Buh?

I completely forgot it was Thursday today, so I'll postpone soundtrack day to tomorrow. I blame a poor sleep. I woke up at like 430am cause I was too hot, then I threw off the covers and it was too cold like ten minutes later, so I put the covers back on again and then had to throw them off a few mins later etc. Eventually found a happy medium and then my abdomen started complaining because of something I ate or w/e. Anyway when I finally dragged myself out of be I noticed the window was wide open next to me.

So since I fail, here's the song I haven't been able to stop listening to the last couple of days. Also, I think my mind is tissue paper because it ripped in half after this.

I feel like I should at least give you an update, so over the past week I've mostly been working on clearing out the Saints Row 4 stuff. I found an old Thief 1 test recording from...who knows when taking up 13GB of my hard drive so I processed that and uploaded it to the unreleased folder. I made the decision to take all the Guild Wars 1 footage I have and just process it into unedited footage (i.e. not pair it down into a clip show like SR4) as we are unlikely to continue it at the moment and if we did pick it up again we'd likely start over. That way I clear up space. I have two Dead Space videos uploaded, but unreleased and am considering that series finished. I will likely still lower the difficulty just to officially finish it, but I'm mostly moving on now.

I'll likely just marathon a good 4-5 hours to finish the Murdered series so I can move my focus to Evil Within for the co-op series. I'm continuing to record VTM with Shauna today actually. I need to bring my external to her house though since she's running out of hard drive space.

As for writing I've actually been mostly focused on that lately. I'm still re-editing Mesk's Ret Tech document and working on the RPG as well as WMRR. My productivity has been drastically reduced due to a struggle with motivation and mood issues. I'm slowly crawling my way out of that, but for now, business as usual. Looking forward to when I get my poop in a group and release the stock pile of videos I have built up over the past couple months. It's been pretty sparse due to laziness lately. Sorry 'bout that.

I'll also have to take time in the near future to tell you all the tale about my boss, his inherited Italian Apartment and the saga of the squatters. I swear to god he has the best stories.

Cold without a Sweater

Since I'll be away as of tomorrow, I figured I'd write my weekly post here. I should have brought that blanket with me. I'm a giant wimp and I'm cold without a sweater.

So first off, I apologize for this year's lack of video. I have been extremely busy with some things going on in my life right now. Work, health and some big events are taking up most of my time and the majority of my gaming has been on consoles and the 3DS, which I normally don't record. I am hoping that by the end of April I'll have some time to sort out a few of my projects, which include LPs, writing, that RPG I'm attempting, helping Mesk with some of his work, and helping Delta out with the LAG website when I can.

Dead Space 2 is likely not going to be finished at this rate. I pretty much screwed myself over for the final boss and it's nearly impossible on Zealot difficulty with the resources I have. I can either sink time into it until I finish...which will likely be a significant amount of my time at this rate, lower the difficulty, or revert to a previous save and respec. That or quit, but I think I'd be mad at myself if I just gave up.

Shauna and I finished recording SOMA two nights ago. We have a surprisingly long review for it despite how dull we thought the game was. It had so much potential, but was executed so poorly. We talk about it for a good 40 minutes so I'll just leave the details to that. I expect this to get posted sometime after Murdered and Evil Within.

Current projects I'm ACTUALLY actively working (mostly editing not recording): Murdered Soul Suspect, Gauntlet (I found about 3 hours of footage I haven't edited yet), Saints Row 4, Dead Space 2 and Evil Within.

Temporarily shelved projects: Testament of Sherlock, F.E.A.R. 3, Guild Wars 1, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Planet Alcatraz

"Infinitely" shelved projects: Bioshock Infinite (it so broke yo)

On reserve: Myst, Riven, Myst 3, completed Saints Row 4 video

Writing: Amy got back to me with edits. It's not as bad as I thought it would be and she brings up a lot of good points. I told her to ignore most of the grammar stuff for now since it'll likely all change. Coupled with the bit of feedback Mesk gave me, I'll be able to change up some things.

RPG: I have a lot of the areas and ideal battle system planned. I have compiled a lot of potential music to use as well.

In my searches (and since I won't be around for a soundtrack Thursday), please enjoy some of the material I've been obsessively listening to:

Comprachicos
The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place
Hold Your Colour
Spanish Sahara
Django Unchained
A Thousand Faces
Watercolour
End of An Empire
I Will Follow You into the Dark
Alright Still
Transistor
Metallica

600 Page Epic

Sent some of my writing to two people last night and nearly puked from anxiety. I promised that I'd give them regular updates, so I guess this is going to be a priority for awhile. My rewrites of the first bit are a lot better than what was there before, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's any good still. I like what I've written for the most part, but I'm a terrible judge of what other people are interested in so I have no idea how it will go over. I don't take myself too seriously, so that has probably spilled out a lot into my writing (and I'm aware of how much silly made its way in there). In the end, the writing is mostly for me and for fun (and to get this damn story out of my head), but it's still nerve-wracking.

Also Kristy mentioned that my first draft is a little...long. It'll be closing in on 600 typed pages when it's done, but I think it's because I like to add a lot of small details into my work. I'll need to pair down and go broader, but I have no idea how I'm going to do that yet. Gives me hope that people write these massive fantasy and science fiction novels, so my friends might actually be interested in reading. Either way, I guess now that I think about it, that's probably why it's taken me so long to get this segment done. There's still two more parts to write...and I have a lot of it in my head. Hopefully it won't take another 10 years to write. 

Speaking of which, I never gave the update on Kathleen, who raised all the money she needed for her editor. She's going to be self-publishing that book, so I'll let you all know when it's on the market. She is an incredibly talented and intelligent writer and storyteller, so I'm excited for her to get this story out. In other news, Amy sent me her material and it's been fun to see how much she has improved with her writing, even over the last year. And she's having fun with it, which is the point in my opinion. 

Anyway this should all be going on the other blog which is mostly abandoned, but not forgotten. 

Soundtrack Thursday!

Far Cry 4 - Suggested by Shauna. I've only played the co-op in Far Cry, which was so buggy, rushed and hilarious. Apparently it doesn't do the game justice. Michael has played 3 and 4. All I've really seen of 4 is Michael getting accosted by a honey badger.  

Guess it's an Ubisoft day. Somewhere Shauna is squealing with glee. Somewhere else, Mesk is puking rainbows. I'm stuck in the middle giggling about this. Excuse the quality. I was playing this on the PS3, saw that thing going somewhere it shouldn't be, so I picked up my camera and then something...unexpected happened. You can always hear my thought process in my voice/noises I make: curiosity to confusion to disbelief to tired acceptance. I've been sighing like that all too much lately.

Assassin's Creed Revelations - I actually did like this ending quite a bit. As much as Ezio's story was dragged out because of his popularity, at least they made a decent ending for him. I still plan on playing AC 4 and 5 because I actually own them, but I need some time to sit down and do that. I really do love the soundtrack from the second game (and it's uh...sequels? Expansions? bah). 

Rayman - Cause...I have no idea. I needed something a little more random/upbeat for 4pm in the afternoon. I'm not sick and doped up on meds this time I swear. Did I even post that? I should at least put it in unreleased if nowhere else. Oh, I did! 

Dead Space 2 is ALMOST complete. I'm a little bit stuck and angry with the final boss. If the death animation didn't take so long it would probably be much better but NO I have to watch myself get ripped apart for 8 seconds every single time. Everything, but chapter 15 going up in the next couple days here. 

I keep thinking we're almost done SOMA and it continues to drag on.

Evil Within and Murdered continue to be edited. Evil Within is going to be a masterpiece of awful, but I was recently shown a full review of Ultima 9 and I have to say that tops even EW. I was actually personally offended by Ultima 9 and I haven't even played any of the games. 

Fire Emblem will be continued after I've finished up with Dead Space 2. 

I Am a Grown Adult

Listening to Disney Soundtracks. Deal with it. Actually going to be listening to random childhood favourites today, not just Disney.

