Thursday, May 23, 2013

Podcasts, Awards & Advanced Tickets.

Today I spent the majority of my day either editing my upcoming MASH 4077 Podcast or judging entries in the Geekie Awards.

I started my day with continuing the editing on my next MASH 4077 Podcast. I did some work yesterday but really wanted to finish it today. So for the next three to four hours I did nothing but edit the podcast.

When I was done I rewarded myself with a little LOTRO play. Since it's the Spring Festival in Middle Earth there are daily quests you can do... well everyday to get special "Spring Leaves" which you can turn in for some really cool items. Anyways I did my daily quests.. spent about two hours playing.

Once I was done I went onto The Geekie Awards judge section on their website and spent the next six hours going through entries and... well judging them. It was very entertaining... lots of great entries in the category that I'm judging. I got through about half of the entries.. plan to finish the rest by weeks end.

A few other things happen today.. The Geekie Awards announced the date of the Award show.. it's going to be August 18th, I'll blog and link when tickets go on sale.

I purchased my ticket for Man of Steel for opening night.. I'm going with my best bud Robert and I'm super excited as Superman is my favorite of the Super heroes.

I also purchased my ticket for Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing". They are having a special screening at the Hollywood Arclight and what makes this extra special is Joss is going to be there.

May Mini Swap... Scarab painting for Chevy - Gogo Marlene

Well I get to paint this fig for Chevy. He was so kind and gave me a limited edition fig so there is no pressure. I am painting 'Gogo Marlene' who is a Civvie for Infinity. He would like the dress blue and the boots white. Everything else is up to me. So far the blue is done and the flesh along with the purple trim. Not sure what to paint the hair color so if you have any suggestions let me know. Anyway here is the progress shot.

Hope you enjoy. Comments and questions welcome....
Cheers,
John...



Star Trek: Into Darkness




I've now seen Star Trek: Into Darkness twice, the first time I saw it I really wasn't sure what I thought of the movie, I really liked parts of it but there were some things that really annoyed me about the movie as well.

My first viewing was with some sci-fi fans but they weren't big fans of Star Trek as such, the second time I saw it I was with Star Trek fans ( one who was a rather cute blond but that had nothing to do with me wanting to see it again ) and I enjoyed the film more with the second viewing I still found certain aspects well to be honest annoying.

The movie starts out with a fun action sequence and things are moving along nicely, then we get to the main story and for the most part I was OK with that as well but it really started to grate on my nerves the seemingly constant paying homage to Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn, I just didn't and still don't feel there was the need for it, personally I would have preferred a wholly original story and hopefully in the next chapter of the rebooted movie franchise that's exactly what we'll get.

It must be said that Benedict Cumberbatch was in my opinion perfectly cast as *cough* John Harrison and in the next film Karl Urban needs to be given more to do as his take on Dr McCoy is near perfect.

The Road




This afternoon I watched a movie called The Road, I think I'd had the movie on Blu-ray for more than a year but somehow never got around to watching it until today.

Basically the world as we know it has come to an end, I don't think the movie even mentions what happened just that things have fallen apart and there is virtually nothing left, it's the story of a father and son and what they have to do to survive.

I think it's a good movie but it's the sort of movie you need to be in the right mood for as it gets a little dark at times.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

LOTRO, Podcasts and Buffy

I was determined to not let LOTRO take over to day today. Got up at 8am, looked for a job (no luck). I had scheduled an hour to go online, get breakfast and do whatever. So I ate, watched a half hour TV show and then jumped onto LOTRO to get my daily Hobbit gift but immediately got off as it was 9am and according to my schedule it was time to start editing my Knights of the Guild podcast.

I had already done some prep work a few days ago so all I had to do was polish the piece and make sure it sound good. So it only took me a little over an hour to finish the episode. After it's edited, I run it through an audio leveling program, then import it into Audacity, check it and then output an MP3. Once that it done I import it to itunes, attach the logo picture and then upload it to podbean. Once uploaded to podbean, I have to create the show notes, build the page, attached the podcast and submit it to itunes. The process can talk up to a few hours depending on my upload speeds.

So around 10:30am KOTG podcast was ready to go. As a reward I decided to jump onto LOTRO and play for an hour or so. And I'm happy to say I did exactly that. I played for about an hour and a half, which took me to about noon.. from noon to one I had lunch and watched some recorded TV before jumping back on the computer and starting to prep my next MASH 4077 Podcast. Spent a few hours doing that before calling it a day as I had to get ready to head over to my buddy Robert's place as it is Wednesday and if you are a regular reader of my blog you know Wednesday's are Buffy and Bros nights.

