Showing posts with label Night. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Night. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

New Year's Eve: The Dawn Of A New Decade (2020)

Guuzaka                                                                                                          2019-12-31

New Year's Eve: The Dawn Of A New Decade (2020)

πŸ‘‰πŸΎThis blog post may contain affiliate links. When you click and purchase something from within these links, I may earn a small percentage of that sale. πŸ’² This is done at no extra expense to you. Guuzaka is not an official salesmen of these vendors. Therefore, any potential product problems and other technicalities must be dealt with through official staff of the online shop. 

 Today is Tuesday, December 31, 2019. This means that this is not only my last blog post of the year, but of an entire decade. 😲 Now it might sound kind of weird to say that, considering that I have only been using Blogger since January 31, 2016. Nevertheless, it has been 3 years of typing here. ⌨ That's enough of the boring stuff, so let's talk about the exciting things: 2020! πŸŽ†
No, I will not be watching fireworks. And no, that end of the decade video is also unfortunately not happening.  πŸ˜₯ This time period was just too busy, and when you do not organize yourself efficiently, you will ultra quickly get yourself into such a tight, awkward situation.  😣 

Over the decade, we have seen so much advancements in just about every industry on the planet: automotive, health, technology, security and beyond. Some of these advancements, however, are not always positive. Some trends have been seriously stupid and disappointing, such as the notches and removal of headphone jacks and expandable memory on smartphones. πŸ™„ Others, like the ever increasing number of all-electric vehicles are very exciting. ⚡

For some of you, it is already 2020. For those of us in the Eastern Standard Time Zone, or close to it, it is late evening at the time I wrote this. And for that reason, I will not keep this blog post too long. I just want to say that I am thankful to have lived through the decade despite the many disappointments, and hardships that I may have faced. There were also many joys and special memories that have also taken place: moving, graduation, relatives' weddings, getting my first proper computer, getting back intro instrumental music, injecting life into my YouTube channel, then rebranding it twice as time went on, getting into blogging, acquisition of several smartphones, visiting many areas, and so many more that if I were to go on, this blog post would end up becoming a book! πŸ“•πŸ“—πŸ“˜

For the next decade, I hope to go further, continue to learn new things, stay healthy, go new places, and be more successful in the things I do. ✅🌠

Thanks for reading and Happy 2020 New Year! πŸŽ†πŸŽ‡πŸŽ‰

Friday, November 3, 2017

November 3rd Entry

GuuzakaTube                                                                                                   2017-11-02


November 3rd Entry

So yesterday's entry was all about that channel trailer, but today's entry will be about the videos uploaded before it. With two of them being outdoor videos, 2 games, 1 game/discussion and an unboxing, you can definitely say that this batch is quite an interesting assortment.

That galloping, rackety sound was present so I scrapped the original audio from the video, and made it 99% silent. There, I said it. That's exactly why I made the video silent. Not because I wanted it to be, but because that sound was obnoxiously present in it. Thankfully, the video I did in Pickering was entirely spared from this sound, because I actually remembered to completely click the damn kickstand into the case! πŸ˜– Anyways, that's enough bickering about that. You came here learn more about this video, or maybe you just decided to casually from here from the links on my Twitter and Instagram? So anyways! The purpose of this video was originally to film the hung up ghosts at Mills Motors Buick GMC, but by the time I decided to go there, they were gone. I then decided to just briefly walk across the dealership, film some of Oshawa's downtown areas, Ontario Motor Sales Chevrolet Cadillac, and then called it quits in front of a random Speedy Auto Service. Though the silly ghosts weren't present, this video turned out -- or would have turned out to be an excellent night test video in a city environment... if only we could only hear the original sounds! 😭 Gosh darn it man! Oh well. I can always film another place in the night at another time, or even Oshawa again if I really wanted to. We'll see.


