I’ve wanted to write about my work at university for some time now but I’ve never really sat down and took the time to do that until now.

There are various things I do at the institute, some of which I don’t understand why they are my responsibility. Some of them I enjoy. Others I don’t, which is something very typical for any job, I suppose.

I am a part-time system administrator at the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision.

Server Maintenance

Whether it’s searching lost files, looking through logs to find specific, maybe even security critical events or just reconfiguring an existing piece of software, maintaining the servers of the institute has become my job - that is if you subtract the physical maintenance and the purchasing process. I am extremely thankful that those areas are covered by my friendly full-time colleagues.

I try my best to investigate errors in logs, particularly recurring ones when there is time to spare.

Configurations

Obviously there’s a lot of command-line fu involved.

In the last few months I changed some processes which were occurring regularly:

1. Changed our servers to use unattended-upgrades where possible
2. Set up more reasonable e-mail notifications

Moreover, I blocked the 360Spider bot from constantly requesting files from our web server. I set up an OpenVPN server with guidance from Thomas. I configured a system in which an encrypted partition is automatically unlocked and mounted on login if you belong to the correct user group (I’m not sure whether I should be proud of that given the incredible hackyness of said system).

Currently I am looking into puppet for my next assignment. I’ve heard great things from friends about the software but my first experience was creating a VM for testing and realizing that the apt puppet module is currently broken (Dec 15th 2014).

Documentation

When I arrived I was pretty shocked to see that there was absolutely no internal documentation at all. I am working to remedy this situation whenever I have spare time between more immediate assignments. Since I consider the documentation my primary project I made all the important decisions myself. It’s written in Markdown and we are using our internal gitlab platform to host and distribute it. Gitlab provides a nice “edit” button too, for those unfamiliar with git.

As of the time of this writing, there is documentation about the most common workflows, some server configuration, deployment notes and command line hints.

Additionally I’ve written a Getting Started guide for new members of our institute in order to avoid explaining everything to every new person again (and again in case something was unclear).

Building stuff

Creating ways of interweaving technologies is easily my favorite task. I like to write scripts to automate laborious tasks that have to be done. On the other hand I am also looking for challenges in which proven ways have to be reassembled to fit a client’s needs (though they are not directly paying me, the members of the institute are “clients” in the sense that it’s my job to make their ideas or wishes in terms of infrastructure work).

In practice that means I’ve written several scripts and am in the process of rewriting most of the tools to use the awesome Fabric module for Python. This particular direction was inspired by my other friend Thomas, who suggested just the right kind of tool for my work - a tool which profits from my profound joy working with the Python language. Except when it comes to the byte string/unicode string problem in Python 2.x. My collection of administrative helpers is located at my github repository since I’ve liberated it from our internal gitlab.

It would’ve been easier - and probably more comfortable - to just stick the configuration in the scripts themselves instead of reading everything from JSON files. That would’ve meant at least three things I was uncomfortable with:

1. Sharing the code outside of our ICG admin team would have been impossible due to the risk of compromising confidential data. I preferred to share because I think that it’s hugely beneficial for any IT worker, be them programmers, sysadmins or similar to have a presentable portfolio of their work.
2. Asking peers for advice would have been impossible due to the same risk. I don’t consider myself a superior programmer and therefor like to get the opinion of my peers every so often to improve the quality of my code.
3. Hardcoding data where it is not strictly necessary feels unclean to me.
4. It would’ve been way harder for anyone who might like my work to use it themselves. I immensely dislike working against the Open Source idea where it’s so obviously unnecessary.

In combination with the work done on a server configuration project involving a cryptographic setup for groups I’ve also scripted a rather convoluted process of setting up new users for said system.

Administrative Chores

I’m not entirely sure why this belongs in my domain but I’m routinely tasked with entering content in our CMS of choice, Plone. That wouldn’t be as annoying of our instance of the system did not feel that broken and slow. Hm, I almost forgot “confusing”. Never had imagined that simply putting up a job offer needed so much administrative overhead just in a CMS.

I don’t have a lot of love for any database driven CMS, now that I think of it. Still, due to laziness I have not taken the time to move my personal site from WordPress to something like Jekyll yet.

And of course, there’s the usual “enter user X into the system, please” because others don’t have the same permissions that the system admin has. Cue “I am root” joke here. Actually, don’t do that. I did that once. Made a terrible mistake less than an hour later.

Tech (and Moral) Support

So you fix our computers, right?

Given you have acquired a certain knowledge of computers, operating systems and software over the years you will be tasked with fixing or configuring things that your co-workers simply cannot manage to do themselves. That’s okay. Sometimes you won’t be able to find the bugs, fix the errors or configure their thing to work. That’s okay too.

