PixlBit

Well Happy Friday Pixlbit Nation! I see that we had a good week. I’m making progress in my backlog of blogs and comments on here, and I am done to one page now! So how is the New Year treating you? So far on my end, it’s not too bad. Since it is Friday and I have a lot to do today (not really it’s the start of my weekend) let’s get this Quick Hits started!

 

Chris Dumps Hulu+

After a couple of years of having the service I finally decided to end it. The concept of Hulu+ was great except for all the freaking commercials. I’m sorry but if I’m spending actual money on this why are there so many commercials especially when a lot of networks are offering their shows on their apps for free.

 

Chris Signs Up For The WWE Network

Since I dropped Hulu+ I went with a channel that I might watch a bit more of

 

I’m not a huge wrestling fan, in fact the last time I was really into watching was in college (the nWo/WWE Attitude era was awesome!) and I occasionally watch Raw and Smackdown so why not give their service a try. I have to admit there is a lot of content on the WWE Network which can be overwhelming because you want to watch everything and I watched this yesterday during lunch

 

Its Just Too Swwwweeeeetttttt!!!

 

Chris’ 2015 Music Resolutions

Since I have them for video games why not for music? I have a couple:

 

Listen To Everything I Have In My iTunes Library: Yup I have this problem and for a couple of years I have had the goal of listening to everything in the library and give it a star rating.

 

1 star goes to absolute crap aka filler on albums like skits, intros/outros, and just terrible songs. 2 stars go to songs that I think are not as good as normal filler. 3 stars are decent songs. 4 stars are songs I like for a while and are placed in playlists. 5 stars are absolute favorites and also placed in playlists.

 

New stuff, and 4 and 5 star songs make it to the iPod and iPhone.

 

These are my playlists on my iPod. I use a lot of smart lists (its in another folder) because of the grouping feature and from there I drag songs I want to listen to into these playlists.

 

Anyways going back to my goal I currently have 34,093 tracks in my iTunes library, and 14,714 tracks that remain not heard as of a couple of days ago. I’m currently listening to track 59 of my 805 track New Stuff playlist and so far most of the stuff I listened to is 3 star which isn’t that bad.

 

Erase Unused Playlists: I have a ton of them, and its part of my “digital hoarding” where I don’t want to erase them because I might need them later. I want to drop my playlists to just the smart lists I use all the time, and the playlists that are on the iPod. Everything else can be trashed.

 

Rip My Albums To FLAC: Remember last year I bought an external hard drive so I can rip my collection into FLAC for my Sansa Clip? Well I stopped ripping CDs for a bit but this year I want to finish, and I want to add my vinyl to this.

 

Rip My Vinyl: I really want to add these albums to my music libraries. There are a ton of stuff I’d like to listen to on the go.

 

UPS Forgets My Package

So earlier this week I placed an order with Best Buy and decided to have it shipped because In Store Pickup was out of the question (I blame reseller guy). I was supposed to get it on Wednesday but Tuesday I get this (My Instagram post)

 

This would make sense if the package was a TV or something huge but it was a Vita game. Yes the “huge” Vita case was left behind. I check back yesterday and it is here in the area but wasn’t delivered until Thursday

 

Oh Reddit knows the struggle.

 

MySpace Is Still Around?

 

Saw this on the App Store. Who knew?

 

Simpsons Tapped Out Makes Fun Of A Certain Retailer

I unlocked this last week while playing the game and I thought I’d share it with you

 

The job for the people of Springfield was to send five people there to complain about a sequel. It’s a shame the Bonestorm character can’t go there.

 

2,500 Dos Games

I know you guys probably already heard about this but Archive.org has these games that can be played within the browser. What game was Chris playing the most of?

 

5^th Grade Chris would be freaking out because Computer Day was Oregon Trail day.

 

Chris Visits Hobby Lobby

I’m not going to lie, I checked out the Grand Opening because of all the controversy and I was hoping there would be some picketers outside. It’s an interesting store, but its just another Michaels’ type spot but with more interesting stuff.

 

In college while other students were spending small fortunes on books, this is where my small fourtune was spent. Between the campus art supply store, the store down the street from SDSU, and the art store in Downtown San Diego, I could have bought a minor league pro team.

 

The 52-Week Challenge

So this challenge I saw on Instagram a couple of years ago and basically its turning saving into a game. So it starts on the first week of January where you save one dollar. The second week you add two dollars, and the third week you add three dollars, and this goes on for the year. The first time I made it to a month, and last year I went two week before forgetting. This year I’m going to complete this challenge!

 

What Chris Watched

Other than wrestling I did watch some cool stuff this past week, which included some new stuff!

