miffy495

That is amazing. I want to read the rest. Where did you find it?

I was just just writing a lesson plan on wetlands for school while listening to Idle Thumbs. "water slowly releases into rivers" became "water slowly releases into wizards". Whups.

Huh. By that chart I just died for the first time, and that ENTIRE life was spent in university. On to life 2, I suppose!

I did it and it looked good. I didn't have any pictures myself, but there were cameras around. If I get a copy, I'll post one up. Side note: The commentary from my girlfriend (who is actually a punk) was "ummm... I don't know if this is something I should say or not, but I'm finding myself significantly more attracted to you dressed up like this..." so that's a thing that happened.

RIP Lou Reed:

Can't tell if you're kidding, but if you want to pay $2.99, it's DLC for the first game. DLC from Rocksmith transfers to Rocksmith 2014, so it's been in there since before launch.

As I'm the youngest teacher at my school by about 8 years and still go out to shows on weekends, I have started too be called "Punk Rock Pete" by the other teachers. (Yes, my name is actually Pete, so at least that works). Now usually at a show, I'm an unassuming dude at the back in a blazer until the music starts, at which point I get super into it. I also dress pretty much like that at at school. Fuck it though, if they want Punk Rock Pete, they're gonna get him at tomorrow's halloween party. Gonna do this up RIGHT. Pictures will happen if I'm super happy with it.

Cook, Serve, Delicious?

Ok, so I lied. The training is actually much better. Rather than just video with small bits of playing in a song at the end, it stops frequently to make sure that you're keeping up, and even does riff repeater stuff if you're not getting it. It also has about 5 million different topics covered in the tutorials menu. I tried playing a song tonight that had two hand tapping, for example, which is not something I'd ever tried before. After about 20 minutes in the tutorial stuff, I would say that I feel like I have the foundation to actually figure this shit out. It made me do repeated series of hammer-ons and pull-offs using the middle finger of my pick hand to hammer the high E note while I did hammer ons and pull offs from the high A and C lower down on the string. At the very least, it taught me the fundamentals of something that I'd never even considered trying before at my skill level. Cool stuff. I'll shut up unless people have more questions, but god damn. This is fucking fantastic. I LOVED Rocksmith so so so much, and this improves on everything that I could have asked for. I haven't even tried the guitarcade stuff yet, but from what I've heard it's actually a way better skill trainer this time around than it was last time as well, so I'm completely sold. If you have the equipment and are even a little bit interested, you've gotta check this thing out. Also, it doesn't seem like this one is built on Gamebryo, which the first Rocksmith was and loved to crash on my laptop. From the time I've spent, this feels a lot more stable, so take that for whatever it's worth. You guys: This shit. It's awesome. So rad.

I just realized I had no twist ties, rubber bands, or clips, so I sealed a bag of salad with a zip tie. Maximum bachelor achieved.

Not so much in the actual tutorials (though the amount of techniques has definitely increased by a tonne), but there are a lot of nice little things in the game that make learning a bit easier. For example, when there's a time that you have a chord made but just pick the individual strings in different patterns, it has a "ghost" of the chord at the start of that section to let you know how to place your fingers before you start. In the first game, there was just a lot of notes coming at you really fast and if you weren't thinking about it, it was way too easy to not realize that it was a chord and freak out trying to figure out how to finger the section. There is also a convenient "chord book" that will just straight up show you how to make a chord if you don't know. Like in the first game, there's always a "recommends" section, but this time it's per song. This means that the game will recognize if there's a chord you've never seen before coming up in this song and one of the recommendations will just be "yo, you should check the chord book for this one before starting" and provide you with an option to jump straight to that chord in the book. It's pretty handy.

Ok, a couple of hours later... This is worth dealing with uPlay. As much as I love Rocksmith (about 90 hours invested at this point) I was always infuriated by how mind bogglingly bad the menu design was. They fixed the hell out of that thing, letting you just tab through the way that the songs are sorted. You've got all the usual, difficulty, artist, title, decade, etc. Notably absent is genre, which is a bit of a bummer, but oh well. One category that they do have that is awesome is "recommends" which pulls tracks that are similar to other songs that you've played a lot, either in terms of difficulty or song. I like that it tracks that and can pull some new ideas. Also of note is just how much more accurate everything feels. I could get away with some pretty sloppy play in Rocksmith, but not any more. The cable is exactly the same cable, but the optimizations that they've made to the software really make it feel way better. Also, you don't need to tune before every song, but you're free to if you're feeling like you need to. I do kind of miss the randomly generated sets from Rocksmith, and I spent a bit of time looking around 2014 for those, but they seem to have disappeared. I found that those were a really good way to keep me on my toes and keep me trying songs that I otherwise would have given up on for one reason or another (ie: "A More Perfect Union", which is a song I don't really like but practicing it to get it off of my setlist menu actually made me way better at pull offs). In terms of songs, there's some good stuff in there if you have the same tastes as me. Also, all my DLC from the first game has carried over, which is awesome. When I booted up the game it told me to go to the store and buy the "transfer" DLC to get all the Rocksmith one songs over into 2014 as well, which is a bit of a bummer in terms of having to pay, but that's how it worked in Rock Band as well so I can't really hold it against them. What DOES suck is that when I tried to do this, the DLC didn't seem to exist on their store. It'd be nice if I could move those songs over, 'cause I really liked a few of those as well. Hopefully they put up that DLC stuff in the next week or so and I'll be able to straighten that out. Overall, I fucking love Rocksmith and the interface improvements alone have sold me. I'm stoked as hell to keep rolling on this game, and now that I have a proper job I'm thinking of buying a bass as well. This shit is sweet, y'all. Get on it.

2014 is out! I'm launching it for the first time right now! ...those fuckers added uPlay to it!

The best thing about the whole drunk thing (which I am every couple of weeks) is trying to play guitar and sucking at it, but not giving a fuck that I suck at it and actually thinking it sounds good anyway.

God, I LOVE Muppet Treasure Island. I would love that drinking game as well.

I will be playing this soon.

Just bought it, pretty much solely for Ticket. I'd be down, but have no idea how to friend a person in that way. \

What a surprise, a guy with "Ghost" in his name likes Gone Home...

My girlfriend is vegan. I made a big fancy Thai meal for thanksgiving. Who says it has to be turkey?

Happy Thanksgiving, other Canadian thumbs! This has been a pretty good year, all things considered, so I'm reflecting pretty positively right now. Hope most of you are as well.

Save money and install gym mats with targets painted on them under your back door.

Being Canadian, I quite like hockey. Having been raised just outside of Toronto, I quite like the Toronto Maple Leafs. Being a Maple Leafs fan, I'm used to being disappointed by my team's performance and try not to get too wrapped up in it. That said, I do enjoy watching games when I have a free Saturday night. Those are VERY few and far between, meaning I get to watch approximately 5 sporting events a year, but I always enjoy them.

...that can't be real. Right?

...well. That was a thing I just watched.

I think you need to learn how to communicate with Toblix. He is never serious about anything. Dude is fantastic, and would not actually mean that. That's just how he talks. In time, it becomes incredibly endearing, honest.