Al.

Did the Freebies board not make the transition?  I have a Disco Elysium Key if someone wants it.   Excellent point and click game.

It is on the XBOX Game Pass so I could play it today if I wished but I am still VERY SLOWLY making my way through Red Dead Redemption.  Big 100 hour games are just such a chore.  

I dunno if I ever will make it back to Primavera Barcelona.  My best memories was when there was 8 or 9 friends all going and we'd party all night.  The last time I was there was 2013 and we were down to 3 other people who were just moaning about things and headed home early and it just gave it a sour memory in my mind.  It didn't help that I think it was the first year they expanded out of the actual purpose built part of the Forum to the wasteland areas and became a bit too big for its own good.  Barcelona was also getting really crabby towards tourists and we didn't feel welcome in a lot of places we went.  I am super glad you had a good time though and it sounds like the old Primavera I (sort of) remember.   I might do Porto again though.  It is certainly not as good festival setup wise and a lot less bands to see but its still decent enough and Porto is a great location.

Next week we are off to https://endoftheroadfestival.com again.  We almost pulled because of the closeness to my brothers wedding and the line up with few names we recognised but I just love the location and setup and I know I will find someone playing I will love.  The audience is typically older and we don't feel like strange creeps in the corner of a field of youngsters.  Looking forward to it.

I'm unsure if there is some sort of checklist of exploitation but I'd bet the people enjoying the results saying "they can leave anytime" is probably on there. 

I'll await the inevitable exposé that the alleged previous experience and any perceived enjoyment were manufactured narratives and really in the background theres a comically moustachioed ring leader sort cracking whips shouting "Do you want to win HALF A MILLION dollars and pay for your son's operation or not? Well then you'll eat the worms!" just off camera.

On 8/11/2023 at 12:36 PM, Chimp with a Limp said:

Some of the people were survivalists, one was an accountant, three were women, so it's a bit of a mixed bag. 

Women can not have hobbies or profession - Anthony Scally (creator of Spacemoose)

From your descriptions this appears to be pure exploitation.  Most "reality" TV is of course but this seems taken to an extreme.  Real Running Man stuff. 

What's next... BABY BABY CHAINSAW?  The new game where we fire three objects into the air to blindfolded contestants.  2 of them are babies.. one is a chainsaw.   Do you take the risk of dropping the baby or catching the chainsaw?  Sorry someone just pulled up to my house with a dump truck of money after I typed this....

Oppenheimer (2023)

Christopher Nolan films Cillian Murphy up close acting to win them both Oscars.  It is interesting and well made though I am unsure if I really need to do the iron bladder challenge to see it in the cinema.  The actual visuals were not really ever justifying IMAX though the sound might.  If you've the power to really annoy the neighbours when the stealo drops no harm waiting otherwise go see it.

4/5

Well if no one else finds it funny be assured I will be well amused by the thought of people giving out to you about the cost of living, how difficult it is to get a baby sitter and why you didn't just put on Jaws in a comically strong New Zealand accent.

Ah  I had one of those nights where every team I am on is getting curb stomped and I spawn and get killed before I can get any feel of where the baddies are.  Probably if I had a coordinated squad we could have broken out but it wasn't fun.  I forgot for every fun night in a BF game there's at least one of these too..

It is possible to make squads on the fly and invite people to them but I was still in the very much learning that m1 shoots stage of the game.

It is certainly at the stage where I have no sense of reference in maps and I just spawn in unsure if I should go forward or backwards or where baddies will be so it feels completely chaotic. I assume eventually if I play long enough I will start to learn them.  I honestly remember old Battlefield map geography like it was a place I visited years later.   I wish they'd implement quick chat and more elaborate ping commands to let your team mates know something is up without voice chat.  About 70% don't use voice chat and of the remainder it still is never clear who they are and what they're talking about.  A good portion have horrible mics, some don't speak English. I did have one excellent voice chat experience where I jumped into a tank being piloted by a heavily accented Eastern European speaking perfect English who gave a running commentary on absolutely everything happening.  I was completely silent but followed along to his instructions and we'd a decent enough run of it with his accent adding to the authenticity of the whole thing. Unfortunately after we got blown up it wasn't easy to find him again due to having so many people on the map.

