Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Goal for tomorrow: move up to 3rd and make progress towards 2nd

This week we will definitely pass "The Nati Four" to become 3rd but we will try to gain at least 800K. If we can do that 3 weeks in a row, we will be 2nd before Rock Band 2 comes out on the PS3.

This will also be DMan's first gig as a top 100 PS3 singer, congratulations! Your skills will help us continue to gain lots of points. We now have a top 100 guitarist (Bongoo) and singer (DMan) and a former top 1000 drummer (Phoenix, staying high in the leaderboards as a drummer is tough to do, but he has potential to be top 100 as well). Our bassist (Raikan) would rank pretty high but there is no way to know since he has no PS3 and there is no separate Bass Career Leaderboard (that should have been fixed in RB2).

Minimum: Gain 450K points, would put us in 3rd place ahead of "The Nati Four"
Main: Gain 800K points, main goal for the next three weeks (to be 2nd before RB2)
Optimal: Get 1M points, to match the last 2 weeks
Bonus: Get a 4th #1 song for the 58 originals

Here is the setlist for tomorrow (worst songs by rank, all songs past rank #6):
1. "Gimme Shelter"
2. "Flirtin' with Disaster"
3. "Outside"
4. "Brainpower"
5. "Green Grass and High Tides"
6. "Mississippi Queen"
7. "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
8. "Enter Sandman"
9. "Epic"
10. "Foreplay/Long Time"
11. "Next to You"
12. "Paranoid"
13. "Pleasure (Pleasure)"
14. "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld"
15. "When You Were Young"
16. "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Friday, September 26, 2008

Infinite Setlist Drumming Marathon

See this page for a live stream of "Someguy913", one of the best Rock Band drummers (member of #1 superband "Here Comes a New Challenger"), doing all 373 Rock Band songs in a row (RB1, RB2 and DLC)!

His amazing journey started yesterday afternoon and will end sometime tomorrow...

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Current Songs by Rank

For the curious folk out there, here are statistics to keep you happy. This is the distribution of ranks for the original 58 RB1 songs:
1st - 3 songs
2nd - 6 songs
3rd - 7 songs
4th - 5 songs
5th - 7 songs
6th - 14 songs
7th - 10 songs
8th - 3 songs
9th - 2 songs
12th - 1 song

1M+ point gain two weeks in a row!

Great session again this week as we met our main goal! We improved on 17 songs for a gain of 1.1M points. This gives us a total score of 77.8M, only 445K behind "The Nati Four".

Highlights:
- A third #1 song for the 58 original Rock Band songs ("(Don't Fear) The Reaper")
- We now have only one song that is not in the top 10 ("Gimme Shelter" at 12)
- We play a DLC song for fun and manage to be ranked 3rd on our first try ("Wonderwall")
- Great performance by Sylvie on Bass!

Getting 3rd next week in a special Wednesday session will be awesome but it's neat to think that we are only 2.4M away from 2nd place band "Slagathor"! That might be difficult to gain before Rock Band 2 comes out on PS3 (only 3 sessions left) but you never know!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Goal for tomorrow: put "The Nati Four" in fourth

It might be ambitious to want to pass "The Nati Four" tomorrow to become 3rd so let's put that as an optimal goal. Because Raikan is away, Sylvie will bail us out and be the honorary Maca on Bass.

Minimum: Gain 0.4M points, would give us a total of 77M
Main: Gain 1M points, would match last week's increase
Optimal: Get 1.6M points, moving us up to 3rd place
Bonus: Because we lost one #1 ranked song to the #1 supergroup "3 On a Match" (for "I Get By"), regain a 3rd #1 song (we currently hold "Seven" and "Ballroom Blitz")

Here is the setlist for tomorrow (worst songs by rank):
1. "Gimme Shelter"
2. "Dani California"
3. "Wave of Mutilation"
4. "Suffragette City"
5. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"
6. "Won't Get Fooled Again"
7. "Time We Had"
8. "Outside"
9. "Orange Crush"
10. "Mississippi Queen"
11. "Main Offender"
12. "Flirtin' with Disaster"

I want to dedicate tomorrow's gig to Lynn from Oklahoma. You seem to be quite unstable but thanks for supporting us!