Got to his place just before seven.. we ordered some Italian for dinner and started our rewatch/1st time. We are in the middle of Season Six. Our first episode of the night was Ep 11 "Gone" A social services worker threatens to take Dawn from Buffy. The Trio accidentally make Buffy invisible.

I remember watching this episode for the first time and just hating Buffy. I thought it was so out of character for her to do what she does in this episode. But watching it ten years later I actually have a  better understanding as to why she is doing what she is doing. Still not a favorite episode of mine but enjoyable.. glad that Buffy and the gang finally know about the Trio.

Our second episode of the night is Ep 12 "Doublemeat Palace" To deal with her escalating financial problems, Buffy gets a job as a kitchen worker at the Doublemeat Palace, a California-based fast food restaurant chain, which she quickly finds to be degrading and dull. Furthermore, a series of strange events, combined with the disappearances of employees, leads Buffy to believe that it may not be cow's meat that they serve here...

I know alot of people say this is one of the worst episodes of Buffy, I don't know if I'd go that far.. I mean it's entertaining. Not an episode I'd want to watch over and over again.

Third episode of the night, Ep 13 "Dead Things" The Trio try to make Warren's ex-girlfriend Katrina their willing sexual slave by magical means. But when she fights back she is accidentally killed, they use magical and demonic forces to make Buffy think that she has killed Katrina. Between finding out the truth about her resurrection and believing she killed an innocent girl, Buffy's world begins to fall apart.

Again like with "Gone" wasn't a favorite of mine the first time around but watching it again gave me a better appreciation for it. Really dislike the Trio in this one. I mean it's pretty much just Warren, Andrew just kind of follows and poor Jonathan is just stuck in the middle. Interesting to see how Buffy reacts to "killing" an innocent compared to how Faith reacted... nice contrast.

Our final episode of the night is Ep 14 "Older and Far Away"  When Dawn feels that nobody wants to spend time with her, she makes a wish in front of a Vengeance demon (posing as school counselor) that everyone would stay with her. During Buffy's birthday party, Dawn's penchant for shoplifting is discovered while the gang tries to figure out why nobody is able to leave the house. Finally, Anya calls the vengeance demon and tricks her into undoing her curse.

Another good episode, nothing great but we do finally resolve the "Dawn" stealing things. It was great to see Tara back in the mix and Xander starting to get cold feet. Dawn is so annoying in this episode.. I don't remember her being such an emo teen.

So ends our Buffy and Bros night... I always say this but it's so true, spending time with Robert is the highlight of my week. Even thought it's only about 3 or so hours and a few hours of commute it's total worth it... Robert's the best.

Knights of the Guild Ep 50

GuildSeasonSix.jpg

Download from itunes: bit.ly/KotGCast, Listen on Stitcher Radio ow.ly/linep or Listen / Direct Download from the main website bit.ly/2CrYxk

Show Notes:

In this episode I sit down with Felicia Day and talk about the Season 6, Episodes 2 and 3.
  • Knights of the Guild on Stitcher Radio HERE
  • Follow us on twitter @knightsofguild
  • Follow Host Kenny on twitter @Geekyfanboy

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Best Laid Plans...

So I started my day on a schedule.. woke up around 7:30am. My schedule didn't start until 8am. So I jumped online and read twitter.. I noticed that LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online) tweeted that they were starting their Spring Festival 2013 in game today. So I went to check it out. Figured it would be like their 6th Anniversary celebration last month but instead of a just a few new "special" quests, there were 30 to 40 new quests taking you all over Middle Earth.. it was pretty awesome but was not in my schedule for the day.

I debated on even starting the quests as I knew if I started I would have a tough time stopping. Also alot of the quests were timed so once you started you couldn't stop until they were complete. Well I started at 8am and didn't come up for air until around 2pm when my buddy Chris joined me.

I took a break as I needed to run a few errands, eat lunch and vote. Well the voting thing didn't turn out so well. My normal voting place was not doing it this time around and I never got anything in the mail saying where it was going to be. So I looked online and for my address the official site said it did not have a polling place for me so I wasn't able to vote :(

I did pick up what I needed and grabbed some lunch before heading home. I started LOTRO back up around 4pm and played until 8pm before calling it a night.

Of course I feel guilty not getting anything on my schedule done like I wanted to. But I haven't done a full day of gaming in quite a while and sometimes you just need it. The schedule I made for tomorrow is pretty much the same for today but I added "rewards" so when I finish a task like editing my next KOTG podcast I can take an hour to play some LOTRO.  So will see how this works out tomorrow. I can't keep delaying all this stuff I have to do.