Monthly Archives: May 2012

 

Shifting Focus: From Tetris to League of Legends

Posted on by in League of Legends

Hi humans.

Those of you who have been following my work for a while know that I tend to shift focus from one type of project to another once in a while. About three months ago, I shifted that focus away from vlogs and other videos and set it towards live streaming and shoutcasting competitive Tetris. Now that the focus is once again shifting away from Tetris (this time less of a choice and more of being forced to do so due to lack of resources; if you would like more details, read the blog post that recaps the final episode of the season), I needed another area that I would specialize in for the next three months.

Late last year, one of my friends introduced me to a game of League of Legends. This past January, another friend of mine (whom you might know from my videos, Ed Lam, also known as Grainyrice), finalized my decision to sign up for the game and start playing. Since then, I’ve gotten decent at the game and was good enough to be able to integrate humor into my play style. I released my first comedic YouTube video late last month.

Before releasing my first comedic video, I also released two other League of Legends videos. None of these three videos got enough attention to be considered a success. Fortunately, I wasn’t very discouraged because the only reason I uploaded these videos was to test the waters with League of Legends videos, and it wasn’t a big deal to me that not many people were watching these videos because they were more or less pilot videos. I assumed that future League of Legends videos would also not do very well, and stopped making them.

Not long ago, Ed and another one of my friends wanted me to get back into making comedic League of Legends videos. Even though I showed them proof that it was most likely not a good investment of time, they reminded me that I never actually went out of my way to promote these League of Legends videos like I would my Tetris videos, and I never actually shared them enough on social networking sites for my regular followers to notice them.

Keeping this in the back of my mind, and because I’m spending some time playing League of Legends with my friends anyway, I decided that for at least the next month or so, I will go back to making comedic League of Legends videos, primarily focusing on “Azn Casts.” In addition to videos, I will also be producing some more content related to League of Legends, such as a weekly blog post called “This Week in League of Legends” where I try out a new free champion from that week for the entire week and do a comprehensive analysis about what I like and dislike about the champion, and how I went about playing the champion.

For those of you not interested in League of Legends or gaming in general, I will always have blog posts related to League of Legends marked such that they will be easy to identify and easy to skip. I would personally think that the videos would still be worth watching, because it will still have Ed and my humor mixed in, but the only difference would be that the topic would be the game play running in the background. However, like always, if you don’t like them, they will also be clearly labeled and thumbnailed so they will be easy to skip if you are not interested, just like how some of you were not interested in my Tetris stream replay videos.

And, of course, now that summer break is around and I will be seeing Ed much more frequently to go to summer classes, I will be releasing a lot of vlogs for those who prefer those classic videos over anything else.

 

It’s About That Time Again … Parkzer.com is Being Migrated

Posted on by in Site News

Hi humans.

Those who have been keeping up with me and my website since the beginning (which, I’m pretty sure there are very few of you) know that once in a while, I decide to do a massive overhaul of my website. After my huge redesign back in May of 2010, I was pretty satisfied with my what I made, and my website’s physical appearance has changed minimally throughout the past two years. There have been some significant back-end changes, but the front-end essentially looked the same except for the occasional new module and different background.

I felt that now would be a good time to do another huge change to my website for a handful of reasons. The main reason for this timing is that I’m on summer break now from university, and have not yet started my summer transfer courses at college. This gives me a relatively larger amount of free time to get everything done as quickly as possible. On top of that, I’ve been doing a lot of discouraging and frustrating programming work for the Badger Herald, which is my university-related work, and I needed a break from that to program something fun for my own website.

As for the actual motivation for this change, I’ve been wanting to make a change like this to my website for a long time now because the way I had my website set up before before was not very dynamic and efficient, and it was time-consuming to make changes.

So by now you’re probably wondering, what exactly is the change? Previously, my website was made out of pure PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript code. If I wanted to edit a page or post a new article or blog entry, I would use a template and code it up, then upload it to my website. Then, I would have to manually update the RSS feed and the XML sitemap. This sounds like a hassle, but I had my coding environment set up so it could be done relatively quickly.

