So. Many. Photos!

The last couple weeks I’ve been doing my best to locally document the COVID-19 pandemic. Honestly day by day it’s getting harder since there isn’t many places to rest as well as being way to cold to rest outside. I’m only avoiding rainy days and make those day my edit days when they come. Besides that I’ve been editing every 2 or 3 days of shooting to keep workload light.

Definitely the boredom is slowly settling at home. At the same time I’m avoiding my vices. I don’t have the space to drink, so my alcohol tolerance will be low after this. Keeping away from the video games since I wouldn’t be sleeping properly and I still want to maintain some rhythm. Hoping six hours of sleep will help me, at the same time I wish I could sleep more since I’m eating more to maintain my alertness.

To keep myself safe for at least 6 hours, I began playing Life is Strange 2. No doubt I’ll be done in a week and put on a review here if it keeps up. I could start creating more gameplay videos on YouTube, but I’m still turned away from poking my voice out there. I didn’t even finish my Fallout 4 playthrough series and I’m burnt out and rusty on editing video.

While we’re on YouTube, I’ve been looking at short films and news reels from a century ago. I was really considering getting an digital streaming device like a Roku, Chromecast or Fire TV. I have a feeling I wouldn’t get any new content that I would get from downloading here. How I miss the 90’s when you can turn on the TV and channel surf than browsing through menus.

At least now I have more to time doing a lot of things for free. Sadly I’m hemorrhaging money without working. At least I don’t pay much and all payments go towards food. While I’m taking photos, I still have to pay for transit for the time being. Hopefully by the time this gets published, there might be a reduction in cost to ride.

For now the best I can do is photograph and wait indoors.

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Last Post 2017

Next week’s going to be a new year; a year older, another year.

I’m just here watching the rest of the Jingle Jam. I’ve been a fan of the Yogscast but these charity streams I do find to be the best part of my year. After the year I’ve had, this is likely the best part right up to the end. However it’s been difficult to really watch these archived streams on YouTube. Not much to view but at the same time has given me an opportunity to see new indie games. At least I get to see the old and usual stuff, like a live podcast and some “live” games.

Last night I couldn’t get away from a 6 hour stream from Zoey from the Yogscast playing both The Sims 4 and a discussion on mental health. I was surprised when we began to talk about her struggle with mental health and how I’ve been over the past decade. From a person I don’t know to hear the same words, this oddly familiar connection based on an illness. After hearing from her and then playing this new game I’ve never heard about, it was like watching a simulacra of what I’ve been through for most of my adult life.

After seeing her play through it for almost an hour, I might want to pick up “Please Knock On My Door”. The hardest part was fighting my own thoughts while she and the game narrates the similar dialogue.

There is nothing easy about battling a mental illness without a cure. There is no phrase nor pill can cure it. Just keep holding on…

…even when things look bleak.

I think next year I’ll just keep fighting myself. I have to hope and keep telling myself things will get better. I just have to whether I should believe it or not.

Lacking.

For those who have been following for awhile, you know I try to put out a post every 7 days or so. Last month it’s been more like 10 days until I throw up a post. I’ve been engrossed in playing Star Trek online and trying to balance working on myself and the things I’ve built around me. This includes this blog, the YouTube stuff and my photography hobby. Hopefully thing will get sorted out, though it looks like more events are coming to Star Trek Online, according to the in-game calendar.

The photography stuff has been slow but I’ve been slowly phasing out my Google Photos uploading and making use of 500px as a place to upload. I just like the fact my account name is visible in the address. I don’t think YouTube does that anymore, which makes the community a bit unique in their own way. I was complaining a lot about 20 photos a week limit awhile back. For me, it’s actually quite doable since the past few weeks I’ve been sending out maybe 4-10 a week depending if I have an idea. Definitely sticking to it and trying to do more in the future.

Speaking of more stuff, I’ve been trying to focus more on playing Tropico 4 which the campaign is being played on my channel. I think I might be burnt out from playing RTS and city builders. I might transition into survival or a shooter sometime soon. For the moment I want to get the campaign out of the way and maybe grab some achievements. One thing I’ve noticed is when you log into the game is when the achievements from the previous session will pop up. Strange they don’t reward it to you on the spot, but I’m not going to complain. I just finished uploading the last part of the first mission for the campaign, just 19 more to go. Yikes.

Until next time, feel free to take a gander and maybe drop of alike and comment somewhere. I’ll probably respond however I’ve been getting lots of spam comments recently on YouTube. Please be unique and try and not sound like you’re advertising, thanks in advance.

Filling up.

It’s been somewhat eventful, somewhat being tiring and I’ve been trying to push myself through the paces. I’ve pushed out all the photos from the accounts I have on Facebook and Google to 500px, still haven’t updated my banner here so that’s my bad. However I’ve been trying to be more out and about snapping photos since now I have 20 photos allocated a week. Trying to not be a competition but I’ve been uploading about a 10 a week so far.

