A lot more to juggle than expected

I guess my last blog was last month's news. I am slowly getting used to my new job and honestly I do not know if I am doing well. I tend to over worry on things. That is how I am.

I do enjoy the first 2 weeks the fact I do not need to tend to my phone anymore than totally needed. It sort of gave me my sanity back. I guess I have to be honest I was feeling pretty bad during my last job and I did had really suicidal thoughts throughout. Putting the job down was one of the things I guess helped alleviate that.

Here's came the next piece I need to juggle in my life. Pursing my degree. I have done some information search for the private universities in Singapore. I have also narrowed down the courses I would take though personally I do not know if I am capable enough of handling them. (Sigh worrying again before things even got started). I have not come into the area how I am going to handle my school fees.

I hadn't talk to my family or specifically my father regarding this yet. I wonder if I am procrastinating to avoid pursing my degree. After all, I did finally get that much cherished free time. I wanted to spend it on playing the games I stacked up over the few years.

But the most ironic thing is here I am sitting with my PS3, my Xbox 360, my PS vita and my DS, for the whole weekend I didn't even touch them. There's still the strong push away that at the back of my head, all this free time will vanish when I play games. Though once I start playing and get done with it. I feel really relieve.

It will take sometime before the tension goes down. Overall I am still feel glad and relieve.

I will sign off here for today.

P.S. I do live video stream now and then which you can check it out here > www.twitch.tv/kilvear

Weird angry responses to Wii U exclusives

With the Wii U announcing the exclusives it will have, there are a fair amount of angry people on the internet.

On the surface it looks like whining idiots who are whining about not getting their games. Here's my other take on it.

I am sure like quite a number of people playing games like myself bought a Wii at some point. (Hell I even have 2. 1 Jp and one for US games. Hate region locking) The thing is with the rest of the Wii owners, there isn't much in the way of games we look forward to on the consoles. Most stuff we play are from Nintendo themselves. Getting good games from Nintendo itself is definitely good.

The thing is that we look forward to more stuff from other developers than Nintendo of course. We would want to use our consoles more than just play Nintendo games. Sadly we don't get much outside of Nintendo games. In fact I have left my Wii alone for a long time.

Like only recently did we get Xenoblade, The Last Story and hopefully Pandora's Tower. Like why? Why did we only get those games only recently and only after much effort by a group of fans putting out that people are willing to buy games those games if they are translated.

For me I feel I am side lined by Nintendo. To put it bluntly I feel burnt by my Wii purchase. I am not stating I don't enjoy the Nintendo games but this few new Mario games outside of Galaxy feels like a recycled experience?

I have to admit I am totally in love with the Metroidvana games for the portables which I truely hope they will continue but have likely not any longer. Those games recycle their assets a lot but I still love them. Strangely I couldn't feel the same for the new Mario games and I feel the experience feels recycled for some reason.

With that burnt feeling, a lot of us are wary of purchasing a Wii U despite being promised there will be a lot of 3rd party support. I believe it when it happens is what a lot of folks like me are doing.

With Bayonetta 2 being a Wii exclusive because Nintendo has helped financed the game is fine by most standards. What I see is a multi console title becoming exclusive to a console which most of us are not even sure we would want to purchase given the history we had with Wii U.

The price of a console is significant enough to warrant thinking about buying it. Hence I believe folks would want Bayonetta 2 would be on PS3 or Xbox 360. The exclusive announcement really made it a downer for most people which don't have a Wii U purchase on their radar anytime soon.

To put it simply, people are not ready to commit to a Wii U purchase and would love the game to be multi console. Looks like it isn't happening and the internet with the usual response of raging and death threats to anyone related to it.

I can't say I don't agree with being angry and somewhat disappointed at the same time. Death threats seemed a bit extreme. Regardless I am having a wait and see view of the Wii U though I do expect that if I wait long enough either the price will drop or Wii U will cease to be relevant at that point.

Its been a while. A long while

As I am writing this I am actually in Japan crashing at one of my friend's place.

So what happened this year? Well mostly the same I can say, but it isn't really a good year to start with I can say.

First, one of my cousins passed away. It was pretty bad. The exact reasons I won't disclose but it is one of those things that you can see it tearing into that family.

Then work is well, work. Like the last post I did. I was generally pretty angry. What I can say is I couldn't agree with the direction of what is being done and things generally got worse. I wonder if I should say which I guess probably not. 

You know I realize there is a lot of things I couldn't say. So let me say something I can.

First I am moving to a new job starting Sept 24. Civil service. My short term plan is at least get familiar with the role then look for a place to study and get my college degree before I think of something else.

Currently I am in Japan, took no pay leave as I wanted to have that break before I start my new job. Besides it is not like my work is appreciated when I am there anyways.

For me it was weird like when I was at the airport, "maybe going over isn't that a great idea. I should like save the money for something else." I was literally guilt tripping myself. Once I got on the plane, that thought just vanished. I generally don't enjoy plane rides. It is hard to sleep and there's nothing to do.

While being bere, I am setting up some stream equipment which used to be my portable streaming setup. I have been thinking of really reducing time playing fighting games. Even with my new job I thought I want to like do something else. Also I really suck at fighting games and I seem to be reaching a place I can no longer get better. I do believe though putting more time and slowly learning I will get over that. It is just I want to spend time on other things. 

I thought I want to say something positive, I feel good now that I don't have to worry about carrying a phone with me or the servers exploding (something like that). The feeling you are like freed from a very heavy burden no one wants to take up.

I remember I had more I wanted to say when I was on the plane, it seems I have forgotten about them. I will note them down when I remember it.

That's it for now.

