This is a nice metaphor for creation, for the beginning of something new, nice. And i honestly hope that this is a beginning of something great.
So, where to begin? Well, I will not write everything about my past now. That will come between the lines of posts. But I can tell you now, that my life till now was full of turns and surprises.
And for sure one of the best turns that I make in my life is the last one. For sure, I'll never regret the decision to apply for Erasmus exchange.
And now that I'm finally here in Tampere, Finland, it's kinda awesome. Although I'm here only for two days now, a lot has happened and a lot is going to happened in this next weeks.
So this is the beginning, beginning of something nice, great and awesome.
See you around :)
So recently I've noticed that my YouTube channel has been getting exponentially more views, subscribers, and comments. With this increased exposure, I've also noticed a distinct rise in immature comments ranging from a simple disagreement with a test I've run to flat out cursing for little reason. It doesn't really phase me much, but it makes me wonder... if this is what happens when you become "famous", why are so many folks seemingly obsessed with the idea of becoming "famous"?
What an awesome way to end the season! Although Mother Nature still managed to land the hottest day of the week on our game yet again, it's still better than other games we've had this summer. The extreme heat felt through the midwest certainly fatigued even our most seasoned players, but in the end, it's another successful run that I'm proud to have been a part of.
Cookout was one of the best we've had, in my honest opinion. Burgers, hot dogs, Gatorade, chips, cookies, we had all the bases covered. Great turnout too, with 21 people making it out, despite the heat. We usually see a slight drop in attendance on the last game as some folks are already back into the swing of things with school and such. Still had a great bunch of folks for the evening's activities.
Games went well, with the exception of one drawn-out "Veterans vs n00bs" game. 6 veterans on a team up against 13 of our newer players looked to be a fun game until everyone decided to hide instead of play the game. Our last game of the night fixed that problem though, as we unveiled a new rule for our Zombies game. With the LTXs and LTARs, if you leave the blaster on for too long without any activity (ie, shooting, reloading, taking hits), the blaster automatically turns itself off. We made a rule for the Humans that traditionally like to stake out a spot and hide the duration of the game that you can only reload/fire when there's actually an enemy present. While this is a nearly impossible rule to enforce, everyone took it to heart and played a great active game of Humans vs Zombies, lazer tag style! It came down to the final minutes as the remaining Humans were fighting for their lives against the rest of the zombie horde. Upon tagging them out in the last minute, we learned there was still one more human left. By our rules, the humans still won since one of them survived. It was still a great game though!
Across the board, things have been kinda quiet. Not just on my blog, but my "Big 3" (SG Nerf, NM&R, Urban Taggers) have been kinda slow recently. The reason? Probably just that there's not a whole lot of new Nerf stuff out there and it's a transitional time. Season is changing, kids are going back to school, and football nuts going to be living off of ESPN and Pepsi Max for awhile. What am I up to? Good question!
Things in my personal life will be getting busier too. My girlfriend (not married yet! Rumor control!) has been studying abroad in Austria for the past 6 weeks. Admittedly, I've had a lot more free time to spend on my hobbies to help distract me from the fact that she's been gone for so long. She returns Wednesday which is great for me, not so much for my blog. I'll also be getting a new job come September 1st, which will be taking a bit more of my time than my current job has. While it's great for my wallet, I will have considerably less free time to shoot videos, do tests, and other blog-tastic stuff. 
Not to bash any of my subscribers, viewers, and commentators on my YouTube channel, but ever since the "Nerf Retaliator vs Elite Longshot" video seemingly went Viral... I've had a flurry of comments asking where I bought the Elite Longshot, condemning me that the Elite Longshot isn't real, and just general abusive comments that I rarely see on this blog. 
I'd like to thank everyone who's been following the blog, defending the Elite Longshot on YouTube and just for your general support. I'll keep trying to educate folks on the fact that the Elite Longshot is just a mod I made, nothing real. On the one hand, I guess it's a compliment that so many folks are fooled by it's appearances. However, in the fame that this video has picked up, it's been kind of annoying seeing all the hate out there, so I appreciate those who have been trying to save me the trouble of correcting the incorrect assumptions and condemnations that I'm a fraud somehow.
Oh, and where have I been the last week? My girlfriend is finally back in town, getting my schedule set up for my new job and my music gigs/shows coming up, chasing storms, and having fun with Subarus. Consider last week my "Vacation" from hobbies! I'll be back with something on Monday (August 27th).
Do they improve performance? No, not really. Do they look awesome in photos? You bet! I've been a fan of working on blaster aesthetics for awhile. From the Yellow Longstrike barrel I made to the Whiteout Spectre, a lot of my mods have been aimed at making them look stock... and tricked out. Today I tried doing a little more with Elite Accessories. I already made an "Elite" stock out of a Raider and the Super Soaker stock, so I decided to give similar treatment to my Longstrike Barrel and a blue Longshot scope.
I actually stopped mid-way through working on the scope because I just didn't really like how it turned out. I painted all the yellow spots on the sight white and started working on detailing, but I just stopped. The hue is a bit too dark to match the rest of the blaster anyways. You'll notice I didn't even bother finishing painting the yellow bit behind the fake orange knob on the sight. I may try to add some dark gray in there to help make this accessory not quite so... ugly. However, I'm not really motivated to do much with it since it doesn't match well with the blaster's blue color anyways. 
Hasbro has launched the "official" Lazer Tag website. While it's good to have online presence, the website itself overlooks a major factor that I see as a marketing flaw that is reflected in their advertisements abroad, including the box. Take a look around the website and what you'll find is a complete lack of anything indicating that this can be used without the iOS device. To show you how confident I am, I'll give an LTAR blaster to the first person who can show me on the website where they show the LTAR being used without an iOS Cradle. Even in the videos, if you can find a screenshot of the blaster without an iOS, I'll gladly send you your own LTAR.
The only mention of the LTAR being able to function without an iPod or iPhone is in small white text on the side of the box. Nowhere on the website or in any commercial is there ANY mention of using the blaster like this. Even in the FAQ section they completely glaze over the fact that the LTAR works without the iOS, which seems to be the main deterrence for sales of this new system.
Last night I finally decided to pick up the Elite Hailfire, the flagship of the N-Strike Elite lineup. It's been out for a little while and I didn't really have an interest in it. However, the completionist in me wanted to finish my Elite collection, so I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about.
Good luck with trying to use accessories on this fella. The grip on top pretty much negates the use of any aiming device and the rail in front is so tiny that it can really only use the Retaliator's foregrip or the Stampede's Bipod. They're really just there to make it look "Tacti-cool". I have, however, managed to use the Lightningstorm shield on the front pretty well, so if you've got that Super Soaker, you could go with that option.
Alright, I need a new trigger finger. Anyone got one they can loan me? But I digress... I decided to load up my newly acquired Hailfire with 144 darts. I don't have 8 of the 18 Dart Clips lying around, so I cheated by putting an extra dart in a 35 round drum and used 6 other 18 round Clips. Unfortunately, during the test, the Firefly Tech clip decided to not feed correctly, so I didn't get a 100% accurate test. Still, if you've got the stamina in your trigger finger and nothing jams and you can swap from clip to clip with no problems, you can dish out 144 darts in just under a minute. While I realize that there's no combat situation where you would need to do such a thing, it's really just a testament to how long you could last in a game armed to the teeth with this Hailfire.
While I may not have been super busy with games, projects, or otherwise, don't think I've forgotten about it! Life right now is a little busy, what with a new job, music gigs coming out my ears, moving into a new place, and just general life craziness, I haven't had time to actually pick up a blaster and mod it or have a game with friends recently. Whilst running through this hobby drought, I do have a few things coming up quickly.
Next in line is related to that Halloween Laser Tag game. Progress is slowly coming along on my Colonial Marine costume. I have a few ideas on how to build/replicate the distinctive armor they used in the film and the Pulse Rifle isn't too far off from completion.
September 3rd is Labor Day (US) which means we get a 3 day weekend! Well, as it turns out, I'm helping plan a Nerf Game that'll actually be outdoors, as opposed to our usual indoor Nerf Games that I partake in. A friend mentioned that he wanted to do a game at a park with some friends, so naturally I wanted to join them. 
I've only done a handful of outdoor games and each time they've been only 5 or 6 people at the most and at the end of the game, I end up wishing we had used laser tag instead. With their limited range, the cleanup of the darts, and the general inaccuracy that is worsened by the slightest breeze, I choose laser tag over Nerf in an outdoor setting any day. While I do recognize that there are homemade blasters and darts that can offer better performance that is more suited for an outdoor setting, it doesn't help that no-one else around me modifies blasters like that. I could be a "Trendsetter" and be the first that would likely trigger others to do the same, but most of the folks who play Nerf with us also play Laser Tag, so we tend to stick with that for our outdoor games. However, with better turnout anticipated for this game, I might have to start Nerfing outdoors. I'll just have to see how this game pans out!
Well, the N-Strike lineup isn't exactly free of recolors, but at least up until now they've been promoted as just that: alternate coloration variants of your favorite blasters. TheWhiteout Series, the Sonic Series, the Clear Series, all of the other N-Strike recolors haven't really tried to BE anything else but that. 
The N-Strike Elite Lineup, I had hoped, would just be launched with some retooled blasters. The Retaliator (Recon), Rampage (Raider), and Stockade (Barricade) were all just updated versions of their N-Strike counterparts. While these are still more than just a recolor, since they have improved performance with better internals, there's not a whole lot of "wow" factor to them outside of that. The Elite Lineup has really only had one "unique" design come through in the Hail-Fire. The Firestrike and Strongarm are both new shell designs, but they're based on tried-and-true N-Strike blasters (the Nitefinder and Maverick, respectively) and now we've got another recolor: the Pinpoint Sight. 
However, there was a casualty amidst the fun. The OMW Longstrike's breech broke, in the same place as it had before. This is the replacement part Orange Mod Works sent me and even while the blaster is using thew 5kg spring instead of the original 6kg spring and using the Xplorer top-grip to single-hand prime the blaster while keeping pressure even to both sides, the kit still failed. I am extremely unhappy with this result and will likely not even bother asking for another replacement from them. It also has me rethinking the long-standing pre-order on the Immortal Longshot kit, as my faith in OMW has been dwindling ever since the kit delays in January of 2012. It has been nothing but overpriced products with long delays and failing parts the past few months. I'm seriously reconsidering doing any future business with OMW when it comes to their kits (aside from springs, which I don't think they're capable of screwing up). After every precaution was taken with this Longstrike, the same failure happens.
Today I decided to open it up and fix this. I removed the bolt sled and breech, peeled off the OMW logo that had once donned the top-grip before, and re-installed the stock parts. I probably won't even bother asking for a replacement part at this point, as I have no desire to continue to run unreliable parts in my Whiteout Longstrike. I'll be keeping the 5kg spring, the OMW plunger tube (since I haven't seen any of those break) and the metal catch and discarding the leftover breech parts. I thought about using the bolt sled, but it seemed like more work than it was worth at the time.
Once I put the blaster back together, I tested it out with some Elite darts and set it aside for it's next game. I'm pretty confident it'll be more reliable in it's current state to whomever I end up loaning it out to. I have also decided to cancel my Immortal Longshot kit I've ordered from them. Experience with OMW tells me that regardless of how much time they spend on testing out these parts (which was the main delay on the Massacre kits) that it'll still be an unreliable and breakage-prone design. I'll let someone else be the guinea pig for that release.
Yesterday I hosted an indoor Lazer Tag game for "FAUST", a university theater club on campus, that engulfed the stairwells and hallways of the Fine Arts building in battle. I've been running games, when asked by their event coordinators, for about 3 years now and it's always a great time! We actually had quite the equipment shortage going on thanks to the epic turnout, so we improvised a few fun games to make up for this.
24 in total attendance along with myself and an MLTA veteran who's been helping me run games like this for quite awhile. We had all of our LTXs out, as well as our two LTARs and 4 backup LTTO Deluxes running for these games. We had a rolling respawn team game that worked out pretty well, but the best events we had was "Horde Mode". We Split the group of 24 up into 6 teams of 4. Each team got a chance to battle the "horde" and see how long they could survive against them. The Survival Team of 4 was set on 25 hits and were outfitted with Shotblasts on their LTXs. The Horde Team of the remaining 20 players were set on 10 hits and basic equipment with unlimited respawns.
Things initially started off in favor of the Survival team, as the horde was largely unorganized and were getting picked off pretty quickly. By the second round, the horde had a plan to take out the survival team by sweeping each of the 4 floors as rapidly as possible and alerting other players when they had found the survival team to hone in on their position. Thanks to the building layout and it's massive staircases, the horde mode quickly found that speed was starting to work against them, as their players were exhausted from sprinting up and down flights of stairs. By the 3rd and 4th rounds, the horde had slowed back down and the time was favoring the survival teams. The best survival team by the end of the night was just under 18 minutes, which was largely due to the last survivor's expert run-and-gun tactics.