Fanmail #1 - ZOMG I LUVZ U !

From: Lynn from Oklahoma
Date: Monday, September 22nd 2008
Subject: ZOMG I LUVZ U !

dman even though i did not create any fan club or those things but in my heart i treat myself as yoour biggest fan . and many people keep telling me that you are not hot not cute not handsome but i told them as long as i love you i dont care what ever they said so i ignore them. i love you d man . and guess wat my friends keeps saying that i should like raikan or bongoo better than you but i dont care i will still like you . i have all the posters about you juat waitin for new magaxines to come out and more of your posters will come to me and i also have all the posters of you and raikan and bongoo and phoenix together and i just want to tell you that i love you but i havent seen you sing once cos my mum did not allow me and you and raikan and bongoo and phoenix have not come to oklahoma alot of times i just hope that you can come to oklahoma more often as wat you said you like oklahoma so i beg you pls come to oklahoma and perform i love you Dman!
For future reference, and to avoid giving me anymore unnecessary headaches, please review the definition of a sentence and apply any gained knowledge in all future correspondence.

Also, its a known fact that there are no girls in Oklahoma named "Lynn". In fact, any scientist will confirm that all Oklahomaian girl names fall into three distinct categories:
  1. Names ending with an "een" sound
    Examples: Amaleen, Brandine, Claudine, Earlene, Faylene, Jaylene, Jean, Larlene, Pristine, Raylene, Shirlene

  2. The three Bs - Where the parents randomly choose one of the three B names (Betty, Billie or Bobby) and add a two to four letter nickname at the end
    Examples: Betty Lou, Billie Jean, Bobby Jo

  3. Reba - All other girls in Oklahoma are named Reba, although they're surprisingly not named after Oklahoma Country Queen Reba McEntire:

(Help!! Her eyes are trying to burn a hole through my head!!!)

Now, I don't know what category you're in, so to be safe, I'm going to call you Betty-Reba-Jean.

So Betty-Reba-Jean, thank you for your very intense fanmail.

All four of us are currently gearing up for the release of Rock Band 2 on PlayStation 3, and will therefore not be able to visit Oklahoma any time soon (though keep an eye out for us in winter of 2009!)

Also, I'm glad to see you have all our posters. Remember that merchandise is what keeps a band alive, so you should do your best to make your parents buy you everything with 3 Macas and A Reject on it, such as our band T-Shirts, Baseball Caps and G-Strings, all available through our Online Store. Even better: if you steal their credit card you can buy all this crap yourself!

Finally, I'm attaching to this letter a copy of our latest poster that will come out later this year. Please add it to your collection and show it off to all your friends!

3 Macas and A Reject

Dman...

PS: Please send me the name and address of your friends who say that I'm not hot, cute or handsome. I have a bone to pick with them...

PPS: There is no 3 Macas and A Reject Online Store... yet...

(edit Jan 21/09: There now is a 3 Macas and a Reject Online Store)





Have Fan Mail you want to send us? Then open up your email and write to: "rejected.fans@live.com"!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Rock Band 2 Day Recap

Yesterday's special RB2 session was great, most of the songs were fun to play.

Highlights:
- We play for fun without the optimal lineup and still manage to be around rank 250 after playing about 70+ songs!
- Passing Visions by Abnormality on Expert (all instruments) at the end of the Harmonix 9 song set (+ encore), took us about 4-5 tries but it was neat to finish it!
- Disappointed that there doesn't appear to be "DLC" leaderboards with the total of all DLC songs. That would have made it interesting to compare with others who have most of the DLC
- Watching the Spike TV RB2 countdown show with some of the best bands competing (Xbox 360). Congrats to "Here Comes a New Challenger!" for an amazing performance! Why not have a competition with the best PS3 bands one day?
- We try to imitate "f4phantom2500"'s overhand playing style (guitarist of "Here Comes a New Challenger!") on a relatively easy song but do a very poor job of it...
- "Panic Attack" is probably the most difficult song to pass on Expert drums. It was late when we unlocked it but Phoenix and I still had trouble passing the intro. Whoever said "Painkiller" is the toughest is mistaken...
- We noticed that the "Nati Four" have moved on to the Xbox 360. They are the band we want to beat for 3rd for RB1 PS3 but they are already near the top of the RB2 Xbox 360 Career Score Leaderboards

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Rock Band 2 on Xbox 360

At last it is here in my hands. I rented the game in preperation for this weekend's special jamming session.

