PixlBit

Pixlbit Nation Happy Friday and its almost time for July 4^th! For you folks outside of the United States you can celebrate too, shoot off fireworks, burn some hot dogs, wear a lot of red, white, and blue, and take in a baseball game. You should be golden after that. So anything fun/interesting happen over the week? You know some things did. I’m debating if I should visit the local mom and pop store today to see if they have anything new. We shall see if I make up my mind after this blog, but let’s get this week’s Quick Hits started!

 

Chris Watches…

Big Brother: I’ve been watching a lot of the BB Live Feed. It’s a bit shocking at first to hear all the cussing especially when I’m used to the Network feed. I’ve noticed that CBS does at times censor the houseguests. When a topic or a portion of the conversation is something they don’t like they switch to the camera positioned on the fish tank. Also when the houseguests are talking about the crew that’s outside building the games, or adding more food to the pantry the voice says, “Please do not talk about Production.”

Watching the actual Network show is interesting because its interesting to see how the they can give particular houseguests a favorable edit, and what they choose to show. So far my favorite houseguest is Meg because it seems like she’s the only one who realizes everything that is going on is a game, and is not letting emotions get in the way. Day, and Audrey are pure emotion. I’ve noticed that for a bunch of folks who are “super fans” they seem to be clueless about the pacing of the show and how the game works. You create an alliance with a voting block of maybe four or five, take out the stronger houseguests who are not in your alliance, and keep the weaker ones that will vote with you until its time to vote them out, and then the alliance breaks apart. Everyone in the house seem to create multiple alliances, and everything is blowing up in their faces. 

Things I would do if I were a Big Brother Houseguest

1. My shirts would be like NASCAR. I would have nothing but hashtags, and company names on my clothing. To be nice to CBS I’d throw in some logos of their properties
2. Everytime I would eat something I would push it like a commercial. “Wow this bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos is freaking awesome. They are way better than Lays”
3. I would always talk to the camera. None of this Truman Show stuff. I’ll let people know that I’m in the fishbowl.
4. Everyday I would plot a way to escape the Big Brother house, and maybe try a couple of them
5. Talk back to the voice that tells houseguests to wear their microphones and don’t talk about producers
6. Bring a ton of cigarettes. I don’t smoke but folks in the house do and at some point they will run out. Packs of cigs in exchange for favors for the alliance.
7. Make an alliance, and name it after a wrestling group like the nWo, Four Horseman, etc. None of this “Bomb Squad” “High Rollers” crap. If I’m going to have a group its going to be cool.
8. Have a plan and stick to it. Everyone wants so and so out, and then when they campaign people have a change of heart. Not going to happen with my alliance.
9. When the houseguests are stuck inside the house, turn the house into a big Floor is Lava game. Seriously what else are you going to do for 12 hours other than sleep…and plot ways to escape.
10. While in the Diary Room, pretend like I’m giving a press conference like a pro athlete when asked about the competition. “We’re taking it one game at a time, not looking past our current opponent. The other competitors are tough but a few lucky breaks got us the win” I would use all the generic answers I could remember.
11. If I ever won HOH, my iPod would be nothing but Taylor Swift just so when other houseguest listen to it, the lyrics to Shake it Off will be stuck in their head, and the players are gonna play play play, and the haters are gonna hate hate hate…

 

I’m assuming other than the Floor is Lava game, everything I want to do is frowned upon by CBS and maybe violating the contract, but it would make for good TV.

Scorpion: Since I’m paying the $18 for 3 months of CBS content I need to watch other shows on their streaming service. Scorpion is really good. Its based on the story of Walter O’Brien, and his company of geniuses that solve crimes, and work with the government. The team consists of a Dr./compulsive gambler who can read body language, a human calculator who remembers everything, a mechanical genius, the leader/super genius, and a former waitress who interprets the world for them in exchange they help her with her genius child. Think fast pace early CSI with a lot of computers and action. Each week the team has to solve problems, while the sub plot exposes how much they really don’t understand how to interact with other people, which is where the former waitress comes in.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention Katharine McPhee, former American Idol runner up, plays the waitress. I bought this single on CD, and thought she should have beaten the guy who won. Other than Carrie Underwood, and Kelly Clarkson, it's better to not win Idol because the folks who lost have had better careers.

Tough Enough: This show is rough to watch. It's slow, the dialogue feels very rigid, and cold. The only redeeming quality from the show is the trainers who push the contestants. The contestants are not interesting; the handfuls of folks who are the “villains” are not good at pushing buttons. We have the guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to the competition, and a woman who likes to pick on one girl calling her “Princess Diana” while saying she’s there to win. This show won’t get cancelled because WWE brings in ratings with Raw, but there needs to be something that changes this otherwise bland show.

 

Chris Will Watch…

USA vs. Japan: The USWNT won 2-0 against Germany and now they face Japan. I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN! USA! USA! USA! I keep telling people Carli Lloyd shows up in big games and she did in the Germany game.

