ScoreHero Wiki : User_Echelar

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Echelar


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Joined ScoreHeroFeb. 26, 2006
Joined StaffSep. 5, 2006

Real NameJosh Slosson
Born
 
Sep. 19, 1981 (age 30)
La Crosse, Wisconsin
LocationFort Wayne, IN
Alma MaterPurdue University
Graduated
 
Aug. 2004
B.S. in Computer Science
OccupationSoftware Engineer
Marital StatusSingle
Echelar is among the first moderators of ScoreHero. He is not as visible in the forums as some of the other moderators, but is always lurking behind the scenes. He is best known for his work in pioneering star power paths in the GH1 days, making early youtube videos of hard/expert performances, and having many first places on lower difficulties. Echelar also is the ban enforcer in ScoreHero's IRC channel with a self-written script.

Contents:
1 IRL Biography
2 Scorehero Bio
3 Guitar Hero Bio & Acc.
   3.1 General Info
   3.2 Guitar Hero 1
   3.3 Guitar Hero 2/80s/3
   3.4 Rock Band
   3.5 Youtube Vids
   3.6 Streaming and Vid Recording
4 Gaming Background
   4.1 Console Gaming
   4.2 PC Gaming
5 Hobbies
6 Favorite Things
7 Etymology of Echelar



IRL Biography


I was born in 1981 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Moved to Fort Wayne in 1984, and have lived there since. I have a brother who is 3.5 years younger than me. We fought a lot (as siblings do) until we both passed adolescence. My parents were fairly overprotective, probably due to a food allergy (corn) that I had to be on a special diet for until high school. Is anyone reading this section? Nobody is, right? Thought so. In 5th grade, I decided I wanted to be a Chemist. I therefore took it upon myself to memorize the Periodic Table on the bus ride home. I also made a crossword puzzle with all the element names and passed it out to the whole class. Yeah, I'm a freaking nerd.

In middle and high school, I was in the advanced classes, also known as "do 5 times as much work as everyone else" classes. Finally, towards the end of high school, I wised up and took some easier stuff. They also offered programming classes, which I proceeded to take pretty much every semester. Sometimes, more than once in the same semester (through some loopholes in the system). After a while, that teacher basically let me and my group of friends do whatever we wanted. One of my friends, after programming Tetris for his semester project, proceeded to, uh, "beta test" it the entire next semester. I made battleship, and a text-based RPG that I "tested" during class. Yeah, senior year was actually somewhat fun.
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HDTVPanasonic TH-50PZ800U
ReceiverSony STR-DG920
Sound SystemBIC Acoustech Series 6

I got into Purdue University fairly easily on a computer science ticket. Since I applied right before the tech crash in 2000, CS was the hot thing. Compared to high school, college wasn't much work at all. After making some college friends, I had a lot of fun playing games and drinking on fridays weekends every day that ends in "y". After graduating, I, uh, took a sabbatical to focus on my WoW playing. I got a job about a year later for a local software development company. It served me well for two years, but eventually I needed to move on. I switched jobs, and am now very happy with where I am.

In July of '08, I bought my first house. It's new, and I'm extremely happy with it. It's been a lot of fun decking the place out with a new hdtv, sound system, furniture, etc. Short of something like a disco ball, it's a pretty great "bachelor pad". As you can see in the pic, there's the HDTV, all the consoles stacked up next to it, the PC in the same room (I mean, who wants to go to two places for entertainment), and lots of open space/seating room. The PC is also set up to output 1080p to the TV for HD movies (which look amazing).

For those of you wondering how I have any money left after all this: Well, I don't.




Scorehero Bio


I don't even remember how I found ScoreHero in the first place. Probably through google. I had a self-made spreadsheet that I was using to keep track of my best scores (I had %/NS too). So, when I found SH, it was a simple matter to transfer them all to the site and let SH be my new spreadsheet.

Shortly after I joined, User_JCirri JCirri was trying to work on deriving formulas for the star cutoffs, and other game mechanics. This also fell in my area of interest, so I started helping out with proofs as much as possible. Eventually, I started talking to him on AIM, which led to us doing a lot of these discovery projects jointly. We even started creating a program to find optimal star power paths (which was never finished). After that, I helped out everywhere I could with the site, which quickly led to me becoming a moderator officially.

On 07/23/06, JCirri and myself started the ScoreHero IRC channel. It quickly became apparent that we needed some moderation tools, so I wrote a penalty-enforcement script for the task. It started out as just an extended banlist (since the internal ban list on GameSurge can only support 45 bans at once), but the newer feature of the Penalty Box is now the most-used feature. This script is what I'm most widely-known for as of late. Besides the IRC script, I've also written some admin-only tools for use with the main site (which I'd explain in more detail, but then I'd have to kill you).



Guitar Hero Bio / Accomplishments


General Info


Strengths: Weaknesses: Interesting Facts:
As you can see, I'm not that awful good at really fast stuff in general. I can 5* Six, but I have to single strum most of the verses, which is extremely tiring. I never managed to 5* TTFAF, probably because I don't combo as much of the fast-strum sections as most people. I also am not very good at tapping. Sure, I can do the TTFAF intro, but I have no hope of learning Jordan. My guitar skills have definitely atrophied since I stopped playing regularly, about a year ago, but I can still put up a reasonable performance on most any song.

GH1


Guitar Hero (PS2)
Easy
Total Score5,403,290
Passed47/47
5*47/47
6*47/47
7*29
100%47/47
FCs47/47
Rank46th
Medium
Total Score8,450,380
Passed47/47
5*47/47
6*47/47
7*37
100%47/47
FCs47/47
Rank25th
Hard
Total Score11,637,032
Passed47/47
5*47/47
6*47/47
7*36
100%42/47
FCs42/47
Rank41st
Expert
Total Score12,062,457
Passed47/47
5*47/47
6*44/47
7*21
100%20/47
FCs20/47
Rank238th
I originally was introduced to GH1 back in Feb, 2006. Some friends and I went to see Kevin Smith in Chicago, then retired back to a friend's house to play video games and hang out for the rest of the weekend. One of them brought GH. I was immediately skeptical, but that skepticism vanished after the first song. After the first day of playing multiplayer, I was passable on medium/hard. I bought the game on my way home, and played it 6 hours each of the following 3 nights to complete all of medium, hard, and almost all of expert.

After a small amount of time on the site, I started to actually path out songs. I actually earned quite a few first places on Expert over people way more skilled than myself because of pathing. Eventually, I determined that I could use said skills to land many more firsts on medium and hard, which is where I spent most of my competitive time in GH1. I became known for defending my 1sts on M/H aggressively and quickly when people tried to take them. I still played expert daily, but never got the skill required to stand with the top players.

Some of my notable GH1 accomplishments:
Favorite songs to play in GH1:

GH2/GH80s/GH3


Guitar Hero III (360)
Guitar Hero: 80s (PS2)
Guitar Hero II (PS2)
I played a lot of GH2, but never felt that I wanted to try to defend a bunch of medium/hard scores anymore. I burned out on that with my GH1 days. My GH2 rank was usually between 50-100th, depending on how much I kept up on my playing. There are some bad playing habits that I never unlearned that kept me from being ranked higher on the difficult songs. The story was much the same with GH 80s. I'd keep a rank around 40-50th, but never be able to rise higher.

For GH3, although I enjoyed playing a lot of songs, I never got very competitive with it. I didn't look up many paths anymore, didn't replay nearly as much for score and FCs as I had with previous games. My one regret with GH3 is not spending enough time on TTFAF for the 5*. Maybe someday I'll go back to it.

Some GH2 accomplishments:
Favorite songs to play in GH2/80s/3:

Rock Band


Rock Band 2 (Drums, 360)
Expert
Total Score14,301,210
Passed82/84
4*82/84
5*80/84
6*59/84
100%19/84
Rank377th
Rock Band (Drums, 360)
Expert
Total Score10,275,061
Passed58/58
4*58/58
5*57/58
6*41/58
100%19/58
Rank202nd
Rock Band (Guitar, 360)
Expert
Total Score9,022,398
Passed58/58
4*58/58
5*58/58
6*56/58
100%0/58
Rank480th
I was quite happy to put down the guitar when Rock Band came out. Ever since then, I've played guitar once every few months, and focused more on drumming. I guess I just needed the change, since I'd been playing guitar hardcore since GH1. I started out very high in the ranks, but have been dropping as more and more experienced drummers pick up the game. It doesn't bother me much, anymore, as I mostly play for fun these days.

The RB accomplishment I most enjoy is finally learning to play Blackened. (YT vid)

My favorite songs to play on RB:

Youtube Videos


I was inspired by Phr34k's BATM videos and SArmstrong's videos, so I decided to make some of my own. My first attempt was Texas Flood (H) on a terrible quality cam recording. I figured out how to use my computer's S-Video input to record directly, and started cranking out videos.

