I have finished and uploaded all of the Dungeon Siege 3 LP. The playlist is complete if you are looking for a specific video or are interested in watching them in order. I'm planning on doing a review of the whole series, comparing 1 through 3 to each other in terms of graphics, style, music, playability and more. Not sure what format I will do this in. I'm still interested in reviewing and critiquing games. It's too bad there are many people out there more entertaining than myself!
I have finished the Diablo 1 LP, which will begin uploading in a few days time. I am currently working on my next LP, but am unsure of how long it will take to finish it, especially since I have terrible aim (there's a hint for you). I will continue to produce LPs because I am enjoying it and because I really need to keep myself busy while I find work. I will go insane otherwise.
Coming Up:
Diablo 1 LP - Uploading every 1 - 2 days (LP is just over 10 hours long meaning there will be around 20 parts, which means that the LP should be fully uploaded within a week and a half)
Current LP - In the recording stage. Waiting until Diablo 1 is rendered and encoded before editing begins.
Machine for Pigs with Shauna - Videos will be produced and edited the week of September 10
Outlast with Shauna - Tentative - Not sure if that will be an LP, but it will probably be recorded week of September 4 if that's the case
I also have more Left 4 Dead 2 videos, but people haven't seemed too interested in those. I will upload those when I run out of LP material in this case.
*In terms of Amnesia, I will probably be equally scared as the first. I really don't know much about the game though, so a lot of it should be a surprise. I just know that enemies are supposed to be...unpredictable.
**In terms of Outlast, it has the potential to scare me the most as its set in an insane asylum. Bad shit happened to people in those places. They are not good places. Too many movies and TV shows freaked me out. This will be either silly or terrifying.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Phew
Just had a massive scare on account of my external hard drive. This drive has been a little flaky lately anyways, but currently it's the only one that has enough space to do any significant recording. My 3 hour encode was 97% complete and I think I tripped something up by disconnecting another hard drive. My hard drive for some reason, had something go wrong and then I got error messages about the video files, which made frameserver crash, which made Vegas crash and suddenly the drive was no longer on, yet it was still registering on my computer. I open the drive, and nothing is in it. So I start to panic. I go to the drive, unplug it from everything, and then plug it back in. It made no noise when it turned on, so I looked in the folder and everything was back. That said, I may want to look into backing up a few more of my files, though, thankfully uploading to YouTube provides a back-up copy for a lot of video.
That adventure over, I am re-encoding the last few hours of Dungeon Siege 3 right now. The LP will probably be fully uploaded by Friday or Saturday this week depending on how reliable encoding and my internet connection is. Meanwhile, I have started my next LP, Diablo 1.
The last time I played Diablo 1 in full was when I was in high school. Like Dungeon Siege, this was one of the games that made up my childhood along with Dungeon Keeper 2, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 2 (lol sequels) and a bunch of much more obscure games. As I've mentioned before, I never owned a console until I was 16, so all of my games were on the PC. I played this game A LOT between the ages of 7 to 9, which is hilarious because I was terrified of Disney villains, even at this age. That said, the furthest I ever got when I was a kid was probably around the start of the Hell levels, if that. I watched my father play the harder parts, but even he never finished the game.
I will be playing a Sorcerer, which should be interesting as I've heard it's difficult to start the game as one. I have no idea how long the LP will be, but I'm already to the third level of the catacombs so, we'll see. Also, the files take up hardly any space at all on my drive. I will be LPing another game at the same time, but I will leave that a surprise.
That adventure over, I am re-encoding the last few hours of Dungeon Siege 3 right now. The LP will probably be fully uploaded by Friday or Saturday this week depending on how reliable encoding and my internet connection is. Meanwhile, I have started my next LP, Diablo 1.
