What made you happy today?

Most people won't understand the appeal of this, but I've spent the whole past weekend in an amazing, yet unsociable manner ever! To be specific, I've been watching the 'Evo Championship Series', the biggest Fighting Video Game Tournament in the world, held once a year.

Hundreds of players, including many of the world's very best, competing in tournaments for the latest Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken etc games. As someone who is keen on competitive Fighting gaming, but has let my own gaming of this nature slip out of touch a bit in the past year or two, it's been an amazing experience, full of hype, history-making moments and shocks. Made me want to get back in touch with gaming of this nature! Nothing quite like it.

Also, after the past week, whereby my hearing has been all over the shop, a few days I've be able to hear well from my right ear but not my left, then the other way round, then after a couple of days the other round again etc, I can finally now hear well in both again!
 
I don't think I get the appeal of watching competetive gaming... playing in things like that's very fun though. :p

WMMH: Trying out a spot of indoor skydiving was fun today!

To me, it's like watching a Sport at it's Top-Flight, or high-level Musicians. It's often thoroughly entertaining and if you understand what the players are doing and how difficult it is to do, requiring so much practice, dedication and in many cases, being able to perform at such a high-level under pressure (Evo gets MASSIVE crowds, cheering, making noise etc when great moments happen, a bit like how crowds get noisy when it looks like their team is about to score in Football), it is endlessly fascinating.

You also learn a lot about the players, their reputation, what they've achieved etc and the commentators explain things like this and high-level tactics really well and sometimes make it even more exciting too!
 
I gotta admit I'm not huge on watching people play, but every now and then I come across some absolutely ridiculous Street Fighter performances that blow me away.
 
Competitive gaming I could get behind if it weren't for all my experiences with fighting games like Mortal Kombat/Tekken etc, amounting to one guy who's diligently learnt every move and combo being beaten by any bloke who can furiously button mash :/

Now, competitive FPS might be interesting.

WMMH: Trying out a spot of indoor skydiving was fun today!

Woah! Awesome, would love to do that!
 
Competitive gaming I could get behind if it weren't for all my experiences with fighting games like Mortal Kombat/Tekken etc, amounting to one guy who's diligently learnt every move and combo being beaten by any bloke who can furiously button mash :/

Now, competitive FPS might be interesting.



Woah! Awesome, would love to do that!

Feel the need to comment on what you said about Fighting games because it is an annoyingly common misconception about them.

I cannot emphasise how much learning every move and combo is a VERY small part of being being good at a Fighting game (well, most respectable Fighting games anyway, Street Fighter, Tekken, Virtua Fighter etc). If you learn every move and combo but can't hit your opponent with any of them, it's worthless.

I'll not go into too much detail, but just some of the common things you need to be good at across all/most Fighting games include being able to Defend, understanding the movement of your and the opponent's character (as well as how general movement works in the game you're playing). Knowing which moves are safe and unsafe in what situations. The Risk/Reward factor of various moves. Mind games. I could go on but yeah.

WMMH: Got a phone call this morning about a local Data Input job I've applied for. The agency dealing with it since they should have some news on it by this afternoon, with the possibility of me having an interview later on this afternoon!
 
WMMH: Two days of work left until I head out for a music festival called the Grateful Garcia Gathering... yes, a hippie music festival! :lol: Will be gone from the 4th through the 7th. Like a hippie Bloodstock. Can't wait!
 
Feel the need to comment on what you said about Fighting games because it is an annoyingly common misconception about them.

I cannot emphasise how much learning every move and combo is a VERY small part of being being good at a Fighting game (well, most respectable Fighting games anyway, Street Fighter, Tekken, Virtua Fighter etc). If you learn every move and combo but can't hit your opponent with any of them, it's worthless.

I'll not go into too much detail, but just some of the common things you need to be good at across all/most Fighting games include being able to Defend, understanding the movement of your and the opponent's character (as well as how general movement works in the game you're playing). Knowing which moves are safe and unsafe in what situations. The Risk/Reward factor of various moves. Mind games. I could go on but yeah.

There's skill in spades for the tournament players and pros, I know it's not all mashy mashy - just in games between friends (and I've played an awful lot) it always came down to there being no reward for actually having skill/patience/knowledge and outcomes seemed at best random and at worst who can pound the controller the fastest? Eliminating who has the most skill in one fell swoop.
 
That's why I like Super Smash Bros., everybody can play and there's no real worry about button mashing :D
 
Yesterday I bought the following sheet music books:

Burgmuller's 25 easy/progressive studies (for sight reading)
Schumann's Album For The Young (for sight reading)
Mozart's complete sonatas in two volumes, urtext (been meaning to get these forever, but they were so expensive!)
Chopin's complete mazurkas, urtext (finally have something to practice by Chopin that isn't a prelude!)

:D
 
I have a VERY GOOD chance of getting a job from Monday. Had the interview just over an hour ago and already they have come back saying they would like for me to do a day's work tomorrow. Providing I don't mess it up big time, I should have a Temp job by Monday!

It's something I think I'll enjoy doing and it's pretty local as well, so am well chuffed with this opportunity.

Edit: Today at work went well, I get paid for it and continue from Monday for at least 5 weeks.
 
That's how it's done man, nice one! Really happy for you! What kind of job is it?
 
The ladyfriend and I went camping for a few days at a Grateful Dead-tribute music festival. Very fun stuff, though the music generally isn't what I'm into.

However, I came home to a nice $250 refund check from the university I had to withdraw from, and my parents bought me a brand new 42" television as a surprise gift! My old television was on its last legs and I had no idea they'd do this. Awesome!