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.

Nice Pancreas

These last few weeks have been quite the adventure in gigantic swings of good and bad luck. Thankfully whenever something bad happens there seems to be good luck in those bad things. Device for music breaks catastrophically > decides to randomly function again. Forget the laundry on top of my car and drive away > return to see nothing got run over. Need to leave my car in a parking lot for two days due to a medical emergency > doesn't get towed or broken into. Need to wait a total of 10 hours in a hospital waiting room to find out why I have stabbing pains in my chest only to find out they can't find anything wrong > there's nothing wrong with me and, I quote, "have a very nice pancreas." 

I was even well enough to go to an adults only night at the science centre last night (despite lingering nausea), which was nice cause we got tickets to it over a month ago. Saw a show about Pluto that was apparently "too much science" for the guy next to us. Because I mean, who the hell wants to experience science in a science centre. It was entertaining to watch 18+ people playing with science displays intended for children (including full-grown adults climbing through the indoor playground...with a height limit of four feet), and flocking around a number of puppies and cats that one organization brought in. There were also snakes and spiders to pet (I passed...mostly cause the line for it was long) and a human-sized hungry hungry hippos. 

So I should be able to upload more videos again starting tonight. I was a little over-dramatic the other evening as I was sitting on the bathroom floor at the time waiting for nausea to pass. I got some Fire Emblem levels on my DS done though so I suppose there's that. That desert level was really killing me for awhile. I was probably complaining about this in my last post. 

Also, was really entertained by a dude who felt the need to tell me how I wasn't a very nice person on YouTube after I commented on a guy who was upset that I had the audacity to joke about Dungeon Siege instead of just playing it. I mean, I'm so lucky to have someone policing my niceness levels these days. I don't want to literally turn into Hitler. Maybe this fine moral guide will scroll down the page and scold the young gentlemen who called me a bitch and told me to "lick his butthole." I mean if he's so concerned about how nice I'm being, he should certainly be interested in telling this lovely individual to mind his language. That said, I suppose I got the brunt of it because I'm just a horrid little hellspawn. It's okay; we'll hug it out. Maybe it'll purge the meanness from me. 

Blaze of Glory

That feel when you place a box of clothes on the top of your car and then forget to move it to the trunk, and then drive away with said box on the top of your car only to realize it five minutes down the road in a sudden, cold panic, returning to find it in the middle of a residential intersection. It's okay, only 3-4 cars full of people saw me scooping underwear up off the pavement in the middle of the road.

And then I get back into my car and this is playing on the radio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfmYCM4CS8o

I'm pretty sure this is the second time that song has been playing at an awkward time.

So now I'm in a mood for Westerns.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Watched this for the first time for a class in university actually.
Red Dead Redemption - Never actually played this one...though I saw a lot of hilarity courtesy of my brother. I think Mesk and HKS did some silly things with the horses in this game too.
The Great Silence - Was recommended.
Compilation - Spice it up for the last entry here.

The device I used to play music normally in my car died completely yesterday though it happened to be at close to full battery. It wouldn't turn on even after connecting it to a computer. Then of course when I was showing it to my brother it decided to work, so now it's...charging? This week has had massive spikes between good and bad luck. That and a slap on the wrist from my new doctor for failing to get my bloodwork done. Then she calls later and is all like "yeah and now you can get these done too while you're at it."

Started uploading Path of Radiance today if you're interested in watching me play the video game equivalent of a board game. I uh...tend to get exceptionally foul-mouthed when playing Fire Emblem games so that should be entertaining for some of you.

Decembrrrrrrrrr

Weather has cooled off here quite considerably, which has been GREAT for my cough. Not actually great. On the upside, I can actually breath/speak without coughing every five seconds so that's a plus. On the downside I've passed on my cold to some other people so...I'm sorry. Humidifiers though, been the best tool out of this entire ordeal. When the humidity in the house naturally sits around 35-38% and the air outside usually doesn't go above 50% at any given time, it's quite useful.

Anyway, aside from still waking up late, having a drippy ambiguous water leak over my and my coworker's desk and accidentally spraying coffee all over the coffee table (lol irony) this morning, things are going a lot better (again, I'm so sorry).

December is fast approaching and I'm excitedddd. Steam has a Black Friday sale or something going on because most of everything on my wishlist is on sale. This is bad for my wallet considering I have some significant purchases coming up in the next couple weeks in addition to Christmas. And then there's living costs...gas, food, housing...BUT ASIDE FROM THAT, I'm excited about a lot of video and creative work going on. December 1 I'll be posting some special videos that hopefully YouTube won't censor and I'll be planning (hopefully) a decent upload schedule for December to make up for the lack of uploads during the summer and fall.

Oh yeah and it's soundtrack Thursday.

Star Wars Old Republic - Cause Star Wars is a thing right now.
Bastion - Cause it's really good
Life is Strange Episode 5 - It still hurts

Porcelain Arms

I've managed to catch a rather nasty head cold. I was coughing so hard that I believe it aggravated another problem I have, so I'm in varying amounts of discomfort. The good news is I have now caught up on a number of things as I've had the time to do so...that is when I'm not working from home, sleeping or waking up in the middle of the night thinking one of my arms turned into a ceramic object.

I'm not joking. Whatever they put in nighttime neocitran is some interesting stuff because I woke up last night and had the most lethargic freakout when I thought that my arm and hand had turned bright white and transformed into porcelain. Just the one though cause I remember taking my pulse in that arm just to make sure it wasn't actually pottery. At some point logic or sleepiness won and I passed out again until morning. I may forego the neocitran tonight.

Murdered Soul Suspect Episodes 1 and 2 are now uploaded. I am well into the next two segments of it. I managed to power through 4+ hours of Gauntlet and now have 3 more episodes ready to upload. Right now I'm trying to remember where I stuck all the Evil Within stuff and whether or not I still need to transfer the Evil Within off the old laptop. Either way, I'm out of space for Myst 3, which is probably good because I shouldn't be recording that with half a brain and when I'm coughing every 5 seconds. How annoying.

Um, yeah so Gauntlet episodes coming soon and...more Murdered. I had some other plans, but I'm still having trouble remembering what's what so, I'll give another update when I'm feeling better.

Wat...

Today I have some tracks that I've already featured before...but it was a long time ago so I'm counting it.

Suckerpunch - Still one of my favourite movie soundtracks.
Guardians of the Galaxy - The version I had in my playlist got entirely muted because of one song. So here's a version with just that song muted. Crap I'm going to have the Pina Colada song stuck in my head.

Speaking of videos with copyright claims. I uploaded the exact same footage twice (one video is private and includes both LOTR and Incredibles from Extra Life while the other is split in two) and only got a copyright claim on one. The one that got the claim on it is the longer, private video. Wat. Whatever, no one's going to watch that version, but what did it claim you might ask? A 32 second clip of a song that was playing in the distant background that came from Fallout 4. Wat.

Wat.

Life is Strange Episode 4 - The track mixing in this version is pretty awful, but the quality otherwise is pretty good. I also love all the butthurt about the endings. People are upset that it wasn't a "happy" ending. While I like my happy endings sometimes, I don't want everything to be that way. Both endings had sadness in them, and in both instances Max learns/accepts something. If it had been perfect and wonderful I feel like that would have been a slap in the face and made the entire experience worthless. Tell me a good story and I'll take any ending.
Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring - Got to love a classic.
The Last Goodbye - Billy Boyd - Was a suggested video on LOTR FOTR.
Game of Thrones - Since Shauna and I have been watching it.


Played more SOMA with Shauna. I'm sad to say it's lost most of it's tension and horror due to a changing tone, but I don't mind the story and the atmosphere. It's a little heavy-handed with the symbolism and psychology, which makes it somewhat tiring. They seem to be dragging out one fairly simple theme out over the entire game. Whenever the monsters actually do show up, it is mildly frightening, but I don't get the terror that I had during the original Amnesia or Outlast. I'm not sure if that's what they were going for or not. It's like Amnesia (duh), mixed with Bioshock, mixed with Alien Isolation, mixed with Penumbra (also duh but kind of unfortunate).

I think the problem with it is everyone in this game is just so damn cheerful no matter what happens. There's no sense of isolation or loneliness. We had that at the beginning of the game when we didn't have a friend in our pocket, but now that we have her, it's like...well we aren't exactly alone are we? Even when we find out what happened to the world and our protagonist, there's no sense of urgency or self-preservation. There's just a little bit of a mystery of what's going on. I don't know. I don't hate the game, but it's certainly not anything mind-blowing. Maybe we'll be surprised.

Either way, well talk more about SOMA when we actually finish the game. I'm probably going to be pushing SOMA to the top of the list of our co-op LPS.

SOMA - Because it's a somewhat recent release.
Murdered: Soul Suspect - CAT.
Evil Within - I actually look forward to editing this. It's so awful.
Sherlock - This is the "I don't feel like editing anything else" project.
Bioshock Infinite - I should really just scrap this. The recordings are so messed up.

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.