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I know we've got a number of Shreddage & S2 users on OCR, so I thought y'all might enjoy this new update! And if you DON'T have it yet, well.. read on You can have the power of Sixto on YOUR HARD DRIVE!

Progress! I started counting calories over 2 months ago, but I've only been tracking my weight on May 30th. Start weight was 189.8, going up to 191.6. I'm now at 185. Love seeing that trend. Unfortunately my lifts are pretty stagnant or with very minor increases (squat, some leg extensions) which sucks, but it means I'm not losing muscle at least.

Agreed 100%. Easy to be jaded by people cashing in on 8bit nostalgia, but Shovel Knight does not fall into that category. It's amazing.

From Chad Seiter's announcement post:

Very excited to be involved in this

Nice Jimmy - I joined the WiiU club as well. Bought one for myself as a birthday present The deals you can get this week are insane. Check this out. We picked up the Mario & Luigi bundle at Target for $275. Then, we grabbed Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3D World for about $45 each, also at Target, price matched to Amazon. Then, Target offers a free game of equal or lesser value when you get two WiiU games, so we got Nintendoland. Then, we got the free game with MK8 (WWHD). Lastly, all that gave enough coins to afford a free digital game through Club Nintendo, so we picked up the classic Mario Party 2. Oh, and we fill prescriptions through Target and had a 5% off card that applied to everything. In total, that's about $346 for a brand-new console and SIX games. Not bad!!

Thanks guys! Had a fun day, bought myself a WiiU.

Here's some inspiration (maybe) for people looking to lose weight. I started counting calories 46 days ago. When I started, I thought that I would shoot for a deficit below 2500 calories. I was eating 2400-2500 (measured) a day and frustrated by lack of progress. I've been steadily cutting down from that and I'm now eating no more than 1900 a day, often ~1700-1800. When I started weighing myself about 3 weeks ago, I weighed in at 190.6 pounds. The next day, 191.4. Today, I weighed in at 186.2. 4 full pounds in 3 weeks! It may not seem like much but it's a huge victory for me. Gotta keep going. I want to hit 160 and re-evaluate there.

The abbreviated answer is that you use a limiter plugin. A limiter prevents the audio from going above a certain level (like 0db). Thus, no matter how much you crank up the volume before the limiter, it will never clip. However, "sound quality" is another issue altogether. All the frequencies within a sound - a drum hit, bass line, electric guitar riff - contribute to its overall volume. Let's take a nice electric guitar sound that you want to use as a lead. Depending on how the sample was recorded, it might have a lot of frequency content in the sub-250hz range. While those frequencies DO contribute to the VOLUME of the guitar, we (as listeners) might not care about them for that particular instrument. So, you use an EQ to remove everything below 250hz for that guitar. Now, the important frequencies of the guitar sound just as loud as before (everything ABOVE 250hz), but the overall volume of the guitar is actually lower. Hooray! Therefore, by carefully EQing your instruments, you can reduce volume for those frequencies that don't matter, while retaining the important frequency information for any given instrument. In my experience, for MOST instruments other than bass & kick sounds, this means reducing the <250hz frequencies. This will usually have the added benefit of making your song sound "cleaner", better-mixed and more balanced... less "muddy". Related to this, your choice of instruments and notes matters. Using, say, 5 different basslines in the low range, all at the same time, can clog up your mix. You're using a lot of volume ('headroom') but the song won't sound full at all. On the other hand, by using a variety of instruments across the entire spectrum of notes & frequencies, things will sound way better. A well-mixed, well-arranged song is key to getting more volume.

