Today's Notes 2/25/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball opened with a lot of audio adjustments as we dealt with not being able to monitor the audio from my PS2 through OBS, the audio doubling creating an echo effect and other silliness that made the first 30 minutes of the stream pretty damn awkward. We did win 4 out of 5 games, finishing up the series against he Braves by splitting the last 2 games of the 4 game series we started last week and then sweeping the Mets in a 3-game set. 

The big positive as that I realized I could use OBS to project what the Elgato was capturing on my main monitor so I could see things in the correct aspect ratio. This will go a long way in making sure games from the PS1 and PS2 era are presented and played in the way they were originally intended. Of course this lead to me having to adjust to playing ESPN Major League Baseball with a 4:3 ratio as oppsed to the stretched out 16:9.

Did have some unintentional comedy when I went looking at the in-game scouting reports, and man was the game rather cruel to one Chase Utley in what was said as you can see in the screen shot. Now yes Utley made his Major League Debut in 2003 and there were a lot of questions about how well he'd do as an every-day second-baseman, but the scouting report basically saying he had no usefulness is just mean. 

Yesterday on the official Ghostbusters YouTube channel they premiered the Extreme Ghostbusters episode True Face of The Monster, which actually touched on racism and general discrimination. Keep in mind for a syndicated animated series in the late 1990s, having an episode even mentioning such topics wasn't exactly common. Combine that with the legend of the golem from Jewish forklore, and you got a very underrated episode. That said, it was pretty clear which actors from the regular cast were pulling double-duty in doing multiple roles which exposed how limited Alfonso Ribeiro was as a voice actor.

Had a solid Fitness Boxing 2 session today, even though Janice's voice is annoying as hell. Lasting 35 minutes (43 if I count the stretching), we threw 1,292 punches. We unlocked new milestone achievements today as well. The first being Light Heavyweight Puncher Lv. 1 which was to have a total punch count of 100,000, and the other was 'Janice's Trainee' which was to perform 10 daily works outs using Janice as the trainer (this also counts stretching)... which means to move on from using her as the trainer I'll have to do Free Exercises (no dailys) 10 times... and with my approach to my routines , that could end up taking a few weeks. 

Tonight's stream will focus on Star Trek Online, we'll bounce from character to character, doing random stuff and so forth, so no real direction this week, just having fun with what's there.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 2/24/21

Good morning everybody,

So you know how yesterday I was saying I fixed the audio for my streams in OBS? Well apparently I took it too far the other way, and my mic was booming through it whenever I raised my voice. So now it's back to the drawing board. The thing is what I hear and what ends up on stream are two very different things, and finding the right balance is not as easy as one thinks it should be.

Anyway last night's entire stream was focused on the Division 2, which mean when it started I spent the entire first half of the stream wandering around DC doing random tasks and stuff before being joined by Iceman, PowerThumbz and FnDanteSavage. Now apparently there were a lot of glitches going on as we did some missions on Hard that took way longer than they should have to get through, which was just crazy, but I think it was tied to the Hollywood event, where certain objectives needed to be done. It wasn't as fun as the Resident Evil event, were it was very straight forward in terms of how to deal with the enemies. Still we had a lot of fun.

The local power company (PSEG) is digging up the street to resume work they started last year involving the gas lines, which means my day job is going to be real interesting because there is no way for me to block out the sounds of a jackhammer coming from outside my home. I just know some smart ass at my job will say to me 'well move to another part of your house', yeah unlike other people I (now) have a workstation sized PC, which means moving it is not an option.

So today's Fitness Boxing 2 session saw Janice in the trainer's spot instead of Lin, the reason being is that their are some achievements associated with each trainer, unlike the first game, so to get them one must use the proper trainer. Janice's voice is more.... how shall I say... abrasive to hear, making me question who was doing the voice direction for it. Unlike with Lin, all of Janice's dialog matches in terms of tone, where Lin's was copied and pasted from the first game.  The workout today was really solid on all front, with only 1 miss and that was me forgetting how to do a left block from the South Paw stance. 

Tonight's stream will focus on ESPN Major League Baseball on the Playstation 2, with Philadelphia Phillies having two games against the Atlanta Braves then a series against The New York Mets. In terms of where we are in the schedule, it will be May 29, 2004, so we're about 1/3 through the season give or take. 

