Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@Jimmer-jammer How are your creative pursuits in the worlds of music and film going ,man?

@Jimmer-jammer A busy stretch at work you mean? I find it commendable that you can still make time to pursue your musical and cinematic adventures. Hopefully you and your filmmaking partner can get it in in time!

I've got my eye on a book on musical theory for jazz guitar that relates to a particular tuning I use, apparently it is filled with copious amounts of jazz knowledge for both amateurs and professionals alike, so I plan and hunkering down with that for a while and just perfecting my skills within the medium as a hobby. Not planning on doing any more recordings right now, thought I'd do what I'm sure a lot of people would have liked Metallica to do and stop after the first four records! 😉

Also starting to read more about art, I posted link to an article in The Art Thread on here recently, if you're interested. And I'm doing that instead of hunting for new jazz guitarists and emcees on spotify, we had this conversation recently, I believe, about how as you get older you seek out less new music, because in a sense, you're already "full" or "almost full-up" on the music you consumed at an early stage in life or altogether up to this point, I remember you saying you're still quite immersed in the music of the scene you grew up with, to a certain extent, for example. So I'm feeling like I'm seeking out new territory in the form of the art research I do, and letting the musical discoveries I have made settle down in another aspect of my being, like nuts for the winter!

i.e still listening to and enjoying my old artists, but not going out of my way, in particular, to discover new ones.

"That which is perfect is finished. The perfect man is no different." - Madvillain.

Edit: I've also finalised my list of games for the next two and a half years, over on the PS4 Backloggery and Most Wanted Thread, after completing as many of those as I can in that time I'll just relax with films, books, guitar ,music and cricket as my main pastimes outside of voluntary or paid work. At which point, if I'm still allowed to be on here minus gaming, I'll just be posting in the relevant threads that correspond to the aforementioned hobbies and interests. Sorry to give you such a gregarious helping of details on my life's plan in terms of extracurricular activities for the time being, but I just felt I would share my thoughts on here, not using any other form of social media properly.

Edit II: Also been listening to a lot of this guy recently, trying to emulate his style, this is his latest album.

Further to my conversation with Jimmer-jammer, I had a moment of realization that I had been listening to such a huge amount of music for so long because I had been "searching" for some kind of musical answer, something that would resolve other issues in my life, I realised now that I was "full up" on music and couldn't take in any new artists/albums and must have already discovered the answer somewhere along the way, and if not, I could always look elsewhere, or resolve those issues in a healthier way, by dealing with them in and of themselves.

Edit: I am quite content at this present stage with my pantheon of musical artists, and ,at this stage, only plan to listen to new albums by them, rather than those by new (to me) artists. In short, I don't feel the need to add any new artists to my Spotify library.

@Th3solution How are you, man? I hope sports watching, gaming, work and travel are all treating you well. I have been reading Middlemarch by George Eliot and studying a jazz guitar book, when not playing Sekiro, I'm getting towards the midgame now, just have to a couple more minibosses and a gatekeeper boss that bars the way to the midgame, and is apparently the real test of whether you can play the game, a "noob filter" ,if you will. Also watching a film that I will talk about in The Movie Thread once I'm done with it.

Hope all is well with you.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Oh yeah, all is well. Super Bowl is tonight. I don’t have a huge investment in either of the teams involved, but it’s a cultural phenomenon over here so I’ll be tuning in to watch and make it an event.

The outage yesterday did put a small damper on my gaming. I played a little RE4, and am close to the end of Chapter 10. Then I wanted to switch over and play something less intense for a couple hours and started Gris, a lovely platformer, but I was kicked off the game after only 10 minutes. I tried logging back onto it a few times and it kept saying the system was down, so I just gave up on gaming for the rest of the afternoon.

@Th3solution That is really strange as I was still able to continue playing my current game with no interrupttions. The only thing I could not do is anything to do with online. So I couldn't do stuff like check my trophies or the store.

@JohnnyShoulder I guess I should clarify, my issue was when cloud streaming. RE4 is downloaded to my console and it seemed to work fine (outside of the real time trophy updating) but other games I had planned to play were via streaming and I hadn’t downloaded them and that’s when I ran into trouble.

I’ve been coming around on cloud streaming of smaller games rather than downloading them and have been quite satisfied, but the instability at times like this is really a big problem. The worrisome thing when I started playing Gris by stream was that immediately after earning my first trophy in the opening minutes is when it kicked me and then gave me a “service not available” type of message when I tried to reload it. I was worried that the first trophy was going to glitch because I figured it didn’t upload the trophy data and also possibly didn’t upload my save and I wondered if the trophy earn would be corrupted whereby I wouldn’t be able to re-earn it and yet it would never be registered on my account therefore my being permanently locked out of it. A silly thing, I know, except it was a gold trophy! 😅 And I think I want to try for the platinum. Anyway, it made me worried enough that I wasn’t going to mess with the uncertainty of potentially screwing up my save data or trophy data with this unknown system breakdown so I chose to shut down my console for the day until I knew it was stable again.