My second recorded run on this track. Did the colours look good this time? No, still rather distorted, but one does not simply expect a BlackBerry Q10 to capture a secondary screen's colours with amazing accuracy. And to make things even more insulting, the BlackBerry restarted itself and aborted its video when it accidentally tipped over and fell onto the Lumia. πŸ˜’πŸ˜“ Ba dum tss? Wasn't thrilled about losing a 20 minute video at all, so I just resorted to playing and recording another session. I wonder which track will come after this one? Christmas maybe? Or will Kiloo wait till December for that? Time will tell.



Wow. Such game. Very Doge. Much Flappy. So Sky. Stahp now! 😝 Ok, if you do not know the meme, you will not understand! If you do, good for you! 😁 So Doge is one of many Internet animals on the web with a lot of jokes and captions, and now there's a game on him?! Wow, so cool! Wait, I actually learned yesterday that Doge is actually a girl, and not a boy! Wow, go figure. Anyways! This game is much like all the flappin' flappy spin-offs you have known, hated and loved. Tap your screen and safely get the character through the pylons to go as far as you can. Only thing with this one, is that it's tough! You normally do not hear me complain about Flappy games being hard, but this one is a rather special case. 🀐 Oh yes! In the beginning of the video, you can hear me saying that I've been "erroneously" referring to the game as Flappy Doge, when it should have been Flying Doge? As I've just looked up, there is such a game titled Flappy Doge and guess what? It is much more feature rich than the game available on Windows Phone! So this means that it's nothing more than just a poor clone of the versions available on iOS and Android. While disappointing, this is definitely not a surprise. Windows Phone does have equal versions with games sometimes, but there are also a good number of times where it doesn't. Just the way it is with the Windows Phone operating system, which is by the way now officially dead, but I'm sure you knew that. 


Ah, Asphalt 8. The most famous, highest quality, mobile racing game, yet also one of the most frustrating for a number of reasons! For real though. As much as I love this game, there are a lot of things present in it, that do not make it as enjoyable as it should be. In the video, I mentioned that the races pay far too little, and need to pay 3X what they currently do. This is because the costs of the cars is just bonkers, and the max out prices on much of the cars after the Great Wall Update, shoot beyond the freakin' sky! πŸ€• I also complained about blueprints, and how hard they are to get, and how it makes some cars borderline impossible to achieve for the average player. Tokens need to be removed entirely from the game, and go back to just good ol' credits. Seriously, they're pointlessly difficult to obtain, and just complicates the currency system. Hackers! In multiplayer, many of us have noticed players who cannot wreck, and respawn immediately upon crashing right ahead of others. These hackers also have everything maxed, pro'ed and typically have all the power-ups. Speaking of that, that's one thing I forgot to mention on camera - boosters! In multiplayer, separate the people who have boosters activated from those who don't! In fact, I've actually seen this complaint on many websites before, and guess what?  It still has not been addressed! Asphalt 8 as of the Motorcycles Update has a lot of cool things going for it, but there are a number of things players have complained about that aren't getting addressed! Is it getting to the point that Gameloft should stop adding bells and whistles to Asphalt 8, and just start fresh with Asphalt 9 for 2018 or something? Yeah, it's time for that. Leave out the "pay-to-win" and just make people buy the game outright instead of all these ads and buy this, buy that. Get rid of blueprints; get rid of tokens; have all cars cost no more than 125,000 - 465,000 credits to max out respective of their class; separate boosted players from non-boosted in multiplayer; iron out all the bugs and glitches that cause people to randomly wreck and skid; and no more extremely expensive vehicles with races that pay too little. I could go on with more things, but I believe this is good enough for now.


While the BlackBerry Q10 has a number of cases available for it, it does not have very many beltclip cases out there for it. Even smartphones like the Nokia Lumia 1520 oddly have a better variety. But of course, nothing beats the sheer number of the iPhone! They get every single case imaginable, which is quite frankly insane. The Samsung Flagships and others get a ton of variety too, but the iPhones apparently top them out. Anyways! So on my search for a beltclip case that wasn't black and bland, I was able to fortunately discover a blue case from the Mpero brand on eBay. I of course made sure that this was a good case for durability, and checked the sellers credentials before the purchase. Like most smartphone cases I purchased in the past, this one also came out from California. Now I'm under the impression that you can find smartphone cases for any smartphone in that that state! 🀣 No matter how exotic they are, or how unpopular your phone may be, Californian shops have them all! So now that I've had this case for a few days, I can tell you that I really do like it. Love both the colour and handiness of being able to clip it onto your belt or part of your pants. As for durability, I didn't do no hardcore testing since it's the only case I have, and the only Q10 I have on me. Still, it held up nicely to my fingernail scratches, and the moderate scissors scratch I've done on camera. Off camera (or more like today!), it also fell into a sink from around 50cm-60cm and did not crack or anything. 😐 That, was not intentional... Anyways, if you wish to buy this case, the exact name for it is: MPERO Collection 3 in 1 Tough Blue Kickstand Case for BlackBerry Q10. Now if you want it in pink or black, you'll just have to change the blue part. 


Pickering! It's been a while since I've made a video in you, so even though it was cold and lightly raining that day, I was feeling very driven to make a video that weekend in this city. Despite the weather, it turned out to be a very interesting walk around. And yes, Pickering's Brock Road and namesake Pickering Parkway are both very busy roads! As you will know from my commentary in the video, there are a number of parks in the area, but because I likely haven't ever been there, or have been there from too long ago to remember, I wasn't familiar with where exactly I was, until I saw the respective signs in the parks. But after wandering around for some time, it soon led to me an unexpected skateboard park that was filled with graffiti! I was originally going to name the video "Rainy Day on Brock Road in Pickering" or something along the lines of that, but as soon I ran into this, I knew that it would have been a much better idea to mention the catchy words "skateboard" and "graffiti" in the same title for a better click rate.  And the best part about it? What you see in the title, is what you get. Now while I personally do not think graffiti is good, it makes for very interesting photography sessions.


I sure put a lot of pictures into this entry haven't I? πŸ–Ό And notice how some of them have special effects? That's because I kept my word from last entry about how I'd do more testing with ProShot Classic, and surely it's a blast to use! Still don't know what's going on with the limited functions of Proshot, but that's because I admittedly haven't looked heavily into it. Proshot business aside, those of you who play Asphalt 8 will know that the new Munich Update has been out for some days, and boy does it sound problematic based on complaints I've read from the forums and other places! 😬 Gameloft has said that they have issued a hotfix that should fix these problems, but when and how will depend on your platform. I'm on Windows Phone, and have only spent around 20 minutes on it yesterday, so I have't noticed a ton yet. One thing I did notice, was how the race did not end in multiplayer after I crossed that line! It finished after running for another 20-30 seconds past the finish line! So, that's just one of many potential issues, but we'll see how severe my ultimate experience will be. And yes, while we speak of Asphalt 8, I do plan to do an experimental video of how I can capture a gameplay session of it on my Nokia Lumia 1520. There's also a certain a person that I REALLY need to do commentary video on! 😜 I'll try and get started on that today, so I can hopefully get it up sometime next week! Don't worry, it's not a hate, exposed, or roasted video. Though I know that's exactly what some of you would love to see, but I do not make such videos unless there's a 100% legitimate reason to do so. Now for the outdoor videos, I wasn't entirely sure where I'd be going this weekend, but I think I have an idea now. And before I conclude this entry, I'd like to say that I'm not fond of the fact that Daylight Savings ends on November 5 for most of us in Canada. I don't know why they couldn't just leave it an hour ahead and stop with this time shift. Some people will disagree about keeping it an hour ahead, but I'm sure we can all agree that it just needs to stop, right? Or do you disagree?πŸŒ‘☀πŸ•’

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Post-Canada Day 2017 Entry

GuuzakaTube                                                                                                       07/04/17

Post-Canada Day 2017 Entry

How ironic that I end up typing the Canada Day entry on American Independence Day! Well, the Canada 150 weekend is over, and both of the videos are now finally up, so it's time to discuss them and tell you about how Canada 150 went.