Mulan - I am struggling so hard not to break into song for the training montage song. It's so hard. I may or may not have been singing it as loud as possible in the car last night driving home. Feel free to judge me. And because I love this review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKLmyqNhKVA

Land Before Time - Don't listen to the other soundtracks in the series. Don't get me wrong, I loved all of these movies as a kid...until we got to 7 and we watched it over and over and over and over like 50 damn times while we were on vacation out at our cabin one year cause my brother wouldn't stop watching it. Don't get me started on Blues Clues. But anyway...the other movies get very uh...kid song-y.

I just got miso flavoured noodle soup in my eye and then burned my mouth on HOT TEA.

Lion King - I never got to be Nala when we pretended to be the characters at the playground. Not that I'm bitter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxTQKxyJyxw

I am still a condensed ball of stress, rage and angst, and have been for the last two weeks. I think if you poke me with a stick I'm volatile enough to turn the city into a crater. I'm so tired.

Also I'm finishing Dead Space 2 finally. I should be done on Saturday.

Everything is on Fire

The sun is a lovely shade of blood red today. Time to ring in the apocalypse with some coffee, cookies and my return from the Place of Spiders (oh, and the Chicken Dance as is tradition with apocalypses). 

Yeah so my city is covered in smoke from the forest fires in Washington today. Heard it's pretty bad down there at the moment, so hope any readers living there are safe from the fires. I couldn't see downtown from the beltline today driving to work, so the air quality is pretty bad. I may add a picture later.

I am back home. I spent a lot of yesterday catching up on video work. I have a small segment of Saint's Row 3 left to go through, but I am essentially done that series. It's nice to have that 600GB back. I finished some work on Testament of Sherlock, but mostly it was just preparing clips for Mesk, who said he would do a in-depth analysis cast of the game for me. That should be fairly amusing. I also continued some work on Tera and the Dungeon Siege 1 Revival series (which I haven't continued since like...May or June). 

I need to finish recording Dead Space 2, Awesome Possum, Gauntlet (with Mesk, HKS and Wibod), Half Life Episode 2 and Riven (will get back to you on this). Guild Wars 1 and Tera need attention, but recording on those are on hold, I think until Mesk and HKS are done Divinity OS due to hard drive space limitations on their end. Not to say my end is any better what with my 600GB free on my flaky external hard drive. 

Oh yeah I still haven't finished Fire Emblem either...

I don't really have an upload schedule worked out yet as I'm still trying to figure out wtf I was doing before I left (nothing productive in the video world I'm guessing). So enjoy the random crap I throw at you for the next week. Hopefully by the weekend I'll have something resembling a regular upload schedule again.

PS - Yesterday I was talking with Mesk, HKS and Shauna and suddenly I'm the proud owner of SOMA and Planet Alcatraz, and apparently I'm LPing both. I'm not exactly sure what happened.

It Stopped Raining

And hailing. Supposed to get more though. Point is my car now looks like a red golf ball.

We had two massive hail storms this week. Shredded trees, damaged property etc. Our neighbours had one of their windows smashed by some grape size hail. One of our windows are now cracked. Also loved all the photos from the newspaper here of all the cars happily ploughing through 3 foot deep water. If you look closely at this one lady in her jeep she's got this massive silly grin on her face. Meanwhile the person behind her is about 3 inches away from flooding their engine. I have a video of the storm from downtown Calgary uploaded if any of you are curious.

I'm going to try and get some video work done tonight. With my mini vacation and other projects I'm trying desperately to finish, I haven't worked on anything since...uh...Tuesday last week. Heh. I promise regular uploads will start again soon.

Dead Space 2 video tonight. Next couple days will be the rest of Contrast and anything else I can crank out. I have many plans, but no time for execution. I am terribly sorry.

One More Thing

Forgot to post about it yesterday, but I figured I'd make a new one rather than add an edit. I will be leaving on Friday for a couple days, so I won't be around to for video uploads etc. I may queue some up and just post from my phone, but that all depends on how good reception is out in the boonies.

