Ditto likes TV – some of my favorite shows #blaughust Day 27
So Ditto was wondering what to post about next, and he was watching some TV, so I decided to talk about what I like to watch on TV…
Well of course I’m going to start with Fraggle Rock – what Fabricated American did not love this show!! Red, Wembly, Gobo, those cute little Doozers… I still love this show, you can watch it now on Hulu or other on demand services, and there is talk of it being rebooted soon too!!
Next we’ll go a bit more modern with ‘The Flash’ – Ditto is definitely a fan of super heroes, and the first season of The Flash was just what Ditto loves – fun, lighthearted, and action-packed! Barry Allen is a great hero because he’s not perfect – he makes mistakes and he learns from them, and he relies on his friends. It is definitely one of Ditto’s favorite shows.
Finally, let’s talk about cartoons… I like a lot of those but Star Wars Rebels is a new favorite – what a great addition to the Star Wars universe! Ezra, Kanan, and Sabine are great, but I love Zeb – I always root for the big furry guy! I also love Ezras’ blaster / lightsaber – that’s a great design, very smart. Again, it’s a fun, action-packed show with great characters and the return of one of my all-time favorites (no spoilers though…) and season 2 should be starting soon!
So what so you think – good stuff? What are some of your favorite shows – anything Ditto should check out?
Captain Ditto battles Inoshishi Bandits in Mooshu!! #Pirate101 #balughust day 26
Captain Ditto and his swarthy crew are back in Mooshu, where they need to battle some untrustworthy Inoshishi Bandits to recover, of all things, an incense stick… Kind of weird
I think this was the last video recorded before I fixed the sound, so it might be a little off again… the next ones should all be awesome!
#blaughust – missed it by ‘that’ much… but I’ve done OK.
So I did try the Blaughust challenge, and overall I guess I did pretty well, but I just couldn’t make a solid post every single day.. there were some days I just never even got online, to be honest, and at least once where I just couldn’t think of anything.
Still, it’s been fun, and I think I’ve had some pretty good posts, things I would not have thought to do without this challenge, so I’ll call it at least a partial success, and it really was fun, when I was able to sit down and plan out a good post. I think that’s the biggest challenge, and one that I’m sure many readers don’t think about – even a short post take quite a bit of time to come up with, to write out, to edit – many of my posts have pictures or video as well, so I’ve got to do those… Every post that you read, from every blogger out there, takes time and effort to put together; in some cases a single article could be worked on for days!
Because so many bloggers do put in so much effort, and it really is a ‘labor of love’ (since there aren’t many that get paid for it), if you read something you like, I encourage everyone to re-post it, re-tweet it, share it, and comment on it – let the author know you’re a fan or a follower, let them know that you liked the article or post they wrote, things like that. Most bloggers don’t do it for the money, but we all love to know that our articles are getting out there and people are reading them and enjoying them – when someone takes the time to write to me or comment that they’ve really liked something I’ve done, be it a video or a blog post or podcast or whatever, that’s the biggest compliment to me, it really is…
So what’s next? Well, there’s still a few days left of blaughust, I’ll get a post up for all the last days, and then I’ll definitely go back to a more ‘normal’ posting cadence, though I’ll try to be much more regular about it – I see a lot of video channels that say ‘new content every Monday Wednesday Friday’ or something similar. I think I’ll try something like that.
Ditto the Dwarf is playing through the LOTRO tutorial! Fun times!
This video was primarily a sound check to get my audio issues sorted out live, but once those were all set I just kept playing my new LOTRO character for a while, going through more of the opening tutorial section. It’s great fun!
Ditto plays LOTRO and rolls up a Dwarf! #blaughust Day 20
So this video still has some sound issues – the next one is where I fix that – but here I start playing LOTRO again after MANY years away, and decide to roll up a Dwarf Champion… I’ll be honest – not sure I’m 100% on board with him, but I’ll play him for a while and see how he shapes up…
Captain Ditto and Crew back in Mooshu in Pirate101!! #blaughust Day 17
Captain Ditto and Crew are back in Mooshu and have to battle possessed samoorai warriors, searching for magic swords!
Mustang Sally was a real hero in this one – her sword work was so quick and deadly, she really earned her keep!
It was a little disorienting doing battle with opponents my own level, since I’ve been playing significantly below my level with those other quests lately. It’s OK though – my crew was ready for action! So exciting fighting these cursed Samoorai – they know a few serious tricks!!
The sound on these videos is still a little off – I fixed it in a later video, but for these I’m still a bit quiet.
