Today's Notes 4/7/21

 Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition was mostly focused on the open area called Emprise du Lion, where we dealt with bears, a desire demon, Red Templars... and three dragons... and we didn't battle those dragons in order from easy to hardest, no no no.... we took them on back to back to back because I came across Kaltenzahn first, which was a pretty drawn out battle nearly using all my potions to keep folks from getting knocked out.... then I stumbled across Highland Ravager, the toughest of the base games original 10 dragons with only three potions left and that saw my party being KO and me solo battling it with bunch of little dragons coming out to cause me a headache (this made me glad I choose the Champion specialization and that I crafted the armor I was using)... and then finally we came across Hivernal, which is the weakest of the three dragons in Emprise du Lion, which was a cake walk in comparison to the first two. 

At this point we only need to take out one more Dragon for an in-game achievement, and it's in the last area we have yet to explore which will be the focus of Monday's stream. Also of note, I'll be periodically loading up Dragon Age Inquisition off stream between today and Monday to tackle what's on the War Table since now a bunch of 2 to 7 hour long items popped up on it due to actions taken during the last two streams of the game.

Following last night's stream I loaded up Overwatch to begin work on grinding out for the first of three weekly skins associated with the Archives Event, and I like the tweaked that they made. Instead of it being 'win base', it was focused on getting stars on the archive PVE missions (Uprising, Retribution, Storm Warning) with a 2X multiplier applying if you do the listed mission for a faster path to getting things done. PandaSweet also joined in for a few runs as well which was awesome. In terms of the new skins, my favorite is Tracer's 1776 skin, because she is dressed as a British soldier from that time period and because of all the British is Coming innuendo jokes that  can be applied to it thanks to the R34 and Fan Fic communities.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, nothing to troublesome, just a good 35 minute workout as we continue to get use to Sophie's speaking style when giving instructions and keeping the player (aka me) on rhythm with the sequence of punches and movements need to be perform. I did not do anything extra with today's session however, just did the base daily workout.

Tonight we'll be back to ESPN Baseball on the PlayStation 2, as we're closing in on the All-Star break of the 2004 season with a very large lead in the NL East. I believe we got a 4 game series with the Mets and 3 game series with the Braves before the All-Star game, so I'm thining we'll play the first two games of each series and depending on time we may play the All-Star game outright. Who knows

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

Today's Notes 4/6/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition didn't see any of the blips of frame rate drops that popped up during yesterday morning's Fitness Boxing 2 stream, so it was smooth sailing.

That said, we got a lot, and I mean a lot of story stuff doing last night as we tacked several story missions that involved Varric and Bianca (the dwarf not the crossbow), Iron Bull, Blackwell, Leliana and Vivienne plus the entire Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts quest which sees the Inquisitor having to play the political game at a grand ball. It certainly was a change of pace, but sadly we did not get all the goodies or find all the secrets during that, but on the flip side I did get one of the apparently toughest achievements to get called 'Belle of the Ball', which is to to gain full approval of the Orleasian court. 

Speaking of 'tough to get achievement', how come fewer people have the 'Botanist' achievement, which is just farming plants you grow at Skyhold? I don't get it.

Anyway we'll be back to exploring more of the open areas of Dragon Age Inquisition, as we still have two major ones to go through, plus work on some of the loosen side quests, so basically, last night was story heavy, tonight's it's all about wandering around. Which is fine because it means we'll be able to put more into leveling up to be able to over power nearly everything we come across. Also this means we'll have a lot of opportunity to clear out the War Table things as well

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was the first daily using Sophie, and man, her voice's lack of intensity makes me think whoever her actress was must of been thinking they were doing voice work for like Wii Fit or something, where a softer tone of voice would've worked better. That said, the session was solid and I did a little extra on top of the daily because we had the extra time this morning.

I've been taking a look at a few things on Amazon and if I time things right I could easily go about finding a lot of brand new mint condition stuff for the PS2, PS3... not so much the PS1 however.

I do have a slight case of writer's block when it comes to laying out a fan fic someone wants me to put together, actually I started it but I didn't like how it was going... and I hate restarting fics.

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

 

Today's Notes 4/5/21

 

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was all over the place, but we had a lot of fun. Perhaps the highlight was seeing the April Foolish concepts in the Experimental side that saw Mei classified as a tank and that she was made to be 15% larger.... so she got extra thick, which I know pleased a lot of the folks the R34/SFM/Blender content creation communities. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on all the fun. We did pick up four plays of the game last night, three as Reinhardt and one as Torbjourn. The best moment of the night though was getting a quintuple kill with Reinhardt that involved jumping off a ledge with his ultimate then using his charge to knock five people over the side, granted I thought I only caught four!

Clip:HAMMER DOWN! Quintuple Kill!

I see that Yahoo is closing yet another one of its sections this time Yahoo Answers, man ever since the Tumblr fiasco, which like Yahoo is owned by Verizon, anything associated with it that can be used for and by the community has been gradually shut down. And people wonder why Google is number one.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was streamed as per usual for a Monday as we finally wrapped up everything associated with Hiro, and then for the bonus stuff we switched to Sophie who has a very soft, passive voice. And while the main daily exercise was nearly flawless, the bonus exercises which featured blocking were... well horrible. Granted I selected to do the blocking combo set, but it was bad. Very bad! 

Clip: Show me you can do  this! 

Now I am aware there was some bit rate dips during the Fitness Boxing 2 stream, not enough to cause problems, but enough for me to notice it. Might have been just network congestion but I'll be keeping an eye on that for sure with tonight's stream.

Tonight we'll be back to Dragon Age Inquisition and I will admit that we did even more off stream grinding last night, and took out the Dragon on the Storm Coast. No major quests or character dialogs were done, so we're good on that front. We do have a few inner circle quests to do with tonight's stream, so we'll be starting off with high adventure!

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

 

 

Today's Notes 4/4/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma saw a lot being done, with the last of the apparent puzzle rooms being finished, so the rest of the way should be just remembering various facts and things for a couple of decision puzzles. There are 35 in game achievements, and we got 21 of them,and as far as I can tell the rest all involve just going through the story. That said, last night was a lot of fun because of things that happened such as Akane clocking Carlos with a fire extinguisher and beating him to death. Eric's creep factor when it comes to Miro, the revelation that Diane and Sigma are Phi's parents, that everyone is in the same area but are only awake at different times... and that Diane and Sigma's other child Delta is also there, but no one notices him. Hell I took a guess upon learning his name to enter it into a the decision box during the triangle stand off for Team Q to learn that Delta is there. I'ms ure all that will get explain when we wrap this game up next Saturday night.

Best Clip Of The Night: You See That Big Nuclear Reactor....

Following last night's stream I did load up Dragon Age Inquisition to work on one of the side quests that involved getting certain materials for a banner, and fuck me does the game penalize folks for advancing too far too quick because I had to look up on how to get Decorative Gems in the game, and it involved going to a certain spot, saving the game and reloading repeatedly to get a particular set of enemies to appear. Like what the fuck! Good thing I did not do this on stream! But of course Dragon Age Inquisition is on the line up for tomorrow night!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was real solid, but the actual workout length was an 1 hour 5 minutes , because I was hoping to wrap up the last of the achievements associated with Hiro, as we're at 99/100 for what's needed for his Best Friend achievement, so we'll get it tomorrow as part of the weekly Monday bonus stream. I ended up setting new records for myself with an Estimate Calorie Burn of 1033.64, but we did gain a little weight as well over this two weeks. 

Tonight we'll be playing Overwatch, and it'll mostly be quick play with maybe some arcade matches as well. There's not an event going on, so it should be a chill yet intense stream because ya'll know how I suspicious I become when I see 'new accounts' playing as if they have put in 1000 hours of practice time into using various characters. 

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

Highlights For The Week of March 28, 2021

 Here are the best moments from my twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of March 28, 2021 which featured Overwatch, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Forza Horizon 4 and Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma!

 

 

Today's Notes 4/3/21

 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream featured Forza Horizon 4 which means last night marked the first time we used the Xbox Series S on stream, and outside of when I was going into photo mode to take pictures of cars, there was barely any loading times. We spent a good chunk of the stream on Lego Island because the Lego Mini Cooper is clearly the best car in the game for just about everything. We certainly had a lot of fun to the point we'll have to keep Forza Horizon 4 in mind for nights where I have no real plans.

Clip Of The Night: That Photo Finish!