The last time I played Diablo 1 in full was when I was in high school. Like Dungeon Siege, this was one of the games that made up my childhood along with Dungeon Keeper 2, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 2 (lol sequels) and a bunch of much more obscure games. As I've mentioned before, I never owned a console until I was 16, so all of my games were on the PC. I played this game A LOT between the ages of 7 to 9, which is hilarious because I was terrified of Disney villains, even at this age. That said, the furthest I ever got when I was a kid was probably around the start of the Hell levels, if that. I watched my father play the harder parts, but even he never finished the game.
I will be playing a Sorcerer, which should be interesting as I've heard it's difficult to start the game as one. I have no idea how long the LP will be, but I'm already to the third level of the catacombs so, we'll see. Also, the files take up hardly any space at all on my drive. I will be LPing another game at the same time, but I will leave that a surprise.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Landed and Lethargic
I have photos now. The journal from this day was a little more disjointed and in multiple tenses because I was EXHAUSTED. I tried to edit it up a bit and clarify some points.
June 21, 2013
(June 21, 2013)
Our first picture from the plane, which includes our friendly Frenchman, who was actually quiet and kept to himself the whole trip. But I'm sure he was a friendly sort of person.
I honestly can't say that I remember the last 24 hours in any great detail. We arrived in Gatwick, sped through customs (wat) and looked for our bus. Naturally, since I booked us for pick up at the North Terminal, we arrived in the South Terminal. Thankfully, this isn't Canada, so a convenient, quick shuttle train was available to transport passengers between terminals. We arrived, found our stop number, waited for the bus (which turned out to be driven by a humourless young man) and was promptly driven to the South Terminal to pick up more passengers (...yeah). At least we were able to get good seats.
Anyhow, we rode on the bus for about an hour and got stuck in traffic. I tried desperately not to puke from the combination of sudden, frequent braking and the dizzying blur of SHRUBBERY. Rachel passed out from the exhaustion many times, doing the all too familiar "head bob" (I am well acquainted with those from boring university classes). I did not have the luxury of sleeping as a young child kicked my seat all the way to London. So I ate rockets that I found in my backpack to keep me awake and stave off motion sickness. The traffic was mostly due to an accident (a truck had flipped over onto its side) and we were almost in one of our own as a van came speeding down the highway on the wrong side of the road. It was about 2 inches away from hitting us.
When we arrived in London, we were delivered to an old looking warehouse building with a London Tube sign on it. This was not where we had to be to catch the tube to our hostel, so we wandered around the area a little confused until we spotted a string of people who had been on the bus with us. We followed the trail of suitcases down the street to West Brompton station where we were advised that an Oyster Card was not practical for a four day stay in London (we had been told by a friend that Oyster Cards could be more cost efficient depending on our length of stay in the city). We got a day pass instead. That we used once.
...
We figured out which side of the platform to wait on, but spent quite a few minutes trying to figure out what train we were supposed to take. We met another woman, who had been on the bus with us and was from Vancouver, in the same situation as ourselves. We muddled through it together and boarded the train that would get us to our hostels. She left us at South Kensington and we moved to find ourselves a seat for the journey. Then we waited. And waited.
And waited.
And then thirty to forty minutes later on the district line, we arrived in Upton Park (later in Berlin, we told the Londoners we were staying with where our hostel had been and they were shocked, saying how ridiculously far out from the centre we were). We got off the train, went up through the turnstiles and realized once we reached outside that we had no idea where we were going. We started walking one direction after I vaguely remembered that the hostel was supposed to be a short walk from the station, We found a map of the community on a board near an open flea market and figured out that our hostel was a few blocks away. We dragged our tired selves down the street until we spotted the Boleyn Tavern.
The Boleyn Tavern, with our hostel sitting on top along a BUSY street. Seriously, I think a siren went off every five minutes along this road. While we were trying to sleep.
The hostel website informed us that we would have to call into the pub below to check in, but a man outside spotted me trying the locked doors and told us he could let us in. He led us to the door, a small, black entry that required a keycard for access next to a wall topped with barbed wire (cosy!). He let us in and and climbed a steep, blue-carpeted, narrow staircase to the reception desk. We were later informed that these were dubbed the "Anne Frank Stairs" (named thus by one of their previous customers).
The Entry
The man at reception, Jared, told us that our beds were not yet ready, so we were told to come back in an hour. We were allowed to store our bags in a room with hundreds of jars of jam (???) and were referred to a cafe for lunch after I asked what was good in the area. Jared suggested the cafe "Friends," which he said had a couch and everything like the TV show. Upon walking there, we confirmed that they did, indeed, have a couch.
The "Friends" cafe...along with some lovely flowers.
Rachel got a muffin (blueberry) and I got a ham sandwich with "traditional English tea." And then we sat, staring blankly into space for an hour while we ate. We returned to the hostel and the beds still weren't prepared, so we found a (dirty) couch in the lounge where we found out about the floods back at home in Calgary, Canmore and High River. I was pretty upset about this, as was Rachel as well. Upon returning, Calgary has recovered very well, but at the time we thought that a huge chunk of our city had been completely destroyed. It was mostly that case in High River, which still hasn't recovered from the disaster. High River had been nearly wiped out, but we learned that the people had really banded together to help each other out and open their homes to those affected.
Once our beds were ready, we got our disgusting sheets for our grody beds and went upstairs to settle in (Jared, who gave us our sheets, walked away without telling us what room we were in. Brilliant.) We met three other women in the room, who were there when we arrived. The one pair of women didn't seem to be too sure of where they were from when we asked (they seemed a little confused on the matter), though they were just as tired as we were (so we'll let that slide). The other woman, Katelin, who hails from Oklahoma City, was staying on the bed near Rachel. She too had tragedy strike her home recently with a class 5 tornado. She told us where she was travelling and learned she was seeing a lot of the same places we were. We talked for awhile and decided to go see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and walk around central London tomorrow. Oh and the Tower of London of course.
I can't wait to walk through St. James Park and see Rachel's reaction to the over-enthusiastic, fat, little squirrels. Anyhow, we went for a "nap" and ended up sleeping a long time. We updated ourselves on home and decided to go for a walk in our area. We happened to be staying near the West Ham Football Stadium (unfortunately not Arsenal for Rachel) and we discovered that the part of town we are staying in is, essentially, the equivalent of North East Calgary...on a much larger scale.
I can't get over how old buildings are here compared with those in Calgary. And if the weather continues the way it has back in our home, it never be that way. We walked down Green Street and then back to Barking. We chanced upon a Dr. Who store in which we fully intend to return to tomorrow when it's open to send pictures to Kristy (yeah we totally forgot). We dropped by a Tesco, picked up Fanta (Fanta Zero by accident...ugh), some pre-made sandwiches and salad (which turned out to be pretty disgusting) and some British Cadbury chocolate, then returned to the lounge to eat. After we were done eating and watching awful British sitcoms, we returned to our dorm to plan our next, hopefully more exciting and less confusing, day.
June 21, 2013
(June 21, 2013)
I honestly can't say that I remember the last 24 hours in any great detail. We arrived in Gatwick, sped through customs (wat) and looked for our bus. Naturally, since I booked us for pick up at the North Terminal, we arrived in the South Terminal. Thankfully, this isn't Canada, so a convenient, quick shuttle train was available to transport passengers between terminals. We arrived, found our stop number, waited for the bus (which turned out to be driven by a humourless young man) and was promptly driven to the South Terminal to pick up more passengers (...yeah). At least we were able to get good seats.
Anyhow, we rode on the bus for about an hour and got stuck in traffic. I tried desperately not to puke from the combination of sudden, frequent braking and the dizzying blur of SHRUBBERY. Rachel passed out from the exhaustion many times, doing the all too familiar "head bob" (I am well acquainted with those from boring university classes). I did not have the luxury of sleeping as a young child kicked my seat all the way to London. So I ate rockets that I found in my backpack to keep me awake and stave off motion sickness. The traffic was mostly due to an accident (a truck had flipped over onto its side) and we were almost in one of our own as a van came speeding down the highway on the wrong side of the road. It was about 2 inches away from hitting us.
