soundtrack Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

28 – Mired Moody Mindset

This mix largely exists because of an anchor song, like these mixtapes often start. I was sitting in the car listening to the radio before going to a doctor’s appointment, and “Sultans of Swing” came on, and I stalled long enough to listen to the entire song. I’ve always liked Dire Straits and specifically that song, and it made me realize that I had not really dived into a lot of the more moody and almost wistful in a melancholic manner style of music that I really seem to love. For example, up until this point, there was not a single list that I felt I could really place Big Dipper by Cracker on, or the song that always brings me to tears… Jimi & Stan by Strand of Oaks. These mixes show you a piece of my soul each time, and this one… drills straight through the core of me. It is through these mixes that I have also found a lot of community with people who have listened to them and struck up conversations about songs that they have not thought about in decades. If I am going to get through this, I am going to need a lot more of that community, which is a challenge given how fucking awkward and introverted I am. Thanks for being here throughout the years, and if you regularly listen to these mixtapes… thanks for sharing in my nonsense. I guess I will stop stalling and get to the track list.

Track List

01 – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult

02 – The Chain – Fleetwood Mac

03 – Heroes – David Bowie

04 – Sultans of Swing – Dire Straits

05 – Message in A Bottle – The Police

06 – Who’ll Stop The Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival

07 – Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones

08 – Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix

09 – Big Dipper – Cracker

10 – The Night We Met – Lord Huron

11 – Red Hill Mining Town – U2

12 – Here Comes Your Man – The Pixies

13 – Cherry Bomb – John Mellencamp

14 – Jimi & Stan – Strand of Oaks

15 – The Waiting – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Listen To It Yourself

It feels like I am working through the stages of grief in mixtape form recently. I just might not be going through them in exactly the same order as normal. I might be in a bit of the bargaining phase because I have been doing a bunch of things in the hopes of improving my success through chemo. I know the Tirzepatide that I am on causes muscle loss, so I have started doing a bit of light weight training, and on some level, I am hoping the universe notices that I am trying and gives me a fucking break. It is weird how fast this mix came together, honestly, because some of the songs are ones that I have not really thought about in years, but suddenly popped into my mind as I was assembling this. For example, Red Hill Mining Town is phenomenal, but I had not thought about that since the album it came out on was on regular rotation for me. Similarly, Cherry Bomb by John Mellencamp is a phenomenal track, but it had not popped into my head in decades. I have decided that I will be disowning “The Librarian” though because he referred to this as “Yacht Rock”, and I present that there is not a single Christopher Cross or Michael McDonald track on this list. This is way more thoughtful than that particularly vapid movement of music.

I have a few more posts that I know I want to make this week, including talking about a book that is sort of awful but at the same time thought-provoking enough that I want to talk about it. As always you can see the full list of my mixes over on the archives.

Life in Tornado Alley

A few days at it was 40* out, and now it is 72* this early in the morning. While yes I live in Oklahoma, where the weather pattern can change in the blink of an eye. However even for us this seems a bit abrupt. It seems that Tornado season has snuck up on us. Over the next several evenings we have a chance of a Tornado each and every night. The high today is supposed to get up to 83* and it reminds me all too much of last year. When we jumped from temperatures in the 40s to temperatures in the 90s over a few weeks. It seems like we are getting less and less of a “spring” to enjoy. Thankfully nothing has really materialized yet out of the Tornado threat, but we still have several more nights of watching the local station to make sure nothing is going on.

Today is the day we purchase our new refrigerator. We ended up deciding on a side by side, because it gives us more freezer space. We eat an inordinate amount of frozen foods, and really don’t keep much in the fridge side apart from leftovers. Additionally I have always wanted ice and water in the door. Growing up we never had a fridge that was not the traditional over/under kind, and I coveted going to friends houses where they had cold water “on tap”. We’ve spent most of the week eating up anything from our freezer to attempt to make the transition that will likely occur this weekend “easier”. We waited this long primarily because we have a friend who works at the appliance store, and they are starting a 10% off sale today. It will be nice to just have this over with and have a new and fully functional fridge in its place.

