This post contains affiliate links so that if you buy these things – at no additional cost to you – I can make a little extra cash for showing you how to inexpensively light your facecams.

So about a year back, I made a brief attempt at being a camgirl. (Don’t get excited, it’s was non-nude and I wasn’t cut out for it.) In preparing for that venture, I did a lot of research and learned that you’re expected to light your feed so that your viewers can actually see you. So I bought this lighting kit and assembled it in front of my desk. (I still use this kit for filming clips, and would recommend it if you need something for that.) It worked out pretty great until I wanted to rearrange my office and put the back of my desk up against a wall.

Before, I had plenty of space for these two giant umbrellas to stand in front of me. In my desk’s new location, though, there was no way to position them correctly. The only place to put one – and only one – was far off to one side so that dark shadows would be cast on the right side of my face in my feed. By this point, I had given up on camming, and instead of had decided to try Twitch. On Twitch, lighting is also pretty crucial because the facecam is an important part of connecting with viewers there too.

A thought then occurred to me: what if I just stick a selfie light on my webcam? Selfie lights are small, but give off enough light to take good cellphone pictures. They should be bright enough to light my face if I’m sitting a foot and a half away, right? Most people take selfies from farther than that. Then I followed the next logical conclusion to that thought: I wonder if someone has made a webcam with a selfie light built in.

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The following post includes affiliate links to products on amazon.com. If you buy these things via these links, I get a commission at no additional cost to you. They haven’t sent me any of these things for free, nor have they asked me to write about these products. I just figured if I send them business, I may as well get compensated for it.

For my birthday a few months ago, my boyfriend Simon bought me a pair of these Cat Ear Headphones (Update (12/7/17): now there’s an improved and upgraded wireless version that changes colors and supposedly has fewer wiring issues). Not only do they feature the pointy cat ears, but they also light up and can be used as speakers in order to share one’s music; or in my case inflict it on others. They are incredibly novel and also incredibly expensive. So it was incredibly harrumphing that they do not work as expected straight out of the box.

I mean, they work just fine as headphones so I’m not exactly crying false advertisement. And I suppose technically they could be used for gaming, if that game were on a cellphone or possibly the Nintendo DS. Because the headset uses a 4-pin jack, which combines the headphones and the mic into a single cable, you can’t use it with most PC’s which have separate jacks for audio and mic. I am to understand that the current generation of gaming consoles are compatible with the 4-pin jack, but it leaves us last-gen plebians with our dicks hangin’ out.

Nonetheless, it is possible to make these headphones interface with both the PC and the PlayStation 3. It requires more equipment, sure, but for some it is a worthwhile endeavor.

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Someone searched for this and because I am a goddamn hero, I will tell you how. But I’m going to assume you’ve already been to HLDJ‘s website and already know the technical aspects of installing and using their add-on and also the etiquette thereof so you don’t get banned from all your favorite servers.

What I’m gonna tell you is how to make it fun for everyone else.

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All right, nerds. I’mma have to be real with you.

You need to stop with the packaged action figures. It’s sending all the wrong signals.

I see a lot of “nerd” rooms that have action figures, still in their boxes, on display like they were cherished tchotchkes. It is my assumption that aside from declaring loudly and proudly that you like nerdy shit, the intention behind this is to convey a sense of fun and childlike whimsy to your visitors. Because who but a fun person would collect Legends of the WWF toys or obscure DC superhero action figures?

But “fun” is not what piles upon piles of toys you cannot play with suggests.

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So maybe you are like me and you have 50+ games on your Steam account and you are using the rest of Steam’s functionality enough that you want to launch all of your games from Steam’s neatly organized and alphabetized library. Or maybe (also like me) you just think it’s fun to let your friends know when you’re playing 5 Days a Fuckfest or Tales of Game’s Studios Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.

It’s easy as hell if your game launches with an .exe file, as most games these days do. But what about older shit? Or ROM dumps? Steam doesn’t permit importing of most proprietary formats just by the usual way, nor links to webpages. As such, how to launch browser games or anything in an emulator, especially the clusterfucks that are DOS-based games, is not something readily obvious in Steam.

But you can do it and here is how.

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How do we prevent viruses?

Fkn duh. Anti-virus.

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So what do you do if you have a virus?

I work at a computer shop, you know. And it may surprise and delight you to know that everything we use to remove viruses at work is absolutely free for you to obtain and use too. Don’t worry. Virii removal is not our bread and butter, and if one were to Google it, they could very come upon these things themselves. What I’m giving here is the 90% tried and true procedure we use at my office.
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So let’s talk about computer viruses. There’s a lot of cute ideas people have about them. A couple weeks back, I had a family come in terrified that people were sneaking into the computer and wanted to know if I could change the IP address to prevent them from finding their computer again.

Yeah.

So first of all, what actually happens when you have a virus?

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