PixlBit

Good morning and Happy Good Friday Pixlpeeps! The weekend is almost here, and I am ready to sleep in on Saturday and maybe finish House of Cards. So how are you good people? Sunny Southern California has been breezy the past couple of days so I had to take my morning walks indoors to the local neighborhood gym where it seems in the same amount of time I walk around, I double the distance on a treadmill (that’s what the app on my phone tells me). Anyways shall we get started with another Quick Hits with Chris?

 

Apple TV Problems

I should say Apple TV Remote App problems. The previous generation Apple TV is fine except there are a lot of new channels I don’t use, and it would be nice to have Amazon Prime on there. Anyways the app itself is starting to act up. It doesn’t load as fast as before and sometimes it doesn’t recognize the Apple TV or the network it is on. I could fix all of this if I could just find my Apple TV remote and replace the battery (it is under some Lego sets). I like to use this as an excuse as to why I can’t finish House of Cards.

Ripping DVDs

I have a decent size collection of DVDs and earlier this week I decided that I was going to digitize them and have them live on a 3TB external hard drive that was supposed to be my media drive. This was supposed to be home to my ripped vinyl, lossless versions of my CDs, and DVDs (I might need more room). I started ripping the DVDs because I wanted The OC series on my iTunes account. I started ripping my TV Shows and so far I got through Firefly, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, and Season One of Powerpuff Girls. I need to search for the missing disc of Laguna Beach (apparently I tend to leave DVDs in random spots).

The process is quite faster than I remember. It takes maybe 8 or 9 minutes to rip a 60 minute episode and convert it to mkv format, and I use Wikipedia for the episode titles.  

 

Chris Watches…

 

Green Batman – CW: So the show came back and they brought back a familiar face, Cupid is back and since she was on the TV version of the Suicide Squad, she was written off the team (no mention of the squad because the DC Movie Universe isn’t connected to the TV Universe), but the thing I wanted to vent about was the dynamic between Oliver and Felicity. I liked them together but bitter Felicity is just annoying. The writers made a mess by having them together and then breaking them up like this. It seems like last season and this season is just a mess. The show was fun when Oliver was taking out names in a book. Every episode some new bad guy to chase down, now it’s full on Soap Opera involving Green Arrow, while stealing plot lines from the last Batman Trilogy. I’m seriously debating just skipping out on the rest of the season and just catching it on Netflix.

 

Billions – Showtime: I’ve finally caught up with last week’s episode and I’m a little bummed that there are only three episodes left. I’m glad that there will be a season 2, but that is a long wait. Paul Giamiatti’s whispering is still annoying, and I’m glad they didn’t resolve the secondary storyline within one episode, but I do want to see how Axe plays this out.

 

Batman vs. Superman: I was supposed to go watch this flick later on this morning but there was a change of plans so I will probably go to an early showing next week. I was really trying to avoid the Spring Break crowd but it looks like I will watch the flick with a bunch of immature screaming idiots and their embarrassed kids.

 

I’m still hanging with SHIELD (the bus’ command room reminds me of a Star Wars Imperial Destroyer), The OJ Show, and the return of Dancing With The Stars. There are a couple of early favorites to win the whole thing. I’m rooting for the deaf model who watches his partner and dances off of that. Dude rocks!

 

Chris Listens To…

I am so far behind on my podcasts that they are just piling up on my phone. I’ve erased some of the Channel 33 podcasts that don’t interest me, but I still have over a week’s worth of Adam Carolla, Channel 33, Live Audio Wrestling (for you good people in Canada), Video Game Generations, and the Tony Kornheiser Show.

Last week my un-listened to total was at 12,864 and as of this morning I am sitting at

 

I haven’t synced my iPod Touch and I think there is another 30-40 songs I’ve listened to on it. Speaking of my iPod Touch I finally synced it to the new laptop and I repurposed it to be my mixtape iPod. I will eventually go back to having a bunch of my favorite songs on it but for right now the phone is doing a bang up job with that and I wanted to finish listening to the 1,300+ tracks of mixtapes I have downloaded over the past couple of years (and I bought a handful of physical copies). It’s easier to listen to these tracks because if there is a DJ who likes to constantly yell over the actual song I just delete the entire album. I downloaded the mixtape to listen to unreleased, remix stuff from the artist, not some yahoo who pushes buttons and has a microphone. There was a really good Chris Brown tape that was ruined because the producer/DJ/talentless hack was yelling their own name. That is the main thing that annoys me and the worst part of the whole deal is that the tape is an official tape from the artist. I’ve gotten rid of at least 20-25 mixtapes because of this.

 

Pickups!

I didn’t do a lot of shopping this week, but I did see the latest Humble Bundle and I decided to spend $12 and buy their latest Sega Bundle

 

The games are:

Company of Heroes Complete Edition

Company of Heroes 2: Master Collection

Eastside Hockey Manager

Sega Genesis/Megadrive Strategy Pack

Medieval II: Total War Collection

Rome: Total War Collection

Total War: Attila

Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai Collection

Valkyria Chronicles

Warhammer 40,000 – Dawn of War – Master Collection

Warhammer 40,000 – Dawn of War – Grand Master Collection

And a couple of coupons

 

I always wanted to play Rome: Total War, and the videos for Total War Attila made the game look interesting so I figured why not for $12.

 

No new music this week. This was actually done on purpose because I wanted to make some progress in listening to the stuff I already own.

 

Well Pixlpeeps I am off to run a couple of quick errands so I shall end this chat here. Have a good Easter!

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

 

For today’s song of the week I am going with a band that the Adam Carolla Show talked about in an older podcast that I absolutely love and this is The Sundays. I was working the front desk late at night and had the radio playing and this song came on.

I thought Harriet Wheeler had an awesome voice and the band’s sound was so good and somewhat similar to the Cranberries. When I got my paycheck I made the mile walk from campus to the local Warehouse Music and bought Static & Silence. Looking back I should have gone to Tower Records but Warehouse was closer. Anyways when Adam Carolla brought them up I did my “hey I know them” move and they played one of my favorite songs from I think their first album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

 

Before I end this I want to share one more track of theirs that was for me a much stronger song from S&S and that’s Homeward

This is one of those albums I would always listen to, and I think for a bit it rarely left my portable CD player

 

Have a good weekend!