 

During the slow period where SHIELD has taken a break, Marvel’s Agent Carter is taking its spot and I have to say I was entertained for the two hours. There were a bunch of Easter Egg moments, and some stuff from the Captain America movie, which means I really need to sit down and watch that film now. It’s a shame its only going to run for eight episodes but it seems like its going to be a fun eight episodes.

 

The premier of the Challenge Battle of the Ex’s II happened right after a crazy Real World, and it was a bittersweet episode. It was fun seeing everyone excited and then MTV showed some of the cast answering the question “What would you do with the money if you won”, and watching Diem talk about kids is sad especially with CT (her partner) talking about wanting to win this for her. I want to see how MTV handles her and CT’s exit from the show.

 

Another thing I started watching is the various streams from PS4 to UStream. I recently found out about this so I checked out a couple of feeds and well if you remember Stickam, its basically that and the only thing video game related is the little robots on the screen. I watched maybe five minutes of Twitch because I don’t get the fun of watching others play video games. This can all be found on the Playstation App on iOS/Android.

 

Pickups

 

Games

 

So I went to the GameStop in the mall to trade the horrible NBA Live 14. The manager was awesome and offered to help me look for game that he thought I would like. He ended up with Tomb Raider but I told him I already own it on the PS3 and I would probably play that first. I then spot this game and decided it would be a fun game to try

 

There really isn’t much to this game but it is a lot of fun. You are this blue ball (giggles) and each level your goal is to absorb these bouncing red things that look like hot dogs. You absorb power-ups, energy refills, and weapons. Since NBA Live was purchased with a coupon I had to pay an additional $3 bucks but I am enjoying this game a lot more.

 

This is the game that UPS left off their shipping truck

 

I do like playing the Vita versions of Lego games because they are different from the console versions. From what I read this is another 3DS Port like Marvel but I enjoyed that one so hopefully I will enjoy this one as well. I ended up paying $10 for this game with $3 shipping so I saved $7 from its new price of $20.

 

Currently I am 20% finished and I just finished off level 5. The levels are broken up in 3 sections, which are the usual Lego beat’em up, and collect Lego Studs. There are also new things to find like Joker boxes, and special cards. This will get a lot of play today!

 

A couple of used pickups from GameStop.

 

I like Asphalt and I think the oldest one I played was 3 on my first smart phone. It was funky but this game I seem to have more fun with either with an actual controller or gyroscope steering. Since the PS3 games are dropping in price I’m picking up the games I want to add to the library. Everytime I would find this one the case was always beat up. This time the case is fine and the game looks good.

 

Some gaming related items from the .99 Cent Only store. Remember how I really didn’t want to jump into the Skylanders stuff because I don’t want to collect all the characters? Well apparently this doesn’t count when it comes to little items that can be used on tablet games. While browsing the toy section I spotted some tablet items that were from Toys R Us, and next to them were these items:

 

Unlockable characters for Angry Birds Star Wars, and Angry Birds Go. Looks like I’m jumping back into Angry Birds Go and Star Wars!

 

Music

I went to the local mom and pop to check out the Buy 5 Get 5 $1.99 wall and I left with 20 CDs

 

Nouvelle Vague I found on a random music blog a couple of years ago, and I finally have a physical copy of this album. One of my favorites

 

Yeah the Selena Gomez CDs are for one song each, and the Stars Dance album replaces the freebie download from Google Play.

 

I also picked this LP up because it was in the free pile

 

The album was dirty and there were a couple of small scratches but I already have it on CD, this is just to have a vinyl copy in the library.

 

At Barnes & Noble I bought these two albums

 

Cypress Hill’s III (Temples of Boom) and Toto’s IV

 

Lego

My favorite time of year at Target is going on because they are blowing out the toys to make room for 2015 stock. Currently the toys just hit 30% off and someone snagged the Jabba The Hut Sail Barge because it dropped to maybe around $70. I did add to my Marvel collection with this set

 

I bought this set mainly for the figures and I will most likely used the set for parts for some kind of base. There are a bunch of other sets of various Lego products that I will jump on once they hit 50% off. Hopefully the tons of Microfighters stuff will be there because there are a lot of cool parts I could use.

 

My final pickup was from Hobby Lobby. I thought about starting up Model Kit Building but I don’t know where to put the finish products so I passed but I did go flashback to SDSU and bought myself a proper sketchbook

 

I’ve been using a GI Joe as my model for some sketches so I finally got a sketch mannequin. When not being used for drawing, my GI Joe will use it as a fighting dummy.

 

Alright Pixlbit, I am going to go be productive and maybe take a nap, or be the Banker in Oregon Trail.

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris