So here I am, it's 5:53 AM and I have yet to sleep. I've spent roughly twelve hours a day running this site single handily. I spend a few hours looking up the latest news and sorting through what is actually worth putting on the site. Another few hours updating the articles I've already written with new content. Then I spend a few minutes writing a blog for the day and if I'm riddled with ideas and energy I might just write two. Then after that I do some promoting on Twitter for roughly an hour. At any given point I have between 100 and 300 tweets buffered. Now this site doesn't seem like a lot and to be honest I have no maintenance or server worries thanks to Weebly. But this is a full time job with no reward other than looking at my page and giving myself a pat on the back. However, I find no satisfaction in my work. I've changed the sites URL twice already. Now I've decided that I've found a better name that appears more relevant to gaming. But I've also decided I don't want to have a .weebly.com account. So on top of paying for a new URL I have to resubmit my site to search engines. Not that it really does any good because only 7% of my traffic comes from them. Now that we're onto traffic, let's talk about that. On a GOOD day, I can get maybe 100-150 views from 50 unique addresses. That's a good day. On average I get 60 views a day. The average time spent on my site? Less than a minute! So my twelve hours a day of work transpires to one minute of viewing. I even do giveaways which cost money out of my pocket to attempt to boost traffic. The real kicker here though? This site doesn't and won't generate any form of revenue. Even if I was getting a million views a day, not a single penny will show up in my Pikachu piggy bank. I'm solely doing this because my addiction for video games and passion for writing. But I feel like this is all for nothing. Because in a month new games will roll out. Which means all my hard work will be set on a back burner and forgot about and I'll have to write about another game. I'm realizing that this is now madness. Expecting a video game site to compete with the likes of IGN, Giant Bomb, Gamespot or, well you get the point. But here I sit, persistent as ever hoping that somebody stumbles upon this post. Maybe my desperation will reach the likes of some group that will somehow help out. Until then though, I'll return to the shadows to continue my writing.
I would like to thank my lovely girlfriend of six years, Julie, for putting up with me. I'm not the easiest person to be around, but add stress and concentration to it and I'm near impossible. I know you wont read this, but I Love You and thank you for dealing with me.
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Yesterday I ranted on about what's wrong with the current generation of games. I finished it off with talking about Electronic Arts. As a huge NFL fan it's only natural that I should be a huge fan of Madden. However, and I'm not alone here, EA continues to do the bare minimum and collect our money annually. They'll throw in a few "New" game modes that were copied from a previous version or game and update the graphics slightly and then release weekly roster updates until Madden 17 comes out next year. In which case they'll do the same thing. Now I wouldn't have a problem with their methods if they didn't go out of their way to essentially buy out the competition by getting exclusive rights to the NFL. This is the cheap way out of having to do the work. Having no actual competition means they can do whatever they want and reap the rewards. Within the next few years they'll more than likely get a chance to renew their contract. This is where I'm calling upon somebody to create a petition. I'm not sure it will have any effect, but I can almost guarantee that it would get close to a million virtual signatures. People want the choice of a better game or at the very least an alternative option. But they say money is power, so this might just all be for nothing. They have a rich kids mentality now, if they can't beat the competition they can buy the win.
I know, my last few blogs have been complaining and reminiscing over the good old days. But do you remember when games weren't sequels and prequels? I'm all for binge playing Call of Duty every year on it's release or playing the latest Gran Turismo. It seems the lack of original games has slowed the latest generation of consoles down. Also the lack of exclusives probably doesn't contribute. I don't blame consumers for not wanting to buy the newest consoles when games are still being produced for the last gen. The Xbox One has dropped $150 since it's release a little over a year and a half ago. Sure you don't get the Kinect but it appears that Microsoft has all but given up on it's motion control all together. So what are you actually losing? The Playstation is staying pretty true to it's price however and it appears that sticking to a gaming only console seems to have worked out for now. Back on point now though. When are we going to see a new game changer? (Pun Intended) I realize that blockbuster games don't just spawn overnight but when is the last time we saw one? Bungie's Destiny is one of the latest premieres to become a moderate success. But it's just using the simple RPG formula backed with millions of dollars. It's hard to think of those big games. However the solution lies with the fans. I can almost guarantee that at least on gamer out there is sitting on the next huge game. I urge developers to reach out to the fans and ask for ideas in exchange for a role in the game or a chunk of change. I also urge Call of Duty to stop milking the cow. Same with you Electronic Arts, but I'll get to you tomorrow.