Life is Strange is fully uploaded. Don't watch part 6 unless you want to see me suffer at the hands of the phone password. The rest is pretty intense though, so be prepared.

I will queue up some Contrast, Dead Space 2 and maybe (if I get it done between editing papers and making ski videos) more of those Sherlock videos. I may have some other videos hidden in the depths that I can throw up in the meantime. I'll have to take a peek.

When I get back, I'll be working through the never-ending back log of video. Awesome Possum may start going up early even though I'm not done it. I'm stuck. In the arctic. With robot dogs. And tears. I supplied the latter.

Twisted

My spine that is. One of the sections of my spine was slightly twisted, so I had a guy untwist it. Didn't really hurt at the time, but it's pretty sore today.

Mostly just posting to say that Bioshock 2 is fully uploaded. I am rapidly running out of finished material to post. I realistically have Contrast, a few more episodes of Dead Space 2, half (I sincerely hope it's half) of Awesome Possum and like up to level 7 of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance prepared.  don't even think I know where that Fire Emblem stuff is actually...I'm going to have to go digging when I get home.

Now back to my crummy, but totally self-inflicted morning full of moths in the bathtub, missing trains by a minute, losing the squishy bit of my headphones and getting to work early for a meeting just to find out that there's no meeting today. But on the bright side I get to email this dude again because he obviously didn't read the other two emails I sent. Because reading is hard.

Less Angry and Exhausted

Yeah I'm actually not angry about anything this week. All is well now that I have finished those edits and I can't remember what else I was angry about. In other news, my memory is still terrible. I keep saying that will get better when I'm less busy, but either I'm never less busy or my memory is just permanently awful. Okay it's all right in some respects. Sure I can't remember my appointments or meetings, but I can remember every line of Arrogant Worm's History is Made by Stupid People and silly flash videos I watched ten years ago. TOTALLY USEFUL.

I can't even remember why I started this post. God.

Updates I suppose. Bioshock 2 and Far Cry 3 co-op are almost complete. I have a handful of video left for both of them. The Far Cry 3 stuff is particularly aggravating as Michael and I spent a long time suffering at the hands of that final mission. Bioshock 2 is equally aggravating and amusing. I would highly recommend watching the last couple of videos I posted (Suddenly We're in Doom) as there is some really messed up stuff in it. Dead Space 2 will continue for awhile (especially since I haven't even finished recording it yet). Life is Strange Episode 4 is supposed to be out soon-ish. I thought it was actually out this past week. I might do something with Banished as I have been playing that quite a bit the last few days.

I think Delta has slowly been posting the Saint's Row 3 stuff I gave him, but it's going to run out fairly soon. I think more Tera is in order in the near future as well. Guild Wars 1 is going to sit around awhile longer. I ran Gauntlet on Normal with Nick. Not sure if/when I'll post those recordings, though there was a lot of silliness (mostly involving me getting him killed). We'll be running Trine 2 in the near future. Murdered Soul Suspect and Bioshock Infinite are on the queue for LPs with Shauna, but I'm likely to produce more Sherlock video first.

Also got to love the music some company arbitrarily decided to block a video with music from Assassin's Creed 4 in my country after having it sitting there for at least two years with no ramifications. Took me about five seconds to find another version (extended which is even better). Nah nah.

Nothing like telling someone they can't have something. Only makes them want it more.

I still can't get over how much this bothers me. Companies fighting over sound or visual content in my LPs, which is fair use at this point in time, for SCRAPS. Apparently a few cents a month at most is worth fighting for. And I'm the kind of person who will openly admit to using other people's music or content in my videos and accept those claims on my videos...if it's something that was under my control. If it's built into a game and I have no control over what plays when, then I don't think you should be filing claims on my content. Don't give me the line "oh well you can turn the music off in game then." No. Just no. Keep fighting over that petty cash gentlemen.

Angry and Exhausted

And hot and bothered.

These past two weeks haven't been bad really, but I've been struggling a lot with my mood, the heat, trying to manage three jobs (four if you count the editing I've been trying to do periodically) and moving. I have had little time for personal projects, which is unfortunate because I really need them to stay relaxed/sane. So I will tell you what I've been telling everyone the last month: I'm really sorry, but I've been insanely busy.

I've been postponing and putting off all co-op things and have been cancelling on a lot of people. The only games I've been playing with anyone is trying out Gauntlet on an easier level with Nick just to try it, and that has mainly just been stress relief. It mostly consists of me trying to get Nick killed and ending up killing myself in the process. That and stealing all the gold cause I'm certainly not winning in kills.

Dead Space 2 is the other recording I've been doing, but I haven't had the time, energy or willpower to tackle anything else. So I am truly sorry for that (mainly apologizing to Voyeur, Shauna, Mesk, HKS and Delta here). Things should hopefully stabilize next week (though I said that about this week).

Um yeah I'd also love to get back into my reading, writing and trying to learn how to code. That would be great.

This is where my brain is at.

You're welcome.

Quiet

So. I have moved. I'm basically just putting stuff away at this point, but that is why there were no videos uploaded over the weekend. I was too tired and busy to sort that all out. I'm almost settled (still a lot of work to do), but video releases should continue today.

I have some Far Cry 3 co-op and more Bioshock 2 for you. I will be switching things up fairly soon (so if you're not interested or sick of those, new stuff will be coming once I am in a good place).

I am officially LPing Dead Space 2 right now and I will be uploading that in the near future. I think I might actually like it better than the first game in some respects. The combat is a lot more responsive (less input latency, faster movements etc.), but the enemies seem to have HUGE attacks. In some cases if you are just in their general proximity, they will injure you, even if they just nudge you gently. And it's dark. Holy crap it's dark. I have had multiple instances where I can't tell wtf is going on and die because I can't see anything but the glowy bits on my back. Also the game has no tension. Any apprehension/fear that the environment generated in the first game just...doesn't exist here. There's some creepy bits, but it's not scary. There are many jump scares though. And some got me.

Only other thing I need to worry about now is sound proofing. My new location is...noisy. There is a lot of reverb caused by the room I'm in. In addition, the walls are fairly thick, but the doors are REALLY THIN. This is a problem when you have other people living with you because we have slightly different sleep schedules and you can hear EVERYTHING through the doors. I'm looking to invest in some materials to reduce noise from the door (both noise I make...like when I record, and noise from anyone outside). I will see how this goes. I'll come up with something.

On the bright side...THERE ARE NO CROWS. Just bees and spiders and song birds and magpies.

Month of Solo LPs

While not 100% true, this month will likely finish with mostly solo LP videos being uploaded. I only have Far Cry 3 videos prepared for co-op, though I have a good start on more Tera videos. The biggest barrier I have there is how I want to handle Bastion of Lok, because we ran it a few times in various levels of completion. I might just pull clips from the one session and then post an entire run. We'll see. I expect Guild Wars 1 will be a July project for me. Saints Row 3 is just sitting on my drives because I wanted to work on other projects (plus Delta has enough videos to tide him over for awhile). Shauna and I keep trying to tackle Evil Within, but we still only have about an hour of that recorded. It's just...vomit educing. One day I'll finish Bioshock Infinite. One day. Good news is I have some more Sherlock videos to giggle through. I'm excited for more broken animations in that regard.

Anyway, none of this is actually prepared. It's just taking up space.

Speaking of space...I started playing Dead Space 2. Because, you know, I have so much time on my hands. It's actually not too bad. I can put in like, an hour of gameplay at at a time and it actually doesn't take up too much hard drive space. AND YES, I'M USING STASIS. To answer the question I know at least two of you have. I dedicated power nodes to it and everything. Be proud of me.

War for the Overworld is finished. I just have some multiplayer games with Nick if people are interested. There's a lot of giggling and shit-talking.

Lastly I'm just going to keep slogging through the Bioshock 2 stuff. As much as the game irritated me, there was some pretty silly stuff that happened during that series. Watching again, I might actually consider it one of the more randomly funny LPs I've done. This really wasn't because of me or my commentary...things just broke so astronomically. Guess the pain was worth my time.