Banished Cells and Fungal Grotto

In MMO gaming there is what is “doable” and then there is what is “optimal”. Folks have relied on the Holy Trinity mixture of 1 healer, 1 tank and 2-3 dps for years as the “optimal” build. However in Elder Scrolls Online the lines get blurred a bit. So far we have made two healers, a tank and a dps work fairly well, and struggled a bit with the 1/1/2 combination that would seem optimal. To mix things up a bit we decided to try running a few dungeons with 2 tanks, 1 healer, 1 dps. It was somewhat painful, but once Kodra and I got the hang of working together it actually went pretty smoothly. I feel like in Elder Scrolls there is not really a viable option that does not include healing… however there are several different ways to build a high survival dps. Similarly I think someone with crowd control would be able to make up for there being a tank.

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVThe next mixture I would like to see is now that several of us are 15 and can do weapon swaps… to throw on a two hander or dual wield and run the dungeons to see if we can get by without a “true” tank. Another interesting thing we figured out is that apparently after running Spindleclutch, we had access to all three dungeons via the waystone network. So as a result we ended up running the Banished Cells in the above video, and Fungal Grotto in the below video. I am not sure what was going on with either Twitch or OBS for for whatever reason both of the videos exported to youtube SUPER jerky. If you watch the twitch version it seems to be just fine, so I might try deleting the youtube version and re-exporting.

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVOne of the interesting things we learned is along the same lines as what I was talking about yesterday regarding splitting the pulls. It seems like the mobs in these dungeons fight in “Kung-Fu Movie Mode” of sorts, in that when you pull one, a number of them will engage you, but not ALL of the pack. The others will sit back and cheer on the ones fighting, but if you engage them… they will engage you back. This means that things like charge and dragon’s leap are really bad ideas in the Elder Scrolls Dungeon infrastructure. As a result we changed up our methods and started pulling with me yanking a single mob out with fiery grip. Then working on the fly to lock down whatever happens to come with the pull.

After figuring this out… Fungal Grotto went remarkably smooth as did a Spindleclutch run that we did afterwards. I think we finally figured out the “plan” of the dungeons, and it is pretty damned awesome. I like that the mobs seem to interact, and while you may aggro an entire pack… they won’t necessarily all come at once leading you to have significantly longer and more endurance sapping fights than short term brute force ones. We managed to make it through a lot of those huge pulls, because we had more healing than we needed. Now that we know the “real” way to run the dungeons, I feel like we could mix up the group make up quite a bit and come up with lots of potentially winning combinations.

Amazing Soundtrack

Another really awesome thing from yesterday is that the Elder Scrolls Online soundtrack is now available for purchase. At first I was a bit pissy when I found out that neither the collectors edition or digital deluxe editions included the soundtrack. However upon seeing it, I am guessing a big part of the reason why is just how big the soundtrack is. Right now you can get it for $8.99 on Amazon and it is a whopping 47 tracks. I guess if you are so included you can pay what seems to be the iTunes tax and get it for $16 bucks there as well. Apparently it is also up on the Google play store for $9.49, and as such available through their Google Music streaming service if you are so inclined. Whatever your venue of choice… I highly suggest you grab this.

Elder Scrolls Online is a gorgeous game, and similarly has an amazing soundtrack… however in the game you are under a constant state of sensory overload. Listening to the soundtrack I was in awe of just how great some of the tracks were, that I knew i had heard snippets of in game… but simply was not able to fully appreciate. I am hoping that the Battle Bards do an upcoming episode on the soundtrack, as with 47 different tracks… there really is something for everyone on it. I don’t care… I am definitely a fan boy here, but that is perfectly okay. This is now pretty much on my permanent “coding” and “writing” music selection. Over the years I have found myself listening to more and more game/movie soundtracks and less and less traditional music. I feel like it is easier to zone into whatever I am doing when the track is primarily instrumental.