I mean they still exist, however they're limited. I spent most of my gaming days as a kid playing demos. They were a great way to sample games before purchasing them and helped get a feel for how the game was. I can't tell you how many times I played the Spyro on my Playstation One or even how many hours I spent replaying The Silent Cartographer in Halo: Combat Evolved. These were both on demos and it was the same level. Yet the replay value was so great that I saved my allowance and bought the games. I used to get a monthly magazine subscription that came with a sample of demos. I would carefully base my next purchase off of what I had experienced. Demos still exist today but not in that sense. They're very limited and most of the time require a massive download just to play for a few minutes. What happened to the disc based? What happened to having around 10 samples ready at your command? With modern media I understand what developers wouldn't want to take that extra time to make a demo readily available. YouTube does a great job showing you what the game looks like and from that you can guess how it plays. But games are like cars. You can't judge them just by the looks, they all drive differently. Most people test drive a car before buying it and that's exactly how I feel video games are. I want to know how the game plays before I spend my hard earned money. I'm not sure how many of you feel the same way, but I would like to see the return of disc based demos. Before I get into the my week 2 recap I should note that the measurements are not perfect. They're more than likely not recorded in the same spot each week resulting in sporadic numbers. The madness behind it is to see inches being removed as weight is hopefully lost.
Summary of Week 2: Week 1 was a wake up call. Not the pleasant "Hey, it's time to wake up" kind of call. This was the slap in the face and pushed out of bed call. My body was sore and my thighs were even sorer. Can't stress the thigh part enough, this game really focuses on your thighs. However I felt good. Counting calories seemed to have become part of the everyday life and was no longer a hassle. I bought bottled water because I wasn't drinking enough prior. So now I was getting at least 10 cups a day from bottled water. It's recommended that you drink half your body weight in ounces. So with that theory I'm suppose to be drinking 140 ounces of water a day! Which is just north of a gallon. What most people fail to tell you is that that water can come from other sources, like juice or milk. So it's honestly not that hard to get your daily intake. Onto Week 2 now. After my weekly Saturday weigh in I was pretty excited about losing 5 pounds. So the impatient person that I was rushed to the scale Sunday morning. I weighed in at 274 pounds. Down another pound from the previous day. Now a lot of things could have factored into this happening. Without considering anything else I hopped online and did a little research. The consensus was that losing a pound a day really isn't a healthy way to go about things and that I should consider raising my daily calorie intake just to be on the safe side. So I did as instructed and upped my daily intake to 2,000 a day. This really simplified finding out all my daily values considering everything is packaged for a 2,000 calorie diet. For this week I started a workout program on Your Shape. My main focus was obviously weight loss and the class I chose was kick boxing. I had three choices of goals, Weight Loss, Endurance and Balance I believe. There were a few classes to chose from as well but I figured it'd be the most difficult and therefor would yield the most results. Some of the routines look ridiculous. Not ridiculous in being hard, but my girlfriend and I actually started laughing pretty hysterically when one of the workouts came on and we had to quit because we just couldn't take it seriously. I'm pretty sure it was one of the Ultra classes in the Kickboxing class. The program I chose consists of 4 weeks and 4 workouts each week. Some people might say that's too much and some will say that's not enough. We thought it wasn't enough so we play the game at least 6 times a week. Trying to get a day off on cheat days or whatever but we find most of our workouts leave us feeling good about ourselves. Week two's results were a little discouraging after such a successful first week. Once again there could be many factors that contribute to random results in measurements. Muscle gain, water weight, waste weight. Those are just a few to name off. So here they are and remember don't get discouraged if you find similar results. Measurements at the start of the week (3/14): Weight: 275 Chest: 44.5" Waist: 43.5" Hips: 45" Bicep: 15.5" Measurements at the end of the week (3/21): Weight: 276 (+1) Chest: 43.5" (-1") Waist: 43" (-.5") Hips: 45" (-.5) Bicep: 15.5" Week 3 will be posted April 17th. You can follow my daily results here. So first off my basics for the start of my program. I'm 23 years old and live a sedentary lifestyle. I started this exercise and diet plan off weighing in at 280 pounds. I'm 6' 3" so I don't look as terrible as the weight suggest; however, it was enough for me to decide that I needed a heavy lifestyle change. With having a love for video games and lacking the desire to revert to my military days I decided to use my Wii U for something other than Nintendo exclusives. I contemplated between Wii Fit U and Your Shape and after reading reviews on both it wasn't much of a decision. I also purchased both Just Dance 2014 and 2015 to use as an alternative to cardio workouts. So without anymore delay; lets get into it.
