PixlBit

Well Happy Friday Pixlbit Nation! The week started off with Monday trying to fight me, and got it’s last kicks in on Monday night when I was having a stew for dinner and I burned my tongue. Yes it was the last FU to me by Monday. Tuesday was better and by the end of Tuesday and the start of Wednesday I hit my stride…which brings me to Friday

 

So Pixlbit how was your week? Anything fun happening this weekend? I’m currently updating my laptop’s OS to the new version of OS X Yosemite which is taking a bit longer than usual.

 

C’mon other Apple you should have done this last night, so my download would only take a couple of minutes instead of 2 hours. I can’t complain beause it’s a freebie and it jumped from four hours a minute ago

 

It is Friday, I’m getting ready to spend my day either jumping into Mount Backlog or getting some pictures taken of game library by console. I’m planning on doing a series of blogs like last time I did this. This should be fun because I already had a couple of “Hey I own this game” moments. Anyways it is time for another edition of Quick Hits With Chris!

 

 

Chris Loves Reality Shows

Top Chef

So apparently Top Chef is back. I think I missed the first hour but I’m hoping I can catch it on Hulu Plus. Ok so I decided to try and stream it while typing up this blog and no dice. Oh well. Anyways the show is back, I’m happy and I see Richard Blais is back as a judge which is kind of cool because he is a former contestant.

 

The Voice

So I’ve missed quite a bit of the Voice because of a certain show about dancing, but I did have favorites and well I found out that my big favorite got bounced early.

 

I think she should have gone with Team Pharrell. Hopefully she releases an album because I would buy it.

 

Chris is going FLAC

A Year or two ago I decided that I wanted to eventually move my music library from CD and Vinyl to FLAC. I thought about going with Apple Lossless, but since the iPod’s highest capacity iPod is around 160 GB, it wouldn’t work, so I went with FLAC and I’m currently using my old PC Laptop that I reformatted and I am using as my FLAC machine and Steam machine. When I first started I realized that my older external hard drive was filling up with other files and I still haven’t removed my old iTunes files on there. I have a bunch of mixtapes, concert bootlegs (who knew people posted these on the internet), and a couple of audiobooks.

Since I cleaned up the PC laptop, it was time to start moving my library to FLAC so I bought

 

 I picked up a 3TB external harddrive that will be home to just FLAC files, and Steam games

 

And I upgraded the external card for my Sandisk Clip Zip

 

So I did a bit of tinkering with my Clip because it seemed to be stuck on the media-refreshing screen, and after installing Rockbox everything worked fine. I went with an orange theme on the Rockbox screen just to give it some color

And I proceeded to rip CDs and manage my files with an application called MediaMonkey. I’m using an iTunes skin because the default screen is not pretty. I’ve ripped 40 CDs so far and this weekend I will probably try and add more albums.

So Pixlbit, any of you guys/gals/little green men use FLAC as your preferred medium? Any tips, and tricks you want to share? I don’t think I’m giving up my iTunes library, but I do want to use the FLAC player as the music choice when I’m home, walking around the neighborhood, and in the gym. The iPod will be used for on the go, everyday player.

 

Pickups!

Games

So on Wednesday I went to the midweek Swapmeet and while looking through the Fake Lego Lady’s stock, her son told me to come back on Saturday because she’s going to have new stuff (I think she recognizes me as the only adult without a kid who buys the minifigures from her). She had a couple of figures I wanted but I didn’t have the five to hit the $20 deal, so I will be there on Saturday! Anyways I took a detour to the K-Mart to see what kind of goodies they had. The display at the front of the store had all the games that are on clearance. It was a bunch of Shovelware stuff along side the “Great Games Great Prices” stuff, but I did find some stuff that I wanted

 

I think this was the Top Gun game I wanted to try while walking around GameStop but didn’t want to spend $18 on. The PS3 game sounds like some of the things can be fun, and for $3 why not.

 

I added some Wii games

 

I have Harvest Moon for the Playstation so why not give it a try on the Wii. $6 each, I can’t complain

 

The final game I picked up is for the DS

 

I think I’ve been watching this game for close to a year now as it dropped from $20 to $4. Originally I was going to buy it at $6 but I figured let’s see how far its going to drop, and I have a bunch of other games to play anyways. Well it dropped to $4 so I bought it.

From the weekend Swapmeet, I picked this game up from a nice family who sold a bit of everything

 

The disc is clean, the manual is fine, and they sold it at the can’t argue price of $5. From reading the Wiki on it, it seems a lot of concepts from this game were reused on Project Gotham Racing. I really need to find my TV Cables for my Dreamcast.

The two newest games in the Humble Bundle Mobile were added and I can’t wait to try So Long, Oregon

 

The game looks like a lot of fun with the old style Oregon Trail graphics. Man I used to rock in that game in elementary school.

Another tablet game I picked up but this one was free and I’ve been waiting for it

 

Angry Birds Transformers. Yup the Birds and Pigs team up as your favorite Transformers in a side scrolling shooter. The Birds are the Autobots, and the Pigs are Decepticons. Your goal is to rescue the captured robots from the newly evil Eggbots. Its crazy, fun, and has the retro feel including the lines on the TV when you use tracking to clear the screen. Give it a try, it’s free on iOS and I think Android.

 

Music

I bought the Target Special Edition of Banks’ album Goddess

 

I thought my local store ran out, and I was about to settle for the iTunes version but I found this one hiding behind some $5 CDs

Google Play offered this album as their freebie of the week

 

I’m not a big fan of Julio Iglesias’ kid, but its free, might as well give it a listen

 

Toys

So last weekend, while at the Swapmeet the Fake Lego Lady didn’t have the Captain America figures I wanted but she had Superman figures

 

The only characters I know are General Zod, and Bizarro Superman. Since I have no idea who the others are I’ve called them Hockey Beard Superman, Special Edition Black Jersey Superman, and Terminator Superman (John Conner is D-O-N-E!). On Wednesday Fake Lego Lady had Clark Kent turning into Superman but I didn’t get it.

I also picked up the Gray Hulk

 

While assembling my new figures this happened

 

C’mon China, if I’m going to buy your knockoffs, don’t do this!

 

Group shot of the figures. General Zod doesn’t have the goatee like my Lego version

 

Gray Hulk with my Lego Green Hulk from the Quinjet playset. The quality of both are similar, but Gray Hulk has a different mouth.

Lego Superman with Fake Lego Special Edition Black Jersey Superman. He also has longer hair.

 

And finally Fake Lego Special Edition Black Jersey Superman, Lego General Zod, and what was supposed to be Fake General Zod looks more like Anakin Skywalker as a Superman. Yeah the Force and Superpowers…him and Terminator Superman could rule over Legoland.

 

Fake Lego Lady had the Red Hulk too which I wanted, but random kid showed up before I grabbed him and was convincing his parents to buy it, which they eventually did. Oh well. I am going back this weekend to pick up the Captain America’s, the Batgirl, Clark Kent changing into Superman, and maybe a Red Hulk if she has it.

 

Ok Pixlbit, the weekend is here for me so I am going to jump into Mount Backlog…or watch really bad morning TV.

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris