PixlBit

How’s it going Pixlbit! I don’t know about your weather but Southern California has been going crazy with really windy weather. It was tough to drive around yesterday with all the blowing sand and being in SoCal, it makes people go nuts, and the whatever is left of the Rules of the Road are thrown out the window (I had a guy blow a stop sign as I was entering the intersection, and didn’t give a rat’s arse as he blew by sudden stopped Chris). We have to look out for each other because some just don’t care.

Anyways during my Thrift Store Saturday I decided to take a couple of pictures of what I typically look for

 

 

Yep that’s me, and the iPod is on Shuffle and the first song was some random Kanye West song. When I hit thrift stores I tend to look for:

• Video Games
• Jerseys
• CDs
• Vinyl
• Anything interesting (baseball cards, randoms)

 

The plan for that day was to hit four stores, three that are church run, and third being Goodwill. For the first store it’s really hit and miss. I once bought a bunch of Lego (and promptly dumped them into a bin with soap and warm water) but usually there isn’t anything of interest.

 

My uncle collects 8-Tracks and they just happened to have a bunch of them. I sorted through them finding a couple I think he would like (whoever owned these really loved Andy Williams and Barry Manilow). Other than that there wasn’t anything worth looking at. They moved their CDs to the back behind the register and the folks working looked like they’d rather talk to one of their regulars than help so I moved on to the next thrift store

Now this store is better because they are part of a network of thrifts so they have a ton of stuff that constantly come in. Their prices are usually a little high (5-6 bucks for an XBox or PS2 game) but the people are really cool

 

 

This is one of the CD shelves. There was a bunch of old Windows 95 games, and a copy of Gran Turismo for the original Playstation. I passed but found some cool stuff. Off to the third thrift store

 

 

This is the game selection at the third thrift store. I wasn’t interested in any of those games so I paseed. This thrift store used to have crazy prices and I stopped going to it for a good half a year. They finally wised up, cleaned the store, and prices are really good. Funny thing is that I think they used kids from their church to volunteer. It’s a bunch of teens putting stuff on the shelves, and working the register. I found a couple of things here as well.

 

Final stop is Goodwill. When it first opened this place was a gold mine! Now it’s come back to earth, but you’ll find the occasional reseller (many of you 1Up folks might remember I took pics of a guy with a barcode scanner at the books section, and I used to mess with him by getting excited over a book he hasn’t scanned) Anyways not much here but I did find something.

 

So here are the things I found at the four thrift stores

 

I like the Disney albums, and this one I actually had on tape way back when (I bought that at Goodwill too). I wished Arrested Development had a cover but for now this will be fine.

 

More music. Finding the Command & Conquer Soundtrack is a nice surprise, and it’s sealed. I’m debating if I should open it.

 

Some Vinyl

 

And I found a Tracy McGrady Swingman jersey.

 

So that was my Thrift Store Saturday.

On the gaming front, I’m still playing on the tablets, and rarely playing console games, but this will probably shift soon (you’ll see why)

 

In Tapped Out, there is a new feature for this week’s episode of The Simpsons

 

There’s Springfield Falls, and a premium Sushi Restaurant that costs 90 donuts. I’m still saving for Mount Carlmont so this one is gonna have to wait a bit. I might buy it on my Android, and Mount Carlmont on my iPad.

 

I thought this was funny. This is the dialogue for the new features from Homer. There was also a line about eating questionable food and getting sick but I forgot to take a screenshot.

 

This is some dialogue between Kent Brockman, and Carl, which I thought was really funny. They both go on to dine together in the two swanky eateries I have in Springfield.

 

 

In Real Racing 3 I’m moving up the ranks and bought two new cars. I shouldn’t have bought the Viper. I thought it was part of the Pro League, but it turns out it was another Pro-Am. Back to saving so I can buy a Pro Car to get into the Pro League.

 

I’ve been playing a bunch of Flow before bed…on both the iPad and Nexus7. I’m around the same area in both tablets, but I’m trying to finish on the iPad because there are achievements (watch I’ll complete it first on Android).

 

I’m in the bonus levels, and this is my progress as of right now.

 

 

There are a couple of new tablet games I’m trying out

 

I kept seeing people playing Candy Crush on Facebook, so I decided to try it and well it’s a mix of Treasures Of Montezuma Blitz meets Candyland. I do like match three games and having a certain amount of moves makes the game challenging. This game is well…it’s ok. I don’t get the hype but hey I’ll stick with it until I lose interest.

 

 

I was hesitant to give this a try because I really don’t like on screen controls for fighting games, but this one is really good. Instead of having a d-pad and buttons, it involves taps for light hits, left to right swipe for heavy hit, and two-finger touch for block. Sound easy? It surprisingly is. When you get enough hits on an enemy a swipe down icon appears. When you do this you knock down your opponent. After earning enough hits, you can use your special move and there is a little icon appears to either swipe down repeatedly, or try to fill up a meter, or try to get a fast moving line in a bulls-eye to inflict the most damage (there are probably others but I haven’t unlocked them yet)

 

You assemble a three-man team and you fight another group. Each section of a level has 3-4 fights. Switching between fighters is fairly simple by clicking the top left icon to tag in your teammate. I’m playing on my iPhone so it can be a little tough because of the size, but if you constantly play this game, you’ll get used to it.

 

After each fight your fighter gets upgraded, and you can also upgrade other aspects of your fighters. After the end of one group of fights, I unlocked Cat Woman, so I’m assuming you can unlock fighters by constantly winning each section (I don’t play a lot). I was told by a GameStop employee that you unlock skins in this game that can be used with the console version. This is a really cool feature because it gets people playing the app and continuing onto the console version. As for myself I’ll probably get the console version…when it hits a price I’m ok with.

 

This is some of the loading screens I came across. I like the detail in them, and these look awesome especially for a tablet game.

 

So GameStop had a 50% off sale on certain games which I called the “Let’s Blow The Crap Out, Before Next Gen Comes” Sale. There wasn’t a lot of games people would go nuts over, but there are a couple I’ve been eyeing

 

Yeah it’s old stuff, but it’s new to me, and I’ll probably get some good play time out of them…except for Madden 09. I bought it more to continue my streak of Madden games and now I own the special edition Madden/Head Coach, and regular Madden on PS3.

I picked up Mag because it was a buck. I don’t know if I’ll ever go online and play it, because I didn’t care for the beta.

 

This morning I picked this up. It’s been something like 3 ½ years since the last album, and after a lineup change, the sound is different. Instead of having one constant “sound” this new album, each song has a different sound, and ventures into different genres. I do like the old sound, and I’m getting into this album, but the one constant is still Hayley.

 

Before I call it a blog, I saw this on Youtube about an Android Easter Egg. Turns out if you tap the Android Version in your About Tablet section you get a Jellybean. I thought it was a cool hidden feature.

 

Well that’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

PS I watched the USWNT beat the Netherlands 3-1, with the US playing a lot of reserves and Christen Press scoring 2 goals. Good stuff!