What boss said

I have to get this off my chest if not I be in agony. Basically my boss called everyone in and tell us that the company is not sure what to make of next year with Europe being in shit and other stuff.

So at the end of it, it came down to being more productive at our work. That just gave me a straight message that the MIS department is not getting anymore new operation personnel which I personally feel is becoming insane with the amount of new stores opening and the amount of projects and new to come projects coming next year.

I am already working extra hours on the daily basis to get things and I am already getting the fact that the company staff has a lack of respect for MIS personnel weekends by calling us regarding IT on a weekend.

So I like to end with a quote from Southpark. "Bail?" "Bail"

An experiment

I started a new twitter account called "unclekilTC" which stands for Uncle Kilvear's Training center.

I just started 31 years old 3 days ago from this post and I wonder how much have I slowed down in terms of reaction time, learning things etc. You know the general stuff about aging. I also like to test the idea that age doe not apply to video games since you are not using a lot of muscles save your arms.

So I decided that I would want to test this out by learning a fighting game that is not available here. Well I decided to learn 2 rather than 1. The 2 games are Chaos Code and Aquapazza. The character I will pick for Chaos Code is Kagari and Aquapazza is Tamaki.

The tweet feed I will use will have updates on what I learn and the notes about the characters and the videos I watched. So you can use and follow that.

All this updates and tweets will be on going till I go to Japan end of this year from 24th Dec 2012 to 2nd Jan 2012 which once I reach Japan I will post as much as possible regarding my progress, match descriptions and match outcomes.

So that's that. I thought I share a bit of the my gaming history so it can provide more background on the experiement.

I have been playing games since I was 9. I started fighting games around the time Street Fighter 2 first came out and did not get serious honestly until I hit my polytechnic days which was 17. Given the time I played I still consider myself by far slightly below average player (AKA scrub for those familiar with Fighting game terms).

I joined a couple of tournaments and also organized a couple myself. My tournament standing is pretty poor and probably only thing that I was like getting something was 2 Arcana Heart 2 tournament where I got second and first place respectively. This isn't a big deal as the tournament only had 9 entries and the best place was not in the tournament.

I have been to Japan a couple of times and I know the relative standard of players is pretty high compared to mine.

So the experiment begins.

Things I done in the past

Thought I wanted to blog about something that is more personal. I remember the time 5 years ago I did a thing that is unimaginable if I would do it now.

I left my job and traveled to US on my own. Yes a maiden journey to US first by myself, second to meet with people I have never ever seen in my whole life before.From that trip, I gained probably the best experience in my life. I talked to people like spook and Arturo. Get to play people like someasiandude(ken) and splayko.

From that trip I got to know Rob then traveled to Japan to meet him and stayed at his place the second time.

That first trip is the craziest thing I ever did in my life. The things I got out of it benefited me for the rest of my life. Simple things like how to plan a trip. Buying tickets online. Looking up maps to get around. Following directions to get around in a place I never been before.

I have to be honest. Recently I have been suffering from burn out from work and generally depressed. I have been playing it safe for a while. Like keeping the job and thinking about my family and what they need. I guess that got to me a lot.

I do envy when people are able to move on and recognizing the need to rest. I am still thinking about my decision and my plan. I guess whatever the decision it is, I can never know if it is the right decision. I probably have to decide for something better.

It is funny how things change in life. I can't tell what is for the better I do know I probably need to change something in my life perhaps soon.

Live Streaming

Recently I have been doing some live streaming on and off. It is for 2 purpose. First and more important is just a hobby purpose of messing around with some new tech and figuring how they work. Second trying to setup a game night kind of thing for  No game No Talk. The details for the second one will not come anytime soon. Well details are not even concrete.

Regarding well the hobby part. First off I like to say, all this video streaming thing made me realize 2 things (I wonder why it is often 2 things not 3). I learn a lot of stuff regarding video formats, types of video connectors, bitrates frame rates, terms used, video file containers, encoding format etc. It is a huge amount of information to absorb. I don't think this knowledge will net me any more money in my job but I do believe in improving myself and knowing more stuff. The saying goes "You become good at your job outside your job" assuming of course I earn from this which I don't.

Second thing is, all this equipment cost money. A lot of money. I lost count of how much I spent on the hardware but its like I am still lacking hardware to do some really good quality stuff. The last count I remember was nearly 3 thousand. I still lack another vital piece of hardware which is a sound mixer and a good mic which is clearly going to like cost another 500 bucks. 

This cost lots of money.

Also live streaming is like the cutting edge crap. If anyone actually asks me how to do it, I be like "I need to spend an afternoon at like my own place with you showing you how everything works". I was talking to Farp just today regarding some of the new stuff he recommended me to have a look. It is literally exposed PCB boards with PCI-E cards sitting on it.

Yeah that's how haphazard things are regarding the state of streaming and doing thing via your laptop for like tournaments. (Warning Tech mumbo jumbo ahead)

Invasion of cables. Lots of them

The setup I use is something like this. Xbox 360 into HD-Pvr into my comp via USB 2.0. On my computer (Running Windows 7 64bit) I would this software called SCFH DSF which is actually a software that captures the desktop at very good frame rate. You can google the name of the software but the page is in Japanese. If you wonder why I cannot capture straight from HD-pvr, the reason is HD-pvr doesn't not output what it captures straight into the computer. So it actually does compression on the hardware before it outputs to the computer via its own software. So I have to capture the output of the video of the software into FME. I also connect my webcam to my comp and launch my webcam software then I will make SCFH capture the video window of the webcam software then I will do some panel arrangements.

Anyways that's the general gist of it. If it sounds complicated, that is because it is. Definitely not for who casually wants to do streaming. The cheapest setup would still set you back at least a hundred. Again assuming you know what you are doing and what you need.