I do own an Xbox 360 but the only compatible instrument was the microphone. After singing a few tunes with my fellow groupies, we decided to take the game to a home with actual Xbox 360 instruments so I could play some drums!

I only played a dozen tracks and so far so good! There already are some interesting patterns. I look forward to this weekend and the PS3 version next month.

I did not have time to try the drum trainer yet... The day will come, don't worry! :)

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Another million points

While we did not reach our main goal, anytime we can get 1M more at this point is great! We improved on 8 songs, bringing us 1M closer to 3rd (now 1.6M away).

Highlights:
- Another #1 score, this time for "Ballroom Blitz" (improved by almost 400K)
- Getting good practice to get near optimal paths for many songs, even if we sometimes don't improve on our old scores it will benefit us in the long run
- A good increase for "Welcome Home" (200K+)

This Saturday will be fun as we will have a special Rock Band 2 day. We will rent the Xbox 360 version to get some practice before the PS3 version comes out.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Beer + Rock Band

I came across this article today: Heath + Beer.

Apparently there are only advantages to drinking the precious liquid in moderation. Since our jamming sessions consist of around 2 delicious refreshments, you could even say our Rock Band nights are healthy!

Now we need to get roadies to keep pouring those ales! :)

Monday, September 15, 2008

Score Reader 1.3 released!

Download Here

New features:
  • Touched up graphics
  • Even more robust login support
  • Support for advanced cookie options for the exceptional cases
    • This lets you manually choose the browser and enter the cookie filename

    (Original Post)

Goal for tomorrow: get closer to 3rd

Having just become 4th last week, our goal for this week will be to gain enough points to allow us to get to 3rd next week.

Minimum: Get 0.4M points, for a total of 76M.
Main: Get 1.4M points, for a total of 77M.
Optimal: Get 2.6M points, to reach 3rd place.
Bonus: Get a 3rd first place rank for the original 58 RB1 songs.

Here is the setlist for tomorrow (worst songs by rank, up to #8):
1. "Gimme Shelter"
2. "Won't Get Fooled Again"
3. "Welcome Home"
4. "Suffragette City"
5. "Main Offender"
6. "Flirtin' with Disaster"
7. "Wave of Mutilation"
8. "Time We Had"
9. "Orange Crush"
10. "Mississippi Queen"
11. "I Think I'm Paranoid"
12. "Ballroom Blitz"
13."(Don't Fear) The Reaper"

"RedDirt & Bob" needs a new quote

Unless they regain 10th place in the Career Score Leaderboards, "RedDirt & Bob" will need to change their quote. It currently says "The only band in the top 10 for both scores and fans" but "Procyon" just beat them for 10th by score!

Congrats to "RedDirt & Bob" for holding that achievement for so long. They were hanging on to 10th for the longest time, we were wondering how long their quote would remain true...

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Top Rock Band Bands on Spike TV tonight!

Check out Spike TV (channel 32 on Rogers in Ottawa) at 11:30 PM Eastern Time tonight to see some of the best bands competing while playing Rock Band 2. The bands ranked #2 to #4 on Xbox 360 will be there as well as some of the best solo players. The show is called "Countdown to Rock Band 2".

The video links are here.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Fans, Fans and more Fans!

Since 3MaaR (3 Macas and a Reject) has reached the top 4 on the RockBand.com Leaderboards, we've begun receiving fan mail at an unprecedented rate. We've therefore created a new email address where you can send your fan mail: "rejected.fans@live.com".

This will allow us to better manage the incoming mail from wherever we may be (on the road, in our cheap motel room before a gig, or backstage, a couple of minutes before the beginning of a show!)

So go ahead and take the time to write us. Who knows, we may actually write you back!

