What’s Wrong with Destiny’s Skolas
I played everything in Destiny with the exception of Trials of Osiris and Prison of Elders Skolas. For now I have no intention of doing ToO but Skolas is aggravating me and makes me want to stop playing Destiny altogether. By any means I am not Datto, Professor Broman or King Gathalion but an average player trying to have fun while playing.
Before I go on I want to emphasis that Bungie said multiple times that they are listening to complaints and so reduced the severity of Cerberus Vae III strike. They did something similar to Skolas but it did not accomplish the goal of make it manageable or fun to play. Keep in mind that I did Cerberus on a Nightfall before the nerf without any burns and could finish it.
Now what is wrong with Skolas or even with PoE?
- No Checkpoints
- Essence to aggressive
- Bad Modifiers Read more
Rocksmith 2014: 3 Weeks Review
When I first saw Rocksmith 2014 (RS) I was intrigued but also feared that this is more hype and that it would not deliver. Now after 3 Weeks I can say that it was worth its money and that for the most part it delivers. There are a few things that do not work well and some of them can be very frustrating but at the end of the day I don’t care what a computer program says about my progress but what I feel I did accomplish and I feel I accomplished a lot.
Before RS I could barely play some chord, played 5th fret pentatonic scale and some 12-bar blues. I had lessons for roughly a year about 20 years back and tried to learn playing the guitar with some books but it never could keep myself disciplined enough to play everyday for a given period.
Since I started with RS 3 weeks ago I played everyday at least 1 hour or more on various things learning songs, techniques, jamming, composing a guitar sound, scales etc. Slowly but surely I can move my hand blind on the fret board and pick the correct string a the correct time. Sure I make a ton of mistakes and I am still have a hard time to trust my feeling to know where my hands are meaning I will look down more times than I should. Compared to when I started I am much more fluent, confident and use less force in my hand playing the guitar.
Currently I am working on the old Police song “Every Breath you Take” and playing it at 100% difficulty and 70% speed is my limit. My left hand tiers out way too fast and I am tick off by a problem way too easy but I start to be able to recover from it.
RS has the ability to reduce the difficulty by reducing the number of notes or the difficulty of the chords but sometimes that is can be a burden in the long run because the flow of the fingers can be easily disrupted by additional nodes, chords, bends, slides etc. That said it helps to get the feeling of accomplishment and for the overall rhythm of the song.
One of my missions was to clear a song on medium difficulty with few mistakes. This is called score attack and it focuses less on the accuracy but rather on the consistency of the playing. What I mean is that it only scores a “strike” when many notes / chords are played wrong in a row and after 3 strikes the player failed the score attack. For example the song Blitzkrieg Pop by the Ramons have many fast power cords but few variations. So even if one missing a chord here or there one will pass.
Looking back I was skeptical about it but I thought I cannot waste more than a few bucks and some hours but now I am hooked onto Rocksmith and there wasn’t a single day in the past where I did not exercise an hour or more and it does show. I could play Blitzkrieg Pop (not a difficult song by any means) in a few tries up to 80% difficulty. Also I remember chords like A5, E5, C5, Am and so on and I have not much difficulty playing scales like the Pentatonic Minor, Aelion etc over the fretboard so that I now can start jamming more freely. And I also completed 110 missions about songs, lessons, jamming, games and setting up a tone.
The only thing that is sometimes frustrating is the sometimes unreliable guitar detector which decides if a note / chord was played correct or not. Sometimes it helps to re-calibrate it or to increase the volum on the guitar but sometimes it does not work right. This is especially frustrating in the lessons because there one is stuck trying to get passed a little exercise.
Finally there are a few things that I would love to be improved. First I would like for RS to tell me more precisely what was played wrong and why and secondly I would like to review the song and my mistakes more easily and quickly like in a fly-over. Also I would like that the Riff Repeater would remember what I did the last time and that I take advantage of the additional buttons on the joystick. For example use buttons to increase / decrease speed, difficulty, switch on and off the acceleration and level-up. This would increase the user experience because when I have the guitar on I want to play and not fumble around with a joystick.
