A wonderful thing you can do to enhance the gaming experience is to play music appropriate for the game’s setting. This is true of both board games and role playing games!
Matt Mercer, the dungeon master for Geek and Sundry’s twitch show Critical Role uses a masterful selection of music to set their environments and situations. Critical Role music selections come from a couple of sources:
Plate Mail Games – high quality professional background loops for a variety of genres
But if you’re looking for the Critical Role theme song, you won’t find theme there. That was written by Jason Charles Miller, and I believe you can download it on iTunes.
Another great source for gaming environments is Tabletop Audio. Some of these loops are ambience and sound effects, some of them are movie-score like compositions. But they’re all free to use at home! If you do use them a lot though, it’s friendly and good of you to contribute to the creator’s Patreon account.
More than one person has told me they started running after they read my blog posts about using the c25k running program. Not sure whether they kept to it or not, but so far I’ve kept the running up as best I can. While I’m no expert, it seems like a well-designed thing that c25k comes with instructions on what to do if you’re not totally successful with any day or weeks run.
If, on the other hand, you find the program too strenuous, just stretch it out. Don’t feel pressured to continue faster than you’re able. Repeat weeks if needed and move ahead only when you feel you’re ready. The Couch-to-5k Running Plan
And boy howdy have I done some repeats. It took me 8 weeks to complete the first 6 weeks of c25k. And that’s even though I got a week ahead early on. In particular, I’ve struggled on my first two ‘long runs’ that have no walking breaks included. But with proper rest I’ve been able to do those 20-minute and 22-minute runs without stopping.
There are no more walk breaks in the program. Week 7 is three 25-minute, 2.5 mile runs without walking. Week 8 is three 28-minute, 2.75 mile runs without walking. Week 9 is three 30-minute, 3 mile runs without walking. This is meant to leave you prepared for a 5k (3.1 miles) the next run after the 9th week.
So far in the c25k I’ve been running for time, not for distance. The help of an Android app has aided me with the time and that way I’ve not had to plan routes for distance. I can just run and simply stop when the app says stop. But I also know that I’m not actually hitting the 1o-minute-mile pace intended for those runs.
I’ve had some guilt about this. Am I really doing the program if I’m not succeeding at both time and distance?
As of this post I’m officially calling ‘bullshit’ to that notion. I’ve run too many miles to disregard my efforts thus far. Doing anything this consistently takes too much energy to discount as not good enough. On top of this, I began this program with no goal other than to start exercising as part of a healthy lifestyle. I’m not racing anyone and I’m not trying to perform to anyone’s idea of what a good run should be. Running for time only and not both time and pace is still consistent exercise.
So I’m going to keep running for time and say that is victory. Anyone that can run for 30 minutes straight any day of the week is a runner in my book, and in a few weeks that’s exactly who I’ll be. Pace and performance might be a goal one day, but right now it’s not my concern. My concern is my health and determination to make myself better.
One last update: I bought some fancy running shoes. That was a good decision.
When taking these pictures I had planned on doing an in-depth post. Really digging into the corps’ shows from DCI Finals 2015. But as I made the post, I realized that wasn’t my real experience of the event. What I experienced was actually joy that 12 shows had genuinely entertained me. 11 of them I would’ve watched back-to-back gleefully and the other I’d still be willing to watch again at some point.
Not every year of DCI has that same effect on me. This was a good one; one for the books. No crazy high winning score but there was stiff competition that kept all the scores reasonable. Anyone that tells you any other corps “clearly should’ve won” is clearly biased, because there was no clear winner. There was a judge that placed the champions, Blue Devils, as low as 4th. And when the two General Effect captions are split, it’s fair to say it could’ve gone either way for BD or Crown. I wasn’t even convinced the Bluecoats were 100% out of it – there was only 0.725 points between 3rd and 1st.
So rather than offer long diatribes of what I liked and didn’t like – I hope you enjoy a few pics I snapped from the cushy seats at the front. I normally stick to the nosebleeds where I can watch the drill, but that didn’t happen this year. It was whole different energy down low, and in some ways that was better. I really don’t like looking up at the jumbotron for big drill moments, but here I got to appreciate a lot of little details I normally miss, and really felt the energy of Finals night.
The Early Program
Listening to Vanguard Cadets from the tunnel.
Dan Potter running the opening announcements
Al Chez soloing with the INpact band
“The Commandant’s Own,” the US Marine Drum and Bugle Corps
“The Commandant’s Own,” the US Marine Drum and Bugle Corps
Crossmen
The Crossmen
The Crossmen
Blue Stars
This show did grow on me a little more than it did in theaters. Being right by that front stage was pretty neat.
The Blue Stars
Human Rubberband
Juggler
Boston Crusaders
As close to Game of Thrones as you can be without being Game of Thrones. Best vocalist moment of the night.
Boston Crusaders “Conquest”
Green and Blue were first to go
Red Wins (of course)
The Cavaliers
The Cavaliers – Run Boy Run
The Cavaliers “Game On”
Madison Scouts
Madison Scouts “78th & Madison”
The silouhettes are just weird
Madison Scouts “78th & Madison”
Phantom Regiment
Phantom Regiment “City of Light”
Phantom Regiment “City of Light”
Blue Knights
I stood up twice for this show. I could not stop talking about how much I liked it. Best BK ever.