When we arrived in London, we were delivered to an old looking warehouse building with a London Tube sign on it. This was not where we had to be to catch the tube to our hostel, so we wandered around the area a little confused until we spotted a string of people who had been on the bus with us. We followed the trail of suitcases down the street to West Brompton station where we were advised that an Oyster Card was not practical for a four day stay in London (we had been told by a friend that Oyster Cards could be more cost efficient depending on our length of stay in the city). We got a day pass instead. That we used once.
...
We figured out which side of the platform to wait on, but spent quite a few minutes trying to figure out what train we were supposed to take. We met another woman, who had been on the bus with us and was from Vancouver, in the same situation as ourselves. We muddled through it together and boarded the train that would get us to our hostels. She left us at South Kensington and we moved to find ourselves a seat for the journey. Then we waited. And waited.
And waited.
And then thirty to forty minutes later on the district line, we arrived in Upton Park (later in Berlin, we told the Londoners we were staying with where our hostel had been and they were shocked, saying how ridiculously far out from the centre we were). We got off the train, went up through the turnstiles and realized once we reached outside that we had no idea where we were going. We started walking one direction after I vaguely remembered that the hostel was supposed to be a short walk from the station, We found a map of the community on a board near an open flea market and figured out that our hostel was a few blocks away. We dragged our tired selves down the street until we spotted the Boleyn Tavern.
The hostel website informed us that we would have to call into the pub below to check in, but a man outside spotted me trying the locked doors and told us he could let us in. He led us to the door, a small, black entry that required a keycard for access next to a wall topped with barbed wire (cosy!). He let us in and and climbed a steep, blue-carpeted, narrow staircase to the reception desk. We were later informed that these were dubbed the "Anne Frank Stairs" (named thus by one of their previous customers).
The Entry
The man at reception, Jared, told us that our beds were not yet ready, so we were told to come back in an hour. We were allowed to store our bags in a room with hundreds of jars of jam (???) and were referred to a cafe for lunch after I asked what was good in the area. Jared suggested the cafe "Friends," which he said had a couch and everything like the TV show. Upon walking there, we confirmed that they did, indeed, have a couch.
Rachel got a muffin (blueberry) and I got a ham sandwich with "traditional English tea." And then we sat, staring blankly into space for an hour while we ate. We returned to the hostel and the beds still weren't prepared, so we found a (dirty) couch in the lounge where we found out about the floods back at home in Calgary, Canmore and High River. I was pretty upset about this, as was Rachel as well. Upon returning, Calgary has recovered very well, but at the time we thought that a huge chunk of our city had been completely destroyed. It was mostly that case in High River, which still hasn't recovered from the disaster. High River had been nearly wiped out, but we learned that the people had really banded together to help each other out and open their homes to those affected.
Once our beds were ready, we got our disgusting sheets for our grody beds and went upstairs to settle in (Jared, who gave us our sheets, walked away without telling us what room we were in. Brilliant.) We met three other women in the room, who were there when we arrived. The one pair of women didn't seem to be too sure of where they were from when we asked (they seemed a little confused on the matter), though they were just as tired as we were (so we'll let that slide). The other woman, Katelin, who hails from Oklahoma City, was staying on the bed near Rachel. She too had tragedy strike her home recently with a class 5 tornado. She told us where she was travelling and learned she was seeing a lot of the same places we were. We talked for awhile and decided to go see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and walk around central London tomorrow. Oh and the Tower of London of course.