Your colleagues want you to try your best - if you manage to do the impossible on the way that’s great. If you’ve obviously done your best and invested multiple hours into research and experimentation concerning their problems, it’s very likely they will understand that it’s not possible for you to smooth out every little itching. And every once in a time, they’ll want your advice or input on a problem they’re trying to solve. You might know something. You might even guess something right - it’s not important. You’re there, supporting them with their issue. Maybe that will be enough; I’ve personally had more than a handful of these occasions during my half year at the institute.

People in my life know I’m good with computers. And they come to me and ask for advice. I can see the pain. They’ve been hurt. They want a savior.
And I’m tired. And I’m busy. And there’s so much to say. So much to teach. So much to do.
And I don’t want to be their savior right now.
And that hurts, too. ~SwiftOnSecurity

This passage from SwiftOnSecurity manages to catch my opinion on this issue pretty well. I’ll try to help everyone given the time but I sometimes I need my colleagues to understand that it’s outright impossible for me to be working on their issue right now. There may be more pressing problems, say I might have rm-ed a file we still needed or I’m in the middle of a project already.

I realized I need to work on my communication skills and the timing of e-mails in order to minimize stress - both for me and others.

Since I skipped the last two month, this will be a longer post, summarizing both May, June and July 2014, probably even some entries from August, just so they’re written down somewhere.

Games

• Guild Wars 2 - Got back to GW2, had a lot of fun, found new guild members, almost finished the story, joined the living story, did fractals, conquered dungeons, crafted. I’m playing it on a Windows partition since the Mac Beta client is still lacking in terms of performance. Honestly, I expect it to stay this way, being powered by Wine under the hood.
• Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Freedom Cry - gameplay wise there are little changes; however, its music is exceptional even for an Assassin’s Creed game. I bought the official soundtrack on its (delayed) release day.
• Assassin’s Creed Revelations - Played again, as part of our companion gaming. I thought about visiting Cappadocia.
• Assassin’s Creed 3 - Got it as a gift from a good friend. Have not yet finished it. Often I found myself tuning out when Connor was talking his native language. In contrast to an Italian or Turkish accent it was not that relatable, especially when more than half of a dialogue was not in English. The game itself is huge. I haven’t seen everything yet but I’m already impressed by the sheer scale of the game world and the variety of activities implemented. It does not suffer from TES IV: Oblivion syndrome though, where each and every thing is more interesting than the main quest itself.
• Mass Effect 2 - A quick game and a few missions to entertain the girlfriend who has yet to see the story of ME2 and was bored with the ME1 Let’s Play she watched.
• Road Not Taken - Impulse buy after having watched the expert video playthrough on its Steam page. The game is adorable, challenging, yet not frustrating. I find it a lot of fun to play. Randomly generated puzzles are a nice idea.

Novels

• Kälteschlaf by Arnaldur indriðason (German, iTunes Promotion) - MISS
• Night School. Du darfst keinem trauen by C.J. Daugherty (German, Amazon Promotion) - MISS
• Du mich auch: Ein Rache-Roman by Ellen Berg (German, Amazon Promotion) - HIT
• No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty - Another recommendation from Stefan, due to me being a lazy writer, blogger and author. Great read even if you’re not planning to participate in a NaNoWriMo.
• The Swift Programming Language by Apple - Had only a cursory look into this yet and toyed around with Playgrounds. I found the graphing of changing variables a great help for visualizing data while experimenting.

The Book of Deacon series

I came across The Book of Deacon as promotion from the Story Bundle newsletter and was curious. It has a rich fantasy universe which is not too far off and caught me with its interesting characters - enough that I bought both the remaining books of the trilogy as well as the additional ones set in the same universe. The author of this series is Joseph Lallo.

• The Book of Deacon (Story Bundle Promotion, iTunes Promotion)
• The Great Convergence
• The Battle of Varril
• The Rise of the Red Shadow
• Jade

The Witcher series

The Witcher is something I love to talk about even considering that I didn’t like the first video game. I have not yet tried the second and the third has not yet been released. Some years ago I was in Cologne at the Role Playing Convention when I noticed the author was also there due to a promotion. They sold games with a map which I wanted to have but I already owned the game and asked if it was possible for me to purchase a copy of the book with the map. It was possible and I still have both map and book - even with the author’s signature on it.

I bought the last book of the series some years ago as a paperback novel however I never really took the time to re-read the complete series. Recently I was abroad for a period of time and bought all the books again as ebooks. Being able to read them whenever I wanted without lugging the whole seven books with me on the plane helped me read them again. I enjoy the Witcher universe which was created by Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s a pity the first game’s combat makes me cringe every time I need to rhythmically click enemies to death.

• Das Schwert der Vorsehung
• Der letzte Wunsch
• Das Erbe der Elfen
• Die Zeit der Verachtung
• Feuertaufe
• Der Schwalbenturm
• Die Dame vom See

Podcasts

I started using Overcast without its IAP since I wanted to see whether I really need a third-party podcatcher to replace Apple’s one. Also, I tend to like Marco’s apps, so I needed to try this one too.