Vocalisa is available now! Click here for more info and to purchase. VOCALISA is our newest virtual instrument, a vocal library capturing in detail the electric and powerful sound of a Slavic (Bulgarian) women's choir. We've been working on this collection for quite some time, and now are finally coming down the home stretch with editing & programming! Vocalisa features a full choir, as well as sections - altos, mezzos, sopranos, and soprano soloist - with multiple vowels/consonants, pitch bends, and word building. This type of singing is very unlike traditional Western choirs. It frequently relies on harsh vowels and syllables, tight harmonies, and extensive use of pitch bends to create a truly powerful and ethereal sound. Slavic & Bulgarian singing has been used on classic soundtracks & scores like Xena: Warrior Princess and Ghost in the Shell. By using Vocalisa's different sections as well as the full choir and soloist patches, it is possible to create a choral sound that is as subtle or dramatic as you need. An inspiring UI includes such features as a phrase builder, allowing you to construct your own musical parts from syllables like "eh", "mah", "oh", "shteh", "svah", and consonants. Library designer Will Roget gives a quick overview of the library in real-time in the video below: FEATURES * Detailed & authentic recordings of traditional Bulgarian choral singing * Five sections: Full Choir, Sopranos, Mezzos, Altos + Soloist * Syllable building with idiomatic vowel and consonant combinations: eh, mah, yah, ree, shteh, svah, oh * Mordents / turns, clusters, FX, breaths * Two flexible playing modes: keyswitch & grid (sequence) mode * Beautiful UI with performance & syllable tweaking, mixing options and FX * Carefully recorded to provide a flexible sound with air and character - not overwhelming hall reverb, or stark dryness AUDIO DEMOS http://soundcloud.com/isworks/sets/vocalisa-slavic-womens-choir PRICING & AVAILABILITY Vocalisa is available now for an outstanding intro price of $99 through June 30th (list price: $129) http://impactsoundworks.com/products/vocal/vocalisa-slavic-womens-choir/

Looks like you can preorder for $250 or crossgrade for $150 - not bad!

I don't need 'em. I can hit 140-150g of protein per day without shakes. Plus based on a few studies and summaries I've read, 1g/pound is actually way more than is actually needed. Something like Even .7g/lb is on the high end.

I can't stomach protein shakes. I've tried different flavors, milk vs. water, etc. It's just gross. Then again I don't drink anything except pure water normally.

OK, so real talk. With MK8 out I'm thinking about a WiiU. What other games are REALLY worth getting? Ideally things that can be played with 2-4 people, pick up and play style. * Super Mario 3D World * ???

Is there a trial or demo version?

I feel good today. My butt is a little sore, everything else less so. Overall, I'm fine. No actual pain or anything.

Wow, that's sick. Very nice work. As mentioned earlier in the thread, my routine w/ my trainer is 2 days a week, 1 hr per day - upper and lower body. On a 3rd day I do some arms + shoulders again, plus calves/abs. Now normally we use the Smith for squats + bench press. He's away for a week so I've decided to sub in barbells instead. Of course, not being as experienced, my numbers are way lower.. on the smith, I can manage about 230lb for my bench, whereas on the barbell I was having a hard time with even 190lb. However, doing a squat with the barbell was even scarier since I was having a really tough time figuring out how to rack the weight again. I had to ask someone to spot me. But, I did do 8 reps at 2 plates fairly easily... not bad for my first time doing a barbell squat. My 1RM is probably at least 3 plates even there. On the Smith I'm doing 3 plates + 25lb atm. Anyway, I'll definitely keep working with my trainer since he's awesome, pushes me hard, and has been getting me results. But as per OA's advice, I'm going to work in some barbell exercises too on some off days. Not to say that we don't use barbells/dumbbells at all, just not for the bench/squat.

Oh yes. The OST is currently 47 minutes long (no loops!) and will likely be a full hour or more, ultimately. We will be launching a soundtrack version on Steam soon for ~$4-5 more than the game by itself, which will include the soundtrack thus far AND the final soundtrack when it's done. I'll also have the soundtrack available standalone via OC Records in a few months.

Dungeonmans is now ON STEAM (Early Access)! You can pick it up now for $12 (20% off list price for the next week). This build of the game is chock full of content, from new classes and skills, to new feats and items, new ways to build up your academy, more dungeon types, more bosses, better sprites, more music.. the list goes on. Check it out below. If you love roguelikes and dungeon crawlers, I guarantee you'll love this! http://steamcommunity.com/app/288120/

Never heard of him.

Er... no? Taking a loop and using it as the centerpiece of a song isn't "arranging" the loop. You're still writing everything else in the track from scratch. Harmonies, countermelodies, rhythms, etc. Now, if the entire track were composed of nothing BUT loops, yes, I would agree that is more 'arranging' than anything else. Can you use loops in an uncreative way? Yes, of course! And can you write unoriginal music from scratch? Also yes! Great musicians and composers will always stand apart from everyone else as a result. Again, that's why even though tons of people have Logic Pro, there's still only one Bastion soundtrack.