Since the 17th, I haven’t uploaded any videos to YouTube. I love to play Tropico but I think the there isn’t much encouragement. However I would like to pull off a Prison Architect and just try everything until I’m ready to move on. Meanwhile Star Trek Online is having an event so I’m trying to farm stuff from the events. A new ship and new item set; with sleeping in and work, this is mentally exhausting me at an incredible rate.

Hopefully this week will be something worth looking forward to do more than I did this past week. I really need to balance my life a bit more if I ever will have the chance to get where I want to be in my life.

New Game – Prison Architect

This week, I’m going to get back into recording gameplay for my YouTube Channel. It has been a very long time since I recorded anything, I figured out why. Stardew Valley was the last game I played on the channel and as I watched, it was getting fairly monotonous. I’m going to break away from Stardew Valley for awhile and focus on a new game. “New” does not mean recent; in this case, I’m taking a game I’ve had in my library that I haven’t played and I bought many moons ago in a Steam sale far far away.

Awhile ago I had bought myself a few games; Stranded Deep, Call To Arms, and Prison Architect. As per the title of this blog post, I’m going to start working on these sandbox games since I’ve had them in my library for the longest time. I’ve already recorded and edited a few episodes and it feels much more fun than the last few episodes of Stardew Valley I’ve put together. Reason behind going with Prison Architect was because the developer recently announced they were done with this game and any upcoming patches would just address major bugs. That was probably a couple months ago, which by now should be fairly stable and playable.

I think after I get a good chunk of Prison Architect completed, I’ll start on the next one and then maybe consider revisiting Stardew Valley. For the time being I think I’ll stop and enjoy what I have accomplished. Much like I did with Defiance, the MMORPG, I’m going to leave this one as is until I feel I can play it in it’s entirety.

Easy September

The past week has been filled with some ongoing things happening. Aside from the sleep and the much relaxation, I’ve been trying to get back into recording more Stardew Valley on my channel. I’ve recently upgraded my 8 year old PC. Nothing too in depth, installed a new GeForce 950 GTX to replace the 430 I had and a 2 TB hard drive. After a week running the new GPU through her paces, I’m starting to think my entire PC is under powered for the new GPU. Power is running great but I think the CPU might be having a tough time catching up with processing some games. I don’t know exactly is the problem, let me know in the comments what you think stuttering and “lag” might be. The new hard drive is working fine, I’ve managed to transfer my game files from Steam to the new drive without hiccups. All save files are functional thankfully so I don’t have to restart a new Stardew playthrough.

The original intent was to buy a new PC, but an old buddy of mine convinced me to upgrade the GPU and save the $600 of new PC parts. But the cheap guy I am, I decided to upgrade this PC; hopefully one last time. When I started up Insurgency to play, I had a few problems with servers that were located out west. Then I realized I was lagging from local servers too. Of course I had to pull off something stupid to expend the $600 I saved. Luckily at the time, a local airsoft store had a P90 in stock. I’ve been looking into buying a P90 since I started playing airsoft and now here it is with only an hour ride out and a few days of waiting for the shop to open. Of course the day came and I bought it under budget, still pricey for a airsoft replica. Nonetheless, it was less than 600 with a spare magazine. Along with the Cyclone impact BB grenade and spring shotgun, I have a few things to try out. Of course I’m giving my pistol another go even though I’m shearing the feeding lips every time I’m using it. If I get a chance at the end of the month to play, I’ll definitely give it a go.

Other than that, happy with my new purchases for fall. Maybe enjoy it as much as I can until I can find something to complain about or something to talk about.

Fallen Plans

As the summer starts, I’m starting to think all the plans I’ve set a couple months are starting to fall through. Right now I’m sort of scrambling with finding something to keep myself occupied with for the next a few months. Unlike last year, I think the internet will benefit from this scrambling.

I was hoping I was going to work for the entire summer. I’ve been in contact with my employer and it seems they don’t know what to do with me or I got it easy (or difficult, depending how you look at it). Now a week into June, I’m making some expensive plans for my YouTube channel and perhaps my new camera. I had everything planned; I was going to end my Life is Strange playthrough and start a summer hiatus, then I would spend the remaining days before I was slated to work to take up a hobby and go to the gym a bit more. At the moment, it seems the hobby and gym might be the largest component in my entire life until I have something to do. I might even seek employment all summer; if there is an employer who will hire me in short notice.

Short term futures right now, I have purchased a new game on Steam. It was on sale called Call To Arms, it appears to be a modern warfare RTS game I might be recording . Along with recording a new game, I’m jumping back into Insurgency and Borderlands 2. For Borderlands 2, I purchased the Collector’s Edition so I have a few DLC packs I can record. Insurgency received an achievement and map update so I’ve decided to record a bunch of compilation of some of these achievements as well as maps I’ve may or may not have played in the past. That should cover a month or so of content online. As for personal content, I will have to really coerce myself to the gym and spend the soon-to-be sunny summer days outside snapping photos and hopefully get into a bit of trouble. I promise I won’t end up in jail or on the evening news, haha!