The current indie darling on Steam is Battle Bit Remastered. https://store.steampowered.com/app/671860/BattleBit_Remastered/

A Roblox looking take on Battlefield which goes back to the days of simple weapon progression unlocks and no ridiculous DLCs etc.  The whole thing costs 15 quid.  I've had a bit of fun playing on my own.  It would be good if one day the "old crew" could do a big game but I have little hope of it.

On 7/2/2021 at 8:40 AM, Al. said:

I reckon we got two.. maybe three years of normality after Covid till we are all screwed Covid level by climate change shit. Enjoy what you can in that window.

Seems fairly on track.

They had a new hottest day ever every day for a week.  Ireland is pretty rainy and gray at the moment but we'd some scorchers in June and currently large chunks of Europe are hitting 45c.  This is fine.

Is this how you reveal you splashed out on a PS5?   These games were originally built with the controller in mind so you'll be fine.  There's a fair amount of aim assistance and the like in play.   Don't forget to try the first person view when you're walking around.  It doesn't work well for driving or shooting stuff but it really shows off details in the various locations when you're not too stressed.

Still not up to some of the runs I did when I wasn't recording but it'll do to demonstrate the fixed recording process.  I still can't get the LIV stabiliser to work which I think could do a more vertical video as the health rarely shows but I've mixed the game level way down so I should be clearer.  There's a lot of dead time in 22 minutes so if you are watching it 1.5x it.  I liked a couple of moments such as the weird gun I get half way through, the traditional grenade fumbles and the last hold starts to get exciting as I get overwhelmed but survive (only to die to a stupid thing later).  I used to play with a lot more health so I am a lot less cautious than I should be as these are done on the default amount.  I need to get better.

Not a lot of time today but capturing in OBS fixed a fair few problems.  Unfortunately the runs are a bit boring so I won't bother uploading.

Yeh I know what your TRYING to get me to do!  I tried the native quest Mixed Reality Thingy before but it was a huge pain. LIV (it's free on Steam) is meant to make it easier and I'll give it a try again some time in the future but I'm not promising I'll release that footage.  

Recording on the headset is an option but I've an earlier 64gb model which I'm constantly juggling things around for size. Recording native on the PC reduces that and removes the streaming noise too and I should be able to capture the mic as a separate stream I can boost in the mix too. It is definitely perfectly possible to do this properly on the PC.  I just went with zero effort this time. Watch at 1.5x speed to make it less painful.

Fucking around with how do I even record this? 

Obvious problems.. it recorded the window and taskbar elements.  I was being lazy and using the NVIDIA capture thingy.  Ill try figure out how to use LIV with OBS to do it properly.  I believe that will fix the other 2 obvious issues.. low mic volume compared to the game (need to record as a separate audio stream) and also not being able to see the top and bottom of the video so it is impossible to see my health bar or radar while I am commenting on them.  

Fun moments.  The Nazi grenade stick.   Throwing another grenade "backwards" (if you don't release the grenade at the right time it'll gain momentum in the other direction).   My awful aiming.  

I had another run I recorded before this but the recording also captured the Nvidia overlay and it was not really watchable.  It was a shame as I kept getting pistols to the point I had four of them strapped to my body and then a ludicrous grenade launcher I had to trigger the grenades on.  A far more entertaining run than this but I'll record a good one and proper next time.

 

You'll watch it which is why they will keep making these things instead of something new.  I'll watch it too but lets be clear it is your fault.

