In Memorium

My grandfather passed away early Tuesday morning, so this week has been a little chaotic. A lot of my family had to fly in from other cities, but they got here in time. Will be having random family passing through the city all the way up to the funeral next week, so I'm going to be a little preoccupied dealing with that as well as my own personal feelings. He hasn't been well since before my grandma passed, but his health declined after she was gone. He had a rare type of dementia, so his quality of life wasn't the greatest. He would have never wanted to live like that. The staff where he was living was fantastic though, and I can't thank them enough for taking good care of him and making sure he was as comfortable as possible.

Soundtrack Thursday is dedicated to him today. When he was healthy, he really loved watching Star Trek. Going through his things at his house a few years ago we found so many VHS and DVDs of Star Trek, old and new. He never watched any of the new remake movies, so today I'm going to listen to the old movies as well as TV soundtracks. 

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Great nostalgic soundtrack...until you hit Amazing Grace in bagpipes. And I know why there's bagpipes. I've just never been a fan of them at funeral type things. That said, if I could arrange a chorus of screaming bagpipes for a my funeral, that would be hilarious. Would have to be like 5 conflicting bagpipes though.

Star Trek VIII: First Contact - Figured I'd get a film from the second generation of crew and captain. I always personally liked Picard more, but I'm also a fan of Sir Patrick Stewart, so I'm biased. 

Collection of Musical Scores - Here's a broad range of feature scores for Star Trek that I stumbled across. Figure it's a good way to end off the afternoon.

For those of you that missed the last post (of the like...5 people that read this), the Myst series is now fully live and updated on YouTube. The playlist is public, but the videos are unlisted. It's the weakest in the series (of my gameplay at least), so I thought I'd avoid spamming people with an entire 8 part LP when it's not that great. I'll be uploading Riven in July, which in my opinion is the best so far, and I will make those videos public. Other than that, I can't promise any regular updates over the next few weeks, but I'll try to get what I can released.

RPG Making...also Soundtrack Thursday

I started making an RPG as of this week. It was a good distraction and got me as angry as I expected. Okay, it wasn't that bad. It's just the walls suddenly decided collision wasn't for them and I found that I could walk freely into the endless abyss. I scrapped all of the little I accomplished and started over. I seemed to have fixed it for now, but some event-triggering bullshit caused it and I couldn't reproduce it with vigorous guess and check testing. So...onwards.

I have a testing ground to play around with triggers and events so I don't screw around with the actual project. Right now I'm stuck on a specific kind of event trigger (one that I'll be using a lot). I'll be back on the testing grounds either tonight or tomorrow to figure that bit out. Either way, the real challenge is going to be creating custom items, textures, effects and animations. The rest of this is cake compared to that. Also messing around with the battle system...

Guardians of the Galaxy - done before but I was listening to it so...
Pillars of Eternity - Since I'm planning on playing this eventually, I'm curious.
So far it sounds like pretty generic RPG type stuff.
It's nice background music, but not sure if it's what I'm looking to listen to today. Hmm...
Prince of Persia Sands of Time - Might be more of the cadence I'm looking for.
Unreal Tournament 3 - It was in the related tracks list.\

Trine 2 is finished as of...Tuesday. Yes it was Tuesday. I'll be working to post the rest of that shortly. Going to be starting Myst 4 fairly soon. I'll likely get through the entire series before I post any of these videos, so I sort of have a completed backlog of videos of people who want to see me confused and eventually working out puzzles.

Also:
My boots are leaking. Both of them. They have holes somewhere cause after 10 mins of walking my socks were soaked. I need new boots now...great.

Flavourless Mush

Now I know why the kiwis I bought were on sale. When sliced open, they are flavourless mush.

Four more days until I know more about what's causing me pain in my right side.

I'd make today a soundtrack Thursday, but I forgot my headphones at home. The other ones I have are mostly broken and hurt my ears.

I got past the first section of Fire Emblem Awakening on Lunatic mode (i.e. Chapter 11), sat through the forced romance cause I was neglecting my support and training for Chrom, and pushed forward into Chapter 12. Started the level and I wish I could be recording DS games because my reaction was priceless. You get taken right to the preparation menu with no cutscene so I'l like "okay, let's see what we're up against." Immediately around me I see 4 knights, 2 cavaliers and 1 paladin (which I didn't realize was a paladin until I started). I scrolled to the left and said "oh god" because there were 5 more horse dudes and more knights. Scroll up and started swearing said "oh god no" and saw that the whole map is just covered in knights and horse dudes. A good number of them are tier two. I look at the map clear requirements and see "Rout Enemy" and there's just this outraged cry of despair you hear from me and I see that it's 43 units vs my 13 units. I have 3 tier two units. THREE. Only TWO of my units can withstand an attack from that paladin. The rest can be one-shotted. I should see if I can grab a screen of this...anyway I quit to go level my dudes on risen (which are easy aside from the bosses which have 60 HP and do 51 damage -_-). I can literally rant about Fire Emblem for hours so I'll stop.

I'm still sad I missed out on the Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition. Currently my only option are the scalped ones on Amazon etc. selling for like...$300 which I'm not inclined to pay. That would be ridiculous considering other expenses.

I'm stuck on the plant level in Myst 3. Don't tell me what to do. I'm missing something stupid obvious. I know it.

I may work on Evil Within backwards as I want those files off the laptop and I have no where to put them.

Working on a special Life is Strange video that will be released next week. It's mostly done. Just need to fix a few areas.

Actively working on editing the rest of the SR4 footage, Gauntlet footage and one more ESO video. Actively recording Fire Emblem Path of Radiance. I need enough space to finish Gauntlet, SR4 and Dead Space 2. Evil Within, Bioshock Infinite and Murdered are the problem since they are full LPs still.

This week in the world of work: Tiger Telepathy, making fun of Facebook's code (though we learned it actually links back to a picture's URL when it scrapes the page not make a copy), excessive Christmas decorations in the other office that shares our building (including a movie theatre, stormtroopers, LEGO displays, Christmas trees, projectors etc.) and the one site I work with FINALLY renewed their security certificate.

I have a script for the first area of an RPG almost done.

I did not lose any laundry this week.

After Extra Life

All right I'm going to do a quick recap of the weekend here. I'm currently uploading the Twitch streams from the weekend. I might do a highlight reel from the games I played, but I will also be uploading the full streams...if it actually works. I don't think YouTube is happy with the length of some of these, even though I've seen 10 hour videos on YouTube. It just processes endlessly until it fails. I just spilt up one of the videos to see if that helps but...well we'll see. The Sonic one is live if you're interested in seeing me unintentionally kill Sonic in a lot of interesting ways.

I had to work on Saturday in the morning and afternoon, so Kathleen and her friend started off the day playing some Fallout 4. If you're interested in seeing any of her gameplay, you should be able to find the video for at least a couple days here: http://www.twitch.tv/missswat/profile

Anyway, I joined Kathleen after work, covered in sparkles and bits of that fake evergreen tree stuff because I was putting up Christmas decorations. Kathleen and I played some games from about 7:30pm-2am and then both uh...promptly passed out. Kathleen at least had an excuse as she was feeling pretty sick that day. Kudos to her for toughing it out so long. I just passed out because I have no willpower. If you watch to the end of the Incredibles stream, you'll see me falling asleep at the end. I actually lose consciousness for a couple seconds at the time, resulting in me taking unneeded damage/dying. 

I tried streaming Transistor, but the computer I brought to Kathleen's didn't do so well in terms of Streaming and running games at the same time. So I gave up on that after about 30 mins of trying and switched to Gamecube games, which turned out a lot better as the Gamecube could run them while the computer streamed. Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers was the first game I played. It was...hilarious. I loved playing that game for awhile when the movies first came out. I don't remember their faces being so terrifying when converted to...whatever the hell I was looking at. Gimli in particular was...well you'll see. I switched to an Incredibles game after because I got mad. I managed to finish that entire game in about 3 hours. It was also quite hilarious. I plan to play this game co-op with Michael someday as for some reason, we've played it multiple times through together. Probably do to a lack of good owned co-op games. 

I fell asleep after that and woke up at 7am. I played Sonic Mega Collection for a couple hours and then packed up. I had somewhere to be in the morning, so I left Kathleen's and headed out to that. Almost didn't go anywhere as my car wouldn't turn over initially. I hadn't left lights on or anything, so that was exceptionally concerning. I took a look at the battery and saw a boat-load of corrosion on the battery so I cleaned it off the best I could and the engine turned over when I tried again. I'm likely going to have to get that looked at before weather gets super cold. Anyhow, when I got home after, I streamed Transistor on a better computer to make up for the streaming failures of the previous night. I keep forgetting how much I enjoy playing Transistor. I managed to break the AI a little though in one of the bonus levels. 

Kathleen played a lot of Fallout 4 and dabbled a bit in Final Fantasy 7 (one of her go-to games). I'll have to ask her if she played a lot of other stuff. I think she had something else running on her tablet at one point, but you should hear her ranting about FF7 characters in the background of my videos. 

Overall she raised just under $500 this year. Not as much as previous years, but I'd like to congratulate her on pulling together that much on such short notice. Next year we're planning to advertise sooner, but every little bit counts, so thanks to everyone who donated!

In other news, I started playing some Myst 3 after getting it to work on the old laptop still running windows 7. Windows 8 baffles the 3rd and 4th instalment and the common factor appears to be anything running below directx 10, which both games do. I may continue to play/stream Transistor...because now I really want to play it.