I can't wait to walk through St. James Park and see Rachel's reaction to the over-enthusiastic, fat, little squirrels. Anyhow, we went for a "nap" and ended up sleeping a long time. We updated ourselves on home and decided to go for a walk in our area. We happened to be staying near the West Ham Football Stadium (unfortunately not Arsenal for Rachel) and we discovered that the part of town we are staying in is, essentially, the equivalent of North East Calgary...on a much larger scale.
I can't get over how old buildings are here compared with those in Calgary. And if the weather continues the way it has back in our home, it never be that way. We walked down Green Street and then back to Barking. We chanced upon a Dr. Who store in which we fully intend to return to tomorrow when it's open to send pictures to Kristy (yeah we totally forgot). We dropped by a Tesco, picked up Fanta (Fanta Zero by accident...ugh), some pre-made sandwiches and salad (which turned out to be pretty disgusting) and some British Cadbury chocolate, then returned to the lounge to eat. After we were done eating and watching awful British sitcoms, we returned to our dorm to plan our next, hopefully more exciting and less confusing, day.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
The Plane to London
There are a lot of aspects I would like to write about from this trip, not only what happened and what we did, but what I was thinking and what I want to do now that I'm back home. I have a whole new set of ambition that I did not have when I left and I am excited to see it through. I did not manage to write every single day as I started out. I managed to keep up with the entries for about a week since I got tired or sick some days and didn't want to write anything. As of right now, I am 9 days behind. For the following journals, I will type the day I wrote it in brackets, and the day all the events occurred in italics. Any interjections I have with my original narrative will be bold like this block of text.
June 20, 2013
(June 21, 2013)
Strictly speaking, the date happens to be June 21, but I wouldn't want to leave out the first day of our fantastic journey across the European continent. We will be touching down in London soon at the Gatwick airport after a typical flight of movies on minuscule, dated screens (seriously, the only "tube" TV I've seen in the past few years is the crummy one I have in my bedroom to play Gamecube and Sega Genesis on) half hidden by passenger's heads, at least three screaming or crying children and the occasional bout of turbulence. On my right is Rachel, who is currently watching a movie about some guy in India collection old people (?) and to my left is a quiet man, whom I have decided is French, or at least of a French-speaking country (plus he chose the French option for his movie...I'm not creepy...). I liked his iPad cover.
The day began with me not wanting to get up as it would likely be my last comfortable sleep in five weeks (I will be happy to be proven wrong). I was convinced to get up, however, by an irritating song on the radio (which is usually how I start most mornings). That, and I needed to finish packing. And I swear I mean finish this time. I was too stressed and nervous to leave it to the last possible minute as usual. The morning was mostly uneventful aside from a trip to my grandparent's house for coffee and cookies. Because what my nerves really needed was caffeine and sugar. Of course this was later helped by my last taste of Timmies, an iced cappechino I enjoyed with Hazen, Kyle, Rachel's mother and Rachel's mother's boyfriend.
We had our coffee and good-byes punctuated with the irritation of lines, papers and grumpy uniformed airport security at the scanners. Because the smell of a thousand feet is supposed to make me feel secure on my flight (I'm always a little bitter about security at airports). Regardless, I removed my footwear (the only city I actually HAD to going through security...which was odd), bag, phone, laptop, jacket like the rest.
Upon passing an arcade outside security, we came across an old favourite of ours from Jr. High math class: Bubble Bobble. We decided we had time for a game. As my friend's lives dwindled, I still had two lives and limited minutes to get the high score. Triumph I did, though we barely made the last call for our gate as a consequence. Heh.
So here I sit, old people movie now complete (strange Indian theme on this flight with the showing of "Life of Pi" first), breathing recycled air as Rachel digs around in her pack for something eluding her reach. I will probably return to reading "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and actually finish this time after trying at least three times in the past to read it. It has actually piqued my interest, probably because I'm a fan of the episode based on the book in the BBC Sherlock.
...
So thus begins our journey. On a cramped, stuffy, sleepy, dated aircraft.
(Which I will appreciate before this trip is over)
I'm Back!