So as I tell you in the video itself, this was one of the “big” things I wanted to do for Canada 150, and that completing this was rather time consuming, but worth it! Another thing to point out that you wouldn't know is the fact that I said animating the frames was a breeze. It wasn't. Well, it certainly seemed like that at first. All I had to do was select all the frames, and set them to the same duration and presto! It worked at first, until when the computer kept given me various stupid/aggravating/annoying/pestilent/big-headed/infuriating/ridiculous/cheesy errors and excuses as to why the video just wouldn't publish to the desktop! One of these errors was error 0x887A0005, and some foolishness about the files going corrupt or how the graphics card needed to be updated. I was then concerned about whether it would be possible to create such a video, so I tried various things and tried to adjust the durations, but no avail. Eventually, I just had to resort to publishing 200 frames at a time. This meant that I had to create 12 parts... Goodness flipping gracious! It didn't take long, but seriously?! This computer is a Core i7, quad-core tool and it couldn't do the job properly?! Or was it Movie Maker to blame? Both maybe? Who knows! I was just glad that it finally freakin' worked! There's no way I'd let a project that took me a few days of 2300 pixels go to waste to easily! I determinedly fought for a solution and won the battle! Victory in time for Canada 150! I'll have the drawing uploaded to DeviantArt shortly.

This was the grand video of Canada 150: the fireworks! While it was a very lively, colourful event to watch, I'll be honest enough to say that it felt much like every other Canada Day fireworks. What do I mean by that? I was sort of expecting to see more colourful shots and even a 150 illuminate in the sky, but that didn't happen. At least not at the coastline I went to. Don't think such a thing happened anywhere else in Canada, but I could be wrong as I didn't watch the firework shows from other cities, save for a brief one from Ottawa. Despite my high-ish expectations, I wasn't disappointed so don't be under the impression that I was. My real disappointment was with all the other videos that I filmed to and around the site. That's right: there was supposed to be more Canada 150 videos on the channel, but because they turned out so darn awful, I was like, “You know what? Don't even bother editing these and putting them anywhere near internet!” So I followed my own warning and put them away as archives that I might not even really watch. Yeah, that's how bad they turned out. “Can I know what exactly was so bad about them?” you may ask. Lots of things: the sharpness/quality was substandard, the unsteadiness was absurdly bad, the audio was very annoying in some segments, and yeah, I think you get the idea by now. It's a bummer indeed, but at least you can watch the unique pixel video or the colourful fireworks video for your Canada 150 fix. Oh yeah, and speaking of fireworks video, I really hope that I won't get a copyright notice for the music in the background – Yep, I did! Great! Should I remove it so I can monetize the video or what? Sigh... A difficult decision. As much as I'd like to have the video monetized, it's going to cause a segment of the video to be completely silent and awkward. It may just be one song, but there are other songs in the background with Labels, so it would only be a matter of time before a notification comes up for them, so to play it safe and prevent the video from having awkward silences, I'll just have to grudgingly leave it in. Next time, I guess I'll just have to watch from a part of the coast away from the obnoxious speakers, which honestly kind of destroyed the beauty of the event. My 2015 and 2016 Canada Day videos were fortunate to be spared from this nonsense. Not to mention that I also had a better view and was much closer to the Lake. Oh well, better luck next time!


So I guess that does it for the Canada 150 hype! Well, guess not as hyped as it ought to be, and I made it sound more disappointing than I ought to in the last parts of the entry above. As I say, I would've been much happier if the other videos were suitable for publishing, and if I had gotten a better view away from the darn copyrighted music! For such reasons, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to focus more so on photography. Don't worry though, I was still able to take some great pictures, some of which I'll share to Instagram once I'm done with this blog post. So going forward from this Canada Day business, you may be wondering what's next? If you've been reading the previous entries, you'll know that I plan to focus mostly on commentaries and hopefully gaming videos for July, so that's exactly what I plan to do next! Oh yeah, speaking of games, if you actually bother to look at my Tweets as I instruct you to do during my call-to-actions, you'll see a Tweet about how I finished listening to Yooka-Laylee's entire soundtrack. Why this game? Not entirely sure, but I guess while I was browsing the internet and saw it come about somewhere, I remembered that this game is the spiritual successor to the much loved Banjo-Kazooie series. I also heard that it had the same composers, so this definitely inspired me to give it a listen. WOW! I definitely was not disappointed! The Banjo-Kazooie vibes is very strong within the soundtrack, and that's a good thing! I hear that some of the songs are also supposed to resemble the Donkey Kong games, but because I've never played them when I was younger, I would have never known without researching that and reading some of the YouTube comments on such videos. Now because I stopped playing video games years ago (my specialty is mobile games!) do not expect me to play these games. Not that you wanted to anyway, but you know? Anyways! That does it for this entry, so let's get it published!

Saturday, March 11, 2017

March 09, 2017 Uploads

GuuzakaTube 3.11.17

March 09, 2017 Uploads

Alright, so this entry is “late” as it should have been done by the 10th at latest. Why wasn't it done? Heh, heh, heh... Tardiness, procrastination, slackness, and the list goes on. For a while, I've done a great job at typing the entry while the videos were uploading, with there even being the odd occasion where I'd type the entry before even uploading. Let's get back to that! While I'd really rather not type this right now, I hate the feeling of doing last week's “homework” in a new week, so I'm getting this done today so I focus clearer for next week. Now, let's discuss the following: Nighttime Traffic on Highway of Heroes @ Thickson Road, Newcastle Public School, and Farrow Avenue (Newcastle).

Remember the Highway Life video? Yeah, that video was done last summer in 2016. I wanted to get another highway video done, this time at night! The purpose of the video was to do a comparison between 1080p and 720p @ 60 frames per second, but I unfortunately didn't get around to doing that in this video, so you'll just have to make do with the 1080p only. Either way, the video turned out “noisy” or rather grainy and blurry in other words, so nobody's likely going to want to watch it. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't bother watching the whole 12 minutes! Or would you? Maybe if you were really bored? Anyways, I believe I used Night Mode + HDR + 1080p for this video. As already mentioned, it looks like the 8MP BlackBerry camera did not cope well with the darkness, fast moving subjects, and all those lights. Still, it has not, and will not stop me from shooting the occasional night video. The fact that Daylight saving time 2017 in Ontario will begin at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 12, means that nighttime will arrive much later. That may likely put me off, since I don't like to leave the house at late hours, but still won't completely stop me from filming night videos. I've tried to look into what kind of sensor it is, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a clear source for what the BlackBerry Q10 or Z10 uses. What is it?! Is it an ISOCELL? A Sony Exmor? Carl Zeiss? Wish I knew! Oh well... Maybe I'll find out someday. If I don't, not a big deal because I'm not going to be using this camera forever, that's for sure.



Ah, Newcastle. Have I ever been to this place? No, can't recall ever coming here, though of course, it's possible that I may have been there when I was much younger. If I haven't, then great! It was truly an all-new adventure! Either way, one thing's certain is that it was my first time filming in Newcastle, as you will learn from watching the video. The title and entry makes it clear as daylight that I chose to visit Newcastle Public School for my first video out here, but why? Why did I choose Newcastle Public School as the first subject to film? Well, Newcastle is a small town with not a ton to see or do within the urban area, and because I've been filming schools quite a lot lately, I figured that I'd check out one of their schools and make it my first video of this town. And so I did. Unfortunately, it just had to be biting cold that day, which took away some of my joy, but whatever. It was a really cool place to wander around, and had a lot to see. In fact, I'd even say that it was more interesting than Military Trail Public School, thanks to all the parks, fields and those xylophones! I would have loved to have spent more time hammering out tunes on those xlyophones, but the combination of a running nose, and biting cold weather, made it difficult to film and look down for extended periods of time. Gosh winter! Are you going to end soon?! Even today, as I write this entry, it was freakin' -12°C! During the March 6-10 period, it was comparatively mild, until Friday settled in, and then the weekend decided to go even lower! Wow! This is not what March is supposed to feel like in this part of the country! Come on! Warm up! Alright, onto discussing the next place I filmed in Newcastle. Because the entry is late, no photos have been uploaded to Instagram during the March 6-10 period, but they'll come after I proofread this, upload it, and then Tweet the videos along with it.



The 2nd video I filmed in Newcastle. So, as you can tell from the title and what not, you obviously know that I filmed a road that goes by the name Farrow, but why exactly did I decide to film such a random, rustic road? When I was looking at the map of Newcastle for a location(s) to film, I saw a few potential spots that would be ideal to film. This was one of them, since it wasn't too hard to find, and the fact that it was going to be random, quiet and rustic, made it more appealing for a secondary video from Newcastle to go with the idea of doing a school, then a road video. I was going to talk about the audio, but there's no point since there's an “ATA1201058-like” excuses slide to give you the scoop. Instead, I'll go into more details about the abrupt ending. There's an explanation for that too, but it served as an important reminder to myself to stop filming once you've recorded around 25 minutes worth of videos, when the temperatures are very cold. By that, I'm talking like maybe -8°C and lower. Before, it used to be hard to get close to 30 minutes of footage outdoors in biting temperatures, until I discovered that attaching a portable charger prolongs it. Brilliant! Right? Unfortunately, as I've learned that day and today, is that the phone still shuts off after a certain point, even with the charger attached! What?! WHY?! I don't know if it's something phones are supposed to do, regardless of whether there's a charger attached or not. Maybe it was the type of power bank? Maybe it was the phone? Maybe Canada is just too damn cold! Who knows! The only way to find out for sure is to test various types of smartphones, with various types of powerbanks on days of around -8°C, but heh. That will surely require a lot of $$$$$$$. Cash aside, I'd love to see how the iPhone 7 Plus, Nokia Lumia 950 XL, BlackBerry Passport, LG V20 and Google Pixel XL fare outdoors, with and without power banks. Oh ho ho ho ho hooooooooooo! Anyways, I've complained about shut offs for long enough, so now I'll complain about the video's sharpness: why did it have to turn out so bad, all because I enabled stabilization in the editing software? You see, based on what I've seen in a fair bit of my 2016 videos, that is the very reason why I haven't bothered to stabilize my videos within Movie Maker: it degrades the quality a little too much! Sometimes it'd degrade it so badly, that I'd go back, turn it off, and republish a video before settling on a goodcopy. Yeah, I know. I'm sure 4K videos probably wouldn't suffer that – ok! This has gone from being about Farrow Avenue to Avenue of Complaints, so I'll just continue with this below. Aside from the finger biting cold and shut offs, Farrow Avenue was a nice, quiet road to wander down and film. I would have done more additional coverage on it, had the camera not die after 13 minutes. Thankfully, it happened when I was almost near the end.



Alright, so as I was fussing about from above, I believed that it is only 1080p or lower videos, that suffer most from the WM stabilization, obviously because the resolution is simply lower. The shakier and lower the resolution, the more your video suffers. That said, most phones that do have 4K, also have their own, proper, built-in OIS, so they wouldn't even need stabilization support from any video editing software. There are some phones out there with 4K and no optical image stabilization, but probably not very many. So! The outdoor videos have been coming, so where's the commentary video I've been talking about for like the past two or three entries? Still in the works... Sigh... I've got the audio and what not, done for it, so I can safely say that it should be on the channel the coming week. Not Monday, but likely Tuesday-Thursday. I've also filmed an outdoor video, so that will be uploaded along with it, but my priority will be finishing the commentary first, before I start editing it. Gaming videos? Meh, as you'll know from reading more recent entries, they're not a priority, but that doesn't mean that I've stopped. Maybe when I can become more consistent and organized with other things, then they'll come, but there's certainly no rush here.