Also decided that I want my December solo LP to be Shadow of Mordor. Because Lord of the Rings. This is providing I can finish Dead Space 2 before then...and have enough hard drive space to work with. So...I have work to do.

Exile and Revelations

Both Myst 3 and 4 do not work on this computer no matter what I try. In addition, something seems to be wrong with my mic and I'm getting random BSODs. This bodes well.

My plan is to put my recordings/playthroughs of Myst 3 and 4 on hold until I can get the old computer up and running again, troubleshoot the mic and try to get rid of the files on the external that I'm 95% sure is causing the BSODs.

In the meantime I have the Journeyman Project games (well 2 and 3 since 1 has never worked on anything) as well as Grim Fandango, the rest of Dead Space 2 and the upcoming Life is Strange Episode 5 (release on October 20 as far as I heard). I finished Riven the other night. The ending still freaks me out. I still can't believe this game traumatized me as much as it did when I was a child.

I have almost processed all of Tera (one little segment to go) and I am continuing work on the never-ending influx of co-op LP stuff.

In other other news, I am likely quitting my part-time job to focus on my full-time so I actually have my weekends and evenings free. This will happen in the next 3-4 weeks. So. Almost there.

Full Moon?

I had a really weird weekend is all I can really say. It was fine up until Saturday afternoon (aside from everyone being excessively cheerful...which was strange on its own). It all started when I was cleaning up one of the tables at work. Suddenly someone comes up behind me, leans in and just says "smile." I look up and it's one of the dudes that hangs out on my floor every weeked and watches DVDs. I just stare at him for a second like...really? And he says it again. So I give him this half-assed smile and walk away cause I suddenly have the urge to punch him in the face and I don't want to give him any of my words.

Backstory: I don't work in the best part of town. There are genuinely creepy, angry and unstable people around. My way to avoid being the target of said creepiness is to look as pissed off as possible. I want to be left alone while I work, because it isn't my job to help out with customer service. I have been attacked before at other jobs, so I just don't want any part of this.

So I continue to work because I want none of that nonsense. I turn the corner and he's standing there waiting at the elevator gesturing at me again to smile. I shake my head at him and disappear, then WAIT until he's gone before I go and tell Shauna about it. This is kind of a big deal because I can't just tell him to bugger off because I work there. And he knows it. He wouldn't have told a stranger that, or even one of the older, meaner looking people working with me and that pisses me off. I want to be an anti-social grump. Leave me alone.

Sure he might have just been trying to be nice or something, but seriously, I have a right to be miserable. Even if I am a perfectly happy, untroubled young lady, I can still be as grumpy as I want with out unsolicited suggestions from the guy who once loudly proclaimed to his friend for the whole floor to hear that he was "drunk and horny." I may pretend to be an oblivious, sour individual at work, but believe me, I see and hear EVERYTHING. At least if he keeps bothering me on future days I have grounds to report him and get him kicked out. That makes me happy.

So then the rest of the day is just full of weird crap like the ominous pigeons, the man who walked across the street balancing his skateboard on his hand while maintaining fierce eye-contact with the driver, the lady who kept scowling at me as though I had personally offended her by sitting in a seat halfway across the bus, the strange barista who was borderline insulting Shauna, the random dude at the grocery store who started ranting about Costco discounts and then screamed "WHOOO DISCOUNTS" at us in another aisle, me getting a text about the son of a guy my family knows having his house blown up, the wedding party taking their pictures in front of the sketchy pawn shops downtown, the statues on the rat and the crow in Evil Within, and those children that appeared out of nowhere behind us on the street and started dancing around.

Then I had issues with my computers. So I was using Oliver's laptop to try and chat on Vent and it kept dropping and reconnecting over and over. Went to get a second monitor yesterday and test it with the old computer, which decided it didn't want to work. In all fairness, it's got hobbled-together hardware, hasn't been used in months and may have been damaged in the move, but it wouldn't boot. So that was disappointing. Good news is if I can make some extra room on my desk, I can have duel monitors. What I really wanted it for was for cross-referencing writing a lot quicker as I'm getting close to finishing WMRR.

Then there's a bunch of drama with friends and family, and I might be getting fulltime at my one job and I am just tired again. Good news is that my back is finally at the point where I can do strengthening exercises and I can drop physio soon.

Anyway I'm disappointed about the computer. I was going to use it (as slow as it is) to double video productions so I can catch up on all my projects. I have only small pockets of time to work on this stuff now. According to Mesk and HKS I should just quit everything and become a YouTube sensation. They sound like my Grade 11 social studies teacher who was trying to get us to run away to California and pick oranges for a living. I do miss it though. Playing video games and editing videos all day doesn't sound like a bad gig.

My problem is I've been playing through the Myst series. I have no idea if I'll ever release it, but I'm too invested in that right now to complete my other projects. And I really need to complete the other projects.