Note: If I mention "1st" or "2nd" in a comment, it refers to the place the score was in when I submitted it, not the current ranks.
Echelar's Youtube Videos
Guitar Hero 1Guitar Hero 2
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
5/20/06Texas Flood (H)173k | 5*Watch
5/20/06GR2R (H)230k | 5*Watch
5/24/06Breaking Wheel (X)350k | 5*Watch
5/25/06Hey You (X)249k | FC | 1stWatch
6/04/06Behind The Mask (X)151k | FC | 1stWatch
6/05/06Fire It Up (H)211k | FC | 1stWatch
6/07/06Decontrol (H)265k | -2 | 1stWatch
6/12/06Graveyard Shift (X)120k | 5*Watch
6/13/06Bark at the Moon (H)305k | 5*Watch
6/14/06Unsung (X)420k | FCWatch
6/16/06No One Knows (X)325k | 5*Watch
6/17/06Cheat on the Church (X)FC 1 partWatch
6/24/06Crossroads (H)286k | FC | 1stWatch
7/01/06Cowboys From Hell (X)5* | GtrGodWatch
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
7/03/06Cowboys From Hell (H)390k | 5* | 2ndWatch
7/20/06Fat Lip (X)284k | FCWatch
7/20/06All Of This (H)203k | FC | 1stWatch
7/23/06Frankenstein (H)247k | FC | 1stWatch
7/25/06Frankenstein (X)258k | 5*Watch
7/28/06Fly on the Wall (X)221k | 5* | 2ndWatch
7/30/06The Breaking Wheel (H)361k | FC | 1stWatch
8/07/06No One Knows (H)309k | FCWatch
8/27/06Caveman Rejoice (X)266k | FCWatch
8/28/06Sharp Dressed Man (X)257k | FC | 2ndWatch
9/09/06Texas Flood (H)221k | 1stWatch
9/23/06Killer Queen (X)173.8k | FC | 1stWatch
9/27/06Bark at the Moon (H)342k | -1 | 1stWatch
 
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
10/07/06YYZ (Coop)GH2 DemoWatch
11/20/06Gemini (H)225k | FCWatch
11/24/06Crazy On You (H)391k | FC | 1stWatch
12/10/06Free Bird (H)539k | FC | 1stWatch
12/15/06John the Fisherman (X)203k | FCWatch
12/21/06Institutionalized (H)354k | FCWatch
12/27/06Freya (X)384k | 5*Watch
1/11/07War Pigs (X)394k | FC | 1stWatch
4/04/07Killing in the Name (X)552k | FCWatch
4/12/07Raw Dog (X)330k | FCWatch
4/17/07COWS (X)308k | FCWatch
4/27/07Free Bird (X)602k | 5*Watch
10/8/07Fury of the Storm (X)No SPWatch
10/21/07Crimson King (X)421k | 5*Watch
Guitar Hero 80sGuitar Hero 3Rock Band
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
8/20/07Hold On Loosely (X)313k | FCWatch
 
 
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
10/12/07Lay Down (Demo) (X)299k | FCWatch
10/14/07Even Flow (Demo) (X)338k | FCWatch
10/28/073's & 7's (X)399k | FCWatch
Date AddedSongAccomplishmentVid Link
7/22/08Blackened (DrumsX)302k | 5*Watch
 
 


Streaming and Video Recording


YouTube Videos
My standard way of recording videos was to split my audio/video feeds. Until recently, I was using standard composite video/audio. One feed gets run to the TV, the other to a VCR, then the VCR-out is run to my PC. I would record on the VCR (yes, using a VHS tape) while I played for an hour. If I got something worth putting on youtube, I'd replay the VHS tape to transfer it to the PC. This way, I could re-record to the PC in case the video capture messed up (which it did a LOT). For video input, I'd use the VIVO (S-video) port of my GeForce4 TI4200. Unfortunately, this method is no longer open to me for recording. Now that I have an HDTV, I'm using component video from my 360.

Streaming
Many people have seen my "high quality stream", that required either VLC or WMP to connect directly to a video/audio stream. For that, I was using VLC to directly encode and broadcast the video capture at 640x480 resolution, and a video encoding rate anywhere from 1,000-3,000 kbps. The result is a picture so clear that it's difficult to go back to watching ustream afterwards. Again, since I'm using component video, I've not found a way to make this work again. My webcam, which is my "backup plan", is actually pretty terrible. It's a Creative Live pos.

Future Planning


Gaming Background


Console Gaming



PC Gaming


We got our first PC in 1990. It was a 386 SX16 with a 50mb HDD. Ahh, the "good old days".

Primary games I remember playing:

Hobbies


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mmm, chocolate.

Favorite Things


I'm going to have to try to not break out into song during this section. That's right, I just referenced a 40 year-old movie. I wasn't planning on putting in a "favorites" section, because it seemed too myspace-ish. However, I suppose it does provide some sort of insight on my sense of humor and other such things.

Favorite TV shows:
Favorite Movies (besides the obvious list of star wars, indiana jones, LOTR blah blah blah):
Favorite Animes (I was introduced to anime in 2000 by a college friend. Blame him for my obsessions):
Favorite Drink:

Etymology of Echelar


A long time ago (10 years), I used the alias "Quakeman". Yes, to play Quake. Yes, it was horribly uncreative. It was basically a joke name that stuck, unfortunately for me. The first time I had to actually say it out loud, in person, to a girl I was trying to flirt with, I decided to change it.

I came across the word "Echelon" at some point, decided it sounded cool, and based the new alias on that. "Echelar" isn't meant to have any specific meaning; I mainly wanted it to be creative and unique. In that regard, it's a success. The name is always available when I register at any website.

Note: It's pronounced [Esh-uh-lahr]

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