Rocksmith is a great and fun way to learn to play the guitar. More fun that any book will provide and more feedback than any DVD. Even the silly games are useful and can and will improve a player’s skill. The songs are great and with enough energy and stamina anyone can master them. Even for players with less time available than me to exercise can benefit as long as they do it consistently. I only took the lead guitar mode in Rocksmith and so I cannot talk about the rhythm or bass mode but I don’t think these are much different. Still for any players jamming with a band the Session Mode will improve their improvisational skills a lot. There are a ton of different instruments, pre-set Bands to choose from and afterwards one can change the scale, root and much more to get the right session. When I took guitar lessons 20 years back I used a little box that would play a very basic blues band but ran around $200. With RS I have blues, funk, pop, metal, rock etc bands which can play nearly every scale, complexity and speed. The session mode would have been enough to make RS worthwhile but with the songs, games and lessons it is a steal.
- Andy
Pebble: Review and Outlook
A few weeks back I received the highly anticipated Pebble Watch which I backed through Kickstarter. Since then I am using it all the time even though Pebble is not yet living up to its own promises. On the other hand I have a lot of respect for the Pebble team and what they accomplished so far. To have so much success and then deliver is not easy and requires a lot of work as well as business skills to just survive the onslaught.
Later I heard Dan Bejamin from 5By5 giving a review of the Pebble on Amplified #51 and I was a little disappointed by Dan’s comments because they sounded more like a spoiled brat rather than an adult even though being a spoiled brat seems to be much of the mantra lately in the tech press. For me a comment like I want more is treating the Pebble team like Apple, Google or Samsung but the reality is that Pebble does not have a multi-million R&D budget where it can just hire a bunch of developers to push the development. This is the bleeding-edge of technology and so we need to ask ourselves if we could do it better.
The Good
That said I think the watch should be reviewed and should voice our expectations so that we can push the technology forward. So this is what I liked about the Pebble Watch:
- Many different Watchfaces which can be easily exchanged.
- Vibrating on incoming Call or SMS. This way I will never miss a call.
- Easy to manage music. This is nice when I have my Bluetooth Headset on and I can pause the music right away.
- Waterproof
- Magnet-Connected USB Charging Cable. Easily to Connect.
The Bad
Many of the bad items are things that I think will be solved soon and otherwise might need creative thinking due to limitation with iOS.
- No Battery Indicator except the Battery is Low or when it is fully charged
- Magnet-Connected USB Cable does easily disconnect and this is hard to discover
- Battery Charge lasts less than 7 days.
- No Apps so far (Golf, Biking etc).
- Email Notification is not working for me.
Improvements
For example the battery indicator does not have to be on watch per se but I could be placed on the Pebble App instead. I also would like to receive a Notification on my iPhone when the Pebble watch disconnects from the Charging Cable and also when the Pebble is fully charged. Another thing I would like is to be able to call one of my favorite phone numbers. I know you can do this with Siri but my English accent does not go well with Siri and most of the time I cam better off taking my phone out and select the number manually. Another think I would like it to use my Pebble together with a Gym Log App where I can use the Pebble to see what is the next exercise / machine, the weight and let me know when to start the next repetition and tell the App when it is over.
Conclusion
Yes, the marketing of Pebble was and still is way ahead of the gadget. On the other hand this is a gadget by a small team and until there is another gadget like this is out we cannot compare it. Pebble is released early, maybe too early, but this has more to do with the funding through Kickstarter, its overwhelming success and the ensuing balancing act between initial success, demand after release and how to mange the business. The Pebble team could have hired a lot of additional people but that would have drained their reserve making it difficult to react to competitors. So I think that the Pebble team decided to focus on the SDK to advance the Watch rather than to create a few Apps even if that meant the Watch looks now limited.
— Andy
Guitar Shop: Still Didn’t get the Memo that Customer Service Counts
Update
When I wrote this piece I mixed up the name of the Store. So it is the Guitar Center Murrieta from which I bought the Amplifier.
Since I bought a Taylor Guitar on my sons’ School Gala silent auction I started to look into buying a good but versatile amplifier because my JamVox is nice but cannot fill the room. On the day after Father’s Day I received a newsletter from the Guitar Shop that their $100 off for purchases over $499 I finally decided to buy a Line 6 Spider IV 150. So I drove down to my closest Guitar Shop despite the warning from the beard to test drive it. After 20 minutes I wanted to buy it but I ran into a lot of troubles afterwards and I am not a happy customer. In the current economy I would have expected a way better customer service. In every company something can go wrong and I am not someone that expects perfect service but I expect that every company puts even more effort into customer service when something goes wrong but not the Guitar Shop.
So that is what happened:
First when I wanted to buy it I was told they did not have it in store even when their website said otherwise. The salesman lame excuse was that they had the display model. So in order to buy it they had to transfer the amp from another store and I left the store about 45 minutes later.
In the store I was told that I would receive the amp within two to three days and that they would call me when it arrives at the store. Two days later no call. When I called to check on the order nobody could give me a good answer but the person on the phone told me that he will call back that day to tell me what is going on. Of course he never called. The next day I called in again and after getting a similar run-around I asked for the manager which promised to call me the same day. He called back the same day telling me that I will either shipped home or to the store and should arrive 7 or 8 days after I bought it.
Finally on Monday I received a big package with the amp in it but just the amp. No electrical plug, no manual, no disks and no registration card. Eventually I had to call Line 6 technical support to figure out what the package content is. The thing that upset me was the fact that I have no idea if this wasn’t a display model or refurbished model even though I looked new.
A few days later I decided to keep the amp and went back to the store to talk to the manager. But he was in a hurry to get out for his lunch break and didn’t bother to listen to my thoughts but rather said that I could have a cable or strings as “compensation”. At that moment I was close to just bring it back and shop somewhere else but I was too tired but I will remember this when I am in the market for my next gear.
– Andy
Warning: Don’t shop at Hobbytown USA, Temecula
Since we moved into the region I was a regular customer at Hobbytown USA in Temecula but this came to a screeching halt because of their bad customer service which also includes the entire franchise Hobbytown USA because they weren’t willing to help me settle my argument with the shop. So the shop and the franchise are loosing me as a valuable customer (I bought several remote controlled cars, helicopters, remote controls and much more) over an argument over $400.
My wife wanted to buy all our kids a toys they could use together and she settled on a Slot Car racing track system. So she went to Hobbytown USA in Temecula because we had good experiences so far and bought the digital SCX 3 cars racing system for $400. So on Christmas day we built the racing track and my wife and the two oldest kids were racing with it on the junior settings so that they don’t shoot out of the tracks on every turn. An hour or so later my wife’s car lane change system stop working which is crucial to play it because that is the way how to refuel the car and at the end of 2 hours playing the spoiler on the trunk of another car was ripped out on one side.
Because we paid so much I packed up the system and went back to the store to return it because the quality of the system doesn’t match its price tag. But there I got a real eye-opener because the store owner was not willing to return it at all. He more or less accused me that we played too rough whatever that means on a racing system and therefore it is our problem now. After I told him that I am disappointed and that I could return a toy even at Toys’R’Us he kicked me out of the store.
After I came home I started to searched the system SCX D10009X510 1/32 Digital System GT Pit Box Slot Car Set 20.4′ I figured out that I could have bought the system cheaper on-line. Close to a month later Hobbytown USA isn’t selling the system anymore and I am wondering why. In an effort to resolve that issue I contacted Hobbytown USA because it was their flyer that gave my wife the idea and it was them defining the catalog of the toys sold. Again now luck with them because they just told me that all shops are owned independently and they set the rules. When I responded that it was their catalog which choose the system from and that it is their name / brand on the store and so I expect that they should help resolve the issue they just didn’t respond anymore.
If a store sells toys at a premium and doesn’t want to be compared to Toys’r’us then they should make sure that what they sell is worth the money and if it fails they should correct it and I don’t care about the relationship between the store and the brand, period. I would have gladly accepted an in-store credit but they choose to let me down and ruin a good customer relationship.
So from now on I will not buy anything from Hobbytown USA store in Temecula and from a Hobbytown USA store anywhere including their online store. Hobbytown USA should have a look at Apple and how their customer relationship is making me preferring their store instead of buying at Fryr’s, BestBuy or any other computer store. I had an iPad 2 where the homebutton would sometimes not work even though I felt the click. They replaced the iPad 2 without any questions and this one costed $600. Even if the Apple store is more expensive I know that I get great customer service and that if anything isn’t up to par I can return it. Or they should look at the 2 person company of Studioneat which make the Cosmonaut, an iPad stylus, and when some of their tips did not work effortlessly they send out an email to tell their customers and replaced mine without questioning and now and I am an even bigger fan of them as before I got the Cosmonaut.
In today’s economy I don’t understand how a company can blow their customer relationships like this and they don’t care if I was a one-time customer or a regular, long-time customer. But they did and I won’t forget it.