Keyrock

I went to see rasslin' in Gastonia last night. Good show with several good matches and one really crazy match where a number of chairs were pulverized, well worth the price of admission.

Set a new personal best on the San Tropez map in IS Defense with 826 kills and 5:46. Things tend to get really crazy around 4 minutes, after that surviving is extremely difficult on that map. Hopefully I can reach 1000 kills and 6 minutes eventually.

They put out a free map for IS Defense today, so I'm killing ISIS in San Tropez. My personal best for the new map is 767 kills and 5:20 for the new map. Good times.

I went to a Mexican restaurant at lunch today. They made guacamole at my table right in front of me. It cannot be overstated how much difference freshness makes as far as guac goes. Ready-made guac is like not even the same type of food as fresh guac.

Did you try the new dlc, GD? I rolled up a Tiefling Warlock last night but I haven't tried it out yet. I'll probably start playing Rage of Demons tonight. I'm also going with a Tiefling Warlock. Lawful Evil for maximum awesomeness. Edit: Never mind. There is a bug in the Mac & Linux versions currently where there is no in-game sound (there is sound in cutscenes). They are aware of it and are working on a hotfix. I'll wait until then to play it. *sigh*

The Talos Princliple 2 is going to happen https://twitter.com/DamirDurovic/status/733609454529347588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw My reaction:

Rage of Demons released today. I'll start playing it this weekend.

Thunder take game 1 on the the strength of a beastly 2nd half by Russ. Hopefully this goes 7.

I finished Episode 2 of The Detail. The second episode strongly hints at an overarching conspiracy. Things are starting to get deep, but I've managed to keep all the people I care about in the game safe so far. I think I've done a pretty good job of diffusing potentially explosive situations and keeping collateral to a minimum, while also getting **** done. I've done my best not do shady stuff, but sometimes I just didn't have a choice or all the alternatives seemed like they led down far worse paths. Hopefully, I can keep people breathing, particularly in the last episode, though things are definitely going to get worse before they get better.

I had a bit of chili left over so I broke out grill, cooked up some franks, and had chili dogs and beer. Good times.

Useless thread is useless

The West Finals are set. Golden State will clearly be favorites, as they should be, but OKC are definitely the scariest matchup for them in the West simply because the Thunder have KD and Russ, both guys that can get hot and become essentially unstoppable. Obviously, the Warriors have guys on their team that can go into unstoppable mode as well.

Sounds like Zenimax has not sent out review copies of Doom 4 to anyone. Their BS excuse is that without the servers being up it's impossible to experience and critique the whole game, but, let's face it, the vast majority of people care about single player which could be experienced without servers. Seems like Zenimax doesn't have confidence in the game, which doesn't bode well. On the other hand, review copy shenanigans don't always translate to a bad game. WB pulled review copy shenanigans with Shadow of Mordor and that game was awesome.

Also also (I'm drunk, leave me alone) I figure I should post a video of my instrument, the bass guitar. Here we have John Myung, bassist for Dream Theater. Normally bassists get little, if any camera time, because bass is not a "sexy" instrument. Any real musician will tell you how thin and ****ty their music would sound without bass guitar, but never mind that. I will say that the people that normally film Dream Theater know their stuff and generally show the bassist and drummer nearly as much as the singer and guitarist, but it's cool to see John Myung shown for the entirety of a song (especially since he's not a flashy guy trying to get in the limelight, he just drops phat lines and doesn't care if you notice), doubly so since this is an insane all-star medley of not only Dream Theater songs, but also some Liguid Tension Experiment.

