Quick Pitch

 

The baseball regular season has ended and the playoffs have started! Despite having a frustrating season, the Cardinals managed to make the playoffs thanks to a historic 17 game win streak in the month of September. Once the regular season is over, the MLB Network show Quick Pitch also ends. Quick Pitch is a daily baseball highlights show that Sarah and I watch nearly everyday. It is a great way to catch up on what else is going on in the majors.  Despite watching a lot of Cardinals baseball, it is very easy to get into the habit of only paying attention to St. Louis or what is going on in the NL Central division. It's an hour long show, so I typically watch it while I'm on the treadmill. It's nice from that aspect as well because I don't have to channel surf to find something to watch while I run. In the off season I usually throw on reruns of Big Bang Theory. We will see Lauren, Heidi and co. next year for the 2022 season!

I found the above picture of Lauren Gardner with Will Power while doing some searching for pics for this post. Being a race fan and seeing how Will Power still races in Indycar, I found it amusing as I've never seen this picture before. It was taken at the Grand Prix of Denver CHAMP Car race, a race I completely forgot existed. Lauren is from Denver and apparently was some sort of promotional race model. Will looks younger but still somewhat aloof.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD - Introduction

 

When thinking about my favorite Legend of Zelda games, Skyward Sword has always been a polarizing entry in the series for me. I've played the game one time, back in 2012 shortly after the game was released. Despite playing the game once nearly 10 years ago, there are so many aspects of this game that I remember, both positive and negative. Skyloft, Groose, Ghirahim, the beetle, and many of the temples stick out in my memory as being positive aspects of the game. However, despite the many positive memories, there were several negative memories as well that tend to dominate my overall impression of the game. These mostly include the motion controls and the repetitive nature of visiting the same locations over and over again.  Skyward Sword also followed Twilight Princess in terms of release date. Twilight Princess is on my podium in terms of favorite Zelda games, and in my opinion it perfected the 3D model of Zelda games first seen in Ocarina of Time. In other words, it was a tough act to follow. I wanted to play the game again and hopefully disconfirm the negative aspects of the game that I remember so well. That is why I was so happy when Nintendo announced this HD version of the game last winter (although I was hoping for a Switch HD version of Twilight Princess). I am going to break down my thoughts on every aspect of the game in several upcoming posts. Although not a true comparison of the original game due to some changes (Fi is toned down, motion controls are a bit optional in favor of controller buttons, etc.), overall the games are essentially the same. While some of the negatives that stick out in my mind so vividly are remembered accurately, I found that there are many more positives to this game than I remember.

There is a lot of content from this game that I want to cover, and thus will be making several posts to go over the content. I thought about a few ways to do this effectively and efficiently, and settled on splitting the game into segments as the story unfolds. Essentially, I start from the beginning and follow the game's major parts. This allows me to introduce major plot points and locations as they come, while preventing redundancy as the game progresses. As you will see in upcoming posts, the game revisits major locations multiple times, so this way I can describe the positive factors as they occur while not repeating myself when the negatives occur. There are some elements of the game that will be discussed that don't fit into this timeline, but I think the majority of the game can be effectively discussed this way.

It's Elvira Season!

 

It's the first weekend of October, which means we are well into my favorite season of the year - Autumn. I love it when the weather cools a bit and you get to wear fleece jackets and vests and sweatshirts. College football is up and running and baseball playoffs are starting. Oktoberfest beer is my favorite seasonal beer. I enjoy apple cider. My kids love Halloween. Generally speaking, it is a nice transition between the hot and dry dog days of summer and the cold and dark winter. And then there is Elvira, the incredibly tacky yet entertaining 80s movie that Sarah and I both enjoy. Overall it is just a fun time of year that I like more and more as I age. My birthday is at the end of September and my kids threw me a surprise Star Wars birthday party, which is fun. Welcome Autumn!

Ted Lasso

 

I heard Ted Lasso was good and was interested in the tie-in with the English Premiere League, so decided to give it a watch. I was late getting started and took a leisurely pace watching so I am just now finishing the first season, which was really good. While soccer is the center point of the plot, it really takes a back seat as the season progresses as character development and their interpersonal challenges take center stage. Throw in some comedy, some of which is laugh out loud funny, and you've got a great show.

The struggling Richmond football team hires American college football coach Ted Lasso to become their new manager. Richmond's owner Rebecca just went through a divorce, and her ex-husband loves Richmond, so she hires Ted as a joke to make them terrible to get back at her husband. Of course, Ted knows nothing about soccer, so he struggles to fit in and win over his players and the press. He's a bit of a lovable loser, however, and as Rebecca and the team get to know him better, they can't help but to like him. As the season progresses it becomes clear that the show is less about soccer and more about being a good person. Even Sarah got on board and started to watch.

Overall a thoroughly enjoyable show and I'll give season 2 a watch.

Tweetbot

 

I've thought about getting a secondary app to access Twitter for years. If you use the Twitter app, the reasons for switching are probably obvious. Your timeline becomes cluttered with retweets, promoted tweets (i.e. ads), etc. But the most annoying thing of all is the Twitter timeline jump. The app will go through periods of time when it works fine. However, there are periods of time where it can't seem to keep a linear timeline. It typically either jumps several tweets or sometimes hours forward on your timeline, requiring constant backward scrolling. Or even worse, occasionally it will jump on your timeline to an alternate Twitter reality, where the tweets you were seeing are completely gone, replaced by new Tweets as if the previous ones never existed.

When I went to the app store there were fewer 3rd party apps available than I expected. Tweetbot was one I had heard of before and got decent reviews, so I downloaded it. Accessing my Twitter account was as easy as logging in, and before I knew it I was viewing a clean, streamlined version of my timeline. I've been using the app for around two weeks and there have been no timeline jumps, no promoted tweets, and no clutter. The tweets are formatted differently, taking up more of the horizontal screen space requiring less scrolling. The overall experience is cleaner and improved.

I fully expected to pay for this app, but this far I haven't paid anything. I have mixed emotions about paying to access something I can access for free, but I use Twitter often enough that an improved experience is probably worth the few dollars. I may be in a free trial period, but I've been using it for a few weeks and it hasn't asked me to pay yet. Most of the Twitter features are locked, like responding, liking, direct messages, etc. If you pay for the subscription those features are unlocked. At this point, I'm thinking you can use it for free but sacrifice those features. I'm fine with this as I am not a Twitter power user and tend to use it more for consumption of information versus sharing my opinion or interacting with others. Plus I can always switch to the native Twitter app to access those features if wanted. With all of this being said, I will likely continue to use Tweetbot as my main Twitter app as the experience is quite a bit better. This will especially be true if I don't have to pay anything for the app.

Star Wars: Lords of the Sith

 

Two things interested me about this book before I started reading it. First, it focused on the Free Ryloth Movement and its leader, Cham Syndulla. Ryloth and Syndulla were both featured in a story arc on The Bad Batch. Additionally, Cham's daughter, Hera, was one of the main characters on the Star Wars show Rebels. While Hera was only mentioned in passing in the book, the show Rebels defiantly referenced Hera's childhood and the influence her parents had on her regarding becoming a Rebel against the Empire. So from that perspective, I was interested in reading about Hera's parents and the Free Ryloth Movement to get better insight into Hera's character. 

The second aspect of this book that I was interested in was its focus on Vader and the Emperor. Considering they are two of the biggest characters in the Star Wars universe, there really are not many scenes where both of them interact with each other. I'm referencing the first three movies here (Episodes IV through VI) by memory, but there are really not too many scenes with the Emperor at all. I'm assuming this was done on purpose to keep the character a bit mysterious. And while we get some insight into his character in the Clone Wars era, I was interested in seeing the Emperor and Vader interact as master and apprentice.

The story follows the Free Ryloth Movement and their attempt to destroy an Imperial Star Destroyer. They learn that both Vader and the Emperor are on the Star Destroyer Perilous. Once they find this out, they have a second mission objective: kill Vader and the Emperor to really stick it to the Empire.

Somehow both the Emperor and Vader survive the attack on the Perilous, making a crash landing on Ryloth where they battle Lyleks while being hunted by the FRM. The rebels eventually get to Vader and the Emperor, who end up winning the battle and surviving. Of course this outcome was known as the events in this book take place prior to episode IV. A lot of people from the FRM die, but Cham Syndulla manages to escape and survive. 

As for the scenes with the Emperor and Vader, they went about as expected. The Emperor seemed to be omnipotent and omniscience, and was constantly testing Vader. Most of the tests were about his loyalty to the Empire and to the Emperor. It was also neat to see some scenes where Vader was fighting with his lightsaber and using the Force against someone other than a member of the Imperial military.

New Sound System

 

A perfect storm of circumstances occurred for me to upgrade to a new sound system. I've always loved loud music, and bought my first receiver and tower speakers when I was in junior high. This system produced house-shaking sound and I spent many nights rocking out and enjoying my system. However, I was in junior high in the middle 1990s, so the connectivity to my receiver was limited to speaker wire and RCA cables. The Nakamichi receiver made it to the mid 2010s until it finally crapped out. By that time we had already moved into our current house and I had my basement TV & audio system set-up. Due to the lack of connectivity of my receiver, I had a bit of a fudged setup that largely bypassed the sound system. I had RCA cables from my satellite receiver going to the stereo, as well as an HDMI switch for my Playstation that would send sound & video to the receiver for rocking out. Generally speaking, though, I didn't utilize my system because it involved extra remotes and extra clicks with the HDMI switch and generally was cumbersome.  This situation got worse when we switched to Apple TV because it only has HDMI outputs, no component outputs, meaning there was no way to connect it to the receiver. This limited downstairs rocking out to YouTube videos on the Playstation. However, once the old Nakamichi receiver died, I replaced it with an Onkyo receiver with all of the modern connection options. I just needed motivation to setup a new system.

The motivation came about 5 years after buying the Onkyo receiver. Over the past couple of years, I have really become interested in Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I've never been one who goes to the movies often, but I enjoy a good movie, and with Disney+ and all of the streaming options to watch and rent movies, I have been watching more movies recently than I did in the past. Additionally, the girls and myself have started a Fun Friday tradition where we watch a movie every Friday. Because of this new routine of movie watching and access to movies, the motivation to setup a new system began. Now, I just needed a spark to light the motivation fire.

From the first time I listened to music from Klipsch speakers, I loved them. They produce a unique, crisp sound that is clean and just fantastic. Plus, I think they look amazing. I also like that they are based out of Indianapolis, so it feels like I'm supporting a local company (although they are a subsidiary of a larger company not based in Indy). My office manager's husband is a sound engineer at Klipsch, and this is how I was introduced to their speakers as he has provided us with open-box speakers for our office in the past. They've been on my radar for several years.

A few months ago, I noticed my right Cerwin-Vega tower speaker rattled with dialogue on movies. You couldn't notice it when listening to music at louder volumes, but it was certainly noticeable when using the speakers while watching movies. I did some research on the internet, and discovered that likely the cause was a seal around the woofer that had degraded. This makes sense as the speakers were around 25 years old at this point. I searched for speaker repair stores and found one that would look at the speaker for $75. Who knows how much it would cost to repair? With the speaker being so old, I was a bit reluctant to pay for the repair, especially considering that it was only a matter of time before the other speaker had an issue. Plus, while I love those Cerwin-Vega speakers, they are designed for bass-thumping rocking out, and are not necessarily the best speakers for cinema. I was looking for speakers that were a little more balanced for music and movies. This whole scenario is what opened the door for upgrading my system.

I added two tower speakers, a center channel speaker, and a powered woofer to my wish list - all Klipsch. A few weeks ago, Klipsch had a 50% off sale, and I was able to get the tower speakers and powered subwoofer for half off. I'm still waiting for the center channel speaker to go on sale before I buy it to replace my current Cerwin-Vega center channel speaker. I was waiting until I got a PS5 before I re-wired my system to include the receiver for sound, but that still hasn't happened and the new speakers were motivation enough to do so. I've got my PS4 and Apple TV running directly to the Onkyo receiver, which controls the sound and video going to the speakers and TV, respectively. With HDMI linking, pressing the home button on the Apple TV remote turns on the Apple TV, receiver, and TV with one button click which is super nice (needing to utilize multiple remotes was a scenario I was wanting to avoid). Because of the simplified setup, we now use the receiver and new sound system every time we watch TV in the basement. I made some adjustments to my TV's picture mode as well, which I think has improved the way movies look. The speakers look fantastic as well (see above).