And on that note we'll see you later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 2/23/21

Good morning everybody,

Well last night's stream was rather odd, as the game audio was so loud that even while making adjustments I could barely be heard, even when bringing my microphone closer. The good news is everybody got to experience the game audio in its full glory, but my commentary and riffs were barely heard. It is weird that happened, considering the day started with audio lagging behind the video. Now I think I fixed it both issues, one by making a few adjustments in OBS by listing my Elgato HD60S as a mic/auxiliary and also by boosting the gain of my microphone to being double standard. Did a test recording using Super Mario Bros 35 this morning and it seems to have solved things.

Now last night's stream which started with 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, and it's always a fascinating game to play from a historical narrative perspective, since it's trying to convey everything that lead into Iran's major shift in the early 80s in a 3 hour interactive experience. You could see a lot of parallels between the events this game was based on and modern day events which makes it very surreal when one considers how close we came to that back on January 6.

We also did some Paladins last night, and yes I'll admit I totally threw one match early going. You see Paladins is cross-platform, and when I was playing using the Xbox  One version with a team that players using the PC version, the one teammate in the role of 'Support / Healer' basically said he was not going to heal the tank, and since I was the lone tank on the team, I checked out of the match. Bad enough dealing with people who jump country servers which reduces latency for everyone, but to see someone say they are not going to assist the one person who was going to be on the front line was enough to grind me gears. 

For the first time in a long time, loaded up Power Rangers Battle for the Grid as apart of last night's stream, and finally got a chance to play as Scorpina, and safe to say the excuse that the developers wouldn't including villains that had 'human faces' was thrown right out the window because Scorpina's design and facial animations were gorgeous. That said, it did take me a while to get use to the controls again, and the game certainly felt slower than the last time I played it, which was about a 10 months ago.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was alright, with some very questionable misses do to the left joy-con de-syncing (basically whenever one moves it, it vibrates heavily as if trying to reconnect), which is of course weird since at this time I'm standing less than 5 feet away from where the Switch is docked. That said, we did reach two milestone achievements today, one's called Lin's Buddy which was to perform 10 free exercises (non-daily) with Lin as the trainer, and the other was Lin's Best Friend which I guess is done by doing 10 free exercises and 10 daily workouts with her as the trainer. Which means at this point 60% of the Fitness Boxing 2's in-game achievements have been unlocked... and I'll be switching trainers. 

Tonight's stream will be split between The Division 2 and something else, not quite sure what will be in the lead off slot, as this will be a double header stream. The reason The Division 2 is getting attention tonight is because of the Hollywood event, which as I mentioned before was something Iceman and PowerThumbz hyped up a lot. 

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 2/22/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun, and big thanks to PandaSweet for being apart of the fun as we each got the wins needed to get Reaper's new Lunar New Year event skin. We each had a few plays of the game, with mine being two for McCree and two for Torbjörn. It is funny that for so long of just being in the tank and support roles, but when saying 'fuck it', I'm going to play damage, I've developed some quirks that allow me to be very effective. Must be because I've seen so many other people play the damage role and not being involved in the front line battle.On a side note, I did get the Anger Management achievement which was to damage six enemies during a single use of Winston's Primal Rage in Quick or Competitive Play. Since I normally don't play Winston out of Mayhem matches, to actually get it was pretty cool.

This week's Real Ghsotbuster's episode was Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood, again a super creepy episode when you get into the designs of 'What' and it's Bird sidekick, but also the possessed Peter Venkman late in the episode. Some thing stood out to me was that in this episode, upon escaping the haunted house, the Ghostbusters have to deal with two lion statues that are actually blue and white ghosts, and in the Ghostbusters video game, you end up dealing with a pair of ghosts that were within the statues in front of the New York Public Library. It's an odd connection, but let's face it, it is a connection most people won't realize.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, going 44 minutes (52 with stretching), and we reached a new milestone achievement with Super Middleweight Puncher Lv. 3 which was to have a total punch count of 96,000, with my exact total being 96,244. But since today's session was stream we did have to do deal with figuring out audio for the stream and for me to hear, which lead to some lag in what was coming through the speakers for me at first. I think I managed to get it set back up to how it was on the previous computer.

Over in Animal Crossing New Horizons, Ozzie will be leaving my island in a couple of days, the big reason why I'm letting him go is because his personality is way to similar to Sherb and Raddle's. Also finally caught a Oarfish. which made me want to catch more fish

We did do two runs of Super Mario Bros 35, and the audio lag I mention earlier was really noticeable, making it very challenging to time out certain things, particularly when having the Star invincibility power up. Didn't get a top three finish this time in either run.

