PixlBit

Good morning Pixlpeeps! What the hell why is so hot here in sunny Southern California? Last week it was what 70, breezy with random spots of rain, and now we’re looking at 101 today. One Hundred and One degrees! I really need to get some errands done in the morning because it’s getting warm and I really don’t want to deal with that until June. Blah! Anyways this past week I finally got around to checking out the latest Captain America Civil War flick and before I talk about my thoughts I really should check out Winter Soldier. Anyways to prevent spoilers the usual black bars will be over my thoughts because it will contain spoilers, just highlight if you want to read

 

So my first thought about the movie is that it is longer than it needs to be. Some of the fight montages could have been shorter because it felt like it just dragged on. Overall I thought it was a solid story where the audience seemed to side with one side over the other, but it was kind of hard especially if Robert Downey Jr. seem to have stolen the show with his performance. To be fair I’m not the biggest Captain America fan to begin with so it was easy to side with the shiny red and gold suit. What I really liked was the final battle between Cap and Iron Man where Cap ultimately drove the shield that Tony’s dad created into Tony’s arc reactor. I thought the symbolism it was good use of Tony’s broken heart about not fixing the relationship he had with his father along with how he felt about Captain America in their current situation.

Overall I felt the movie was good, most certainly better than Batman vs Clark Kent but will probably be second to Suicide Squad (it might be a tossup compared to the new X-Men) Solid summer flick and much more than a popcorn flick.

 

There is one show I want to talk about this week and that is MTV’s The Challenge: Rivals III. We just had our second episode and this season it looks to be a fun season where already we had one team leave due to injury and we saw the “twist” for the competitors who are sent to The Jungle, which is the competition where the losing team goes home. I’m still rooting for Jenna because she can compete and her ditzy answers always provide some hilarious sound bites (last season while in Turkey they ask her if she knew where Germany was and she had no clue) This season I’m adding another contestant to my root for list: Tony. Tony was on Real World Skeletons where while living in the house MTV brings someone from their past that they have to face. At the time Tony started dating fellow housemate Madison when his skeletons showed up to the house. They were his ex girlfriends. During his episode he managed to hook up with Madison and one of his exes. Afer the show he had a baby with Madison but while on last season’s Challenge, he hooked up with one of the other competitors just a few hours after showing up. After the filming of The Challenge he broke up with Madison got back with his ex and is now expecting a baby with her. Here’s the kicker, he’s trying to hook up with another competitor while he has two baby mammas back at home. He’s going to have to be on every Challenge to support these babies.

 

Chris Rips Vinyl To iTunes

Yup I know some record enthusiasts are freaking out that I’m digitizing records, but hey I’m always roaming around with my phone, iPod, or both and I like to listen to a lot of music. I have a modest record collection of maybe around 100 albums, a dozen or so 12”, and a ton of 7”. The last week of last month I decided to give digitizing my vinyl collection another try and this time I got some momentum going for me because doing this is giving me another opportunity to rediscover music I own but forgot. It’s easy to rip a CD because iTunes does all the dirty work. The hardest thing I have to do is find a missing album cover if iTunes doesn’t have it on file. With records it takes a little more work.

I have a USB turntable. It’s not the fanciest but it gets the job done. My goal for every day is to rip three albums a day. That takes usually three hours which isn’t so bad. I use a program called Audacity

 

I connect the usb turntable via line in to my laptop and Audacity records the record in real time. Since I can’t hear it I do this while surfing the World Wide Web and I save the projects as Side A, and Side B. Once it is finished recording this is where the fun starts. I look at the recording and proceed to cut it up into individual tracks and then export those out as .wav files. Thank goodness that the albums have 2-3 second gaps so it’s easy to spot. I save these files in their own album folder and then it’s off to iTunes.

I bring the .wav files to a special playlist where after copying them over I convert those .wav files into AAC files. During this time I find a suitable cover online. When finished I fixed the info tags on the songs, add artwork and then proceed to add them to their respective vinyl list. Here are the Album and Singles lists for May

 

For my albums list I added 20 albums or 230 tracks while for my singles I added six 12” and one 7” or about 29 tracks to the library. I do have some rules when it comes to what gets added to the library.

Albums/Singles Rules

• I will not add albums I already own on CD because they are already in the library. So far I found I think around 10 records that this rule is used for
• If I find the CD after I already added the vinyl copy to my library, both will stay in the library but any ratings I gave on the vinyl copy will be moved over to the CD copy. *I rate every song 3 stars unless it’s something I don’t like then it gets 2 stars. 1 star is reserved for skits, intros, and other filler. Favorite songs are 4 stars and absolutely love are 5 stars. If I have any 4 and 5 star songs on vinyl they automatically become 3 stars while the CD version gets the 4 and 5 star rating
• Even if I have the full album and a corresponding single release I will add the 12”/7” to the library because there are always remixes, instrumentals, b-sides, and sometimes a completely different version of the song
• There are a couple of records I own that are sealed and will stay that way.
• All albums/singles will have “ – Vinyl” at the end of the album name

 

Because of the sudden addition of new tracks my not listened to track list has grown from the 12,360 tracks but I brought it down a bit and as of the time of this blog entry I am at

 

It doesn’t seem like I haven’t listened to any new music but I think I listened to 100 tracks this past week (I’ve been on a bunch of podcasts) .

 

Pickups

Oh I really need to start being picky when it comes to bundles of PC games because I am now down to 300GB of my 2TB second drive in my laptop. This hard drive is home to my iTunes library, and video games. As I write this I will now tell you about the latest Humble Bundle I bought for $15

 

I jumped on the Capcom Humble Bundle that consists of Strider, Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode 1: Penal Colony, Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Resident Evil Revelations, DmC: Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4, Remember Me, Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition, and Resident Evil 6. Since this is a Humble Bundle and I bought the top tier I can expect two more games next week.

I believe this latest bundle took up about 70 GB of space on the hard drive.

 

Lego

Last weekend was Free Comic Book Day and I wasn’t in the mood to go (plus I bought this laptop a month ago) so I wasn’t going to buy any comics but in keeping within the budget (no CD purchases this week) I added some new Lego Polybags from Toys R Us

 

I bought two of the Captain America Motorcycles, one to open and one to keep sealed, and the BvS Batmobile to add to my Batmobile collection.

Alright Pixlbit I am off to get ready and run some errands. I need to get visit the bank and the barber. My hair is long and I am using my bigger sized caps that I like to call the “no haircut hats.” Have a good weekend!

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

 

For today’s song of the week, I came across this 12” that I forgot I owned and it turns out it is on bright orange vinyl

 

Remember when Shaq was a rapper? I still have the Shaq with Fu-Schnickens Can We Rock 12” that needs to be added to the library

 

Have a good weekend!