Thor


Thor by *jiuge on deviantART

Honestly thought there was some weird stabbing going on with Loki’s helmet going through his chest or he was growing spikes out of his back, but no, it’s just Loki’s helmet on the other side.

Spotify

I don’t keep up much with the music scene. I can go a long time without background music if I’m focused enough in other thoughts. It’s nice and puts me in a productive mood if the right flow comes along, but up until recently, it had been a long time since I had put on my headphones at work to listen to some form of online radio.

My go-to choice had been Last.fm because they have a system in place to try helping you find music they recommend that you might like. I had long heard of Spotify but every time I’d be about to sign up, I’d see some part of their terms that just didn’t sit right with me, such as a 10-hour per month limit on their free service (which was mistaken as I will explain further along in this post).

Well, a week or so ago, I put on Last.fm and was listening to my Mix radio which is a combination of tracks I’ve marked as being in my library and music that Last.fm themselves recommend based on that. And as I was hitting the skip button, I caught sight of a little notice that something to the effect of “You have only 2 skips left!”

Whoa, now. That was new. I’d always been able to skip to my heart’s content and taking away such a thing is kind of a big deal to me, a possible deal-breaker altogether. I stopped the radio then and there and went back to contemplating Spotify.

I figured well I could at least TRY it and am glad I did.

The free service requires ads, which I’m not too keen on, but in exchange is a pretty sweet deal-if you live in the U.S. like I do that is. That 10-hour limit apparently does not apply to those located in the U.S., so there was no need for me to be concerned about it.

You can listen to just about any track in their library whenever you want. You can create playlists based on these tracks. I haven’t used the sharing features, partly because I’m having trouble even connecting my Facebook account, but it looks pretty easy to share on the likes of Tumblr and Twitter too though I haven’t tried either.

But what I really like is that I can connect it to my Last.fm account and then use the two together to find recommendations. When you add the Last.fm app to Spotify, there’s already a heading for “Recommended” but another thing you can do is find similar tracks to the specific song that is currently playing.

SpotifyLastfm0001

SpotifyLastfm0002

Yet Another feature is that you can set up a playlist and then start a radio for that playlist where presumably other similar songs to what you have in your list will play. You can thumbs-up and thumbs-down the tracks so that Spotify will then consider that as it tries to improve what you want out of your radio.

Supposedly there is an app called Blockify that can mute ads, but I haven’t downloaded or tried it yet. Even so, I’m pretty happy with the service for the past 2 or 3 days I’ve been using it, better than I expected.

VH1 Kid Stars

A few days ago, Mara Wilson posted on Twitter that she’d be featured on a special VH1 was doing on the 100 Greatest Kid Stars; she’d be on the episode covering 20-40.

I decided to go ahead and check out the special in general, at least for the last 3 episodes (so 1-60). Throughout the coverage, I heard mention that more specifically, it would be kid stars from the last 20 years. Some I recognized, some I didn’t, and others were truly bizarre ordering choices, the one most on my mind right now as I type this is number 1.

To call me a Justin Bieber hater would be a stretch, but I certainly don’t care for his work and am no fan. Regardless, putting him at #1 and then the Olsen twins at #3/4 is just…mind-boggling. The choices on the list appeared to be about the success these kids had while actually being under 18. Some moved on to stay in the industry, and some didn’t, but nowhere did it seem the measurement was based on current success.

Bieber is a relatively recent thing, in light of considering the past 20 years, and the choice appears to be based more on this recency or current success than anything he did while in “kid star” status. Admittedly, I did not actually watch the rest of the sequence once they announced it was him, but I doubt any explanation would satisfy me.

Number 2 was Macauly Caulkin, and number 5 was Daniel Radcliffe. I probably would have picked the Olsen twins myself, but I’d think either of those guys would be better choices as well.

The full list can be found here.

The Hawkeye Initiative

So I heard about this through GAF this past weekend, and a geek girl site I recently added to my mega-Twitter list, The Mary Sue covered it today too. Some of the pics were well worth a laugh. Others made me cringe, so enter at your own risk.

It is downright painful to look at some of these poses from comics. It’s like you hear about it and you kinda sorta know about it, but you don’t really believe it until you see it. Well, that’s how it goes for me. Truly baffles me some people can make money with art SO bad (I refer to the originals, not the parodies).

Actual Hawkeye Initiative Tumblr:
http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/

Article about this initiative:
http://www.themarysue.com/introducing-the-hawkeye-initiative/

Tumblr post linked with quote about this initiative:
http://gingerhaze.tumblr.com/post/37003301441/how-to-fix-every-strong-female-character-pose-in

GAF topic about it:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=502366

Note to self

Note to self: The “Awesome” fanart thread at NeoGAF has “awesome” in quotes for a reason and should be avoided in the future.

Random TK/SC rant

On the one hand, I like being asked and therefore giving my opinion and on the other hand, the mention of the name of the worst character ever (in any context) is the quickest way to get your comment deleted on my channel. What to do? Rant on Tumblr of course!

Plus, I wasn’t really asked for my opinion, more like someone drew their own conclusion about me and commented about it.

The comment tonight was on my video showing off Soul Calibur 5 Critical Edge moves. The video was largely ignored by pretty much everyone, and by that I mean I certainly got no comments on my efforts and only later in person did friends of mine tell me they even watched it at all. I had actually been quite proud of it, but this person’s comment wasn’t really about my efforts either so can’t feel too bad.

Anyway, they asked “No Dampierre?” As in, I assume to mean, why wasn’t he in the video? It’s quite simple really. If I dislike a character enough, I will ignore him/her given the chance, and I find Dampierre repulsive. I would not subject myself to him anymore than I have to.

And then this person brought up comparing Patroklos to that character I despise from Tekken. I have hinted at such a comparison myself on this blog, but let me make it clear to anyone who cares to read this blog with a genuine interest in my opinion about the whole thing why my feelings differ.

Here is the HUGE difference.

There is A LOT of history in the Tekken 6 hype explaining events from E3 2005 to E3 2006 to 2007 to 2008 to 2009, and all the garbage in between. Believe me, I’ve recorded like 2 hours worth of audio explaining it, just figured it was boring material not worth publishing. In that time period, guess when it was known that we’d be stuck with that awful Scenario Campaign centering on two EXPANSION characters? April 2009!

Meanwhile, it was clear from about when Soul Calibur 5 was announced that Patroklos had the type of role he did. This person didn’t ask, but I don’t like Patroklos. He starts off as a stupid, arrogant douchebag and despite any character development in the story mode, said change does not make up for the numerous faults in Soul Calibur 5.

Added on top of those differences, my passion for Tekken was much greater than my passion for Soul Calibur. And then on top of all that, Tekken 6 left me so bitter that I swore off getting excited for a video game ever again. I don’t feel this way about Patroklos because I’m not as invested. I don’t post on a Soul Calibur message board, having to repeat my point or opinion about him all the time. I’m not bombarded over and over again with his face on this message board I do not go to or in my deviantART inbox or when I browse Tumblr looking up Siegfried.

The reason I hate Tekken 6 so much is because I wanted to love it so much. I loved Soul Calibur 3, but my hype for Soul Calibur 4 was nothing compared to how badly I wanted Tekken 6. Those aren’t typos. SC4 was a disappointment, and T6 was an astronomical failure, so I had my expectations in check for SC5, I can assure you.