Later today we'll be back on with the Xbox One version of 1979 Revolution Black Friday. and I'm not what we'll pair that up with to make sure the stream fills out to four hours, but I'll think of something.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 2/21/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward was really productive in terms of reaching major story points, as we unlocked the achievement called 'I Can't Believe It's No Murder' for being able to prove that Alice wasn't killed due to one of the effects of Radical-6 being suicide, in addition to getting the character endings for Tenmyouji (In Root Beer Veritas) and Clover (Secret Agent Woman), with the obvious details being revealed that Tnmyouji is indeed Junpei and he never was able to find Akane/June after the events of 999 but he adopted Quark, while Clover along with Snake ended up working with Alice who seen in the post credits scene of the first game. The thing that most people will find odd is the age difference between the two, as for Clover and Alice it's only been a year since the end of 999, but for Tnmyouji it's been way longer. The reason for that gets explained.... much later on.

This week The Division 2 is having it's Hollywood event, which means Tuesday night will be dedicated to checking that out since Iceman and PowerThumbz talked so much about it and how the rag doll effects are turned way up. Which means I won't be starting a major game this week, instead Monday night we're going to open with 1979 Revolution: Black Friday on the Xbox One, because I've already played the Steam version, so we can get some easy achievements to boost my gamer score. We'll probably pair it up with something else because it's not a particularly long game.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, but a little 'weave heavy' which lead to so misses, which is odd because since I'm moving back to doing doing the workouts towards the right side of my desk, one would think I wouldn't be missing anything because I'm standing much closer to where the Switch is docked at. But yup, misses still happen. When I do Fitness Boxing 2 sessions for a stream, you won't see any step movements because I don't quite have the good enough angle to be able to perform those without hitting something solid. Also tossed in an extra set, so my daily exercise totals seen in the screen shot is actually lower than what I actually did.

Tonight's stream will be focused on Overwatch in my pursuit of Reaper's skin that corresponds with the Lunar New Year event, as we need to reach a total of 9 wins for the week. Because of the computer fiasco this week, and with Overwatch being one of the first things installed on the new rig, I already have a few wins, so the pressure isn't too intense to try and get them all in one night.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Best of the Week of February 14, 2021

Here are the best moments from each stream from my Twitch Channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of February 14, 2021, which included the following games Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Music, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario Bros 35, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Hades and Zero Escape Virtue's Last Rewards!

Today's Notes 2/20/21

Good evening everyone,

You ever get that sudden feeling to look for something and you think you know where it was, but then you realize it's not there and then you look up how to get replacements? Well that happened to me today! Not going to go into full details of it, but that's part of why this posting is later than normal.

Last night we tried out Hades on the Nintendo Switch, and as I've stated before rouge like games are not something I normally dive into, because of the random nature of it. Of course seeing that it had a 'god mode' of sorts where you get a little tougher every time you die to be able to withstand more punishment is a good thing. I got surprisingly far, making it the boss battle against Theseus and Asterius at the end of Elysium twice! Again, first night playing it and I just about made it to the half-way mark. Not sure how often I'll stream it, but it certain is a game that can fit in as 'filler' when I finish another game and I don't want to end a night early.

Got back to work on a commissioned story piece last night, and I figure it's probably already double the normal length I'd do, since everything I write typically ends up being 2000 words or less, depending on how interested I am in a particular subject... and this story is already about 3500 words.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was nearly perfect, okay there were a few only 'okay' rated reps performed but only one miss!  We passed another milestone, unlocking the Super Middleweight Puncher Lv. 2 achievement which is to reach a total punch count of 92,000 HITS, my exact total is 92,957. Also did a weigh in today, I'm down to 253 lbs, which means I met the goal I set for myself back when I switch from the original Fitness Boxing to its sequel. So now my new goal is to get down to 240 lbs. 

Popped into Animal Crossing New Horizons for the first time in a couple of days, was kind of weird to see Hopper hanging out in Sherb's place. Also Pietro and Antonio seem to be the most DIY focused of everyone on my island as of late

Tonight's stream will see us returning out focus to Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I believe we have to resume from an AB game point and select Betray before jumping back further to also select another Betray option. Should be a lot of fun and probably a chill stream on all fronts.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden