Breeze

I received a PM earlier today, and I'm quite positive that it's spam. It's from a user with zero posts in the forums, and the body of text is similar to everyday spam.

For the forum moderators, I can PM you the next of this message, and user details if you like.

I've got a baby boy (he just turned 1). I named him Grayson, obviously after Colonel Grayson Death Carlyle (to which my partner surprisingly agreed to). It's a bit of a double geek reference as well, as I'm a bit of a Batman fan as well, and he'd be my Robin (as in, Richard Grayson. The profanity filter won't let me use the more commonly used, and short form version of Richard).

Obviously Grayson needs a mech to ride around in, and what's more appropriate than a Marauder?

So I went ahead and got one made for him. In other words, I found someone talented enough to do it justice, and had one custom made.

You might have come across the work of this artisan from other videogame related projects (I believe Kotaku has posted up previous works before). She's made plushies from Plants vs Zombies, and Starcraft. You can find her website here.

I play MWO on my gaming laptop (a MSI GT783). I've had a sudden problem with my headset and I'm having some trouble figuring out the reason.

Prior to the problem, I hadn't installed any particular software to get the headset to work. Just plug in and use. However, in the past 2 days, there appears to be no input from the microphone (and the in-built mic is picking up my voice instead).

In the past week, I might have uninstalled a relevant program whilst fiddling around the control panel (I can't say for sure what the program I clicked on actually was, and whether it's related to audio at all. Careless, I know). I tried to restore my computer to an earlier point, but to no avail.

Currently, the laptop seems to recognise that a mic has been plugged in. Under the Sound menu, the mic shows up, and the green bars by the side light up when I plug the mic in and out. Speaking into it doesn't cause any reaction however.

I know that it's not very clear what exactly is wrong here. But looking for any suggestions on things I can try.

I will be testing out the headset itself, and also try to plug in another headset to test the mic jacks. But are there other things I should be testing out as well?

In trying to solve this issue, I did install the RealTek High Definition Audio Codec, which I believe was originally installed, and may have been the thing I had uninstalled.

Thanks for any assistance.

DISCLAIMER: This is some pretty obvious self promotion!

I'm a regular contributor to Pixel Hunt, an Australian based videogame website, e-zine and podcast. Yesterday, I interviewed two of the developers of MechWarrior Tactics for our podcast, which has now gone live. You'll find more details about this specific podcast episode here: http://www.pixelhunt...arrior-tactics/

I'm a huge BT/MW fan, and in addition to being a general fan boy on both the MWO and MWT forums, I've been pushing our editorial team for more coverage of MW games on our site.

Long story short, if I want more MW coverage on our site, I'm going to have to do it myself. When I posted about the MWO tweet chat a few weeks back, our site got the highest number of hits ever in the past 2 years. So the team has realised the strength of the MW community.

Help me keep up the barrage! Listen to the podcast (jump straight to the interview if you like; there's some preamble before it), and leave a comment. If you can give our podcast a positive rating on iTunes (if you like it, of course), that'll be even better!

Thanks, and enjoy the podcast.