Please note that any questions or comments about the Score Reader should be sent to "phoenix5096@gmail.com" and not the fan email address.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Score Reader 1.2 released!

Download Here

New features:
- Better support for Windows Vista and Firefox 3.0
- Support for older versions of Excel
- Files are now saved to "My Documents" instead of "Program Files"
- A "logs.txt" file is now generated by the tool. This will make it easier to track and fix issues. Please email the file and a description of any problem encountered to "phoenix5096@gmail.com"

Future plans:

- Add support for Rock Band 2 once the RockBand.com RB2 Leaderboards are active

The Macas make the first page

By beating our worst ranked song yesterday ("Mississippi Queen"), we achieved something worth mentioning: All of the original 58 songs are now ranked on the first page of the RockBand.com Leaderboards (need to be top 20)!

The next step will be to reach the first page for every song in the in-game leaderboards (need to be top 11). This will surely happen soon because only "Gimme Shelter" is holding us back. And it's not even that far from 11 (we are rank 13).

I know its DMan's favorite song too ;) so we should have no problems.

The Macas are now 4th!

Tonight was awesome as we jumped from 7th to 4th in one session! The total point gain was 2.1M points, far surpassing our optimal goal. Now the next step will be to gain another 2.6M points to move up to 3rd and be listed on the RockBand.com Leaderboards login page.

Highlights:

- After piledriving the Lesbians by moving up to 5th place, we gained 491K righ away on "In Bloom" to beat the "Killa C,o,m,m,a,s" for 4th!
- Two original 58 #1 scores for "I Get By" and "Seven", the last one gained even after Phoenix dropped a drum stick on the floor and continued playing with his left hand... a groupie became a roadie to save our #1! :)
- Missed getting another #1 score for "Learn to Fly" by only 8K...
- Now the "Top Songs" section in "Band Profile" has five 2M+ songs with today's addition of "In Bloom"
- Starting our session by trying to beat the worst ranked song with a "practice run" seems to be paying off as we improved on "Mississippi Queen" on our first try!

Stay tuned for Rock Band Score Reader version 1.2 sometime in the next 24 hours!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

To Play, or To Program

Its the phoenix reporting in.

During the past week, we have officially made the Score Reader application we have been using available to the public. This means I haven't practiced as much as I would want to (but don't worry... we'll still piledrive those lesbians tonight!)

I usually come home at night and now face a conflict...
- Do I play Rock Band?
- Do I keep working on the Score Reader?

If programming is what I now do at home half the time, I guess that means I am working in the right field as a programmer ;)

(Can anyone say NERD!)

Monday, September 8, 2008

Goal for tomorrow: move up to 4th

Tomorrow is a great opportunity as we have the potential to pass "Pants on head!?!", "Lesbian Piledriver" and the "Killa C,o,m,m,a,s" in the same night!

- Minimum: Gain 0.8M points, would allow us to piledrive some Lesbians and be 5th!
- Main: Gain 1.2M points, would move us to 4th, ahead of the old #1 "C,o,m,m,a,s"
- Optimal: Gain 1.6M points, would give us a bigger lead at 4th
- Bonus: Get a 1st place for one of the original 58 Rock Band 1 songs

As for the Score Reader, look for the release of version 1.2 soon after our post about the result of tomorrow's Rock Band night. Thanks for trying out our tool, we appreciate the feedback!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Score Reader ".csv" Formatting Tips

This only applies for versions before 1.2.

The Rock Band Score Reader is currently optimized for Excel 2007. With earlier versions of Excel it might open a raw ".csv" file (with no formatting, sorting and stats) instead of a formatted ".xls" file (even if "Excel" is selected in "Advanced Options").

If you have this issue, keep an eye on this page as a new version should be coming soon.