WWE in Tokyo: First off there is no way I’m staying up until 2:30am Pacific to watch this live so I’ll watch on Saturday Morning. I’m pretty sure Finn Balor will beat Kevin Owens because KO is on Raw/Smackdown a lot and he might win the US Belt from Cena. Also WWE is running a lot of Finn Balor info pieces, setting up who he is, his backstory, etc. I find it interesting that a lot of folks on those pieces refer to him by his real name. When I was growing up I had no idea what the real names of the wrestlers (a handful I still don’t) its funny how the wrestling business’ stance on this has changed.

Tour de France: Yes I like watching this, and I got caught up in Lance mania (everyone was cheating, he was just doing it better than everyone else.) I loosely follow cycling but I do watch the tour and Tour de California. 

 

Chris Listens To…

While I’m typing this up, I’m listening to my New Stuff Playlist. This is where I weed through filler, and songs from albums to find songs I like that will stay on the iPod. I don’t do shuffle with this playlist because I want to listen to an entire album instead of listening to random tracks. This is kind of funny considering I don’t have many full albums on my iPod.

As for podcasts the Tony Kornheiser Show will go dark for a couple of months because that’s what Mr. Tony does. One summer the radio station actually released a podcast of their replacement show, which was just as funny, and that team was fun to listen to. I saved those podcasts and currently have the mp3s on discs. I should add those to my iTunes library. Funny thing about podcasts is that, I only keep episodes of the Adam Carolla show. I don’t go back to listen to them, but I like keeping them.

I’m thinking of revamping what’s on my iPod. I don’t know what I want to do yet, but it seems I always stick with my Top 200 plays instead of listening to the other stuff on there. Maybe I should just have one playlist for music, and another for podcasts, and have the music playlist be of everything I like and have it on shuffle. We shall see.

 

Chris Takes Pictures…

I’ve been slacking on picture taking but I’m going to try and take pictures of fireworks this weekend. The local casino puts on a fireworks show so I’m going to try my hand at taking pictures. There’s probably going to be a lot of learning on the spot but it should be fun. If I get anything good, I’ll share them.

The first picture is actually from my iPhone. I was at the Swapmeet a little later than usual because it was hot and the sun was still up. Instead of my usual 5:30pm I went at 7:30 and more vendors were there and I got a cool shot on the way out

 

I think I might take more random shots like this with my phone. I like it, and I used the Camera+ app that was cofounded by Lisa Bettany. I’ve been using this app exclusively I place of the regular camera app since it was released and I like that I have a lot of control over the app.

 

The next pictures are taken with my regular camera

 

The clouds are rolling in. There were supposed to be thunderstorms but they actually happened around 2am-ish. For some odd reason I was up and I caught some of the show. I didn’t go outside to take pictures because I don’t think my camera is fast enough, and besides it was around 2am, the bed was way too comfortable.

 

Here’s a birdbath that usually has some water in it, but because of the whole mosquito thing, no sitting water.

 

Here are my last two pictures for this blog

I really like the detail on this leaf. The ridges, and the dirt gives it some character especially when here in hot as hell Southern California where we all of a sudden have to save water (don't get me started on this) 

Bonus* Last night the local casino had their fireworks show and you could see it from the backyard. They usually have it over their golf course and folks can come out and sit on the green. Since it was Big Brother Eviction Night I stayed home but I got some cool pics

 

I like how this came out. It’s a little blurry but that’s ok for my first time shooting fireworks. I tried to use the continuous picture mode and took three shots, and always one shot was out of focus. There are things I could have done to make this better, which I’ll try next time. I’ll add it to my notebook.

 

Thank You for looking at my pictures!

 

Chris’ Randoms…

This weekend I’m going to have to fix the softmod Wii. A little backstory: A week or two after buying my Wii from a thrift store, I saw that you could connect an external hard drive to the Wii, and copy over the games you own for it so you don’t have to always change out discs. Since I had the extra external hard drive laying around I decided to give this a go, and it worked well up until a couple of weeks ago when I erased one game and all of a sudden the program didn’t work and refused to recognize my games I already had on the hard drive. Thursday I tried again, and nothing works, so I’m going to erase the app from the Wii, re install it, clear out the hard drive and proceed to copy over all my Wii games again. It’s going to suck but I like to switch games without getting up.

 

 

I had to upgrade to the next version of iTunes on all the iDevices (except for my iPod because I guess its too “old”) I can’t find how to stream from my laptop to my iPad which when it works is fun to use. The Apple TV should be simple but it bugs me that the iPad isn’t connected like this anymore.

 

While looking through some old stuff I came across some posters I kept including this one

 

I might have been one of the few guys in my dorm to have the ’99 US Women’s Soccer Team on their wall. I also had the other two Nike Mia Hamm posters but I tossed those a couple of years ago because they were getting beat up. At some point I should get this one framed. Also USA! USA! USA! I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN!