And ready to get back into writing and video production. I'll be beginning videos today, including more video game recording and to get back into Dungeon Siege 3 to beat that stupid multi-armed boss. I am not going to sleep tonight until that statue is no more. I have had a request to play Diablo 1 after this LP, so I shall do that. I also decided while I was away that I would LP Half Life 1 and Overlord 1. I feel like I have unfinished business with both. I'm also debating uploading the Baldur's Gate video footage that I have, but I'm not sure if it would be interesting enough. We'll see. I certainly get mad in it because of some of the fights.
I will also be posting updates here from my trip with video and pictures. I journalled the entire time (though I have yet to finish the last 9 days or so of the trip). I figure I can hit two birds with one stone by sharing what we did and edit them up in the process. My only fear is that I can't read my own writing. I shall start now. After all, what else is one to do at 5am when they can't sleep?
I will also be posting updates here from my trip with video and pictures. I journalled the entire time (though I have yet to finish the last 9 days or so of the trip). I figure I can hit two birds with one stone by sharing what we did and edit them up in the process. My only fear is that I can't read my own writing. I shall start now. After all, what else is one to do at 5am when they can't sleep?
Monday, June 17, 2013
Travel
As of Thursday, I will be gone for a month and a half. I'm trying to get a lot of videos uploaded before then, but I won't have Dungeon Siege 3 fully recorded, encoded and uploaded before I go unfortunately. I won't be taking my laptop or external drives with me as they are too heavy and I don't want to risk them getting broken, lost or stolen (I can't really afford to let that happen). And so, I will try and post some updates here and perhaps have some videos prepared for when I return at the beginning of August.
I am done school, graduated and ready to work full time for the rest of my life. Good news is, I will probably have MORE time to record with no homework or papers to worry about. I'm actually going to miss school though. I'm a nerd.
So, I will be around for a few more days. After that, if you never hear from me again, I probably fell victim to one of the following:
-kidnapped by trolls
-got hopelessly lost and starved to death
-got eaten by a bear or a giant rabid moose or a grue
-got assaulted by a killer rabbit or beaver or a combination of the two
-executed my leap of faith incorrectly and missed the haystack
-got hit by a runaway scooter
-sacrificed myself to disarm a bomb that would have been sent to the earth's core in a desperate attempt to destroy the world
-choked on a crepe
-went crazy after being bitten by a cave spider
-got run over by a street cleaner
-got slapped in the face with a cod
-got trapped in an invisible box by mimes
-engaged in an epic battle with one of my many doppelgangers, eventually destroying us both
-encountered a giant robot minotaur in a labyrinth where I became lost after being kidnapped and taken there by trolls
Or something along those lines.
I am done school, graduated and ready to work full time for the rest of my life. Good news is, I will probably have MORE time to record with no homework or papers to worry about. I'm actually going to miss school though. I'm a nerd.
So, I will be around for a few more days. After that, if you never hear from me again, I probably fell victim to one of the following:
-kidnapped by trolls
-got hopelessly lost and starved to death
-got eaten by a bear or a giant rabid moose or a grue
-got assaulted by a killer rabbit or beaver or a combination of the two
-executed my leap of faith incorrectly and missed the haystack
-got hit by a runaway scooter
-sacrificed myself to disarm a bomb that would have been sent to the earth's core in a desperate attempt to destroy the world
-choked on a crepe
-went crazy after being bitten by a cave spider
-got run over by a street cleaner
-got slapped in the face with a cod
-got trapped in an invisible box by mimes
-engaged in an epic battle with one of my many doppelgangers, eventually destroying us both
-encountered a giant robot minotaur in a labyrinth where I became lost after being kidnapped and taken there by trolls
Or something along those lines.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Questions on My Mind...
Such as:
Is a person who played video games before they were cool, who wears outrageously huge glasses and can be incredibly pretentious a nerd or a hipster?
...
That and why can't I figure out where I stuffed all those dodgeball videos? Interns.
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