The weird spring

As abruptly as it started, spring sure is on the weird side up here in Montreal. While on the 21st of March I was chillin' on a patio having a beer in shorts and T-shirt at 10PM, a few days later Mother Nature was back to freezing our barren and snowless landscape on a few occasions. It was wasn't until this week that we finally got some weather ressembling spring (summer even) but even then it didn't last long and after some blasting 40mph winds we're back to the freezing point. Well, at least it's better than last year where spring brought us rain, flooding, more rain, more flooding, more rain... you get the picture. So while my bike may be ready for some good rides, riding weather is iffy at best. I will have to literally harden the fuck up soon, bite the bullet and start using my bike more in the very near future. If I'm to travel hundreds of clicks I'm sure the weather will not be perfect all the time!

In the meantime what have I been up to lately? Well, with the drumline project well under way I've been getting my rudimental chops to levels I hadn't thought of attaining this quick. I guess practice does make perfect and now that I have more tools to practice with I spend much of my free time banging away on one of my practice pads, studying video tutorials and music scores, and listening to the seven Nightwish tunes that the drumline will play on at the October 20th show. One of my latest achievements in drumming is finally nailing down a classic snare exercise that's been around since the American civil war called "Three Camps", when drums and fifes were used as communication methods. It is a reveille, a wake-up call if you will, that's basically a triplet roll exercise which isn't too hard but I had never gotten around to actually playing it, even though I have heard it hundreds of times because of the drum corps background. I nailed it at slow speeds first to make sure I understood correctly what the sticks are supposed to do, and now I'm working on getting the speed up while staying as clean as possible. And of course to give myself a bit more challenge I play it both in matched grip and traditional grip. It fits on a single jpeg image so here's how it looks:

Accented notes are singles, the rest are doubles.

Also, my drumline instructor is giving me tips before the practices start and he's encouraged me to keep playing along the rudimental excercises he throws at the rest of the drumline. For now this is easy to do as we don't have instruments yet, but when we get 'em I'll have to keep to my practice pad and feel more than hear what my sticks are doing, unless someone doesn't show up and I can borrow a snare for the warm-up. Man would this make my day or what! :)

Now with all the drum stuff that's going on my gaming time has pretty much hit rock bottom, but I still keep an interest in a few games. The most prominent for me these days is Fallout 3. I love it so much that I'm really getting into the whole post-apocalyptic fiction genre, survivalism, Cold War history and all that jazz. I guess it puts me in the mood to get into survival mode as I prepare to travel the vast expanses of my province by bike. I've taken a big break from Skyrim not because I don't like it anymore, but because my computer doesn't like it anymore. I may have modded it a bit too much for my weakening box. I know it's getting short on memory and the video card is showing it's 4 years of age. I really need to think about upgrading if I want to play any newer games, like say Mechwarrior Online when it comes out! I do play a bit of Quake Live and Mech4Mercs once in a while but pretty much all my attention is on Fallout these days.

And this blog being this blog, how can I not mention this cybernetic drug called EVE Online. Before you ask, no I'm not resubbing just yet. Even though fun things are on the horizon like the Burn Jita event, Hulkageddon V, the Inferno expansion and DUST514 (I'm still wondering what the Montreal area code is doing in a game title XD), and even after I watched my own buddies and corpmates having a ball in Low-sec, I do not yet hear the call to undock Rifters, Thrashers, Taranii, Vagabonds or Absolutions. The busy summer I have ahead of me doesn't help, and there's still the slight problem of me hating the most important part of EVE with a passion, ISK making. I was watching Dr EyjoG's economic presentation at FanFest and somewhere in it he even pointed it out: in order to lose ships in PvP, you have to do your chores and make ISK to buy ships. "You have to do your chores..." I was screaming at my screen at this point; THIS IS WHY I UNSUBBED DOC !!! I don't play video games to do chores. Period. But on the flip side having a space dogfight in New Eden is a truly unique experience. *sigh* Well, if I want to help my real life buddies in a better way than just watching and giving the odd advice I will just have to bite the bullet and make ISK. I guess I can become a cheap ship specialist because losing T2 and Faction goodies is hard for a non-economically enclined player like me. Bah... we'll see what the future holds. One thing is absolutely certain, nothing will happen before the October show. By then we should also start hearing about the 2012-2013 winter expansion and see what that brings. And to anyone who would really want me to tackle, scout, or even FC, you can activate my account and I'll gladly do it for you :))

Fly, flam, ride... all that good shit!

