Don't owe anybody anything!

While just Google Image Searching on a whim, I found this really interesting meme on this random blog site I found. I'm going to give it my best shot. Along the way I'm sure there's much to know about me, and some deep and fun things to discover that I wasn't aware of before.

( Here's the whole list of objectives for future entries! )

( This will get lengthy. Don't want to stretch out your Friends' pages. )

Woot, I did it! I came up with 15 things about me at random! Now, to start on Day 2. :)

Yep, it's been another while since I last posted. I've been using my Twitter a little more. I use it for sharing things, as well as putting up whatever little blurb comes to mind. And, I use it a lot to interact with my favorite people on YouTube. Also, if you choose to look, you'll see the awesome stained glass cat vase I got from one of my friends! It's so beautiful!

BTW I don't think I showed this amusing thing I did with one of Jacob Fu's instagram pics on here, so here it is!



He liked the pic enough to retweet it, shortly after I tweeted it to him.

Before I move onto more about these awesome people, I'll mention a little update about how I'm doing at work. Last weekend turned out really good for me! I've sold a bunch of books, including the Americana Encyclopedia set that was so big. I'm so glad someone finally bought that! Almost no one buys encyclopedia sets these days. I received this large 30 book set as a donation weeks ago. I'm glad I decided to make some space for it.

The hostas outside, a few at a time, have been flowering. I've taken pictures when that's happened. Some of them are already on my website's art gallery page.

I even took a picture of one of the Asian day lilies while it was raining outside. :)

I still (of course) do boardgaming every Friday night. Every other Friday it's with our friends at the High Tides game store in St. Mary's County. We hope we can have enough space for everyone that comes over! Lately, the owner has moved in some display cases into the room we play in. There have been some new semi-regulars coming around, and we've had more 10+ people show up altogether during the past few weeks. High Tides have been good to us for a long while now, and we'd hate to have to find a new place again. The 6 core members of us (including my mom and myself) were told to leave the last place and never come back. Basically, the owner had acted like a passive snob around us because I brought in a cup from Subway.

Whatever--all the better to have found a better place where no one flips out about things like bringing along games that aren't already selling in the shop. No one flips out about anyone bringing in food and drinks from other places either. The staff at High Tides have been open and laid back about both of those things.

Because of these reasons, I'd hate to have to change locations again...

( Updates on my music )

( What I'll mention next is something that's made me so happy. )

First things first; yeeeep, I'm still alive! I managed to catch up with some of you on my F-list! Next week, I'll try to say hi to some more of you.

I figured I wasn't the only one hyped up about the uber awesome FF7 remake. *flail, fail, flail!* It's happening! It's actually happening!! I remember first reading about a 3D remake about this ages ago, in a Game Informer magazine. That was just trolly of Square Enix to just show dangle the concept over us like that, IMO.

Now, it thrills me that it's becoming a reality. Woohoo! \o/

I have NO IDEA when I'll get a PS4! (A Nintendo 3DS is the next big thing to save up for anyway, once I'm successful in getting a hang drum.) Video Gaming wise, I've only done a little DS gaming over the weekend.

Still board gaming, of course. It's amazing that more people have visited the meetup group. I think there's one or two new regulars or semi-regulars. That's awesome.

Haha, last Friday, I almost pulled a Ryan Higa with Mom. Though, Tri-ominos is hard for me to win and get lucky at... The golden horseshoe was with me during all the other games. We're especially competitive when playing Splendor. It's one of our most favorite warm-up games.

Ugh has proven to be a lot of fun too. What's amazing about that press your luck card game is this; there are times when it gets brutal! You may happen to draw a few nice various colored cards with high point values on one turn, only to draw a minus 3 Ugh card the next, leading to discarding your whole face up pile of point cards. (If the Ugh card is the first one you take from the draw pile, you get to keep that as a consolation prize. At scoring time, the end of the game, each Ugh is 3 points each.)

The rest of what's going on with me will go under cuts.

( Vlogging, NEW finished instrumental, NEW video series... )

( YouTube and Twitter Stuff )

You can easily put together your own fan-mix playlists on it and share it with others! You choose a picture for the cover and choose what to put into the Annotations section too.

Playlists, they're great! I kind of want to start another one soon. Either Death Note or another mix towards another ATLA character. (I know of some songs I know that are Sokka-like!)

I feel sooo accomplished, after finishing putting the ultimate Zuko fan-mix soundtrack together! It's mostly songs, with a few great instrumentals that fit this character so, so well. I inserted 46 tracks (there's just a lot of great, fitting songs), and this is almost 3 hours of music, so it's something to listen to while surfing online for a good long while? XD There's a wide variety of songs I picked that represents different parts to Zuko's personality, his troubles, and his journey.

The Fight Inside from SilverFox Jams on 8tracks Radio.

( Would you like to see the entire track list? )

( I go on about a few of the songs I've discovered and put into that mix here... )

Aside from that, I've been writing some fan fic bit by bit. One of them has a quite complicated part, and there are little plot bunnies from different points in time that make me want to write those parts out. I know there will be more than one story here. The first I've already titled as Treading Carefully Between Sides, since one OC of mine will be traveling with Zuko, Iroh, and their crew. Her best friend will be with Aang, Sokka, and Katara. The bond of their friendship will be one of the things that change and make this something AU. Also, there will be these bad, nasty creatures...

I'm almost a quarter way done on my Darius Twin remix. It sounds awesome, and some of the time I've been breezing through this. Still, I know I'm going to be picking the hell out of it until it's as great as it's going to be.

I'm feeling so PUMPED and psyched that I want to write an update on here! I should catch up with favorite music artists around NewGrounds soon, as well as on Sound Cloud. I'm so overdue for just setting time aside to listen to some tunes... I've been sucked into writing my fan fiction and reading other people's fan fiction, along with some role-play writing with friends (around here) on the side! ^^;;

I'm not quite there to finishing this remix, but so far it's been amazing progress!! I really like the beats and synths I've been coming up with so far. I've recorded some speaking parts too, some of them by yours truly. LexaHergon, one of my buddies on NG and Skype, inspired me a little for an extra speaker part I hadn't thought of. Hey, it turns out it works. Thanks!

For the intro... In the Darius Twin game I remember playing so much on the Super Nintendo, there's this alarm sound that goes off, followed by a message on the screen just before the boss ship arrives. I'm inserting something like that. :D

Darius Twin does have some good music tracks to go with the challenging side-scrolling in the spaceship battle game. (Search for "Darius Twin OST" on YouTube! It's all there!)

I know there's one other Darius Twin remix idea I'll want to do, something that came to me out of nowhere. As I first heard this play in my head, I thought, "Oh my God... YES!" This other idea I really love and will try my hardest to accomplish will blow us all away, I know it.

It's a blast when it comes to experimenting. Putting in my own spin when it comes to remixes. I'm on a roll, and looking forward to figuring out what original melodies and basslines (and more beats) of awesomeness I can come up with.

It'll be at least a month until this Boss Theme remix is all done. This week, I've been in the process of getting all I want in variations of the main melodies. I know I want 2 to 3 variations of that. Piece by piece, I managed to get one of them done today! After I get all that done--or at least half done--I'll come up with more original material to mix in.

Sometime last year, I was messing around while jamming on the Waspy LE VST I've got. I played the Darius Twin Boss melody half a step down-pitched from the original notes. In tweaking the options and stuff I created a really nice synth in doing so. That really fun and most excellent jam session first gave me inspiration to want to do this remix project. (YEP, the synth I've played with is going in there! *beaming with excitement*)

- On Zelda: Majora's Mask, hehe, I switched games without saving to try this other game on my N64. I got my stolen bottle back! At some point I ended up sitting on Epona firing arrows at that big headed awful bird, from a distance. (It takes over 10 arrows to take him out, but in the end it's worth it, 'cause there's a BIG orange rupee! I think that's 500 rupees.) Ha, serves the Takuri right for stealing from me!

-I sold a bunch of books today! Two returning customers came to my shop. Last week I was open only on Sunday because it's snowed quite a bit last Monday. Today made up the lack of people last weekend.

-Finished my short experimental track! Finally! It took way longer than I thought, partially due to how cold it's been last week, but hey I got it done!


On SoundCloud, an hour after I uploaded this, three people heard and loved it! :D (I've yet to get any feedback for Catacombs over at my spot at Newgrounds.)

-Updated my webpage a bit, minutes ago. I added the new track onto what I listed on the Music page, and put up the news announcement for it on the Home page! I'm serious on podcast planning. Here's what I know I ought to include so far:

1. Music update on my Darius Twin remix.

2. Sharing something I heard on YouTube that's sped up. In fact, I can use Audacity and record a track or two tonight! I'll save those audio files and add them in later.

3. I think I'll mention about my writing. At least say why it's been over a month since the last time I recorded a podcast.

4. Ask a curious question towards my listeners that can leave replies by commenting on here, my music YouTube page, and on my next Artist News post on Newgrounds! Yeah, that'll be something else new to do for a podcast. :D

( The rest is YouTube stuffs )

I'm still on YouTube, and I'm thinking about catching up with PeanutButterGamer. He's this funny dude who "reviews" and plays various video games. I hope he doesn't totally go bonkers while playing more LSD Dream Simulator and Mario 64: Chaos Edition. XD

(The following I've mostly copied and pasted from my other current blog, at my website.)

Yay, I'm making time to update again!

I'd first like to list some songs that sound good when heard twice as fast. I was on YouTube again when trying this.