With A Little Help From My Friends #blaughust Day 16
Yesterday I did a bunch of streaming, and it was fun – I even started a dwarf on LOTRO. As I was streaming everything seemed to be working OK and it was fun – I will admit, this new streaming is a lot of fun and it’s much easier to set up than my old method with the ‘over the shoulder’ camera, with Carl the camera-bear and trying to make sure everything was lined up right… this was I can just start playing, hit the quick-key to start the stream, and then I kind of forget about it….
After I finished streaming and went back to watch some of the recordings, I realized that the sound was off – my voice was much too quiet, game noise was too loud… you can hear me, but it’s not great. I knew I needed to fix it but I didn’t know to adjust it and make sure it sounded right while I was streaming without a lot of trial and error. This morning I realized the simple answer – it’s a stream, I could ask people to jump in and listen and tell me how it sounded! (more…)
More Twitch Streaming – Captain Ditto versus the Floating Dutchman! #Pirate101 #blaughust day 15
A fun adventure where Captain Ditto and his crew track down the very spooky ‘Floating Dutchman’ – it’s a great little adventure that is WAY below Captain Ditto’s level, so it makes him look like a real super hero!!
I do think there’s still a problem with my audio I need to figure out – my voice is much too low, so I need to fix that. It might be a setting in Windows somewhere – I’ll try to figure it out. Sadly I don’t realize it during the stream… I need to get someone on to watch and test things out with me at some point. I’ll try to do it this week.
As far as Blaughust… Well, I missed a few days, sadly – Thursday I was working and Friday we had friends over. Sadly, sometimes life gets in the way of fun stuff like blogging, but that’s OK – I’m going to keep going and I’ll try my best not to miss any more!
10 Things about Ditto the Monster #blaughust Day 12
Almost halfway through this ‘Blaughust’ thingy and I wanted to take the time to do something quick and easy deep and insightful, so I thought I would do a ’10 things you might not know about Ditto’ post…
- Ditto’s middle name is ‘Percival’ – it’s a family name, but it’s ALSO one of Dumbledore’s several middle names.
- While it’s obvious that Ditto loves all kinds of pie, Ditto is also a vegetarian. Yup – Ditto is a tofu-lover.
- Miss Narrator is, in fact, Ditto’s wife. Yup – it’s official. Should we have a shipper name, like ‘DitNarr’ or something?
- Brushing my fur takes about 20 minutes a day. If it’s really humid, it might take double that…
- Dittos’ favorite TV show of all time is The Muppets, followed closely by Fraggle Rock. I’m also a big fan of ‘The Flash’ on CW though – that’s a fun show!
- Ditto has four cats – Phil (Grey), Samantha (Black), Floofy kitty (Floofy black) and Suzan (fabricated). He also has a redfoot tortoise named Jasper and two fancy goldfish – Lion and Tiger
- Ditto is afraid of spiders – even daddy long-legs. He finds snakes cute, though.
- Ditto adopted a tiger! Well, he donates to a tiger rescue organization that helps to protect Tigers and other endangered animals. Tigers are really beautiful and awesome animals, and they should be protected.
- Ditto really likes reading books – all kinds of books. Right now he’s reading a book on astronomy that is fascinating!
- Big surprise – Ditto’s first ever Wizard101 character was actually a Necromancer… I played him for a while before I decided to start blogging about the game, and made it to level 50 (back when Level 50 was the max level!).
So that’s it – a little more about Ditto, a few fun facts – I hope you liked them!! As always, Have Fun and Play Safe!!
Pancake Ninjas play Oregon Trail!! #blaughust Day 11
I’ve been thinking more about streaming on Twitch… it seems the top channels have regular scheduled streaming times, and a lot of them stream for an hour or more – is that right? My main problem is that I typically don’t play at regular times… Sometimes I’ll be able to play for a half hour or so, sometimes I play for a few hours. Sometimes I can stream or record, sometimes it’s too noisy or the cats are crazy, stuff like that…
So I’ve been thinking, maybe I’ll try to play and stream at least once a week, have a good fun time and make sure I record it… see if I can start gaining a small following that way. It’s fun, to think that people are watching live… If I can’t do it regularly I’ll still do it whenever I can, I do have fun 🙂
So I’m really liking my new laptop – it’s an Asus 2 in 1 running Windows 10, and I have to say, it’s fast, and it’s got some great features. I’ve tried a few games that my trusty old system couldn’t quite handle, and it plays them wonderfully. I’m still getting used to a few things, but overall I’m quite happy with it. Wizard101 and Pirate101 play great, of course, as well as some great newer games – very exciting! Maybe I’ll review it soon… I’ll think about it.
I don’t know that this completely fulfils the ‘blaughust’ requirements, as there’s not much ‘content’ to it, but it’s late and it’s been a long day, so I guess it will have to do…
Ditto
Winners of Ditto’s Pirate101 Arrrgust contest – Keeping Cool!!
For a quick contest, I sure got a LOT of great, fun entries!! I love so many of these fun and clever ideas for how your pirates keep cool in the summer heat! Some of them definitely made Miss Narrator and I laugh! There are lots of ways to keep cool in the Spiral – there are lots of waterfalls, for example – and some very creative ways of keeping cool too, things I never thought of. The Water Guardians in Mooshu are certainly an interesting choice!!
Anyway – here are the randomly chosen winners – congratulations!!! (more…)
Ditto battles Pampero Spirits in the Floating Mountains – another stream test… #Wizard101 #blaughust Day 9
So Ditto is getting more sophisticated with his Twitch Channel – I’ve modified my sound settings and I think it sounds much better and more clear now, and I changed some settings that seemed to be making me lag a lot. Finally, I’ve figured out how archive my streams on Twitch and export them over to YouTube so I can keep the videos there too…
As for the video – well, it’s Ditto getting beat up by Pampero Spirits again. In my defense, I was more focused on the stream tweaks than the fight itself, but I think I just didn’t have a very efficient deck – I’m sure next time will go much better…
Blaughust Day 8 – Ditto’s Apple Tree
I wanted to do something totally different for my blog post today, and as I was out in my yard I had an idea… Miss Narrator and I have a little garden at our little house – tomatoes, peppers, peas, that sort of thing… and I have some apple trees that I like. I have one tree, a nice little Macintosh tree, that I’ve been tending for around 4 years now. It’s all organic – we don’t use any chemicals, only natural treatments and fertilizers – and the apples are thick on the trees this year! They’re still a few weeks from being fully ripe, but I had one today and it was tart, but really tasty!
Growing our own food is fascinating – we don’t grow a lot, of course – we don’t live on a farm or anything – but planting seeds and watching the plants grow, seeing the vegetables and fruits ripen, then picking then when they’re ripe… that’s pretty cool. Miss Narrator makes pickles and salsa with the fresh veggies and herbs, and yes – she makes an amazing apple pie with the apples from my trees!
I know this wasn’t my typical kind of post, but I think it’s a fun one – something very different from my normal game related posts but it shows other things monsters can me interested in, like gardening and fruit trees and pie… Oh wait, you already knew about the pie…
New Gameplay Video – Captain Ditto battles the Blood Lord and Chaka Kahn!!
Well 7 days down, 23 to go… This ‘blaughust’ thing is going to get interesting.
That pause in the opening of the video really bugs me, I have to fix that… I think I need an .flv file editor.
Well here it is, the big end battle with the Aztecosaur Blood Lord! Of course my crew and I defeat the Blood Lord pretty easily and start destroying creepy crystal statues, but that awakens a nasty evil Chaka Kahn boss thingy and we have to fight again!!
I know it’s a little cheezy, but I love going through this very easy dungeon – I feel so powerful! Like a super hero – such fun! It’s a fun story too – I dig Azteca, it’s a cool mythology.
#Blaughust Day 6 – Questions about other games…
While I am primarily a Wizard101 and Pirate101 blogger, I do like playing other games like online games and puzzle games, things like that. I’ve even done gameplay videos of some of them, like HearthStone – I still have a lot of fun with that one, but I still need to install it on my new laptop.
So I want to add at least a couple other games into my repertoire, now that I’ve got the new computer – all family friendly, of course. I’ve been thinking of playing LOTRO again, as one example – I have a lifetime account and it REALLY plays well on the new machine. I know it’s an older game, but I always thought it was really rich and the quests fun and entertaining. The graphics are nice, too… What would folks think about that?
And of course – if I start playing LOTRO again, would people be more interested in me starting from scratch, starting off fresh with a brand new character? Or just start playing with one of my existing? It doesn’t matter much to me – I haven’t played it actively in probably close to three years, so I’d have to learn it all over again anyway. Inquiring minds want to know!
It’s so pretty…
I’ve got other ideas brewing… I really like the ‘Dittos’ Movie Reviews’ idea, still working on that. Maybe book reviews too – Ditto loves to read. So what would you like to see? Games? Video Blogs? Ditto jumping rope?
New Gameplay Video – Captain Ditto in Azteca fighting suff… #Pirate101 #blaughust Day 5
Captain Dito and crew continue on the Azteca quest, and it’s so fun! It’s far below my level, true, so none of these fights are terribly difficult, but they’re fun!! Ditto battles some ThinSkulls, then travels through Azteca to talk to Itzam Halach, and Ditto needs to fight the dreaded Chaka Kahn, or something like that. Ditto has to defeat the dread Chaka Kahn and save Azteca! And there’s a totally rude triceratops too – and I always loved triceratops!
And this video is one of the first stream videos I did, so the sound is still a bit wonky. Sorry about that.
And for the record, I know that blaughust rules say a post of ‘at least 10 sentences’, but I think a 15 minute video also counts… I mean, a picture is worth a thousand words, so a video has got to be worth… well, a lot.
So what else is Ditto up to? #blaughust Day 4
So Ditto has been blogging a lot here for quite a while – over 5 years, if you can believe that! When I started thinking about things to write about for this ‘blaughust’ challenge, I realized by blog has been a little stale lately – that’s kind of the point of the challenge, I guess. I post a lot of my Wizard101 and Pirate101 gameplay videos, and I post contests, but not much else; I haven’t even been doing my video bloggy thingys, which I was planning on doing weekly. I want to change that and to diversify my blog, by posting more than just game updates. What else I’m going to post I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got some ideas.
- Updates and gameplay vids from different games. Now that I have my new laptop I should be able to play more games and record more games! What games should I add to my repertoire?
- More craft projects – I got a lot of great feedback on my wand making project, so I’ve thought this might be a good idea.
- Ditto’s movie reviews? Ditto likes movies, so maybe movie reviews would be fun? I think that might be fun…
- Get back to the Video Bloggy Thingys – try to keep up with these weekly; though to be honest, sometimes I don’t have a lot going on that’s worth talking about. I’m kind of a boring monster sometimes.
Ditto Blogging
Contest Time!! Summer Fun in Arrrgust in Pirate101!! Blaughust #3
It’s summer in The Spiral and in the Skyways of Pirate 101 are celebrating the grand tradition of Arrrgust! And what does that mean? Well, it means CONTESTS!! Lots of the fansites are going to be doing contests, and Ditto is one of them!!
First, what is Ditto giving away? A SOLAR SABER mount!!! How awesome is this thing? Just look at it!
Awesome Solar Saber mount!!
Certainly an awesome mount – very stylish!! Look at those fangs!! And of course, he’s fast! Good kitty!!
And what do you need to do to win this awesome kitty cat? Well, since it’s Arrrgust, and it’s HOT, I want to know what your pirates do to keep cool. I know it can’t be splashing around at the beach, since there’s no water at the beaches of the Skyways, so what else do they do? Giant Slip and Slide? Spiral-Style air conditioning? Be creative and funny and let me know how your pirates keep cool…
Send your entry in to dittopirate@gmail.com with the subject ‘Keep Cool’, and make sure you include your pirates name. The contest runs from today to Sunday, August 9th at midnight EST, and winners will be chosen by random draw after that!
So that’s it – enter and have fun! And don’t forget that lots of fansites are going to be having fun contests of their own, so check them all out!!
Good Luck and Have Fun!!
Captain Ditto decends into the Scaly Warren in Pirate101. Blaughust Day 2
So Captain Ditto is back with his excellent crew, ready for some thrilling heroics! Of course there was an added challenge of playing this live on my TwitchTV channel, and I was recording it as well, just to see how that all worked and if people liked the new format. So check out some fun questing and please feel free to let me know how you like it and what I can improve…
So there’s this thing called #blaughust… I blame The Friendly Necromancer
I was reading the very excellent blog of ‘The Friendly Necromancer’ and he was talking about this challenge, ‘Blaughust‘, which challenges bloggers to post every day in August. The first thing I thought was ‘Wow, is that a terrible name for a challenge. I mean, who came up with that name? How do you even pronounce that?’, but soon after that I thought – well, this might be a good idea, something cool for me to try, and it’s highly opportune timing, because I’ve got plans for updating Dittomonster.com
You see, I just got a new laptop – my trusty old Asus has been with me for over 5 years, and though we’ve been through a lot together, I felt it was time for an upgrade, to a brand new Asus laptop! It’s a nice 2 in 1 running Windows 10 and a GeForce 940m, so it’s pretty sweet for gaming. It can also handle something my old machine just couldn’t – live streaming game sessions! That’s right, Ditto now has a Twitch.tv Channel and will start streaming games and things there! I was playing around with it today and so far it’s pretty fun! I’m also going to try to start recording videos differently – instead of the ‘over the shoulder’ shot with the video camera I’ll try to record the videos with the ‘picture in picture’ style a lot of gamers use – my face on the webcam in a little corner window. A number of people have said that some of my videos are harder to see because of the way I shoot them, so I’ll try this. It should be easier to set up, too… though Carl the Camera-Bear might be upset that he’s out of a job. Sorry Carl.
So can I pull this off – a good blog post every day, with real content and not just me going ‘la la la la la…’ Probably not, but I’m giving it a try!
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 