TiE23

I want to post, too! I think I was last here in July 2012. Vidja game Grand Theft Auto V, multiplayer I wasn't that crazy about. Battlefield 4 has been bumming me out lately. The Last of Us was great. Splinter Cell Blacklist was a return to form for one of my favorite series. NHL14 because I like hockey now. Assassin's Creed IV, because sure, I never played 3. Europa Universalis IV, because I find Civ 5 boring and have played too much Total War Shogun 2. Bioshock Infinite, pretty good. Samurai Gunn, played this for hours during the Christmas break. I never learned SMB so this was a good stand-in for me. Tomb Raider, it's less funny when Nathan Drake gets really hurt and he's a woman cause now it's all awkward for me... does that make me sexist? Movie: Gravity? Lots of inaccuracies but was still pretty great. Book (that I read this year): Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick - Best book I read this year. Pretty mind blowing and also really freakin' long. Just don't follow the Twitter account of the author, he's kind of a prick. TV: LA Kings hockey! I don't watch TV otherwise at all. Not even downloaded or Netflix'd TV shows. Albums (I listened to a ton this year, starting this year): I uploaded all my music to Google Music when I switched to Android. So from the start of the year I know how many plays in particular I've made of each album since the start of the year. Wolf People - Fain - 2013 - 75 plays Brant Bjork - Jalamanta - 1999 - 70 plays Hanni El Khatib - Head in the Dirt - 2013 - 40 plays Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust - 2011 - 35 plays Vista Chino - Peace - 2013 - 25 plays So yeah, by definition those are my favorites. Edit: @Sabretooth My brother showed me the first episode of Kill la Kill and I had to agree, that shizzle was bonkers.

Pretty much this.

It's what haxxrz use. They ls and cd and rm all your datas after pinging ur IPs.

I used to get that problem viewing YouTube videos in Firefox months and months ago. Click on a link to any video and I"d get that instead. It was pretty ridiculous. Try another browser, yo. That would be my first step.

Dustforce on Steam Holy hot hell is this game something else. I've only played to perfection 3-5 levels (srsly, they're only like 50-100 sec long) and already spent 3 hours gritting my teeth to get that perfect run. N+ acrobatics, Super Meat Boy challenge, some light combat, and a demand perfection likened to Trials HD. Oh, and the graphics are great, the art design cartoon-y and pretty, animation smooth and varied, and the music is fantastic. http://store.steampowered.com/app/65300/ Music is great, too. http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/

All on vinyl, cause yeah... Mastodon - Crack the Skye -- Because I want The Last Baron's thirteen minute epic-ness in a physical form. Comets on Fire - Avatar -- I downloaded this album originally because appeared on a music podcast DJ'd by Valient Himself. It sounded like if KISS was ordered to write a song that was like Yes' Roundabout - a long, jam filled piece of classic rock awesomeness. LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge 12" EP -- Pretty cool, huh? I can go from sludge metal to psychedelic jam rock to 2002 club electronic music in one shopping spree. From the looks of it this is the first thing LCD Soundsystem ever released... and I only recently realized how great of a song it is. I managed to snipe an auction on eBay for <$14 with literally 2 seconds left in the auction. At the moment of writing I'm waiting for it in the mail, but you should give the song a listen. The music video is a little truncated, but pretty funny.

My grandma, Carol Schanbacher died at around 8:30am this morning in California. She lost her second bout with cancer. Beyond the obvious feelings, what makes me feel terrible is that the plan was to call her to say goodbye sometime today. My mom made an emergency flight this morning but it seems that she was in the air while it happened. So I feel even worse for my mother... for both of her parents have passed away without her being able to be there.

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening (2010) Franz Auffray - Original Popcorn (1969, 2010 reissue) In vinyl cause I'm a music hipster with a turn table.

More evidence of me being an ugly American hillbilly. *Insert the "but I'm totally not, I swear" line here* Before: After: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kg-23/sets/72157628798793891/detail/ Took around 9 hours to pull off.