Really? I bet if I made a simple 4 or 8 bar instrumental loop and asked people to build a song around it, we'd get entirely different tracks from everyone, each expressing musicality in a different way. It can be a tremendous exercise in creativity, and highly inspiring. Spectrasonics did an entire contest like this with a small pack of loops from an upcoming instrument (Omnisphere, at the time) and the contest entries could not have been more different from each other, despite drawing prominently from identical loops. There's surely a spectrum here, like Dave and others have said. If you can't think of a melody for your track, and then throw a premade melody on top... that's not too creative. If you take a melody and build a whole song around it, that's more creative (IMO) - after all, that's what we do on this very site! And then there's everything in between. Hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people have Logic Pro. Darren Korb made incredible use out of it to create a near-universally praised, award-winning soundtrack. Even if you don't like his work, you can't deny that tons of other people DO like it, and it received extensive industry recognition. If using loops was truly uncreative and unmusical, why haven't those hundreds of thousands of others made equally popular and renowned works with the same material? The answer is because it takes skill, creativity, and musicianship to write a great soundtrack, whether you're using loops or not.

Some updates on my end - even though working out with a personal trainer 2x a week has been great, and I've had some solid gains, I've decided to get rid of my excess fat once and for all. I'm tired of having a spare tire, and I want to look good. So, I calculated my basal metabolic rate + TDEE here - http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/ - and conservatively estimated my TDEE (which is your daily calorie expenditure) at 2600. I then set my goal for a 500 calorie deficit daily. To accomplish this goal I bought a kitchen scale and I've been meticulously weighing and tracking every last calorie I eat. Every single one. I don't eat so much as a scrap of food without it going in the log. It's been a VERY illuminating experience to say the least - I think I was eating way, way too much before. I should be able to eat 2100/day and still get some good gains though. I've been doing this for 2 weeks now, and I haven't "cheated once (i.e. popped some snacks w/o writing them down, lazily guessed the weight of a food, etc). Total deficit 7000 calories so far, or about 2 pounds of weight loss. It feels amazing to be in total control of your diet. It's like heavy lifting using willpower - I feel like I can do anything. It's done wonders for my confidence. Now I know it's not a matter of "if" I'll lose weight, but "when". I'm shooting to lose between 30 or 40 pounds total, so it will be a long road, but I know I can do it. I really have OA to thank for inspiring me to try this route. On the lifting end of things - even before the diet change I was plateauing a bit on some of my lifts, like the bench press, but today I hit my goals and next week I'm going to get bumped up. For example I was really struggling with my final set of 260 on the bench for a good month.. I could barely get 3 reps, and they were pretty bad. Today I hit a solid 5, with my trainer helping a little on the last one. It was a definite improvement. I think what contributed the most to this was getting in the right mental state. I pumped myself up and visualized moving the weight with all my power. And I guess that worked!

Weight training itself is a physical activity, so you burn some calories just by working out. But yeah, as Soul Splint said, muscle ALSO burns calories around the clock regardless of what you're doing. http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/8-ways-to-burn-calories-and-fight-fat 10 pounds of muscle burns about 50 calories of fat per day.

I'm not a personal trainer, but while I wouldn't jump into intense martial arts right away, there is nothing preventing you from getting started with weight training. You just start with lighter weights and figure out what you can handle, then settle into a routine where you increase the weights regularly. Nothing requires you to be particularly limber. I'm overweight and infelxible, and I've been getting great benefits from lifting. Speaking of being overweight, I've decided to take my nutrition as seriously as possible: I purchased a kitchen scale, started a spreadsheet, and began tracking every last thing I eat right down to the calorie. It's actually not THAT laborious, but it IS extremely illuminating. It's really, really easy to eat "healthy" foods in quantities that are way too big. For example, on day 1 I had a 3-egg omelet and 4 strips of bacon, with some ketchup. That was over 600 calories! On the other hand, yesterday I ate a very optimized lunch consisting of deli chicken, homemade tomato sauce, and some part-skim mozzerella cheese - a "chicken pizza" which was highly filling and not even 400 calories. According to an average of some TDEE calculators, I'm probably burning about 2600 calories a day. I'd guess a little more than that just because I've put on muscle mass, and I also play badminton 2-3x a week, but I wanted to be conservative. My goal is to eat no more than 2100 calories a day (500kcal deficit) and so far I've been hitting that goal. I think as long as I continue to do weight training 3 days a week I should be able to lose some of this extra weight while putting on muscle.