#100daystooffload #daysixtyone

So for some background, I grew up playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I started playing when the first game came out, and got better all the way up until Rock Band 3 was released. I've said pretty often that out of everything in my life, I was best at Guitar Hero. When looking back at my old scores on scorehero, they still rank top 500 in the world. But my junior year of high school, I stopped playing for the most part. I was introduced to Stepmania at the time, which was fun, but I never got fully into it. There were also a lot of people that played DDR at school, but it wasn't for me, either.

Maybe my Sophomore year of college, I started playing Osu!. I enjoyed watching twitch streams for League of Legends, and a player named Boxbox would play in between games. I started to do the same and found myself improving pretty quickly. Now, I wasn't great by any means, but I was consistently challenging myself with different tracks. But again, my interest with this game waned, and I stopped playing rhythm games for the most part.

Last winter, I took a trip to Texas to visit with some friends. While there, we went to an anime cafe that had an arcade section. This was my first experience playing several different games: Hatsune Miku Project Diva, Sound Voltex, and Jubeat really stood out the most. I also got to try out Beat Saber for the first time, but it hurt my eyes too much for me to want to really get into it again.

So that brings us to today. I have been greatly enjoying Muse Dash. I've been travelling with my Switch and playing a few songs during my lunch break now. I'm already approaching a skill ceiling for me (mostly because my hand has started hurting from too many spam sections). However, something I can still play to improve on is my overall timing. I am regularly early/late for notes, and that can be practiced on easier songs that don't cause me pain.

The tracklist is also really nice, and it looks like the game gets monthly updates, as well. I've also been using some art from the game for my desktop background as well as my profile pic for different services. And now I'm looking at other rhythm games to potentially pick up. Musynx is the number 1 contender, mainly for the soundtrack. I'd also like to pick up one of the Miku games, but I'm not super into vocaloid music (yet). I'd also like to get a special controller to play with. My hope is that it would help me control my hand pain when playing more difficult songs.

#100daystooffload #daysixty #gaming #rhythm #musedash

#100daystooffload #dayfiftynine #raspberrypi #gaming

#100daystooffload #dayfiftyeight #shortform #linux

Nowadays, I'm focusing a lot on the video side of the equation. I've come to the conclusion that I want to try playing all of my devices on a modern 4k display. For some things like the PS4 and the switch, it's easy. But as we go back in time, things get tricky. I have an NES, a Gamecube, and a Wii, with no way to hook them up. I'm saving up to get an OSSC now to at least alleviate the Wii side of things. The NES will likely need to be modded, and the Gamecube will sit pretty on the shelf (it doesn't have digital output, so it's gonna be stuck regardless).

The next piece of the puzzle is ensuring everything can be easily sent through a capture card in order to stream. Luckily, a friend helped me save a lot of money by recommending I get an HDMI matrix instead of an AV receiver. I found one on Ebay and made the plunge. So far it has worked great and I may end up picking up a second, just to increase how many devices I can run through at one time. I also picked up an HDMI Splitter to let me capture footage from my PS3 as well.

Once the video side of things is completed, I'll switch back to audio. I wouldn't mind having a simple soundbar to increase the sound quality over the TV speakers. I'll also end up trying to get a bluetooth transmitter, as well as a headset to keep my mic quiet during streams. At the moment, though, it isn't important since I can just monitor the audio from my laptop with minimal lag.

Barring 8K being adopted in the mainstream, I should have an extremely versatile setup by the end of it all. I'd be able to swap out the TV without stressing about the overall workflow.

#100daystooffload #dayfiftyseven #gaming

Here's a quick overview of all that I was able to update:

• Shell Theme (Arc Dark)
• Icon Pack (Breeze Gradient Dark)
• Cursor (Sweet Cursors)
• GRUB2 Customization
• Appfolders
• Apt Update Indicator
• Dash to Dock
• GSConnect
• Places Status Indicator
• Unite
• Workspaces to Dock

I also took the time to learn how to make my own shortcuts for applications. For example, I've had TechnicLauncher installed for Minecraft to connect to a specific modded server. In order to run it, I had to open a terminal and run java -jar TechnicLauncher.jar Now, I have an icon on my dock that runs the command for me, saving me time.

I'm extremely happy that I'm able to make an experience completely tailored to myself. Like, I've heard people say that about Linux before, but it finally clicked. There's a lot of room left for me to grow in to, but I'm finally getting the hang of Linux. I still don't know much about kernals or different desktop environments, but I can figure those out as time goes on.

I'm trying to get to the point where I can uninstall Windows completely from this laptop. The main thing holding me back right now is my capture card. I've been doing research and learned that there are plug-and-play capture cards that should work perfectly fine for my usage. Unfortunately, I will never be completely free of Windows, but at least I can limit my usage to a virtual machine for those proprietary softwares and only that.

#100daystooffload #dayfiftysix #linux

I've also started doing the same thing on my laptop. I know it can be viewed as a glorified bookmark, but I enjoy it as a separate window. I've started using Discord and Slack this way without any issues. One added benefit on the laptop is that I'm saving extra resources since it's all lumped into the Chromium processes.

#100daystooffload #dayfiftyfive #privacy

#100daystooffload #dayfiftyfour #shortform

Holy moly, this TV is huge in that room. It feels like it takes up the entire wall. It's an upgrade from the 49” TV my mom gifted me. The screen quality is perfectly acceptable for me at this time. The main drawback is it only has 2 HDMI inputs. I have several consoles to hook up, and I really dislike swapping cables around if I want to play something else.

The original solution I came up with was I would need to buy a receiver. I found one that I knew would work without compromising on loss of quality. I was just going to have to save up $600 to get it. I ended up talking with a friend way more familiar with gaming AV stuff, and he suggested I save some money and get a thing called an HDMI matrix. I'd never heard of it, but it's essentially a receiver without all the bells and whistles to do surround sound and whatnot. So I dropped $50 to get a used one on Ebay that should fit in nicely with my setup.

With the money saved, I think I'll end up getting an OSSC and another Raspberry Pi. I'll still wind up under my initial budget, and I'll have an even better setup. Stay tuned for updates :)

#100daystooffload #dayfiftythree #gaming

After rebooting, my system started defaulting to booting to Windows instead of GRUB. However, every time it started loading the OS, it would BSOD with an INVALIDBOOTDRIVE error. I went on a crazy goose chase trying to figure out how to correct the issue and learned a little bit about EFI vs Legacy Boot along the way. I made a launch disk called rEFInd to help me try booting into my systems but had issues still getting into an OS. With the help of the Debian forums as well as some research of my own, I was able to clear up the issue and get back to normal.

So the main takeaway here is if you have a smoothly running system, don't just blindly make changes to the BIOS unless you're prepared to sink several hours figuring out how to fix it. And for the record, I was still able to host the stream.

#100daystooffload #dayfiftytwo #linux