 My town has put the no free plastic bags when you go shopping law into effect. Of course Walmart started early, but good guy Toys R Us didn't care and gave me a bag. Here's my problem with this law: When I was younger we had paper bags, but soon (I'm assuming someone who had deep pockets and owned stock in plastics) said these were bad because we are killing trees and we should switch over to plastic bags. Now the plastic bags are bad (someone with deeper pockets and stock in a company that sells the fabric for the cloth bags) and we are now forced to pay ten cents per bag if we don't have our own cloth bags. Walmart stepped up the quality of their plastic bags to a thicker bag, and the local grocery store has paper bags (wait what about the trees?) I see this as a way for stores to make more revenue through selling bags and you know the state of California is going to get a taste. 

I bet in a couple of years there's going to be a study that the cloth bags we are being forced to use will covered in germs because people will keep them in drawers, their cars, etc. and now wash them. There's going to be a push to sell new cloth bags because the current ones are too dangerous.

 

Pickups

Games

My cousin let me know about GameStop giving these cards away

 

Thank goodness my local store was just handing them out unlike the other store where the manager gave me some long-winded spiel that ended with “you have to pre-order a game.” Whenever I get back to my Pokemon game I’ll add the code. I guess I should do it soon just in case the code expires.

Last night at Toys R Us, while roaming the video game section I spot the red tag on a game behind the glass.

 

Turns out it was an online return, which is fine because it dropped in price to $20 and since it was Wednesday, there was a special deal going on for Rewards Members where they took an extra 10% off so the game came out to something like $17.90. It’s a little more forgiving than Driveclub, and I’ll give it a lot of playtime this weekend.

The final game I got because of Slickdeals. I’ve been wanting to get this game for a while to add to the series but didn’t want to pay full price until I saw that Walmart had it for $10 and it was available for store pickup.

 

I think for the console releases I’m missing the launch AC game for the PS4. That one should drop in price.

 

Music

No trips to the local mom & pop shop but after a week I finally picked up this CD because it was on sale for $10 at Target

 

I like Kacey Musgraves and her Same Trailer, Different Park album was a fun surprise when I bought it (and it won a Grammy.) For this album I think I had more 4 star rated songs than her previous album. Her lyrics are smart, fun, and one of the few albums I could sit and listen to the entire thing without skipping tracks.

 

 

Lego and Fake Lego

So my reasoning for visiting Toys R Us last night was because earlier in the day, on a whim I decided to check if they had the Ant-Man set available online. They did and they had the option to buy it online and pick up in store (this is quickly becoming my new favorite way to shop.) I chose instead to try my luck and walk in the store and sure enough they had three sets left

 

I originally wanted the set for the minifigures and I wasn’t going to build the ant, because I’m not a fan of toys about bugs. I decided to build it anyways and I have to say the Ant is pretty cool

 

The minifigures are really cool as well even if you have to positing Yellow Jacket a certain way because his back piece is bulky  and yeah my photo skills weren’t the greatest with the last picture.

The retail for this set is $20 but since its Toys R Us they have what many call the TRU Lego Tax and this set came out to $22. I’m fine with the extra two bucks because everywhere else is sold out.

 

While I was there I also price matched another set that Walmart had for $17

 

I’ve been waiting for a good time for this set because I wanted the Space Batman minifigure (Sinestro and Green Lantern are bonuses.) After building this set I noticed that the build was similar to the 2012 Hulk Helicarrier Breakout set (6868) that had a Helicarrier jet.

Both are small jets but the Lantern jet has more weapons like two hidden missiles that fire if you turn the exhaust nozzle in the back of the plane.

 

The figures are cool, and I was hoping for thick plastic wings for Space Batman, but it’s the thin plastic stuff and I never pop these out of its main body. Batman also came with a regular head incase you wanted him without his oxygen mask.

 

As for the Fake Lego, I went to the Swapmeet and Fake Lego Lady was there. She didn’t recognize me because I had the short hair and no facial hair but she did have some new stuff. She had the Big Hero 6 figures that didn’t look too good, along with some new Minecraft stuff and a handful of new Superhero items

 

I thought the Purple Batman was a fake of one of the Comic Con exclusive figures that is really expensive, but it turns out it’s a fake of the figure that came with a Blu ray awhile back. Bane is a fake of the Batcave set, and I wasn’t sure if I had the Batman with the white body paint so I picked it up again. Thor is really cool because of that winged helmet. Comic book fans you have to help with who the guy with the red cape is. Overall I’m happy with the new minifigures and it turns out that I already have that Batman with the white paint. No big deal. I might go back this weekend to see if Fake Lego Lady has new stock.

 

Alright Pixlbit we have come to the end of this week’s Quick Hits. For you folks playing with fireworks this weekend, be safe, and if you can go watch the pros do it. It’s a better show, you save some cash, and you don’t have to clean up afterwards. Have a good July 4^th Weekend!

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

 

 

It’s the Fourth of July of course this week’s music is going to be patriotic. I actually found out about the “President’s Own” when I watched a show on Discovery about the Nation’s special military groups like the old guard and of course “The President’s Own.” If you like their stuff on their webpage they are giving away their version of the John Philip Sousa Marches for free. Have a good weekend!