PixlBit

Good morning Pixlpeeps! It is going to be a freaking hot week here in Sunny Southern California. You know it’s hot when the local news is urging folks to check in on elderly neighbors and invite them into their homes if their Air Conditioning isn’t working. Since this is a Monday and I kinda missed last week this is going to be a combo What Chris Is Playing/Quick Hits because not a lot of either went on. I started playing a couple of games, mixed in with my usual array of random freemium iOS games and I had two separate day trips around Southern California. Let’s get started.

 

Chris Plays

Everspace - Steam: So I finally started this game up and after playing a little bit with the controller I ditched the controller in favor of the keyboard and mouse setup and hot damn the game plays much better.

 

The point of the game is that you are a pilot and you’re flying through space and each stop you take you have to mine for supplies. Depending on the area you can run into this company that also mines the galaxy and they established trading posts. There are also debris from destroyed ships, raiders who are attacking folks and other goodies in the final frontier. It is up to you on how you spend your time. Do you help the folks getting raided, or do you jump in? Do you rob the trading posts, or do you play like a normal person who goes about their business. Decisions like this make the game fun.

There are tons of upgrades you for your ship and you can even save up cash to purchase new ships. I’m not that far and I’m still learning the game. So far I know that if you blow up you start back at port where you can spend your currency on upgrades or a new ship and off you go right back to where you blew up. The game keeps tabs on how many times you die, I’m assuming to shame you in front of other players. I have no shame so I really don’t care but I guess if you play through the game you have a number you want to beat which in itself adds to the fun of the game.

Quick Hits

This weekend I did a couple of things, 1. I went to my cousin’s house for their house warming/baby shower party, and 2. The next day I went to Oceanside to spend the day at a mission and hang out by the water enjoying the high 70s temps, watching people surf and eating random foods.

The party was fun. I hung out with cousins I normally don’t see that often, I gave my cousin the hard drive copy of my music collection instead of having to mail it, and you can’t complain when you’re spending time with family and eating good food. As a bonus their neighbors have a horse of a dog. It’s a Great Dane and every so often you hear a WOOF and see this massive head and paws on the top of the wall. Seemed like a nice dog.

The next day we started off late so the random day trip to San Diego was out, and besides there were a lot of folks there for Comic Con, so we went to the beach city that is a half hour to the north of it. I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Oceanside is a military town because of Camp Pendleton that is a couple of minutes away so there are a lot of folks there from all parts of the country so you hear a lot of accents and excitement because of the Pacific Ocean.

While we were there there was a couple who just flew into California and were walking the pier and stopped next to us so they could FaceTime their family the view of the ocean. I got to take some pictures of the surfers and really use my camera for a bit. I should start looking at a stronger lens than my 200mm but I think I still got some good shots to enjoy the day. Here are some shots

 

 

 

While I was on this little weekend day trips I only used an iPad, and iPhone so I relied on apps and streaming. I decided not to touch my music library on my phone and instead stream all music through Spotify and for the most part it worked well. There were some dead spots on the freeway but it was only for maybe a couple of miles. Also I actually did some editing of some pictures I took. On my SLR I have a dongle that I can send photos to my phone. From there I used the Photoshop app that does an ok job of color correction, and after a couple of minutes my photo was ready for Instagram. I did all of this while sitting in the passenger side of a car while on the freeway. It still blows my mind that this is possible. Heck if I was a college student all I would bring to class is an iPad with keyboard, notebook, pen, and a backpack. Here is the pic I edited while on my phone

 

Pickups

No Games, and the only Hot Wheels I bought were for my youngest cousin who is into cars so he got a really nifty 5 pack. I also bought this snazzy thing for my iPad

 

I now have a keyboard. I’ve wanted a keyboard for my iPad for a while now but never got around to picking up one until a couple of days ago while at the local Walmart buying the Hot Wheels for my cousin, I saw that the Electronic section restocked on them so I bought one. The keys have good travel, but they are a little noisy but overall I think the iPad could be the perfect replacement travel laptop. I think if I ever decide to upgrade and get an iPad Pro the keyboard is a must have, and then I too can be annoying like that girl in the commercial who didn’t know what a computer is. Anyways as you can tell I am currently typing this entry on Google Docs and I’m digging this setup.

 

Alright Pixlbit I am off. I need to get some stuff done even though it is over 1000 degrees outside. Have a good week!

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris