Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 151)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos, we save our bees, celebrate our lab techs and lament the passing of time.

• First, if you're feeling like you've heard too many sad, weird or creepy Greek myths lately, Dael Kingsmill is here to tell you a touching story about a guy and his bees. Well it's still weird, but what can you do?
• Next we have a moment of thanks from Periodic Videos for their awesome lab tech Neil. 
• Finally, Laura Shigihara plays her cover of Chrono Trigger's Corridor's of Time, The Fall and as usual raises all the hair on my arms with this song.

Blog: Video Games of July 2016

I spent a lot of July recovering from May and June and I definitely got a bit more time to play. I was also still quite busy for the early parts of the month. Generally I tried to play games to give me a bit more focused fun, aaaand I also played a lot of Pokemon Go.

My top five games (by play time) for July were:

1. XCOM 2 - I dunno. It just eats time without me even noticing really. I also started to accept that even when I'm not actually having a lot of success playing, getting a team out to fight a level or two is pretty fun. That also lead me to tryout some Invisible Inc (which I also quite liked).
   

   

   My first ever total party wipe.

2. Pokémon Go - So Pokémon Go has changed a lot since it first came out and I started playing it before it even officially launched in Canada. While a lot of people have said a lot about the game, it's a huge amount of fun and in the early days seeing people crowding together in groups to play. I think it really delivered on the promise of creating a Pokémon adventure in the real world.
   

   

   A Pokécrowd. 



3. Chrono Trigger - I'm pretty sure that Chrono Trigger is my favourite game of all time (top 3 for sure) and so once I was finished with my first course it was nice to be able to sit down and play it for a while (even if it wasn't all that much). I got most of the way through the main game (it's shorter than I remember) and then stopped waiting for the "perfect time" to finish the game.
   
   
   


4. Cities: Skylines - Hey have I mentioned that I really like building cities? I really like building cities. And Cities: Skylines is a great way to build cities. I didn't play all that much, but I really enjoy all of the phases of city building (although I do tend to get a little board in the later ones and keep starting over). This game is great, really well designed and well executed. It's a huge amount of fun if you want to play a city builder (and they keep adding really cool things too).
   

   

   Golden Hour



5. Civilization V - I was not ready to wait until October for Civilization VI, so I played Civ V instead. It's a lot of fun, but ... it's time to move on.
   
   
   
   

   

   I can't remember why I have a city in the middle of the bay, but I do!

Here's my total play time chart for July:

And here's my total number of times played:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 147)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos, we touch hearts, heads and feet.

• First, if you asked, I'd tell you that Jurassic Rhythm is why Chrono Trigger is awesome... of course, I'd be willing to tell you that any part of Chrono Trigger is what makes it awesome. Also if you asked, I'd tell you that this song is why Caleb Elijah is awesome... of course, I'd be willing to tell you that any song he plays is what makes him awesome. Now if you asked me what make is guitar awesome, I'd ask what the hell is wrong with you because LOOK AT THE THING!
• Next, in case you were wondering (and I'm sure you were) it turns out that every hat you thought was different was pretty much the same, and Lindybeigh is here to fill you in.
• Finaly, not content to answer your questions about headwear, Lindybeige  is also happy to fill you in on those things you were wondering (amd I'm sure you were) about shoes.

Blog: Video Games of May 2016

Quick note: As you may have noticed I'm rather behind in posting these. The retrospective for April was written in early May (and it just took me forever to get it up), but the rest will be written and posted now. As a result, they will probably have some gloss from the passing of time.

May was the first month where I was teaching a course and that ended up eating a lot of my time. So I played with a little less mindfulness than I'd been playing earlier in the year. Most of the stuff I did play was to give me some stress relief and to stop thinking for a little while.
My top five games (by play time) for May were:

1. XCOM 2 - Having played a non-ironman "really easy" run through the first time I played, I thought it would be good to try the game at a little harder. I tried for an ironman run at a harder difficultly level. After a lot of restarts I managed to get a little traction, although honestly this game is *really hard*, or I'm just *really bad at it*.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Stardew Valley - I really love this game. I especially like the 20 minute flow of a day, and I like starting my day with a day or two of Stardew Valley along with coffee and breakfast. It's also nice to be able to drop in for a while in the evenings and play a little extra.
   
   
   


3. Chrono Trigger - It's nice jumping back into old favourites and where I had the time to sit down and focus on a game Chrono Trigger was a nice game to have on hand to jump back into. It's also surprising just how short the game actually is. 
   
   
   


4. Middle-Earth:Shadows of Mordor - I picked this up because I wanted a game I could play without thinking too much. It took a little while to get the flow, but then the stealth to combat mechanic took over and it was a game I could play a lot and let my mind wander while I played it.
   
   
   


5. Super Mario Maker - It's a little disappointing how hard it is to get your levels played, and that's cut down quite a bit on how much I've played. Still there are a lot of good levels out there to play and there's nothing quite so easy to play as 2D Mario.
   
   
   

Blog: Video Games of April 2016

April worked out to be a pretty stressful month for me, between being offered my first chance at teaching a Spring Semester course and moving. So, my game play fell into a couple of weird patterns mostly determined by how stressed I felt. For a while Pocket Planes was in my top five, and that's really a game I only play when I'm stressed.

My top five games (by play time) for April were:

1. Stardew Valley - Stardew Valley is really comforting, and it's nice to have a game you can turn to without having to worry too much about what's going to happen. So it was nice to have as an anti-stress game. It also has enough depth that if you're slow playing it (which I mostly am, with a few exceptions) it feels like it will last quite well. My only complaint remains, as I said in March, is that you have to play it in 20(ish) minute chunks since it doesn't save other than over night.
   
   
   
2. Super Mario Maker - I'm still playing more Super Mario Maker than I expected. I think, to some extent, this is due to it being the game with the disk in my WiiU, so it's easier to play than bothering to put something else in. It's also quite flexible, in that you can play for just a couple of minutes, or you can have a longer play session. 
   
   
   
   
   
   Nintendo has also done a good job in keeping new material coming and I've found it worth playing each of their new example courses since you get a new amibo sprite for finishing them. I'm still a little frustrated that there's not that many people playing new levels, but it's not enough to make me feel like putting the game down.
3. Hearthstone - I'm not winning quite as much as I was in the first few days of the Old Gods expansion, and I'm slipping behind on cards and the meta again. Still I have a lot of fun for a game I'm not good at (and I get a lot of joy out of the games I do win).
4. Chrono Trigger - I'm still touring my SNES collection and after Final Fantasy VI (3) this is the natural next place to go. I think my replay has convinced me that this is my favourite game of all time. 
   
   

   

   GameFAQs user MK8

   It feels beautifully choreographed, every fight and every conversation is placed in just the right place, and it feels like people worked very carefully on how players experience the game. Compared to how drawn out and unfocused Final Fantasy VI felt it's a real breath of fresh air.
5. Mario Golf: World Tour - Wanna play nine holes over lunch? Over the years I've played hours and hours of Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and while I've never been an expert at it, it's up there on my list of favourite games (and probably the number one reason I turn the game cube). Even though it's been around for a while I didn't get Mario Golf: World Tour (on the 3DS) until last summer and didn't really play it that much until this month.
   
   

   

   GameFAQs user ollist

   
   Since I've been quite busy and trying to stay focused on work, I thought taking a good break at lunch and pulling out the 3DS was a good way to have focused fun. I think I'm even actually learning to be better at the game.

Other than that I haven't played too much worth talking about in April. I've definitely tried to focus a little better on the games that are important to me and play less of the games I have a harder time stopping (hi Mini-metro, although that may just be a natural fade).

Here's my total play time table for April 2016:

And here's my total number of times played:

And here's a chart of what I've played over the month:

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 140)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we haul out old favourites to take ourselves on some epic adventures.