1. Battlefield 3 Yet another Battlefield to call my favorite of the year. While I haven't even bothered to finish the single player the multiplayer has its own brand of crazy action and on-the-fly tactical thinking. BF3 has been more punishing to me than BC2, I think it's a better game because it brings in the tiny but potent little details from games like ARMA 2 but puts it into a totally accessible game. The gameplay is like a simulation without all the buttons and gauges. 2. Total War: Shogun 2 I bought this game on a whim, telling myself at the same time that it would be a waste of money -- that I'd play it for a few hours and never touch it again. But luckily for me, this was the first Total War game I bought where I actually started a campaign. And dammit, would you know, that stuff is awesome. Amazing graphics, slick presentation, fantastic setting, and a 100% logical rock-paper-scissors unit mechanic that makes warfare make sense. The campaign map mode is like a whole other game as well, who needs Civilization V when you can play Shogun 2's campaign? 3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I went through a month of abstinence from Elder Scrolls so that this game wouldn't destroy my ability to do concentrate during the last four weeks of school. While I haven't dove totally deep into Skyrim, I think I may be relegating this game into a slow burn mode. I sort of missed out on the initial frenzy from 11/11/11 onward -- but I may have destroyed my future career chances if I hadn't waited. 4. Portal 2 When this game went on sale on Steam for $15 for the first time I said to my visiting brother, "Hey, dude, no thinking, just buy Portal 2. Just do it, take $15 and use it. You won't be sorry."Well, he ignored me... but jokes on my because he ended up getting it for $7.49 or so and marathons through it. The game is great, just great great great great. No matter who you are or what you play --- whether you're a pony tail wearing ****-head who plays nothing but imported Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games; a racial or sexual epithet spewing CoD bro; a kid who can't stop playing that god damn Angry Birds game; or a person who starts flame wars on forums if any Mario/Kirby/Zelda game released isn't given a 10/10 - you'll like this game. Simple as that. 5. DiRT 3 DiRT 3 manages to tread the "bro-dude" route a little more well. It's better than DiRT 2's trailer menu aesthetic in terms of ENERGY DRINK EXTREEEEEME-ness as it takes a more professional approach to the whole thing. Watching Ken Block's Gymkhana films on Youtube was a great prep activity for all the stunt driving the game made available. Make no mistake -- straight up rally and trailblazer events are my bread and butter but dammit if I didn't spend an unhealthy amount of time blasting through empty shipping containers and around concrete barriers with a 600hp squealing gymkhana rally car having stupid f*cking fun the entire time. 6. Dark Souls I've sorta been beaten down by the game, sadly. I put it down for a few weeks and lost all my finesse with the gameplay. And like hell this game is going to let me through the rest of Blight Town with a half-baked level of skill. It did scratch my strange Monster Hunter itch of weird, "you're ****ed or your good" fighting where safety is found in paper-thin margins and death comes swiftly. I may come back to it, maybe not. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, though. 7. Saints Row: The Third I haven't gotten very far into the game yet but I can't wait to dive further into the chaos. 8. Crysis 2 I can't wait until developers start to getting back into the PC-first mentality for the next two years (until the next Xbox comes out). While Crysis 2 contained a lot of disappointments: It didn't feel like a sequel, it felt like it was written by different people, felt like it was MADE by different people, and while it is vastly more open ended than a game like Call of Duty or Battlefield, it felt constrained compared to the original Crysis. The game did end up shining through in the end, though 9. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Pretty great game... maybe I should finish it some day. 10. Frozen Synapse "Turn based Rainbow Six RTS" is what I'd call this game. Very interesting game about watching your corners and setting up killzones. Very entertaining. I've played only a few more games that were even released in 2011 -- and own plenty more that I have but haven't touched at all: Dead Space 2, Assassin's Creed Revelations, LA Noir, Bulletstorm, Bastion. Games are just too good and I'm getting too old. I don't have the time like I used to. I can't tell if I'll ever get to some of the best games of 2011. Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3, Batman Arkham City, Modern Warfare 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, Zelda Skyward Sword. I think this year was the beginning of the end for me.

All of my cash is disposable, honestly. And, uhhh... for new things? My uncle gave me the rest of the shotgun, a nice 4GB CF card, a spare Olympus FourThirds lens, and 50rnds of 12GA birdshot. Plants vs Zombies for my Kindle Fire. Bulletstorm, World of Good, and Dead Space 2 on Steam. A $30 b/g/n wireless router so I can get good wifi in my room finally. And the Kindle book "Mao's Great Famine" As soon as I'm doing with my C++ class final on Tuesday I'm gonna be playing BF3's Return to Karkand, Shogun 2, Bulletstorm/Dead Space 2 until my face is blue. Oh, and finally buy Skyrim... it's been really hard maintaining my Elder Scrolls chastity.

