The Clan of the Cave Bague

Well, it always does really. I generally class the honeymoon period of a new job as the period of time between walking through the door for the first time and the moment where I type vi munge.pl.

So, that halcyon period of belief that every single person around me has clue has ended horribly. A fellow sysadmin, a few weeks ago, provided a dump of a database for the sales guys. For reference, of course. Well, the sales team have been busy going through all the contacts in the database tidying them up, working out who’s moved on, putting in new leads, and so on.

Except they’ve not done all this to the database. Oh no, that would make too much bloody sense. Instead, they’ve sent back a 3,000 row Excel spreadsheet, with no unique IDs and said “Can you punt this back into the database, please?”.

Some people are alive simply because it’s illegal to kill them.

I love it when bloggable things happen at work. Due to a bizarre experiment involving a wall, a whiteboard, all the blu-tack in the universe and an infeasibly large number of natural language programmers, systems bods, and developers, we’ve managed to prove exactly what it says in the title.

Technically, I suppose, it wasn’t the paint that gave up first (as suggested by the huge craters in the wall). It was in fact the plaster.

Or that’s how it seemed. After what seems like an eternity of listening to music on mp3 players and laptops, we finally got our nice shiny hifi set up last night. Between the big chunky toroid transformers and the fairy-dust powered magical crossover in Linn speakers, we dragged Nina off the surface of the disc and planted her in the middle of the room to sing for us.

And lovely it was.

Urm. Well, it’s been a bit busy of late. On the gaming front, I was playing Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin until I met a boss that killed me and set me back an hour. I was also playing Lost Magic, but then I met a boss who killed me and set me back an hour. I’ve also been playing Final Fantasy III, but I met a boss who killed me and set me back an hour. By far, though, what little gaming time I’ve had has been spent playing Puzzle Quest. But I met a boss. That killed me. It set me back an hour.

In other news, though, we’ve moved into our nice shiny new house! And it’s fab! And we were all settled in! And then our shipment of stuff arrived from Oz and (1) we’ve nowhere to put it all, (2) did we really have that many toys and (3) it all stinks of eucalyptus. So our house is now chaos.

Never one to shirk from a challenge, I’ve also started a new job this week – and it’s a Linux house, so there’s not a sniff of Windows in sight! Hooray!

The Killer Shrews, made in 1959, is everything a B-movie should be. Really really bad, really really funny, and awesome entertainment. IMDB give this film 2.5/10 which is probably 2.5 more than it actually deserves in terms of artistic merits, but who cares! Ray Kellog manages to direct this truly dreadful script with flair and panache and the lovely black-and-white lightening is done to a tee – especially during the faked up storm sequences.

Basically, the dubiously named Captain Thorne Sherman (James Best) arrives on an island with a cargo of supplies for a mad scientist. Sadly, the mad scientist has been busy training EVIL KILLER SHREWS which, as you’d expect, have broken free and are RUNNING AMOK on the island. Some nice characterisation, an interesting semi-abusive love triangle, and a few moments demonstrating that the “hero” is actually a bit of a murderous sod make this a little more thought provoking than most monster movies, but who cares! The titular shrews (oobits dressed up) manage to gallop around cheerfully and steal the scene every time they appear – especially the bit with the kitchen door.

You’ll be able to pick this movie up (along with The Giant Gila Monster and The Giant Leeches (see a theme here?)) in a box called “Monster Attack” available for tuppence at most disreputable discount bookshops or here.

This is a bit trickier than one expects from a modern Castlevania game! Anyway, I covered everywhere I could reach in the town painting and did a bit more castle exploring. I also did a couple of quests which have yielded a double jump ability (which is handy) and defeated another boss (or two – I can’t remember). So, I’m now exploring a distinctly Egyptian painting and having lots of fun making mummy-dust from mummies. Which is ACE.

ZOMG! Well, firstly can I just say that Portrait of Ruin is easily one of the best looking games on the DS and equally easily the prettiest Castlevania EVAR. Nice parallax effects, a lot of 3D backgrounds and baddies and the usual whippeding action. The whole dual character thing is a bit confusing, but I’m only an hour in so I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it. I’ve come across the first boss in the first painting – a big armour thingy with a detachable blue head – and it’s kicked my bottom several times already, despite me using cool zappy dual strike things, so I’m obviously doing it wrong.

But I’ll get there – after all, nothing could be harder than Circle of the Moon :-/

Guhh! Death’s second form is quite breathtakingly hard. Fortunately you’re free to go and find a save point after his first form. Which is just as well, because I’ve spent well over three hours play time being killed by Dracula, going off and getting up a level, coming back, getting killed, levelling again, etc. By the time I finally defeated him I was level 51 and started the fight at level 46.

Anyhoo – I ended up equipping as much defensive gear as I could and then staying as far away as possible at the top of the room, listening for his rushes (74% health lost in one rush == gnot gnice). Anyway – he sometimes does two rushes in a row, sometimes three and sometimes four – no way to tell except to listen for the rush sound, wait and see if there’s one immediately afterwards and then rushing down to find him and hit him with a thunderbird summon if not.

So there he is – ganked horribly. And even though I’m in the middle of Final Fantasy III, Puzzle Quest, and Children of Mana, I must start Portrait of Ruin, just to remind myself what Castlevania games became like when they weren’t as ROCK HARD as Circle of the Moon. An utterly, utterly ACEBEST game.

I get so many requests for my OpenPGP key these days that I thought I may as well post it here to save people asking. You can download the transport armour version here. It’s also available on the main keyserver at http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/ under the key ID jmd at nelefa.org (but replace the at with an @, obviously).

Gah! I’m consoling myself with the thought that I’m not incredibly rubbish at this but that the AI does, in fact, cheat like a cheating thing. Not only that, but the hint marker that comes up almost always shows you a move that will leave you wide open to a massive damage-fest by the enemy if you’re foolish enough to take its advice. Of course, it’s not fixed at all – I’m just rubbish at it, but I am (albeit slowly) getting better.

Honest.

Still the BEST GAME EVAR.