• First, CalebElijah plays "A Wish", which is the snow area theme from Secret of Mana. As always CalebElijah makes me happy and this is one of my favourite parts of one of my favourite games, so this one definitely makes all the hair stand up on my arms.
• Next, Mr. Smooth McGroove, sings "One Wing Angel". I like the cover even though I don't really like the song (nor how excited people get for it, but apparently I'm a game hipster ... surprise). 
• Finally we get to the very awesome Meine Meinung playing "Guarida Millenial Fair". One of the things I absolutely love about Chrono Trigger is how the music tells so much of the story and I love the way Meine Meinung covers Chrono's adventure at the fair. 
• This is definetly the point where I fell in love with Meine Meinung so the next six videos in my favourites playlist are all from them, so expect the next two volumes may be all blue grassed video game music all the time.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 123)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we play some video game music and take some video game facts out of the guts of a PlayStation.

• The first video is from, Caitlin and Vaughan, of Geek and Sundry Vlogs, playing "Into the Wilderness" from Wild Arms. I've never played Wild Arms (I had a real it's not an RPG if you don't have armour and a sword thing going for way too many years), but the music's good. 
• Next, Ben Chan presents his arrangement of "Wind Scene" from Chrono Trigger. This music always grabs me, and I like his performance and his improvisation in the second half.
• Finally, on VSauce 3, Jake takes apart a PlayStation and finds out that it's full of interesting facts. 

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites Update

I'm making progress on the Chrono Trigger Sprites!

He exists!

The first stage of the project I've been working on is to make all the sprites at 1x1 scale to see what they look like and how to build them. As you can see above I've made a 1x1 Chrono and I thought I would devote this post to talking about how I put it together.

Planning the Sprite

One of the things I was unsure about at the beginning of the project (and some of what slowed me down putting things together) was how to make sure that I had reasonable bead colours for all of the colours in the sprite.

I started working on colour matching by separating out all the colours into big visible blocks and then making a spreadsheet with the names of the Perler beads I thought would best match. I separated the colours of the original sprite using GIMP, since I've never used photoshop, but basically any utility that lets you select by colour will do. I picked a colour from the sprite, drew a box of it in another picture then blanked out all the pixels of that colour.

I did the matching in what is probably a dumb way. I basically held beads up to the screen until I thought they were about right. As I mentioned, I've purchased most (it turns out) of the bead colours currently offered by Perler, so I felt I had a pretty good ability to match things.

This is the colour block I used, although I given how much time I spent switching between the colours and the spreadsheet, I've labeled each of the blocks right on the picture. (I'm keeping that in mind for the future).

Why do purple and brown get double the space? I have no idea, sometimes past!me just doesn't leave good enough notes.

To help sort out which beads are which colour I have created colour separated sprites. I've also thrown in the hex code for the sprite colour, the bead colour I matched that to and included some notes on how good the match is.

I didn't do this originally, but I think it may prove helpful in the future. If I were to produce these on a large scale, it might help to create templates for beading. To produce these sprites, I took each colour in the sprite and then blanked out all other sprites. (The sprites should all align to go back together again, but it took me a little while to get the process in, so take them with a grain of salt).

Sprite Part	Hex Colour	Perler Colour	Notes
	The Original!	---	---
	#402038	Purple	This colour is purple, even thought it's basically used as dark grey. I thought it might look odd, but in the end it looks good in the finished sprite.
	#281820	Black	This is close enough to being black that black looks just fine.
	#b80038	Rust	Rust is a little darker and a little browner than the true colour, but it seems to be a pretty reasonable substitution in the finished sprite.
	#580000	Brown	Brown is a good match here.
	#f88800	Butterscotch	Butterscotch is maybe a touch dull, but seems to be a pretty good match.
	#a8a870	Crema	Crema seems to match the beige colour used here.
	#f88068	Peach	Peach is a little lighter than the colour in the sprite, but seems to be close enough.
	#083838	Parrot Green	This is a bad match really(Parrot Green is much much brighter than the colour), but a good colour I think. I especially like it as Chrono's eyes.
	#f8c898	Sand	In the finished sprite this looks a little bit too close to the peach skin tone. I might go for something a little lighter.
	#307070	Dark Grey	The sprite colour is much more green than the grey, but I think this balances the brightness of the parrot green as the main body of Chrono's clothes.
	#50d0e8	Turquoise	This looks like a great match to me.
	#50f8b8	Toothpaste	This one also looks like a good match.
	#ffffff	White	And white of course matches the white, I've shown all the white pixels here in purple.

Once I got that done, I got distracted. I actually finished that part of this job more than a year ago, but then didn't get around to actually putting things together until recently. This has made a few things more complicated and I'm especially short on justification for the colour matching.

Anyway after letting most of a year pass, I finally got on to...

Building the Sprite

So a little while ago I sat down to see how to actually put together the sprite.

 

The first day of work was quite slow. I'm used to the the big fields of the Super Mario Exclamation Blocks, which simply need you to figure out where your edges are and then you can turn your brain off and lay out beads. Here each line has a lot of different colours. I tried to find trails of colour to put in,  so that I'd find landmarks to construct around so that I didn't get lost.

I found while working on it it was also very hard to see any of the pattern emerging. I had to sit back and cross my eyes. In the second and third images you can pretty clearly see Chrono's head and arm, but as I was putting it together it was tough to see. (Why does he have three eyes? Oh, that's his sleeve.)

I ended off the first day about here. With his head and upper body done. The second day's progress went a little faster because there was less colour variation and the sword makes a good landmark to be able to figure out how far down the sprite you are. The harrowing part was adding the second board to bead from and then not messing things up as I went over the gap (which is really not a problem, but I'd never done it before.

Overall it took me two days (maybe 4 or 5 hours total) to bead out the sprite. It was definitely hard than the coasters, but it wasn't awful.

Next it was time to fuse the beads, although I ended up having a small problem first. It turns out its probably safest move the two halves separately, or better yet to put down a board for both halves to sit on.

Fixing the sprite was a little bit of an ordeal because I had to figure out which parts of the pattern were messed up. Fortunately I managed to keep all the beads in the same place, so everything I had had to go back somewhere in the sprite.

Before fusing I also noticed that there were a couple of spots where there was a bead by itself (with only one neighbour. I figured these would be hard to fuse properly, so in each of these three places I added a black bead to support.

Finally I was able to fuse. Unfortunately my iron doesn't have a temperature setting, just a cloth setting, so I can't tell you how hot the iron was other than "cotton". I still don't have a great intuition for fusing, knowing how long it's going to take for the beads to melt and how long the beads should melt to stick together and look their best.

The fuse was ok, although not all I could have wished for. Structurally I'm happy, the sprite is strong and doesn't flex, wobble or feel weak anywhere. I think it could look a little better in the evenness of the melt, but that's not the end of the world. More practice will probably help.

Success of the Sprite

So generally I'm really happy with the sprite. It came out strong and I think it looks really good. My primary concern with the colour plan was that the purple around the outside would be too extreme, but I think your brain automatically ignores it when you see it against a back ground. Alternatively you could easily make the purple parts of the outline dark grey or black.

As you'll notice there's one major problem with the Chrono sprite. He's not that flat on the bottom. I knew this would be trouble while I was putting the sprite together and I thought about building a shadow under his left leg to make him level. Two other options were to make a background for him to stand level on or to make a stand that can hold him up this way. I'm going to stick with the given sprites for the rest of this experiment, but when I get onto stage two I'll revisit and think about how to make them stand better.

Anyway, in the end, I'm happy. I have a good looking sprite kicking around and every time I see it I'm pleased. From here I'm going to make all of the PCs at this 1x1 scale before moving on to bigger ones in phase 2. I've started work on the next one, as I hinted to twitter and I'm happy with the project.

Project Update Post

As always I seem to get behind on projects, but in the last few months I've managed to start picking things up again. So I'm going to reorganize my deadlines again today and reorganize a few of the projects.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters
• I have actually gotten as far as beading and fusing my new larger format test coaster. Now it needs a backing and then I'll give it a test for a little while to see if it develops the same cupping that the smaller ones. 
• I'm going to try to get the backing on in the next week and then I'll test it for a month or so.  I'm going to set the deadline to see if I make more / bigger ones on July 17, 2015.

• Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've finally made some progress. Last night in fact I actually spent about 2 hours beading the beginning of a 1x1 Chrono sprite. This is giving me a chance to see what works and how the colours look (little problem there, but I'll give a longer update once I get everything done).

Coming together.

• Progress is happening so I hope to have the 1x1 sprite and update done by June 23, 2015.

• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I'll get back to it and I'm putting it on hold for the time being.

• Project 14 - Sketch Fiction
• I originally was calling this flash fiction, but based on the lack of ... plot in the stuff I've been writing I wasn't sure if flash fiction counted. I ran across an article on "sketch fiction" which I'm repurposing as a term for what I'm turning out.
• As you might have guess from the above, I have actually written a bit. I have one sketch done and ready to go an others "in the pipeline". I'm going to try to do six sketches in the next little while, rather than one a month like I'd originally posted. I'd like to try to have all six posted by August 1, 2015.

• New Projects
• I have two (and a half) new projects I've either started or would like to start. I'll put up proper posts for them soon. 

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 81)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we ask some questions about the nature of the universe.

• First, what happens if you combine the awesomeness of the Duck Tales Moon Theme and Smooth McGroove? Well you get a lot of awesome in one place. Possibly enough to look at the asymptotic limits of awesomeness. 
• Next, what happens if Kristina Horner and her roommates get a bunch of costumes really cheap? This... apparently.
• Finally, what happens if the Internet talks about video games. Well lots of stuff, but here RinryGameGame looks at all the over analysis that happens.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 78)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we open our minds, feel the magic and try to bring down our evil overlords.

• First, Hank Green went and had a talk to a bunch of rad people about their sexuality.
• Next, Smooth McGroove takes us back to the magic mystical land of Zeal, singing the Corridors of Time.
• Finally, if you want to experience some real tension, Wil Weaton plays The Resistance with a bunch of very cool actors on Table Top.

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites: Update

The Chrono Trigger Sprites are another project I stalled on.

One of the big concerns I ran into was figuring out what colours of perler I wanted to use. I had a sampler set of beads (which I made the test patch in the picture above from), which was a good starting point. I was able to create the original SNES Coasters out of that set, and I might have been able to start on the sprites, but there was one particularly large problem ... I can't figure out what colour (by name) each of these colours is.

So that slowed me down some, along with all the other usual distractions that lead to me not finishing a project. However I have now solved this problem, I went out (to the Internet) and bought myself ALL of the beads:

On the EK Sucess Perler site, they sell 1000 bead bags of every colour. I started to try to figure out what matched what I had already through the website, but then ended up just picking up one bag of everything they sold. Fortunately perler beads are relatively affordable and the promise of free shipping on large enough orders convinced me to just go ahead and do it. Sadly it turns out that that offer wasn't available to Canadians, but still at the end of the day a big box of perler beads appeared at my door, for not that much out of pocket. And now I know name of every colour of bead I have.

As a side note, I wanted to find a nice way to sort the beads that I had. Conveniently I found a screw sorter that happens to perfectly hold 1000 beads in each drawer and probably 3000 in the bigger drawers, which seems like a really nice way to be organized for a project.

Anyway, now that I have all the beads and I'm super organized, I'm out of good excuses not to work on the Chrono Trigger Sprites. So I'll bring the project back up and try to finish a Chrono in 20cm scale by September 30, 2014.

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites

A quick note, I've updated this project!

I don't usually go for having a lot of stuff on your desk, but my recent success making SNES coasters has inspired me to try my hand at making something cool that I can put over my desk at work. Given that Chrono Trigger is one of my favourite games, I figured doing sprites of all the playable characters in the game would be a pretty cool addition to my office.

If you look at the sprite sheets for Chrono Trigger each of the PCs has a lot of positions. I think the best poses though will be the action poses the characters strike at the beginning of each battle. Chrono's sprites look like this:

I'd like to make them about 20cm tall, which will require some reworking since the sprites themselves are only about 30 - 40 pixels tall, which will probably be about half the hight I'd like to reach. Given the need to expand the sprites, I'm not sure if the right answer will be simply to scale them or if I'll have to make a "higher res" version.

The other main problem I've discovered I'll have is is matching colours, since Perler doesn't give you quite the full palette the SNES does. Other people, such as devient artists ~SerenaAzureth and ~MaliceOhgr242, have tackled this before so I'm going take my cue's from them in terms of matching colours.

The next little while is not great for the number of things I need to get done (and the number of unfinished projects I have hanging around) so I'm hoping to be done with these by July 1, 2013.