"Enter Sandman" and "Master of Puppets" by Metallica (If you need to hear something really, really energetic to wake you up, that should do the trick! XD)

"Don't Speak" by No Doubt (It sounds funky in places!)

"Say it Ain't So" by Weezer (This track sounds funky in places too!)

"Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin (This song at 1.5 playback speed is just awesome to rock out to.)

When I heard the following twice as fast, I cracked up.

"Original Prankster" by The Offspring (Hearing Dexter Holland rapping twice as fast in this song is hilarious. I could not stop laughing! I'm chuckling right now as I type this part.)

"Like a Surgeon", "Word Crimes", and "Amish Paradise" by Weird Al Yankovic (The third song's tempo is so Dance-y!)

I'm thinking I ought to share this whenever I do another podcast for my website. It would be something entertaining. I think some of my buddies around Proboards and Newgrounds might enjoy this. I'll do this, in addition to a list of topics I'll write down to talk about.

Luxliev I have not heard from for some weeks now, he might enjoy a podcast like that too. I know I mentioned him before on a previous podcast. If you missed that and can't be bothered to find it on my site's previous blog posts, I'll state that he is a musician and composer I found on Proboards one evening. He does game remixes as well as his own stuff. I just knew he has the potential to get better and gain a number of listeners, so I offered to give him advice. :)

I must say he's getting better at his own original music! I'm very happy for Lux. His remix of J-E-N-O-V-A is pretty good too.

Doing my own remix of that would be such a challenge, I just know it. I know I heard this awesome guitarist on YouTube, on his channel called Artificial Fear. His rock remix version amazed me so much! It's THE BEST! It's even better than the rendition in the Advent Children movie. All fans of Final Fantasy 7 really should look that up and listen to it!

It may be a really long while until I blow myself away doing my own version of it... I still want to make room for the Darius Twin Boss Fight remix I started weeks ago. (Darius Twin is a 2D scroller spaceship fighter game on the SNES. I enjoyed playing that so much as a kid, and I've taught myself on how to play the melodies from some of the game's music on two of my keyboards.) It's been fun on the RP sessions but I know I'm on a roll there!

...I also started on a new original project over the weekend, something with a hip-hop like beat to it. There's so few hip hop artists I actually like, that do not rap about money, sex, drugs, and gangs. (Hip hop instrumentals are what I like more.) I rarely listen to hip hop at all--but the elements to this genre are fun to experiment with.

Seriously, I am not putting the music on hiatus anytime soon. I've made at least five that sound really good. (For all of you on Dreamwidth, I'll put a list of hyperlinks to them.) I have a handful of ideas for other music projects in my head, and I just need to be persistent with myself to keep on making tunes.

Catching up with favorites and friends on SoundCloud and Newgrounds is something else I'd like to do at some point. I know I have some buddies at NG. Some are super talented at what they do. They're amazing. Step, theeketel, Pandasticality, VideoGameManiac...

Coming up: a second separate post that's a questions meme. I found this on my Dreamwidth.com friends list.

Yet, before I do so, here are links to five of my completed music tracks I've been thinking about when writing part of this entry.

The Underground Machine (Newgrounds wouldn't let me put in the full title, Presenting the Underground Machine, so I had to shorten it. Why that title? Well, first let me say that I'm visual in my mind when writing and doing music. I imagine some kind of underground dance party music machine that's sort of defunct. The voice part kind of sputters and that cool guitar part is trying to be showcased, and the operator is trying to stop the voice part but is having a bit of technical difficulties at first on doing that... I think this is the first time I've mentioned this anywhere online ever. I don't know why, lol.)

That Big Loud Bass (This one has gotten over a hundred listens on my SoundCloud page! Also, a bunch of downloads. People who go there really like this one, and I understand why. The beats and low bass, and that snare are what I love most about this track. To pick up on the really low bass, you'd need to put on headphones to hear it clearly.)

Windows Sounds Mix (This one's actually a medley of mostly Windows sounds to different beats. Be sure to read the description about it. I say much more there, and the link to the track that inspired me to do this is on it. I might need to improve on the transitions here one day, but that will likely happen whenever I'll have less ideas I really want to get done!)

Mortal Kombat Komputer (My first video game remix ever! Oh my gosh, I really did an epic job on this one. This turned out to be longer and better than I first expected. In fact, this wasn't how it all first turned out, which is why I labeled it as version 1.2. I varied and cut back more on the percussion on this more than the first. A few of my friends at NG had given me some really good advice, and it made a huge difference. You're welcome to hear the first version if you want, but 1.2 is as good as it gets!)

Sonic.EXE Comes Out to Play (This has been my latest track, a tribute to a cool Creepy Pasta character! Creepily awesome! I say more about this in the description under the audio player.)