This is all I have for now for updates and progress. Hopefully I have something to show next week.

I Bought A Camera

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about buying a new camera. After looking over at both my computer and my wallet, I freaking did it!

It’s a logical buy considering I want to stretch out my creative side. In high school, I had a few avenues to express it. I took creative writing, strings (I joined the junior orchestra, too), and I even tried a digital media course while I was young. Now I don’t feel like that person but I itch to do something creative. I want to write poetry and take photos, maybe play an instrument in the future if I could ever multi-task singing and strumming. Just something recently has really encouraged me to go after new hobbies. Ever since my workplace gave me camera to work with, not because I am playing Life Is Strange in it’s entirety on my YouTube channel. Though I think ever since I got my camera, Life is Strange definitely became a catalyst to really observe the world to find those opportunities.

Some of you have been reading patiently, asking “Which camera did you get?” I did a bit of research and to not break the bank, I went for the cheapest and what was on sale. I traded in the next 5- 6 months of my new gaming PC for a Canon EOS Rebel T5 kit which included a lens (“EF-S 18-55 IS II”, just reading it off the box. If anyone knows what that means, leave a comment for internet points). I’ve spent the past weekend taking it out to the park and around my neighbourhood to take a few shots and started to play around with some manual settings. As much as I would like to use the automatic settings, it’s not the true purpose I got a DSLR. I want to learn to really get technical with taking pictures, I want to control everything that comes with taking the right picture. It’s a big step from point and click cameras like my phone, but I am willing to jump. In a couple days, I’ve gotten use to taking pictures but I want to control more than light sensitivity, aperture and focus. I want to full control, I’ve been slowly working up to using my Rebel on just manual. In my room, I’ve been tinkering with settings on manual. Just have to test it out there where I can take a photo in different lighting and distances.

The take away from this weekend, I can do good. Just need some time and hopefully I can blossom into the late blooming adult I’ve always wanted to be, haha! Before I go, here’s the first shot I took.

See you guys next time!

 

Oddity.

Recently I started to watch a few documentaries on YouTube, there is some quality of a documentary I feel compelled to watch. Most I’ve seen were about half an hour the minimum and it took me to a lot of places in human society. The civil wars in the middle east and northern Africa, the hyper cyber culture of South Korea and Japan, the drug wars in South and Central America. It’s interesting the topics and views you would encounter that will pull you into viewing the entire doc.

The strangest thing I’ve noticed when I watch documentaries, the topics are very localized in those areas. The examination of depression and suicide is always in a developed country, gaming culture is in a western young adults basement or on the pro circuits in Korea, pollution topics in our lakes and polar caps. There are a lot of issues with the world, most of our own doing. The human condition is varied all around the world, what seems strange to us is a norm to them.

There are places in perpetual war and death and sadness is becoming an issue in developed countries because of anything and everything. It’s interesting how these short films deliver the truth but skirts around the phrase “at least we’re not like these people”. What it is like to live on this planet varies from region to region, changes from economic and political variabilities. You can be born poor and living in he worst place in this world to one day live in mediocrity, but it can be vice versa from rich to poor.

The human experience is crazy because everything you can do can change and everything will happen could change what your can do well after. As objective we can point things in a perspective, subjective we have our own perspectives.

Day 29 – Confession Period

From https://hugaslittlehouse.wordpress.com

Around year 2 of my blog, I kept a long list of topics on a text file. Over the the past 3 years since, I have probably went back and forth on the text file. Out of all the topics in the file, I’ve wrote about 40 posts on a few topics. If you know the immensity of topics, it would dwarf the 40-ish posts. As much as I like to be organized, this blog has turned from gaming to just thoughts and opinions. As much as I like to cover games, I do have a YouTube channel for the very purpose. The hardest part to keep it personal without getting too personal because of the things I have to keep to myself and just the general “stranger danger” of the net. As much as I like you guys to know more about me, there are things best left a mystery.

Back to the list.txt file, do I still have it? Yes I do, sometimes I read through it and eliminating things I don’t want to talk about and adding more to it. In the past few years, I have been more inclined to read through it than just writing about them. I’ve drafted a few posts but nothing I have really felt ready to publish. At first it was a good idea to have some topics ready to go but it felt less organic. Now it has turned into an archive of things I would like to talk about rather than documenting things I would feel comfortable to voice a comment towards. I have spent the last few years just riffing off my own mind. Every post is a spontaneous post. It feels more comfortable that way.

Goes to show not everything will benefit from order and organization. A bit of chaos can go a long way.