Since I'm giving verbal fellatio to drummers, I would be remiss if I didn't post something from my favorite drummer of all time, Panamanian legend Billy Cobham. Thanks, dad (he's the one who turned me on to not only Billy Cobham, but jazz fusion in general). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_SqtFerjg

@Orogun - When I have the time and means, I will happily take you up on that offer. Visiting various places in South America is on my bucket list (along with Italy, France, and Japan) ^ Animals is my personal favorite Pink Floyd album too. You almost never hear songs off this album on the radio because they tend to be 15-20 minutes long (except Pigs on the Wing), but they are absolute masterpieces. I truly believe Pink Floyd is the greatest band of the 20th century. The vast majority of bands are lucky if they create one truly good album. The truly greats are lucky to have 1 album in the top 20 albums of all time. Pink Floyd has 4, IMHO. Also, since I mentioned Beneath the Remains earlier, I figure I should post a song from that album for comparison. I think Sepultura's creativity level was just as high here as with Arise, but their musical polish was still slightly lacking. The jam session from 1:55 to about 3:30 is an amazing example of progressive metal, but a couple of the transitions are a little rough around the edges, something they would fix up on their next album, Arise. I'd also like to highlight Igor Cavalera's expert use of double bass. Note how he goes into double bass at 2:25 and keeps it going through the quiet and slow section until about 2:44, where the thundering of double bass can be very clearly heard. He immediately backs off and drops into regular single bass drum when the guitar riff comes in dropping in a very quick double bass fill here and there for emphasis. Igor rarely gets the credit he deserves for his masterful drumming work. When I was younger, I played bass guitar (something I should return to eventually). I don't regret it, I love bass guitar. If I had it to do all over again, though, I would play drums (assuming it was something my parents could accommodate).

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands when I was young, Brazilian thrash metal legends Sepultura: Note the restrained use of double bass by drummer Igor Cavalera. Double bass drum is a staple of heavy metal music but is sometimes overused by metal drummers. Double bass creates a powerful backdrop akin to thunder, but sometimes it's best to back off and not use it all the time, that way when you do drop in a double bass fill it's that much more impactful. Arise is widely considered their best album, it's at the very zenith of the crossroads of their creativity and experimentation and their polish as musicians. Many quality bands follow a similar path where they start out raw but creative and end with their creative juices run dry but their polish as musicians at an all time high. Somewhere in the middle you get that album (or 2 or 3 if you're really lucky, or 4 if it's Pink Floyd) where the band's creativity and experimentation is still going strong and their musical prowess and polish has caught up to their ambition. For Sepultura that zenith encompasses 2 albums: Beneath the Remains and Arise.

I bought a charcoal grill today and decided to put it into immediate use (after letting the flames burn with the lid closed for 15 minutes to burn off any production oils). The nice thing about living down south is that grilling season is 12 months a year, so a grill is an indispensable tool (it's arguably an indispensable tool anywhere). I grilled up some cheddar bacon burgers with ketchup, mustard, pickle and onions.

My favorite Mexican folk song:

I've heard good things about it, but it's MP only, right?

I'll be interested to see if they manage to capture the dreary soul crushing nature of trench warfare that was WWI or if they discard any shred of authenticity in favor of spectacular setpieces. I'm guessing it will be the latter.

Ideally, Vulkan would become the API of choice and make DX12 (nearly) obsolete. In theory, it holds all the advantages of DX12 (the two APIs are extremely similar), is cross-platform, and works just fine on previous versions of Windows, so long as you have the necessary hardware. In practice, we'll have to wait a few years for both APIs to mature and a large enough batch of games running each API to be available before we can truly compare the two. We already know Croteam are fully behind Vulkan, as The Talos Principle is in the process of being ported to Vulkan (it's partially there now) and the upcoming Serious Sam 4 will almost certainly run on Vulkan. Doom 4 was recently shown running on Vulkan, so id (and perhaps Bethesda) are at least considering it. Obviously, I fully expect all Valve and Epic games in the future to support Vulkan as they are 2 of the companies most involved in developing and pushing Vulkan.

Does it include virtual Swedish meatballs?

It would be a kickass theme even if it was for some scrub, but it's that much better because it's the theme of a bona-fide legend. I can picture him Yakuza Kicking dudes in the head every time I hear this.