Blue Knights “Because…”
Blue Knights “Because…”
Blue Knights “Because…”
Santa Clara Vanguard
I regret not looking more into them earlier. Any other year would’ve been a title contender. This design was so much better than 5th place.
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
Fans lighting up their phone flashlights to welcome the corps
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
LED lights on their uniforms
Santa Clara Vanguard “The Spark of Invention”
The Cadets
Really surprised they didn’t win Percussion. Love the french horns.
Every yardline is a 10 yardline
X equals 10
The whole ballad was ten yards wide
The Cadets “The Power of Ten”
The Cadets French Horns
Bluecoats
My favorite show of the year.
Bluecoats “Kinetic Noise”
Bluecoats “Kinetic Noise”
Bluecoats “Kinetic Noise”
Bluecoats “Kinetic Noise”
Blue Devils
Their sound was so huge, I thought they had an extra 30 brass players.
Blue Devils drum major salutes
Blue Devils drum major salutes
Blue Devils snares
Blue Devils – “Ink”
Blue Devils – “Ink”
Carolina Crown
Looks like hell, sounds like heaven. I thought they earned the win and it probably had the best crowd reaction.
Carolina Crown – “Inferno”
Carolina Crown drum major salutes
Abandon all hope (down in front!)
Carolina Crown – “Inferno”
Hellish soloist
Carolina Crown – “Inferno”
Finale
I did my first ever Periscope broadcast by letting people share my view of the finale. Unfortunately I didn’t mark the broadcast to save, so can’t embed a video here. You can watch the official DCI version though.
Blue Devils B and Vanguard Cadets drum majors
Blue Devils Encore
This encore run was amazing. You could hear the clinking of their medals throughout.
Last week I spent some time away from keyboard (AFK), which for me includes being away from work. Thursday was the longest day of his and about 2/3 through it I found myself lying on a bench at my mother in law’s house telling her and my wife,
“I never feel this tired after a full day of work.”
A lot of that has to do with just how much I love my job. In past jobs that I didn’t enjoy, a full day’s work would leave me not only that tired, but also filled with stress and angst. Mostly at myself for not finding work that actually suited me.
Now I’m at the point where work is a part of my cycle of feeling energized and refreshed. A full work day leaves me feeling accomplished and knowing I impacted the world in a small way, and several individuals in a big way. A full work day might in fact leave me tired, but it’s a strong finish to an important effort, the muscles begging to be stretched after a run.
That fatigue I felt on Thursday wasn’t from the pain of labor, or the frustration that comes with making art. It’s an existential drain. It’s the part of your lizard brain that says, “you don’t really want to bother with this so I’ll just make you lay down and sleep through it.” Things like driving in commuter traffic in the rain are problems I’ve so successfully avoided the past year that on these rare days I face them, I’m not very tenacious anymore. Instead I lay down and hate myself.
One of my smaller chores was hanging this bit of art in our living room.
But those days still have their purpose. Work/Life balance isn’t always about taking vacation or sleeping in, it can also mean gettings those errands done that are best not put-off. Taking responsibility for things you don’t care about but would hate to have taken away. Making the little efforts around the house that your next-week’s self will thank you for. These are not bad things.
And when they make you tired, it’s okay. Make great art as soon as you can after it, and you’ll feel much better.
I had no idea that “.io” referred to a place and not just “input/output.” Learned a lot from this one.
[…] .io is also a place: a country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD, which refers to a particular place on the Earth’s surface. In this case, that place is the British Indian Ocean Territory, a remote but strategically-important scattering of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, also known as the Chagos Archipelago.
Watching an episode of The Flog, Felicia Day’s webseries, I heard about the IBM Watson Personality Insights analyzer. By entering in some text, Watson attempts to a do a personality profile of you. I usually find these sort of descriptions silly, but I decided to have some fun with it.
Rather than write in a chunk of text on the spot, I took some text from my blog. I wish I could’ve just given them my RSS feed to analyze, but instead I copy and pasted in the content of my three most recently published posts (at the time.) So it’s really more an analysis of how I portray myself on my blog, rather than an analysis of me.
But since my blog is totally restricted to text (and media, but you get my drift) I actually consider this more likely to be fair. It’s not who I am – but it is how others perceive what I write. Let me know what you think of the results!
Your Personality*
*Compared to most people who participated in [IBM ‘s] surveys.
You are sentimental.
You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are altruistic: you feel fulfilled when helping others, and will go out of your way to do so. And you are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life.
Experiences that give a sense of connectedness hold some appeal to you.
You consider both achieving success and helping others to guide a large part of what you do. You seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person. And you think it is important to take care of the people around you.
The Postmortal, in paperback, with Bagheera (an avid reader cat)
With a great premise and a recommendation from a trusted friend, I had high hopes for this book. In the near-future a ‘cure for aging’ is found and the world faces never-before-considered problems associated with rapid population growth. Kind of like the Torchwood series Miracle Day, except people still die. Murders and cancer still happen, but people just don’t get old. Liver problems hurt more than anything as every American goes into a giant binge of alcohol.
This review has more spoilers than others of mine. Fair warning.
Alex "Gus" Gustafson 