Big update from the last month or so. I forgot a few things since my ICO/Dark Souls post. Audio-technica LP60 Turntable A solid turn table. I'm making it a habit to spin something once a day, which is important cause I've gotten so many more vinyls. Battlefield 3 Because of course! Logitech M510 Nice mouse. Since I basically re-made my bedroom with a new desk and drawer set-up, everything modern and clean, my decade-old-designed Microsoft Intellipoint mouse was just providing a terrible eye sore. So I went with this and I'm liking it. Altec Lansing UHP326 Earbuds I lost my previous pair... and I rarely lose stuff. So I went for slightly nicer ones, but honestly I can't tell the difference when, while from the same brand, are 250% the price of my previous set. Logitech Z623 2.1 THX Speakers Probably the nicest set of 2.1 computer speakers you can get, and they are nice. I run my turn table through this with RCA. Kindle Fire I bit the money bullet and pre-ordered a Kindle Fire, because of course I'm going to get one, and luckily the day after I got it Amazon now reports a "4-7 day delay", which, by the time you may read this, will become longer. Knoxx Spec Ops Remington 870 Recoil Reducing Stock Yeah, my uncle da cop is gonna give me the receiver of his old 870 shotgun, which means I've got to replace the stock, foreend (the pump-y bit), and the barrel. In a week, I'll be the proud owner of a 12 gauge. [/redneck] Mossberg 18.5" 12ga Remington 870 smooth-bore barrel I've fired a bunch of rifles. A few pistols. But only a 20ga shotgun. From my understanding an 18.5" barrel is gonna provide a pretty wide pattern... Now I need to buy shells and err... watermelons? Booker T. and the MGs - Green Onions 7" single Sick song that everyone has heard before, even if they don't recognize the title. The song: The Gap Band - Burn Rubber On Me 7" single Another funky song that I heard in DiRT 3 and dug a lot. Got it on eBay for just a few bucks. The song: Tame Impala - Innerspeaker Limited Edition (2 CD) Love this album so much that when a version with a second CD of B-sides was around I had to have it... Even on CD! The B-sides are so good that I had to have them on vinyl as well... Sample song, Alter Ego: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBSropdYqtY (turn up your bass) (This BBCode requires its accompanying plugin to work properly.) Tame Impala - Sundown Syndrome/Remember Me 7" single Wonderful song and yes, I recommend it to you. You may like it. Maps & Atlases - Perch Patchwork 12" LP While BongoBob may hate this album for bringing Maps & Atlases in a totally un-bad-ass musical direction; and initially convinced me as well to its suckage (if this song of theirs appeared in Rock Band people would be posting attempted FCs, it's pretty intense)- I ended up turning around on it and I'm now enjoying it a good deal. Sample song, Living Decorations: Wolf People - Steeple 12" LP If you played Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Vietnam, then you've heard and most likely dug this band, their song was used as a loading song and it was pretty bad-ass. Sample song, Tiny Circle: Valient Thorr - Immortalizer 12" Double LP Even though my musical tastes have become softer in the last year or so, I still have room in my heart for bat-**** stupid/crazy rock. This guys are nuts and they should never stop, ever. Sample song, Red Flag (live): Flying Lotus - 1983 12" LP I remember sitting on this album for months, I downloaded three Flying Lotus albums but just took forever before listening to it. Glad I did. Most of the songs need to listened to as a whole to enjoy, so going "hey, listen to this one" is sorta hard. Sample song, Unexpected Delight: Cut Chemist - Sound of the Police 12" LP Second album with no track listing to speak of other than "sides". I've listened to a tiny bit of Cut Chemist so it was a surprise to me to find out about this album. When I saw that it sampled Fela Kuti's "Water Get No Enemy" (afrobeat... if you played GTAIV you've heard him... if you bought the OST for it, it's on there, the song "Zombie") I just had to have it. Early sample of Side A: Al di Meola - Elegant Gypsy It always seems that the earliest works of guitar virtuosos seem to be the best. I mean, look at Yngwie Malmsteen, past his original album, it's nothing but crap. Pretty great stuff. If you've ever listened to popular guitar duo sensation "Rodrigo y Gabriela" you'll probably really dig this. Sample song, Mediterranean Sundance (epic acoustic): Sample song, Race With Devil On Spanish Highway (epic guitar):

$25 at Best Buy right now... and maybe for one more day. Played only around 3.5 hours so far but getting the hang of it already. I know I've already scratched the surface but I feel I'm more prepared than others who've never played Demon's Souls because I've spent some time with Monster Hunter on the PSP. So, woo!

Yub-nub. Happy birfday! That's leXX on the right I'm pretty sure. I have no idea what the **** the other guy is...