Category: General Blog Updates

Updates and information regarding the blog itself.

Sorry For The Lack Of Posts… Been Sick

So I want to apologize for the lack of material this past week or so, but I’ve been fighting off a cocktail of winter ailments – tension headaches, common colds, heavy coughing, practically no voice, and even the one-off nosebleed that probably won’t scratch any Muta scales – and I spent most of my free time in bed recovering.

All the while having to partake in a Sunday dinner that I somehow survived and didn’t make anyone else sick.

Fortunately, things are starting to pick up. I’m feeling a little better (not great, but better) and just recently got my voice back, which means I can start dubbing the next bunch of videos and even the next DTM-Cast, which should be up this coming Sunday. Things are going to be slowly, but surely returning to normal… but I’ve also got some other bits that need tending to.

That’s it for now… later.

Technical Issues Stalls My Recordings

I recently picked up an old PC game called Tetris Elements from a Value Village for a couple bucks. It was just the jewel case with CD and little instruction booklet, which is a bonus. I figured it’d be worth a shot to try and see if it would work; this being an old game and all.

The good news is that the game works fine, as I’ve managed a couple quick games here and there and seems to be working without a hitch. The bad news is that my recording software won’t capture footage for it right out of the bat. So chances are I’m going to have find a workaround for this thing before I’m able to produce a video… which I’d like to be able to do before the week is up, because the week after, I’m doing a whole bunch of Genesis/Mega Drive reviews, starting on that one with the blur rat.

As for the game itself? It’s basically Tetris with keyboard controls. It works fine. There’s a couple other variations of the formula, but the basic Tetris format works well enough.

Greatly Considering Re-Doing The Old Ramblemanias

So, we’re about a month away from the next edition of Mania and I have been considering re-doing all the old Ramblemanias from before whenever I decided the shows a proper musings as opposed to quick insights. Actually, this was something that I have been considering for a couple years now, but wasn’t quite sure on how to approach this. Do I go back and re-edit all the old posts with new, expanded thoughts while trying to keep the present tense out of it or do I present new posts that are easier to access, but by proxy, giving me new drafts to replace?

Go to the Wrestling Documents and click on any Ramblemania post before 25 or 26; each one of those entries features a brief blurb on my thoughts regarding the event followed by a complete list of match results; most of them having been taken from the old Tripod blog. Suffice it to say; they hold up about as well as reposting PPV Predictions for shows that took place well over a decade ago.
The truth is that I’ve wanting any excuse to go back and re-watch all the old Wrestlemanias again. The problem is that I’ve seen those shows who knows how many times; I have the VHS tapes to prove it and the WWE Network offers a treasure trove of shows that I’ve never seen before or completely missed out on. Maybe if I give myself something to document these viewings…?
Ultimately, I might not even bother with this for the moment… and besides, this year’s Mania might actually be worth a damn if the story plays out well… but if that doesn’t happen… there’s always the old ones.

Hello From Hiatus…

Good morning, boys and girls. A post of random musings, updates, and thingamabobs.

The past couple weeks has been pretty time consuming and aside from some text posting preps and some background work, I’ve been keeping off the blog work for a time and even managed to get a bit more sleep, which is what I needed. Me folks celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and we had a rather small dinner at this Portuguese grill on St. Hubert. Nice place, good food, loves their salad, wouldn’t mind going there for another festive event one of these days… but not too festive. We got them plates and a fruit basket. They enjoyed it, it was fun.

Now that all the holidays and anniversaries are in the books, things are slowly returning to normal and less money will be spent. Thank fuck for that.

So this week, I start audio dubbing on a number of videos. This does NOT include the Pixel Player project; I’ve done dubbing on that on and off for some time now. But in terms of future reviews, DTM Rambles videos (those are coming back after a lackluster 2018 – got a few of those in the can already), and possibly a couple other potential projects, the text based material is prepped and I just need to turn that stuff into audio.

The reviews are basic stuff; a couple puzzle games, a couple quick titles, and there’s going to be a week’s worth of Atari reviews because they’ve also had a lackluster 2018 and need to be in the spotlight. After all, Ataribox is coming soon… or something.

Regarding the Pixel Player Project… I’m debating whether I’m going to release it as a single video or split it into smaller chunks. The video is going to be in HD for the most part, but it’s entirely possible that I might reduce it to a standard def video (do people even call it that anymore?) if the file size turns out too heavy. After all, most of the video is composite video recorded onto DVD and blown up into a massive video frame for extra blurriness. Also, Vegas 15 is newer than what I’m used to (despite being the older one), but it does sometimes show signs of Vegas 14 when it comes to rendering needlessly complex and long video files… by crashing at inopportune times. We’ll see how it goes in the future, but for now, the plan is a single video on February 24th, 2018 as part of the Sunday Gimmick Table series.

While we resume normal operations in February with the promise of daily posts – whether it’d be videos or things of that nature – things will only start formulating a month or so later. Eventually, I’ll want to have regular features fill out the blog in some form or fashion. It’s a hobby, but I want to give this my all as a personal exercise of sorts.

Well, that’s the story for now. Time to get back into hibernation.

Later.

About The Christmas Special

So in an update to the update, I will provide you on the current status of the Christmas Special. Right now, the aim is to get it ready and uploaded for Christmas Day so that people can watch it and enjoy at their leisure. I don’t expect this to be a long sucker; about an hour at most. However, there will be some interesting bits here and there.

At the moment, you can expect:

– Pick Ups for December 2018. This will provide you with “clues” as to forthcoming video projects.

– A short first impressions video on my first time playing Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 for Playstation 3. This is something of an experiment I’m trying out and possibly a springboard for a future video series.

– TWO new video reviews to debut on this here special (they will be uploaded individually the next day, along with some “other” stuff)

– An exclusive DTM Rambles video… which will eventually be uploaded individually

– And who knows? I might even throw some doggy videos because people like those, right?

Anyway, that’s the update on the Christmas video. Reviews forthcoming.

Tonight's Video Will Be Delayed By A Day Or Two

But this is a good thing…

Made the jump to Vegas 15 via humble thing and despite some growing pains, I’m slowly but surely getting into the grove making this my go-to format. I’m testing out some rendering settings to see if I’m getting precisely what I got from 14 so that the transition is consistent with what came before. Therefore, there will be plenty of disasters along the way.

The general plan is to go full bore with Vegas 15 going into 2019. That means a lot of old stuff that I use needs to get some retooling or reformatting. This will take a while, but I’ll try and get regular shit going.

Bare with me, folks.

Classic Wrestling Musings Done Up Until April 2019

So in another bit of good news on the backlog front, I’ve pretty much finished all the weekly Classic Wrestling Musings for the next several months. We’ve got stuff going on up until the end of April and I couldn’t be happier to get that out of the way.

I’ve tried to go for a varied selection of choices; at the moment, we’re doing WCW Uncensored until early-December. Then it’s AWA Super Sunday, followed by ECW Massacre On 34th Street. From then and throughout January, we have select Royal Rambles to cover. Then February will see the final three WCW PPVs covered and finish off with the Wrestlerock Rumble.

March will then see WWF Fully Loaded 2000, WCW Capital Carnage 1990 (the one with FUCKING ROBOCOP!), both ECW One Night Stand shows from 2005 and 2006, and then we dive into April with a random assortment of choices.

So that’s that. Unless something worthwhile pops up that’s worth talking about, I think the wrestling talk is going to be kept to a minimum for the foreseeable future. I’m not quite sure if I’m even going to talk about next week’s Survivor Series show, let alone watch it.

From A Cast Comes A Ramble Or Two

So I’m putting together tomorrow’s DTM-Cast audio and prepping for the eventual upload. The two major topics being put together are the WWE week and the upcoming PS Classic. But as I’m putting together the audio and gathering the notes, a thought occured to me that this is just too wonderful to restrict to audio. I could do a little slideshow on this stuff and turn them into Ramble videos. Honestly, I need material to revive the DTM Ramble series and this could be a nice start.

So while the DTM-Cast is being pushed back a week, you will be getting TWO wonderful DTM Rambles during the week. Not including this weekend’s ATGames-related piece. The Nintendo-related reviews that were intended for last week should also be ready to go this coming week.

It’ll be fun, no doubt.

DTM Archive Page To Shut Down July 2019

So I guess the first thing that comes to mind is… “You had a DTM Archive page?”

Yeah, it was the WordPress site that I had signed onto years ago and got a domain for… Unfortunately, said site didn’t see much use despite plans to try and bring more importance to the site. So I’ve opted to cancel the subscription, which should last until next June. After which point, I will shut the site down.

At the moment, there’s very few bits and bobs to move out; mostly the old PPV predictions that I’ve cleared away from THIS space. Those will probably find a new home elsewhere if there’s a vested interest in that sort of thing, but it’ll be done in some repackaged format.

Will there be something else in its place? I don’t know… maybe. We’ll have to wait and see.

(2024 Update: The answer is yes. You’re looking at it.)