It happened to me back in 2011 — I was locked out of a couple trophies while playing AC2, which therefore locked me out of the platinum. During the glitchiness of the PSN at the time, I earned a couple trophies, at least one of which was an unmissable trophy for completing a chapter (or as the game called them, a ‘DNA sequence’) which didn’t register on the PSN/system, yet registered locally as being earned, and so I have this weird “hole” in my trophy list with all the story related trophies except for DNA sequence 4, including the one for completing the game. So on my list it looks like I skipped the fourth chapter and yet still finished it, which should be impossible! I tried to reload and re-earn it at the time, but my console ‘thinks’ I already earned it and it won’t pop again and so I’m forever locked out.

Gratefully it appears the Gris trophy was able to upload to the system even though I crashed a few seconds after it, so disaster averted this time! 😄 But I wasn’t going to take anymore chances.

@Th3solution Yeah streaming a game just might be a bit problematic when PSN is down.

I was earning trophies I think, but it is not something I'm that bothered about tbh, so might have been when it first came back online.

@Hapless Yes.

Random but anyone missing the 2010s? I felt that was such an amazing time, plus I’m listening and consuming a ton of 2010s media now and it makes me miss it so much…I just heard some once popular Overwatch fan song called No Mercy now and I’m getting reminded of how great Overwatch was upon its release in 2016 before it went downhill with its sequel.

@Pastellioli
I prefer 90's and early 2000's era in term of music and entertainment media.

@Pastellioli In terms of media I miss everything

Each decade from the 80s until 2010s gave us so much in terms of gaming, movies and media in general.

But with the shift of the economy and the tech we see a shift in the culture as well. And it is not a good shift. That is why the big companies can turn the greed levels high, because they feel they can get away with most stuff.

@Anti-Matter I see. I do like some 2010s media, but I find I’m also more of a fan of older media, in terms of movies, games, and television, and some music, though a majority of the songs I listen to are from the 2010s and usually are in Japanese, but I’ve been trying to listen to some older songs. There’s this feeling 80s-00s media gives off that makes me happy that I think is hard to find in modern media…

@Zuljaras One thing I remember so much about gaming in the 2010s was Nintendo. I kind of miss how Nintendo was personality-wise during the 3DS and WiiU-era from 2011-2017; although you could say Nintendo was kind of cringy and unfunny in a few of those Wii U ads, it really showed a wacky side to them, plus (if it makes sense in how I say this) I think the consoles had more of a personality too. I still like the Switch and I do think it’s one of the best consoles to come out of the 2010s, but I vividly remember the 3DS and Wii U kind of a bit more. I can remember so many things that came out of the 2010s that I liked a lot.

I do think companies have gotten worse as the 2010s started nearing to an end…I think some have become less creative and do worse now, plus they always lay off employees far more frequently this decade compared to the 2010s. I can’t remember it all, but I think it could come from a bad economy shift that you mentioned (also a notable one is the awful price inflation). The atmosphere has kind of changed a lot, and I just wish it’d go back to how it used to be decades ago. 2010s and the years that came before it seemed happier, simpler, and better.

@Herculean I may be having rose-tinted glasses on…for me I thought the 2010s had a lot of memorable media (mainly the songs, tech, movies and the games that came out of it) and I felt way happier there than now, but I do think issues like layoffs, greedy micro transactions and that just got worse a decade later, especially since the 2020s notably got off to a bad start.

I see. Although I am kind of nostalgic for the 2010s, I really like older media a ton! I just love the feelings they give off, and I often play older games too and sometimes prefer them a bit more over modern games.

@Th3solution How are you man? Been up to much? I defeated a couple of mini bosses in Sekiro since we last spoke, Samurai Generals, the defeat of which was described as no easy feat by a fellow user on here, so I was pleased with my progress. Besides that just the usual jazz, hip hop and volunteering stuff going on. How are whatever game(s) you're playing at the moment going?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Hey, buddy - doing okay. I’ve just been busy with my usual routine, although I have mixed in some exercise finally, after a hiatus from it. I need to get back in shape.

My gaming was quiet this week, so I only played a little Gris over the weekend since I had some friends visiting and then I ended up having to work one day, which isn’t typical for me. I had a goal to finish RE4 this week, but I just didn’t get to it. I’m in Chapter 13 (out of 16…?) so it’s not long now. Usually each chapter takes about 1-2 hours, so theoretically I could probably finish the game in one long sitting. I don’t expect that much time to open up again until next weekend though.

And hey, by the way, nice work on the Sekiro success! It’s been encouraging to see your steady progress. It gives me hope for myself.

@Jimmer-jammer How are you, man? I couldn't help noticing some love/praise in The Music Thread for/in anticipation of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, and wonder how you feel it is going to compare to the obvious Shinobi-style games such as Nine Sols and the almighty Sekiro? Will you still be playing Nine Sols at some point?

@Jimmer-jammer I just have this whole power fantasy about being a Shinobi on some level of my life, thru gaming, reading about ancient Samurai in Japan etc. (yes, I know that's different to Shinobi, but, hey) so I'm loving playing thru Sekiro rn, and plan to play Nine Sols further down the line as well. That new Khazan game looks good as well, and features plenty of parrying ,from what I've seen, so that's more than enough to whet my appetite for Art of Vengenace until it comes out. (The short answer is no, not yet).

I just had to check that via your tag list @ the PS game club and holy moly you're right @PeaceSalad

Definitely makes me a little a little sad. Especially as it's clearly someone else and not Rog making a comeback...

I discovered this article, recently, on the Art News website, the 100 best artworks of the 21st century, a retrospective piece. Very thought-provoking.

https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/news/100-best-artworks-...