Playing a little more again.  I've set a vague goal to try and beat the absolutely insane Darude - Sandstorm level on Beat Saber at Expert+.  Currently I can't do it even on Expert and here's a Beat Saber streamer failing it 

I'm currently running the practice level at 60% to try figure it out. I've not done that for a long time so I'm hoping to achieve the aha moment where seemingly impossible stuff became possible I had in the past and elevate my game... Or at least get sweaty trying.

I had another great session of H3VR take and hold. I'm gonna try record one next time. It feels like a game I'd happily stream not because I'm particularly good at it but I could probably make my confused reaction to every random gun entertaining.  

I'll probably get the Quest 3 when it launches later this year.  A lighter set without the Fresnel blur of the Quest 2 sounds great.

Twitter spectacularly shit the bed last week coinciding with when Musk had to pay more cloud hosting bills.  He lamped in an unworkable rate limit and broke the main site. He also came for the single thing that kept the site usable, tweetdeck. 

Tweetdeck has been force migrated to a shitty beta UI they'd been working on a year ago but that was largely abandoned. It's slower, uglier and doesn't support multiple accounts.  It is also getting out behind the "Twitter blue" subscription next month.  I tried rawdog twitter and it is god awful.  Just pure random out of any useful order shit interspersed with the worst ads for the worst products.

So what a great time for everyone's favourite wax figure left near a heater too long, Mark Zuckerberg, to launch an alternative. Threads is a text forward Instagram from what I can tell. Hilariously they got 30 million new users in 1 day. Twitter's user base is just shy 200 million and it's unclear how many are just bots.  Hilariously Threads is such a privacy nightmare (because of course) that it's not available in the EU. I'm not overly bothered to be honest. If it actually could be old Twitter, maybe, but I hear it's a standard, sanitised, corporate shit hole with the worst posters right now. 

The real hilarity is the 2 worst people fighting (literally if you believe the talk of a future cage match between them).  Musk is now trying to sue Zucks as well over Threads.  I'm hoping Twitter implodes and is picked up by someone who restores it as the eventual outcome but it's probably mortally wounded and none of the alternatives will ever be the same.  A shame but probably better for my mental health (lol nope I'm reading the Something Awful forums again to fill in my brain holes.)

They released this near ten year old game onto the Xbox streaming service which meant I was able to play it from the comfort of my bed on my tablet. It still looks good and the detail is still stunning. Just wandering around looking at environmental storytelling like Franklin's mother being into new age stuff evidenced by all the random Indian tack in the house alongside crystals and yoga books. It's amazing I can play this better than I did at launch streaming it from a cloud computer.  One of my biggest complaints was it was a monster on the hard drive. Streaming means I can pick it up and drive around whenever without that commitment to either keep it around or download it.

Darkness doing a 20th anniversary show for Permission to Land.   If you can get your ass over for early December I'll buy you a ticket.

Our thoughts and prayers for the bacterial infection that has unfortunately found itself in Madonna. 

I am unsure what your musical preferences are these days. CHARLOTTE ADIGÉRY & BOLIS PUPUL (sorry for caps but I am copying and pasting them from somewhere because I never get their name correct) were a nice surprise.   Christine and the Queens was... certainly an experience.   I enjoyed Chvrches even if she has one dance move (spinning always spinning)  I'm sure there were others.

I watched a lot of Glastonbury live with a UK VPN and BBC Iplayer.  I never realised exactly how much was available and how close to real time.  I was in a WhatsApp group basically able to watch it remotely and comment with people who were actually at the festival in real time.   They've the 5 biggest stages available from about 2pm so you miss the opening couple of acts and occasionally there will be someone who doesn't want to be broadcast who is removed from the stream but other than that it allowed me to catch probably a lot more than had I actually been at the festival.  At the same time I felt very annoyed I had not gone as I could see all the familiar places I've been in the past and I was mentally imagining my progress around the place.   I had planned to try again for next year but my other half rather we stay home and watch it remote again.  The expense and pain and discomfort for some atmosphere and a couple more shows sure seems like a difficult equation to balance.