PixlBit

Pixlbit Nation how are ya? I am exhausted and I am excited that today is the start of my weekend. I’ve been having some odd sleeping patterns where I would wake up at 5am. One morning I woke up, thought it was 6ish when I usually get up and it was 3am. THREE AM! It’s a tad bit insane but hopefully it ends so I can get back to a normal sleeping pattern.* So what are your plans for the weekend? Anything fun? I am going to hit the weekend Swapmeet because Swapmeet Lady said she would have some new products. Let’s get started with this week’s Quick Hits.

*Update: I had a good night's sleep last night. Went to sleep around 11:30pm, and I was up at 6:30am with no problems. 

 

Chris Watches…

 

The Avengers – Black Box Galore!

 

So last week after I finished typing up the last Quick Hits, I made my way to the local theater. The theater app I was using said the flick started at 10am and I made it to the theater to realize that was for the 3D showing, and there was no way I was going to watch that, so I went with the 10:30 regular showing. I must have been the first person at the concession stand, and got my breakfast popcorn, and gallon of Sprite. Being in a small town one of the positives is that I know not a lot of people will be at the theater and at the start of the previews there were ten people total. For the next part it will be all black boxes for you folks who haven’t seen the movie 

Ok so overall I liked the flick. It had everything I wanted in a popcorn flick, action, explosions, likable characters, and for two hours there was no over complicated plots, just good ol’ fashion fun. I have a new appreciation for Hawkeye and I’ll probably no longer call him fake Ollie. I'm excited to see if the movies will push forward with the new characters and have a new group of Avengers or one crazy all star cast of Avengers. The biggest thing I was waiting for was how what happened on Agents of SHIELD will affect the Avengers. After watching I am excited for Captain America 3 or what I am already calling it: Avengers 3.

 

Agents of SHIELD

Just like Winter Soldier, this week’s episode picks up where Avengers left off, having what happened in the background of the storyline. The setup of reunited SHIELD vs Inhumans should be an interesting storyline especially since SHIELD got picked up for next season. I wonder what they are going to do with Hunter and Bobbi now that their proposed spin-off wasn't pushed into production. I like the Hunter character, and Bobbi is just fun but she needs more dialogue, plus her fighting doesn't hurt.

 

Arrow

Ok I like Green Batman, and this season has been Batman Begins but what bothers me is that the previews for the next week’s episode spoiled what could have been a big event in the show. I can't wait to see how the season finale of Batman Begins...err Arrow ends. 

 

Draft Day

My friend told me to check this flick out because it was so over the top in terms of what the main character did during the draft. I saw that it was on HBO and decided to check it out, and seriously it was insane. This movie easily replaces Pacific Rim as my it’s so bad I have to watch it everytime it comes on flicks. Because of this flick, I started up Madden again with the Cleveland Browns (more on this on Monday.)

 

The Fight

Let’s face it, two boxers just made seriously bank for such a terrible product. I wasn’t rooting for either fighter and let’s face it, the UFC put on a much better product. Hell the WWE puts on a better product. WrestleMania > This fight.

 

 

Some Interesting Things…

 

This was blowing up my Twitter feed. Last week during a festival at UCSD, Snoop Dogg was performing and he wore SDSU gear

 

The newspaper tried to make it sound like there is some rivalry between SDSU and UCSD but there isn’t. They don’t have D1 sports, and their Internet tough guys like to talk about how great their academics are.

 

So this is the new Suicide Squad

 

It looks cool, but I liked the Squad on Arrow. They can’t use it now because apparently the TV Universe, and the Movie Universe are separate. I think this is a wasted opportunity that Marvel is taking full advantage of.

 

I’m interested to see how the new Tough Enough is going to be. The previous ones were sometimes fun to watch but I lost interest in them. Having Paige being one of the coaches, I’m probably going to stick with this season. IGN Article

 

The Hummingbird Neighbors

So last week I said I was going to take pictures of the baby hummingbirds, and its tough getting a picture of those little guys. Well I have some sad news, a couple of days ago I was inside working on a project when I heard some leaves rustling and I spotted a roadrunner by the nest.

 

This is the guy who I think ate the baby hummingbirds, and knocked down the nest. I’d put up wanted posters but from what I learned from cartoons, roadrunners always win.