In the meantime, if you want to transform your ".csv" files into a readable sorted scores list, please do the following:

1. Select the first column

2. Click the "Data" menu, then "Text to Columns..."

3. Select "Delimited" and "Next"

4. Only select "Semicolon" then "Next"

5. Click "Finish"

6. Select all cells by clicking in the top left corner

7. Click the "Format" menu, then "Column" and "AutoFit Selection"

8. Click the "Data" menu, then "Sort..."

9. Select to "Sort by": "Format", "Descending"

10. Select "Then by": "Rank", "Ascending"

11. Select "Then by": "Title", "Ascending"

12. Click "OK" and you have a decent scoresheet!

Bonus: For columns with scores, you can add "1000 Separator" formatting by right-clicking on the column letter at the top and selecting "Format Cells...". Change the "Category" to "Number" and you can then put "Decimal places" to 0 and check "Use 1000 Separator (,)".

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Score Reader 1.1 released!

Download Here

New features:
- Support for the latest ".Net Framework" versions
- Support for HTTP proxies
- Support for Firefox 3.0 (basic framework, needs further testing, IE still recommended)
- Patriotic branding (in "About Us" page)

Planned for next version:
- Full Vista compatibility (will do more testing to fix any remaining issues)
- Full Firefox 3.0 support

Future plans:
- Support all instrument and band selection for all scores in one spreadsheet

Download Here

".Net Framework" info:

With version 1.1 of the Score Reader, all you need is the latest version of the ".Net Framework" (version 2.0 SP1 on XP or 3.5 on Vista). You can also get version 2.0 SP1 directly here if you still have issues with Vista.

See Windows Update (under the Tools menu in IE) to get the latest version. If you want to see which ".Net Framework" version you have installed, see the Control Panel and "Add\Remove Programs".

(See original Rock Band Score Reader post here)

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rock Band Score Reader

Note: The evolution of this tool is now the RockBandStats.com website!

You can see your scores there and it loads much faster than fetching your own scores with the Rock Band Score Reader. Enjoy!

See this post for more info.

-------------------------

Would you like to see all of your official RockBand.com Leaderboards scores (Solo or Band) in one easy-to-read spreadsheet? Would you like to quickly know which are your best and worst ranked songs? Do you want to see how close you are to the #1 score for any song?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this tool is for you!

Version 2.3 includes:

- Compatibility with the new RockBand.com website (all scores for RB2 and RB1, including RB1 Disk Export)
- Support for all instruments or band on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii
- Support for DLC, including an option to specify songs you own for faster score retrieval
- Can get #1 scores and calculate spread
- Stats page
- An estimate of the time remaining
- The ability to select the range of ranks that the tool will search for your scores in
- Support for XP, Vista (32-bit) and all Excel versions
- Logging for better issue tracking

Here is a look at the tool in action:


Here is an example of the scores spreadsheet:


Download Here (no longer available, see RockBandStats.com instead)

Brought to you by Phoenix5096 (code master extraordinaire) and Bongoo (usability and QA).

If you have any questions or comments about the Rock Band Score Reader, please send an email to phoenix5096@gmail.com.

This tool has been very useful to 3 Macas and a Reject. We hope that it will also be useful to you and your band!

Useful Rock Band 2 Links

Here are a few useful links to get you prepared for the imminent release of Rock Band 2.

For a list of quick links to all Rock Band 2 songs on Youtube, click here. If you want to see most Rock Band 2 song difficulties (new Tier system goes to 7, not 9), click here. For a high-end Rock Band 2 drum peripheral, click here.

All DLC ranked plus new #1

Tonight was a fun diversion from our usual leaderboard quest as we only played some DLC. It is likely that we can climb up to 4th next week when DMan returns.

Highlights:
- Without using our best instruments, we still managed to gain a new #1 score (for "They Say", only 3 mistakes overall)
- Attaining our main goal of ranking all unranked DLC
- Playing our worst ranked songs, now every song is above rank 2200 and we will soon have all of them in the top 1000, 100 or even 10 one day (slowly improving on all random guest member session rankings)
- Trapper (one of our groupies) and his caustic comments about most non-metal songs (he especially despises "The Pixies", "The Cars" and the "Scene Pack")
- Bongoo finding out that it is not a good idea to sit on top of the La-Z-Boy...

Monday, September 1, 2008

Goal for tomorrow: Rank all DLC

Our quest for 4th is put on hold for one week as DMan is away on training (not singing school). Instead, we will have fun with the numerous DLC. After playing the last remaining unranked songs, we can improve on our worst ranked ones.