Summary of Week 1 (March 7th - March 14th): So along with a healthier workout regimen comes with the obvious healthy diet plan. I was a heavy soda drinker. I was in the area of six 12oz cans a day of Mountain Dew. So my first step toward a healthier life was to completely cut that out. Next was to start counting calories. I looked into applications that had syncing between my pc and phone and My Fitness Pal was the most recommended. So now I was counting calories and exercising. The next thing was to find how many calories my bodies metabolism was suppose to be burning naturally each day. There were multiple sites telling me different things and considering my size and relatively cheap budget for food I settled for the least; 2,920 calories per day via My Fitness Pal. The general rule of thumb for losing a pound a week is eat 500 calories a day less than what your body burns naturally. So to try to maximize my results I decided to eat 1,800 calories a day in hopes of losing a little more than two pounds a week. To my surprise or maybe due to weighing myself in the P.M on March 7th (I weigh myself first thing in the morning now) I lost 5 pounds in the first week. This week probably has the most inaccurate results due to it being my first week. Either way at the end of the week I was pretty ecstatic and feeling good about myself. However when it came to my measurements they didn't change to much. So here I was pretty confused about the results. Measurements at start of the week (March 7th): Weight: 280 Chest: 45" Waist: 44" Hips: 45" Bicep: 15.5" Measurements at the end of the week (March 14th): Weight: 275 (-5 pounds) Chest: 44.5" (-.5") Waist: 43.5" (-.5") Hips: 45" (+.5") Bicep: 15.5" Week 2 will be posted April 10th. You can follow my daily progress here: Here we are, just a few hours away from one of the craziest days of the year. The Patriots have locked down McCourty but have some other questions they have to lock up. First off, they have $10,000,000 in dead money. I realize I could have shortened that, but come on. TEN MILLION DOLLARS! Granted half of that is from Revis, but if they didn't plan on re-signing him for 20 Million, why would they guarantee that? Moving onto the running back situation. Before we start going into free agency with no money we need to free up some cap space: RestructuresBrandon Browner: The Patriots are letting Browner explore his value. This will do one of two things, allow us to cut him for $0 in dead money if he finds a better deal. That or teams will offer him less than what we're paying him and he'll restructure his contract to stay with us cheaper. We'll say he can't find a better deal and reduces his 5.5 Mil to a mellow 3 Mil. Total cap space freed 2.5 Million Danny Amendola: Set to make 5.7 Mil this season, he's the Patriots highest paid wide out who's stats compare to a fourth or fifth string. Brian Hartline said he would've taken less than the 3 Mil he's going to make in Cleveland to play with the Pats so expect Amendola's restructure to be around that ball bark. I imagine he's going to get cut to the 2.5 Mil area. Total cap space freed: 2.2 Million Jerod Mayo: His cap hit is 10.3 Mil this year. That would be absolutely fine if he was producing numbers like he was three years ago. However, he's not and hasn't been able to stay healthy for the last two seasons. He's going to have to restructure his deal. Just because of his injuries we're going to cut his salary right in half to 5 Mil. Total cap space freed: 5.3 Million Nate Solder: Solder is entering the last year on his contract and is set to make 7.44 Million. This year usually indicates a contract restructure of some sort anyway. His cap number could be reduced to 4.5 million with a good restructure. Total cap space freed: 2.9 Million Kyle Arrington: If we somehow manage to retain Browner and Revis then Arrington's role will remain in the nickel. He's going to make 4.6 million this season so as a nickel corner. That's a little high so let's have him make 2.5 this year. Total cap space freed: 2.4 Million Keeping this hypothetical train rolling let's start spending this new found money. 15.3 Million to be exact. That would be them almost 20 million under the cap which would give them money to work on their free agents: Free AgencyDarrelle Revis: Let's get this one out of the way. Revis was probably every fans second major concern. With McCourty staying put, he's not an upgraded priority. Now the Jets want him back too? Come on guys, cut it out. The bottom line here; with some help from McCourty, they use some of that money to keep him put in Foxborough. Not before he spends a couple of days putting us fans on the verge of a panic attack. Look for him to get paid $42 Million over the course of next three years and getting $10 million this year. Bringing us to 9.5 Million for cap space. Vince Wilfork: Don't count the big guy out just yet. I won't be surprised if he returns for one last run with the Pats. I'm not quite sure what our budget will be for an aging DT, so I'll keep him off the team. Shane Vareen, Stevan Ridley, Roy Helu: Only one of these guys will be in New England this year. The Giants have interest in Helu and Vareen, so it's one or the other with us. Ridley might be a last minute choice if we can't get the other two for cheap. Helu has more yards than Vareen in fewer games but Vareen knows our system. I'd like to see him back for the $3.5 that he wants. Free space is $6 Million. There are a few rumors of other players like Andre Johnson or Zach Morris. Who wouldn't want to see Johnson in a different Red White and Blue Jersey? However he will come at a high cost and if we couldn't spend the money on Hartline, I don't see them spending it on Johnson. Morris could be a good fit, but with Wright entering his second year and first off season don't expect another TE to make the roster. We're leaving $6 million for draft choices. Imagine having an ability to wash all your troubles away by going to a different world. Imagine you could kill a dragon or life someone else's life. These things sound great, right? But what kind of science fiction madness would allow this to happen? Well video games of course. Oh, you thought you didn't like them though. However you're wrong. Have you ever played Angry Birds? What about Candy Crush? Those are a form of video games. What? You didn't know that! Why not give things a chance. Who knows, you might just find yourself lost in a virtual world. So maybe you haven't played video games yet. You've heard of them and have only looked into the bad of them. I compel you to try just one game. If you can spend one hour playing a game and not get the slightest bit happier than you sir/ma'am are a very unique individual. Genres of games have evolved wildly over the past decade. With mobile phones adapting their own style and consoles becoming more powerful, developers are coming out of the wood works with games. Think of something you would like to play. Give it a quick Google search and I can almost guarantee it exist. If it doesn't, then I strongly suggest you submit it to a company or learn some coding and make it yourself. So here's my argument to you. Why not give them a try?
My book Virtual Reality released today. It's a story set in the year 2299 where the American government has failed. New America was founded with dreams of restoring what was once a great country. In hopes of taking a step towards that dream they pass a wave of new laws. Including fully legalizing cocaine and marijuana and heavily taxing them. In light of these new laws the country still post the highest unemployment and crime rates ever recorded. The only thing keeping the citizens sane through this time is a virtual reality machine by Oryiss Corporation. This is the first machine of it's type. There's no controller, no graphics. You'll fell the gust as a dragon flies overhead. You'll feel the recoil of the gun. However the machine is highly scrutinized by many for being linked to schizophrenia and other psychological problems. The young protagonist quickly falls victim to these side effects. He begins to lose touch with what's real. He quickly finds himself struggling to differentiate between reality and virtual reality.
The Super Bowl is over and the Patriots have returned the Lombardi trophy back to Foxborough for the fourth time in the past fourteen years.With one their best looking defense since way back in 04' they were able to pull of the improbable victory. But we know the past, it's the future that you want to know. On the verge of the 2015 season starting next week people have some questions. Like what's going to happen to Darrelle Revis? There's a lot of talk that now the Buffalo Bills are going to try to make a run at him. Before that story the New York Jet's were going to try to get him back in green. Calm down though. The Patriots didn't add a second year option to his contract to let him walk away that easily. He's going to being staying in the red, white, blue and silver next season. If it comes down to having to pay the man the $25 million dollars necessary to do so then so be it. They've been in talks with him basically since they signed him last march. They're going to get a deal done with him before they let him test Free Agency. Now what about Devin McCourty you ask? Is he going to be tagged? First off he's vocally come out and said that he's willing to take that tag and has agreed that it's player friendly money now. But don't be surprised if the Pats don't use the franchise tag on him. The tag for safeties this year is a whopping 9.6 Million. If they could get him to agree to a long term deal they could probably get him around $6-7 Million. The man is one of the top safeties in the league and worth that money. It's safe to say though that he's not going anywhere this off season. The next big question is Shane Vareen. The guy had a pretty stellar season with us and rumors are that he's demanding $5 Million a year. He's also come out to bat these rumors down stating that he's never once said that. Continuing on his situation. We currently have Vareen and Ridley hitting free agency. Ridley is kind of the forgotten guy after his early injury in the season. I'll get to him in a moment though. To me Vareen is our Kevin Faulk of the early to mid 2000's. The guy is a great pass catching back. He runs his wheel routes perfectly setting up 20-30 yard plays almost two times a game. He makes players miss on tackles and almost rarely drops the ball. However he's not your traditional work horse back. He'll stay in New England as our 3rd down back for just a little over what he was previously making. Back on to Stevan Ridley. Do we keep him? I myself am unsure about this one. We have Gray, White, Bolden and Blount already in our backfield. If we do end up signing Ridley it's for a place holding spot in case they don't get someone better in the off season. The draft has a few good RB's looking to go into the second round. With the Pats holding the number 32 overall, they could grab one before. More than likely they'll trade out to provide a few more late round picks. So yes, I think they take Ridley for dirt cheap and Vareen for a little more. Maybe give White his walking papers. Next is Stephen Gostkowski. This is pretty open and shut here. Just look at the Adam Vinatieri situation back in '05. If Gostkowski thinks he's worth more than that Patriots think he's worth then they'll let him walk. That simple. Akeem Ayers, he was a pretty solid back last year filling in for Mayo. They won't pay him a lot of money when they still have Mayo on the roster. He get's the boot. Mayo has been put into a bad situation. He count's as $10 Million towards the cap. That's a lot of money. He hasn't played a full season in over two years now. I think if he doesn't renegotiate his contract he'll get the boot after June-1 (Welcome back Ayers) Moving on to another huge cap number, Vince Wilfork. His contract basically tells us he'll be cut. After June 1st only $433,000 would be dead money the savings you ask? $8.5 Million! If they were to cut both Vince and Mayo they'd be saving over $15 million. Vince didn't really prove that he was his old self this year, and Jerod hasn't played 16 games in over two seasons. If both of them don't negotiate then expect them to be playing somewhere else. Last big money player we have is Nate Solder. Now I don't think they cut him. He is however entering his last year on his contract and is expected to make $7.5 million. Now if any contract said "You're not safe" It's his. He would generate a whole $0 in dead money no matter when they cut him. That wasn't a mistake, that was a zero. He get's a contract extension here and cut's his cap number down dramatically. I'm going to post some numbers for a player now. He played 16 games during the regular season. That's all of them, great start. He posted 27 receptions. That took a dark turn, 200 receiving yards and recorded 1 Touchdown. Now you're asking who is this player. Surely he can't be that big of a deal. Wrong, this was Danny Amendola. He's set to make $5.7 Million this year. Some people are saying the his post season workload saved his job. I don't think so. They're plane silly if they pay this man almost $6 million dollars next year. Cut him or restructure. There's a lot of talent out there this free agency, they'll find someone worth that money. Notable Dates: Teams must designate franchise tags for players tomorrow March 2nd, before 4 PM. On March 7th teams are allowed to start talking to players agents to negotiate contracts but can not execute a contract until 4 PM on March 10th at which point free agency starts. Teams must be under salary cap by that time. I'd like to thank over the cap for all the salary cap information. |
AuthorDaniel Naylor Archives
June 2015
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