My copy of My Little Pony / Transformers: Friendship in Disguise arrived yesterday afternoon, and it's a nice brisk read, with short comics pairing up various cast members of both shows, such as Rarity and Arcee, Discord, Fluttershy & Soundwave, etc, and it does come across as we're seeing more side-stories that would take place along side a bigger plot. That's not a bad thing, because it fits the tone of My Little Pony perfectly, however considering some of that shows more epic tales (the Canterlot Wedding episode for example), I would imagine an animated featured would be epic. And I found out there is a sequel mini-series in production with the trade collection coming out in November with it seeming like it's gonna take place in the Transformer's universe. So I wonder if the style of the story for that will be reflective of that franchise.

Republicans and Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for being happy about Georgia's blatant voter suppression actions, and you know companies like Coca-Cola and Delta are going to feel it. But the funny thing is Republicans and Conservatives are really pissed that Major League Baseball has moved the All-Star game that was scheduled to be in Atlanta this year, and are using the hash tag of Cancel MLB for making that decision. Think about it what the All-Star game involves, it's three-days of Baseball games coming to one major city for at least three days, which means a shit ton of revenue for local businesses, hotels, restaurants and such. All of that will go to another city, and the people of Atlanta have their own governor to blame for it because he's a Trump supporter.

Today's Ftiness Boxing 2 session was a long one with two bonus exercises being done and a realization that the 'Best Friend' achievement for each trainer is very weird in how it is scored. That said, the daily set was mostly on point, with a few misses here and there, but nothing to bad. It is funny on how I feel I'm not getting a good rotation for when doing Right handed movements from the Southpaw stance as of late. It's probably due to my stance and trying to keep a good view of the monitor, because I had the same issue before with regard to Left handed movements from the Orthodox stance when I was in a different corner of the room.

Tonight's stream will be focused on Zero Escape Zero Time Dilemma as we resume the story with Team D (Diana, Sigma and Phi) as we work our way through the different timelines and such. Once we covered all we can with them we'll turn our focus back to Team C (Carlos, Junpei and Akane) because we did unlock some new plot points for them last week. 

Anyway, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 4/2/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was the shortest one we had in a while that did not involve starting at 9:30 PM EST... part of it, well a huge part of it is because Star Trek Online doesn't have the content where one could just lose themselves in the game and just have a good time. Hell just to prove a point when chatting with a viewer who plays the console version of STO when they indicate that PVP (player versus player) is very much an active thing on the console version, we tried to get into a PVP match last night to show what I've said, that on the PC version of Star Trek Online, PVP is dead. Waited for 5 minutes in every queue and got nothing.

So the stream ended at about 10 PM, which was fine, someone wants me to write a fan fic forum featuring Kelly Kelly and Randy Orton set somewhere in 2007/2008... and since they are going to pay me for it, I took some time to start work on it. It'll pop up in the usual place once it's done.

Speaking of fan fiction, Drace Domino (author of Rise of the Battlebitch) posted on twitter that there was actually a My Little Pony / Transformers crossover comic mini-series... and yeah I went out of my way to track that down because, when you think of things that Hasbro own and realize there have been very view crossovers between their own properties... and then realize this crossover involves the Gen 5 Mane 6 ponies dealing with the likes of Optimus Prime, Soundwave and Arcee.... yeah that sounds awesome. 

While I was at it, I went and put down the order for the Life Is Strange comic collection set and RWBY the Manga Volume 2 because what can I say, I like what I like

Which brings me to the Mass Effect Legendary Cache collection BioWare is selling, and I went back and forth about putting an order in for it, then I realized since I'm getting the digital version of the game because I have the Series S console, and could easily get the physical copy when it's price drops down the road... which in terms meant justifying putting in the order for Cache collection. Now what bugged a lot of folks was the fact the Cache collection didn't have the game with it. but when you think about it, more people buy the digital versions of games than the physical copies these days, plus it's a celebration of the Mass Effect trilogy. If the game was included the Cache collection probably would've been $225-250 after shipping charges were included to make sure people received it day one of the Legendary Edition's release date.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session did involved a a few misses happening, all of which involving blocking motions , because it all relates to how I'm standing in regards to the Switch while trying to keep a good view on my main monitor. That said, it was a solid 30 minute work out and the way I figure just doing normal long sets tomorrow and Sunday would mean for Monday's bonus stream we'll have a new trainer to feature.

Not totally sure what will be on the agenda for tonight, debating doing something either using the PS3, Switch of Series S. I could easily switch between the three consoles but that would be over kill for one night.

Anyway we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!