Mike Dragon

 

American Truck Simulator's anniversary convoy just ended. It was a fun ride. Had some hiccups along the way thanks to a stupid Turkish VTC full of yellow trucks who were overtaking everyone at high speed and causing some accidents as well as one fellow who was doing the same but on a much worse scale. Other than that it was alright. At the end we were supposed to ditch our trailers before entering Darchelle but I wasn't paying attention to the warning in the chat. Not until @El1teZombiezHD  called me out directly in the chat when I was almost in. lol I quickly ditched the thing on the move (I was going slowly) in a tiny moment of panic and caused my engine to stall and die. Sorry about that! I was paying too much attention to the traffic to realize I should have ditched the trailer earlier. My bad.

 

Here's a few screenshots from the trip!

 

There were too many people in Sunflower Crop's yard and the frames were too low. Thankfully I found a good spot in front of @NoTime4name and managed to make my way out of that mess. Much better!

 

Admins guarding the road.

 

Eventually the convoy started, led by Sgt. Salt! With about 20 minutes of delay. Which was good, because I got slightly late. I arrived with my trailer on the server at the exact time the trip was originally scheduled to begin.

 

Found some other familiar faces, too!

 

And @The Scottish Lad seems to have found himself a way to get the fabled double trailer!

 

Or is that actually a trailer hat?

 

Also this mess happened. RIP everyone.

 

A break on the Golden Gate Bridge to admire the sunset and take a few pictures.

 

Arriving at Eureka's Darchelle Whateverthesecondnameis.

 

Admins, you know what to do with @Mirrland.

 

And here we are, the final destination.

 

When the place filled up and there were no more parking spots left, the entrance was closed so those who couldn't make it in had to stay out in the cold.

 

It was quite warm indoors. Hot chocolate was served (noitwast).

 

Poor @NoTime4name couldn't make it in.

 

Then again, it seems @El1teZombiezHD  couldn't, either. At least they could keep each other company. lol

 

 

It was a fun journey, in the end. It was great seeing and driving along some familiar faces.

 

 

See you all on ETS2 for the next official convoy!

"Today I'll finish this commission" has been a lie for the past two Sunday streams but having said that, today I'll finish this commission! lol Join me for today's Chill Art Sunday and let find out together how much of a lie that is going to be today. Hahah.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon/

 

@RepaiR @Blah1945 @Killua // Ireland ^_^ @ALLIANCE Jean M. (SP-BR) @_Russian @[VTCSL] Harsha @Der Joey @[JET BLUE] - LeiTo @mcglynn14 @JamesS014 @Bears I DarkMoon [RU/EN] @Mehmet [23] @Herr Müller [GER]

I think that's all of you. Did I forget someone? Thank you so much, guys. 

 

@The Scottish Lad, @sko0923, @KhaosHammer, @Microsoft Windows 10 Pro, @M.J.

 

@A Simple Cheeseburger

 

@Penguin  

 

https://forum.truckersmp.com/index.php?/profile/666-mike-dragon/&status=82592&type=status

 

Here's the warrior and her battle scar, taking a nap in one of her favorite spots:

http://blog.scssoft.com/2018/01/somethings-cooking.html

OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OREGON!OREGON!OREGON!OREGON!!!

 

 

I hope it's Oregon! *-* And hopefully they get to add a new truck soon. That licensing situation is really starting to get to me. D:

http://fav.me/dag5hag

http://fav.me/dapk9kr

Remember last night when I complained about some of my reports being declined for no real reason by this one admin simply because the reported player was already banned when the report was reviewed and that it was BS? So, like I did with an old report, which was declined by this one admin for that "reason" but then I filed it again later, it was reviewed by another admin and ACCEPTED, I re-filed this last declined report. The player's latest ban would expire today but guess what? The same flipping admin took in the report and declined again telling me to stop spamming the reports? Oh, but get a load of this... this time he added ban time to the player's ban and added my evidence. SO WHY THE HELL DECLINE THE FRACKING REPORT AND TELL ME NOT TO SPAM IF YOU ACCEPTED IT THIS TIME?! What the actual buck?
 
That's it. As I said last night, one more nonsense from this admin and I would mail @Clarkinator. And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm fed up of this person indirectly picking on me. It's the 4th time. Enough is enough.

Crashes Compilation 27 is out! 

Thanks to @Smalley, @DavidOC93 | Killua, @HerrSwizz and @TruckBro for submitting/allowing some of their clips to be this episode.  

*Rant mode ON*

Why is it so difficult to find a good keyboard, these days?

 

I've had this keyboard I am using for quite some years now. It's a great keyboard. REALLY comfortable to type with, it looks nice, it has a very practical multimedia panel and the command keys are very easy to reach without having to teach yourself to hit a specific spot if you are not looking at the keyboard while typing. The right Shift key has just the right length and the Enter key is only as wide as it should be. The Arrow keys are centered under the Insert/Delete/Home/Page Up/Page Down keys as they should instead of being cluttered together with other keys and the Num Pad has a space of its own. Oh, and my favorite: The keys are slim. It's a simple, but really great keyboard that I love to use and it has served me really well for almost ten years, now. It is great for work and great for games AND it is water resistant! In fact, I slipped milk on it once a long time ago and absolutely no damage was caused to it.

 

Everything in this keyboard is just perfect and it has never let me down. However, like everything in this world, some day it will malfunction or stop working completely and I will need a replacement. I've had it for almost a whole decade (man, time goes by so quickly!) and the more time passes, the more I worry about the arrival of that day so I have been trying to prepare myself and find a worthy replacement but holy balls! It's been impossible to find something decent that can live up to the standard my current keyboard has got me used to!

 

Let's begin by the basics and main thing: Key layouts. 8 out of 10 keyboard models I ever looked at so far have crappy layouts. Tiny right Shift key, an Enter key that's as tall as any letter key, arrow keys and others that are completely offset and crammed underneath the letters, tiny Backspace and/or CapsLock, etc. Like the one below (look at my keyboard above to compare and see what I mean):

 

Then there's the multimedia panel. Those buttons that are usually at the top of the keyboard and offer practical shortcuts to things such as your internet homepage, Back, Next, Mute, Volume Up, Volume Down, Play, Pause, Stop, etc. My keyboard has a button for Play and Pause and one for Stop so I can have full control of the music or movie I em enjoying, whether or not it is playing in the background or not. I can pause it if I want or completely stop it to start again from the beginning if I so desire. All other keyboard I find only have Play/Pause. No Stop button! Is it so hard to put those buttons on the same keyboard? Not to mention those who do have all these multimedia buttons, but they are attached to the F keys (F1, F2, F3, etc) as Function keys, so you have to press the Fn key to use them. Or the other way around, have the F keys as Functions, which is just as bad.

 

And then there's the key themselves. I love slim keys (those that are short in height, like on my keyboard) and I want them on my next keyboard but it's so difficult to find one that has them! It's all about the traditional height with all keyboards these days, it seems. And don't even get me started on those "gamer" type keyboards. The keys on most I've seen are huge and 8 out of 10 of them don't even have a multimedia panel. Also I find them ugly. I honestly fail to see their appeal.

 

All of those points are separate things by themselves and of course, there are keyboards that have some of the good features my keyboard has combined, like a decently practical multimedia panel, decent keys layout, etc. Though the keyword on most cases is "some". All few models I could find so far that are the least sucky in comparison to my keyboard either have one or two of the features I like in a keyboard. Never all of them (or at least most of them). It's either a good layout with a bad or completely absent multimedia panel or if it does have that, the layout is bad and in most cases, no slim keys. Look at this one, for example... the keys are not as slim as I like but the keyboard looks nice and it has a multimedia panel and decent layout, but the panel doesn't have Stop and the Enter key is just a slab, which makes it easy to hit the key above it by accident, instead:

 

And then there's also the comfort aspect. A couple years ago I did find a keyboard that seemed to have all the good attributes I like in my keyboard so I bought it. I bought it online so I could not check how the keys feel and what a deception it is! The multimedia panel has all the stuff I wanted, the keys are slim and the layout is good, but the keys are really hard to press! Type on that thing is absurdly uncomfortable!

 

Today I found what seems to be a good option, though. The multimedia panel has all the buttons I wanted plus a couple more, the keys, although not as low as on my keyboard, are said to be slim (they are definitely not the regular height), the layout is good, the size of Enter, Backspace, etc. is just right and it looks alright. But why must the keyboard itself be so large!? And why must the Volume Up and Down be so massive!? D:< :

https://www.kabum.com.br/produto/12932/teclado-c3-tech-multimidia-usb-preto-kb2202-2-bk

 

I am actually considering to buy this one to keep as a replacement but because it's an online purchase, I have no way of knowing how comfortable and soft those keys are, so despite all other attributes appear to be promising, it's still a shot in the dark. And I have been there! Don't want to repeat that experience once more.

 

Back in the day, find keyboards with all of the good attributes I listed throughout this text was not difficult. I actually could find many different options even at the local stores so... what the heck happened?! Why and when did it become so difficult to find such good keyboards that are capable of suiting all your needs?

Gaming Friday is about to go live. On tonight's stream: Euro Truck Simulator 2 multiplayer. Join and let us have a little chat!
 

https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon/

 

Gaming Friday is starting now! On tonight's stream: Dragon's Wake!

 

Come and join me as I play through the game as a little dragon!

https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon/

 

Gaming Friday will begin in about an hour. Follow me on Twitch to catch it!

https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon/

 

Gaming Friday will begin in about two hours, at 6 PM eastern, don't'cha forget! The Friday and Sunday streams will be happening one hour earlier for the next few months due to daylight saving time in the northern hemisphere having made clocks go back by one hour. For me, where I live, it's still gonna happen at 7 PM but for folks in this time zone up north of the globe, that's gonna be 6 PM for a few months. The Chill Art Sunday streams, which are normally at 3 PM on this time zone, will happen at 2 PM eastern time, on Sundays.

 

Regardless, follow me on Twitch to catch it all! 

https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon/

 

Guns of Icarus Online is currently free on Humble Bundle. I don't know if it is any good, but it's free! Go grab yourself a copy!

 

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/guns-of-icarus-online?linkID=&mcID=102:59f101f80fab4ee673b99fd8:ot:58272826f7bb513ff1ae3abe:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017_10_26_HauntedHalloweenSale_store&utm_content=Banner

Layers of Fear and its soundtrack are available for free on Humble Bundle for a limited time. I have no idea if any of it is any good but who cares? It's free!

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/layers-of-fear-and-soundtrack?linkID=&mcID=102:5a3810dae1b8299b597abdbc:ot:58272826f7bb513ff1ae3abe:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017_12_18_indiemegaweek&utm_content=Banner

Rocket League is coming out for the Switch and Super Mario Odyssey actually caught my interest so I thought to myself that perhaps I should buy a Switch, after all. But then I looked at the prices for the console: https://lista.mercadolivre.com.br/nintendo-switch#D[A:nintendo-switch,L:1]

 

Then I was like:

 

Satellite Reign is currently free on Humble Bundle! Is it good? I have no idea. Is it free? Yes, definitely. Go grab yourself a copy!

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/satellite-reign?linkID=&mcID=102:5ad7e73abfb829e131488766:ot:58272826f7bb513ff1ae3abe:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2018_04_19_satellitereign_storefront&utm_content=Banner

The Walking Dead (Season 1) for Steam, is currently free to keep on Humble Bundle. Go grab your copy!

 

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/the-walking-dead-season-1?hmb_source=search_bar

Truck Simulators Multiplayer Crashes Compilation 33 is out! Come and watch it while it's warm!

 

Thank you to @JeKnYan and @Killua // Ireland ^_^ for submitting their clips to this episode!

Truck Simulators Multiplayer Crashes Compilation episode 34 is finally available! Enjoy!

 

Thanks to @A Simple Cheeseburger and @Virablas for contributing to this episode!

TSMP Crashes Compilation 26 is being uploaded right now. I had to re-render everything because the first render (which took over two hours) was garbage. Lots of frozen clips or simply plain black screens with only the audio working. I just don't know what went wrong! The second render went well so it is now going up and should be done in the morning, just a few hours from now.

 

However, I won't make it available until later on this Wednesday. There are a few songs in some of the clips that I think might be copyrighted but I am not sure, so I will leave the episode in private until I can check if YouTube's bots detect and copyrighted tracks in the video. If they do, I will go back to the project and edit the audio for the affected clips, re-render and upload again. Once it's all "clean", episode 26 will be out and available for everyone.

 

TSMPCC26 includes clips submitted by @sheppardpat47, @Smalley and @DavidOC93 | Killua.