The bad part about this set-up was that it was too localized within articles. If I wanted to make a universal change, it would be nearly impossible, and I would either have to go through each page individually, or at the very least, I would have to go through each section or category individually. Thus, even if I wanted to add new features (such as previous and next buttons), I wouldn’t be able to easily put it into effect for my entire website.

After this update, I’ll be able to do what I couldn’t before relatively easily, because I am now using a pre-made content management system called WordPress. It probably sounds familiar to a lot of you, because WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms. The difference between other WordPress blogs you might see and my installation of WordPress is that it’s hosted on my own server (my friend’s, if you want to get technical, but it’s on my hosting account on his server), and it’s extremely customized.

Before initiating the change, I already finished coding up the design, which is why the finalized aesthetic version of Parkzer.com got released so soon. It’s almost the same as it was before, but with a few differences related to the functioning of WordPress.

Now that the core of the conversion is done, I have to transfer all of the individual pages manually over to WordPress. There are an estimated 800 unique pages that I have to hand-transfer by copying and pasting content and trimming out unnecessary pre- and post-scripts.

Fortunately, after I transfer everything over, all my website’s content will be in a nice, parsed format stored in a database rather than in 800 individual text files, so I will never have to do a mass migration of this scale ever again. Meanwhile, I still have to get through a lot of content. My hopeful completion date is within the next week or so, but at the rate that I’m going, I don’t think that will be a viable deadline. I am literally taking every opportunity I can to transfer pages, so hopefully I will be able to get everything tidied up before the end of the month.

During the migration process, you might notice an abnormally high number of 404 errors, which are page not found errors. That most likely means that I haven’t gotten around to transferring that file yet. The order in which I am transferring files is based off popularity as stated by Google Analytics; my most frequently visited pages will be transferred first, and my least frequently visited pages will be transferred last.

 

Recap: Tetris Arena Live with Parkzer, Week #9-2

Posted on by in Competitive Tetris Live Stream, Video

Hi humans.

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog and/or my stream, you probably have picked up by now that this will most likely be my last competitive Tetris show until late August.

This show was a pretty smooth and normal show (except for the fact that my laptop overheated and shut itself down about half an hour or so into the broadcast). I would say that the highlight of this show (and probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done on stream) is towards the end when I help someone sign up for an account on Hard Drop. If you skip in to about two and a half hours into the video, you will probably start seeing someone named HD_SkyAlly talking in the chat. Pay close attention to that, and how I react to her requests.

In related news, I thought it would be a good idea to give the top two reasons why I will no longer be streaming for the rest of the summer (or winter if you’re below the equator).

First, over summer break, I will no longer be on a set schedule like I am while studying at university. I have a lot more responsibilities and other things I have to get done while I am home, including working at the family business, working elsewhere, and helping my parents when they need help with what they’re doing. These responsibilities are a lot more dynamic than things I have to do at university, so I cannot ever guarantee that I will be available weekly at a specific time.

Next, the Internet that I have at home is pretty much the most basic DSL that you can get. My parents do not do things on the Internet that require high download and upload speeds, and the extreme extent to what they need is a connection fast enough to watch 360p video from YouTube. Seeing as my parents are the only ones living in this house for a majority of the calendar year, it would be a waste of money just to have faster Internet when they don’t regularly use it. On top of that, nobody in our family watches or wants cable television (or any type of paid television), and most faster Internet deals require a television package in order to not pay a ridiculously high price.

Does this mean that I am never going to make an appearance in the competitive Tetris community for the remainder of the season? Absolutely not. If I happen to be free at the same time as an event is going on or someone else is streaming, I might hop in via a Skype call and commentate. If you miss my guest appearances, remember that you can always watch replays of the broadcasts on the Hard Drop Twitch.TV account.

 

Recap: NullpoMino Live with Parkzer, Week #9-1

Posted on by in Competitive Tetris Live Stream, Video

Hi humans.

As I’ve suggested and possibly explicitly said in the past, my regular streaming will come to an end after this week. As this is the last week that I’ll be streaming on a set schedule, I decided to do a special bonus episode and bring you guys NullpoMino Live as a variation of Tetris Arena Live with Parkzer.

For those of you unfamiliar with NullpoMino, it is an extremely customizable Tetris clone made with Java (as opposed to Tetris Friends’ Flash). It usually runs a lot smoother than Tetris Friends, and it has a multitude of single player options as well as a competitive multiplayer option. It was the most requested clone for me to stream, so I decided to go with it for my extra show this week.

As mentioned in the stream, this week’s regular Tetris Arena Live will take place one day early on Thursday, rather than Friday, because I’m not 100% sure if I’ll be available to stream between 7-10 PM CST this coming Friday. If I am, and if my co-caster is also available, I might end up doing a third stream show this week (although unlikely, still possible).

If you’re unfamiliar with my competitive Tetris streams and want to find out how to join, I stream at http://Twitch.TV/HardDrop on behalf of HardDrop.com, a massive Tetris community. Be sure to subscribe to our channel and check out the live streaming calendar (link available at the top-right corner of Hard Drop forums) to find out when I (and others) will be streaming.

 

Recap: Tetris Arena Live with Parkzer, Week #8

Posted on by in Competitive Tetris Live Stream, Video

Hi humans.

I am officially (almost) done with my academic semester. I just finished my last exam today, and now all I have to do is wait for a presentation next week before I can go home.

With all that being done, I streamed competitive Tetris normally today like I would any Friday.

I started off with a little notice about how I felt like I was about to get a cold part-way through the stream. My nose had that weird tingle, and I felt like I always had to sneeze but the sneeze would never come out. About two hours into the stream, I actually did start getting cold symptoms, and I had to blow my nose a few times. Fortunately, when I get a cold, I’m usually able to recover within a day or so.

The remainder of the stream went pretty normally and smoothly. Ukrainian4Life was there with me the entire time. We spent a little under two hours in a six-person free-for-all room, then spent about an hour in a one-on-one room.

Next week, my stream schedule will be off from normal because I will be going back to my home town on an unspecified and unknown date. I will also be doing an official NullpoMino stream next week as well.

To accommodate for potential scheduling conflicts, I decided to bump everything up by one day to make sure that I don’t end up going home at the same time when I’m supposed to be streaming. Thus, NullpoMino Live with Parkzer will be taking place next Wednesday from 7-10 PM CST. Tetris Arena Live with Parkzer will be taking place next Thursday (not Friday) from 7-10 PM CST. If I happen to be available on Friday as well, and if Ukrainian4Life is also around and not busy, we might do another third bonus stream on Friday – if this is to happen, more information will be released sometime next week.

 

Recap: Tetris Arena & NullpoMino Live w/ Parkzer, Week #7 (Fail)

Posted on by in Competitive Tetris Live Stream, Video

Hi humans.

If you tuned into Tetris Arena Live this week, you know that it was an epic fail. In case you missed it, here are this week’s two videos.

To begin, I was already a day late in streaming because I had academic work that I needed to finish within a tight deadline, and I couldn’t stream during my normal Friday time slot. I streamed the following day (which was yesterday, Saturday), and it went absolutely horribly.

My Internet was lagging so much that nobody on the stream could see what was going on, and I could barely see what was going on in the Tetris Friends room. The audio was getting through the stream perfectly fine, but the video was updating at about 0.3 frames per second, and I was dropping significantly more frames than I was streaming.

Fortunately, there was a tournament going on an hour after I started streaming, so I was able to use that as an excuse to stop streaming and put myself out of my misery so someone else could take over the stream.

As you might have seen in the recent blog post about League of Legends, I’ve been having other Internet issues as well, so I called my Internet service provider to find out if there was anything on their end that they could look in to so they could help me solve this problem. When I called, they did some basic diagnostic tests and found out that even though I was the only one connected to my router to my knowledge, even if I wasn’t downloading anything, there was still tons of traffic going through my router. I did a power cycle on my router as the customer service representative suggested, and after my router powered back up, the traffic drastically decreased. That brought me to the conclusion that there was someone who hacked my wifi connection and was using my Internet for torrenting.

Unfortunately, the router I was using was not mine, so I didn’t know how to access its firmware and change the password. That wasn’t much of a problem, though, as I was able to easily hack my own router and change the password so whomever was able to do it before would no longer have the new password needed to use my Internet.

After settling this issue, I went back on the stream to broadcast NullpoMino for another hour or so. At first, it seemed to be working out fine, but then the lag started increasing once again. I checked my dropped frames, and I was once again going at a very low frame rate, and I was dropping far more frames than one would expect. At this point, I had no idea what was going on with my Internet and how to fix it.

Then, one of my viewers pointed out in the chat that I was streaming in 720p resolution. I itched my head for a little bit because my Internet is usually only good enough to barely stream in 480p, so there is no reason that the setting should be at 720p. I checked the video viewing page for the live stream, and I was indeed streaming at a quality far too high for my Internet upload connection to handle.

Basically, there were two massive issues contributing to the issues that I was facing during my Tetris Arena stream – metaphorically speaking, I was trying to shove too much data into a tube that was already too small, but was made even smaller because it was clogged up by some hacker’s data.

Now that these ridiculous issues have been resolved, next week’s stream should go a lot more smoothly. Be sure to tune in this Friday from 7-10 PM CST on http://harddrop.com for the 8th week of Tetris Arena Live with Parkzer.

 

Reague of Regends Azn Cast and Recording Fail

Posted on by in League of Legends, Video

Hi humans.

Quote of the Day: “I’ve been up since 6 AM tomorrow.” —Justin White

For those of you not subscribed to my YouTube channel, you might be interested (or apathetic) to the fact that I recently released another League of Legends video.

This is a different type of cast than I normally do. I’m generally a shoutcaster and commentator, but in this video, I’m one of the people who are actually playing, and I have Ed Lam (Grainyrice) on Skype. The commentary isn’t insightful at all, but I think it’s random enough to be humorous. We talk in Asian accents and say things that Korean casters are known to say.

After recording this video, I tried to record another one, but due to a humorous and unrealistically chained series of unfortunate events, never got to it.

First, I tried to rebind my keys. Shortly after playing this game, I played a game with Dr. Mundo where I rebound my Q key to smartcast rather than standard cast. I wanted to switch it back to standard cast for playing Cho’Gath for the recording, so I opened up my options to change my settings back to normal.

In the process, I accidentally started clicking outside the options screen and my keys started randomly rebinding to different random things. After struggling for about a full minute, I finally exited out of the options because I thought everything was set to normal. I tried to move back into the fight, but my champion was stuck.

I literally spammed my right clicks all over the map to try and move to a different spot, but I was stuck where I was, unable to go anywhere. My best guess was that I somehow rebound my move command to some other random key, and I didn’t know which one. After a few more minutes, I finally just gave up and reset by key bindings to factory settings, and was able to resume the game.

That game clearly did not work out, so Ed and I joined another game so I could try recording one more time. But, League of Legends wouldn’t have any of that, and made it so my ping was at 999 during the loading screen, and over 5,000 milliseconds during the actual game (when it should normally be around 20-80). For those of you unfamiliar with ping and latency, having a ping of 5,000 ms means that it takes 5 seconds for my command to travel to the server and a response to come back to me. That meant, if I clicked on something, I would have to wait about 5 seconds for my champion to actually respond to that command. For example, if I wanted to attack someone with an ability, I would click my ability and cast it at a location. Five seconds later, the ability would show up at the location, long after my enemy was either already dead or had moved out of the way. No, I had no idea why or how that happened, but that effectively prevented me from playing the game.

Wondering if it was just a problem with my client, I exited so I could restart League of Legends. In the third and last ultimate troll, League of Legends started updating before it would let me log back in to the game, with an expected completion time of 24 minutes. While my game was going on, I was unable to rejoin because League of Legends thought now would be the greatest time to update itself.

I was actually able to rejoin the game just in time to see the victory screen, but that was still one of the most frustrating and ridiculous series of events that has ever happened to be on League of Legends.

Hopefully, the next time I try to record another League of Legends video, something like this won’t happen again…