 

Chris Takes Pictures…

Ok so after thinking about it, watching YouTube videos, talking to folks, and reading up on it I decided it was time to get a prime lens and I went for the 50mm

 

As much as I liked my 55-200mm lens, this one is freaking awesome! Unlike my kit and zoom lenses I can get down to F1.8 and I have more luck with low light pictures.

 

I took this picture of the Hulk with some light in the room, but most of the light was from the television. After tinkering a bit in Photoshop on the raw file, I like how it came out. There is a bit of noise because it was in low light, I do like the glow around the Hulk’s head and arm.

 

Here is a picture of my phone in the same light as the Hulk without any Photoshop magic

 

And here is a picture from one of the neighborhood mini parks right around dusk

 

The final image was taken this morning before I continued writing in our little chat. It has been really windy here the past couple of days and the weather is winter-like which is nice.

 

We might get rain later on today, so I’m hoping I can take some pictures of that.

 

Thank you for looking at my pictures!

 

Pickups

 

Games

So after the trip to take part in Free Comic Book Day, my cousin and I hit a couple of GameStop’s in the area. I found some stuff to fill some holes in the library from the 4 for $10 section (Big Thanks to these two stores who weeded out all the games that qualify and placed them in bins, unlike other store who throw a list on top of the games. Lazy.)

 

I wanted to get these on PS3 because I have the rest of the AC games on that platform, but for now, this will work.

 

I talked about these two games on Monday. This weekend I’m going to remove those GameStop stickers. The positive is that at least they are not as bad as the old yellow stickers (remember when GameStop would slap a ton of stickers on cases?)

 

I now have all three Dead Space games in physical form. I’m not a fan of Zombie stuff but I needed a fourth game at one of the locations and this was the game I didn’t have from their selection. I also think it replaces a digital PS+ copy of the game I have.

 

I should have bought that Epic Mickey paintbrush controller from K-Mart months ago but oh well. I heard it was bad but I had to buy the Star Wars game because you use the Wiimote as a lightsaber.

 

So I found close to $12 on my Microsoft Account when I finally booted up my 360. My cousin told me since I signed up for some rewards thing and bought a bunch of stuff, I get money back. Anyways I saw that Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga was on sale for $7 so I added it to my library, and every so often you can catch me online playing through that game once again. I enjoyed the original storylines more than the prequels.

 

Music

More stuff from the Buy 5 Get 5 Free wall at the local Mom & Pop.

 

Guess who failed to notice that there wasn’t a Parental Advisory logo on the Busta CD? Yeah I’m not a fan of clean versions so I’ll probably donate this CD to a thrift. The Game album is a mixtape, which is something rare at this store, and it was still sealed. I know there are sites to get mixtapes, and I use a couple of them, but I was excited by the novelty of having a physical one.

 

More physical mixtapes!

 

Another mixtape, and Jennifer Lopez. I’m really not trying to collect a JLo discography but there are a couple of songs on each album I’d like to have on certain playlists.

 

When you think of Rap Mixtapes, and JLo, Alison Krauss also comes to mind. I love her voice, and I stumbled upon her stuff back in college. When You Say Nothing At All sold me, and since then everytime I come across her albums, I buy them.

 

And some stuff from Van Halen and Kansas.

 

From the non B5G5 section

 

I had a digital copy of Cuban Links and seriously thought about buying the reissued purple tape box set (it was on an actual cassette) a couple of years ago but couldn’t justify the price tag. Bone Thugs were part of the college soundtrack.

 

Toys

I didn’t find any of the new Batman stuff but I did find this car

 

This Impala lowrider is so freaking cool, I had to open it…and somewhere Hot Wheels collectors are screaming.

 

At Toys R Us I think they were hoarding minifigs in the back because when this figure was released, they were never on the floor. A year later I decide to hit the local spot for Star Wars Day and there were tons of them on a shelf

 

The Electro in the Spider-man set I believe has a clear head, and light blue body while in this set he looks like he's wearing armor. I didn't watch any of the new Spider-man flicks so I don't know what he's actually wearing, so I'll go with armor. 

 

Well Pixlbit Community, it is my weekend so I am off to do something fun. I’ll probably go back to working on Illustrator once this is done but anyways have a good weekend!

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

Because he's Batman.