o7

PS: To famous/infamous PvPer Garmon who is even now asking for real-world money for The PvP classes... just what the flying fuck dude?! I've already thanked you for giving me my first PvP death and teaching me this important lesson in a n00b's career. But with this sort of shenanigans I will just have to issue you a challenge if/when I come back. No worries, I will mail you. How about 1v1 Ruptures? You did kill me with a Ruppy that first time :)

Better late than never: exploring the D.C. wasteland

Having strongly renewed my love for Bethesda's vast open world games, I just had to "get with the times" so to speak and get a game I had skipped because I was at the peak of my interest for EVE Online when it came out. I am talking about Fallout 3 of course. The fun part about this game is that because it came out the same year my computer was put together, the hardware doesn't even bat an eyelash with the graphics on high. There may be an ultra setting but I prefer fluid gameplay over eye candy any day of the week. It's always a bonus when you can get both because Fallout is a very beautiful game, in a barren post-apocalyptic kind of way.

So far I'm still pretty early in the game, being a whopping Level 6, with specializations in Small Guns, Repair and Medicine. I'm putting the main quest line on hold for the moment because I'm doing the Wasteland Survival Guide quests from the amazingly annoying Moira Brown. Unlike what I usually do in deep and open games, I didn't read much about it before hand and any tutorial/training the game can offer will be done before I even think of going out and getting my ass kicked. I did do a few other quests like disarm the Megaton City "Fat Man" bomb in order to get my house, but soon after I downloaded the Underground Hideout mod which gives you a great base of operations. The hideout is located just off the port bow of Rivet City and the entrance can be fortified to no end.

Speaking of Rivet City... I have to say this place is spectacular! I wonder how often US navy personnel get lost on the real life Nimitz class carriers. The only other video game city I've seen that got me lost would be the city of Vivec in TES III: Morrowind, but the carrier comes close. Now that I've discovered it I have access to a much better market than Megaton and I was able to buy my current favorite weapons: the Chinese Assault Rifle and the Combat Shotgun. I also bought some decent armor so now I can take more of a beating. At least there's no shortage on stuff to fix you up because God knows I need it often!

Here goes with the things I love about the game. Being a Gen X'er and having lived through a good chunk of the Cold War (I was 21 when the USSR fell), it's great to see the spin that the Fallout universe puts on history. I absolutely love the retro-tech and early 50's look to everything, right down to the music on Galaxy News Radio. When my dad comes back from Thailand I will just HAVE to show him the game; hell he just might start playing! I also love the wasteland itself, even if it's a tad greenish; that's my next mod in the pipe by the way, some graphical prettiness. I have yet to do some serious exploring as I have done in Skyrim but I'm close to finishing the Survival Guide quests so I think that once this is done I will head out into the wild before I start questing it up.

But to oppose the things I love there are things I don't like as much. The first would be the repair system. Cool that you can fix your stuff with other stuff of the same family, but for some reason I don't find a lot of what I use, especially for the armor. I also find that stuff gets damaged too easily; maybe I'm just too used to Skyrim by now. The second thing would be the scarcity of ammo, especially before you find Rivet City. Yes I could console command 20000 bullets, but running out of ammo just sucks. I don't know, maybe I'm too much of a bullet hose! And last, you guessed it, bottlecaps. How often do I have to explain that I absolutely fucking DESPISE making money in video games. If I don't find a fun way of making caps, I just may break down and console myself a couple million. It's a good thing that the rest is so awesome!

Another mod I found just yesterday is one that transforms the leveling up mechanics to the one found in the Elder Scrolls game where you skill up what you practice. Fittingly the mod's name is "Practice Makes Perfect". Being a TES veteran and a Fallout n00b I am much more used to the former's mechanics so this mod was right up my alley. I may have to start a new game though, which is no biggie because I haven't done too much yet, plus I'm still in the learning process. And like in all Bethesda titles, there's a lot to take in! Before I applied and activated the mod my character specialized mostly in small guns, repair and medicine, but what I hated the most was leaving a lot of locks unpicked and computer terminal untouched. As the mod author said in his readme file, why should killing a bunch of Super Mutants allow you to raise you computer hacking skills? Because I applied the mod to my level 6 character I think the balance may be a bit off, but I've seen nothing but good comments about the mod so I'll give it a shot with a fresh start.

So there you go, another jaunt through a universe filled with danger and excitement. I realise I'm four years late on this game, but I'm glad I finally got around to it. Now let's see if i can find my virtual dad!

Happy wandering, and go easy on the Rad-X!

o7