• The Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast 114 - Songs from the Final Frontier
• Accidental Tech Podcast 29 - Computerized Garden Gnome
• Accidental Tech Podcast 30 - Full Frontal Thumb
• Accidental Tech Podcast 31 - Swimming in 16 GB Gold

Movies

• Maleficent - We rarely go to the cinema, mainly due to me complaining about other people and not liking movies a lot. After this visit I could add another point to that list of negative impressions: Along with the movie we watched we were forced to watch about 14 ads. 14. That’s almost the same amount we paid in Euro for the tickets for both of me and my girlfriend combined. You should watch this movie though. It’s interesting, fairly well done and not being overly kitschy. I’m not a fan of Angelina Jolie either but the overall impression was very positive.
• Youtube: a little history on harvest moon
• Youtube: Tim Minchin’s Storm the Animated Movie
• Extra Credits: Extra Credits - Why the Vita Failed - PlayStation’s Lost Gamble

Overview videos

• The Amazing Spider Man 2
• Child of Light
• Hack’n’Slash
• Transistor
• Wolfenstein - The New Order

From Rands in Repose, titled “Your People”:

It’s attending a conference where you know no one. It’s driving to the city to sit in a coffee shop with ten strangers bonded by a programming language.

You’d think that occasions like this are no longer needed in times of the Internet, since you simply join a community of people with common interests and hang out there. Having spent a lot of leisure time on the Internet though I can say that having a great time at a conference or other type of event is something different altogether.

Amongst my favorite memories are the many times I joined the Linuxcouch at university where I met great people who I get along with extremely well. There is not only a basis of common interest but it’s the mutual respect that is given to people who have accumulated a certain expertise in their respective fields. Helpful friends who either try to help you when you need advice in technical (or other) matters, who may on occasion defer you to someone else but who also offer suggestions on whom to ask when they don’t know the answers themselves.

One of the big reasons why this tends to work out well is a willingness to learn from each other. While the finer aspects of interests can differ, there are topics which may cross over between your areas of expertise and theirs. I’m not saying your topics should be restricted on the things you work with. I’m trying to tell you that exploring one’s stance towards a particular issue or idea can be its own reward. If you are similar to me, you prefer to work in silence or behind your headphones with which you drown out distractions but can enjoy the detailed discussions going hand in hand with technical decisions.

Your People rarely demand anything. But when either you or they make a request, neither the request nor the agreement to do it is ever in question.

You don’t question the request because your trust in them is enormous. You assume - and rightfully so - that they know what they are doing. You don’t have to question them because of your unwavering certainty that their reasons are as legit as yours are when you are in the position of having to ask them.

You get mail all day from everyone, but you always stop to read mail from Your People.

You don’t stop to read their mail because you think it’s more urgent than your regular mail. It’s because you care. It’s because their issues are more interesting, because their fate is dear to you. Admittedly, you often assume that they act the same when you contact them. That’s okay, because that spiritual connection you feel is probably mutual.

These are not people that let you sit in place, these are people who hold a mirror up to your fuck-ups, and who explain, in excruciating detail, exactly what you don’t want to hear.

They know that constructive criticism is what you need to improve yourself. They also tell you what you need to hear in order to be better, not to feel better. You are better of leaving last part to a loved one anyway.

Networking is the art of finding those who are willing to listen to and critique your stories, so go look at your Inbox. Better yet, go look at your Sent box.

Instinctively you may already know who exactly Your People are. That’s because they are the ones you are relying on when you need honest feedback. They are the ones you like to spend your time with if they are in the vicinity. They are the ones you try to keep in contact with even if it’s been an unspeakably long time since your last communication.

You already know their value which you hold dear and are keen on keeping that bond intact. Rightfully so, as they can improve your whole attitude towards life in ways you will have a hard time wrapping your mind (and imagination) around.

From a recollection of above post on Rands in Repose:

Your people are your people because while you may not always agree, you are comfortably on the same frequency. Because of this frequency alignment, you invest in them instinctively because while people look at you like you’re crazy, they do not. You answer their emails quickly. You arrange drinks when they are in town – always. They are your people and in a world chock full of people, your people are uniquely yours.

In closing, I’d like to say one last thing: If you do one thing - just one little thing - that should be keeping true to your people. Never feel uncomfortable because they might not be respectable company in the eyes of judging others. Never feel like you have to apologize for them, their customs. You belong among them.

Summary: 5 games, 2 novels, 1 movie, 11 videos, 1 podcast.

Games

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood - Finished again; no point in trying 100% completion again after having it synced to AC Initiates before though. Saved me a lot of nerves.
• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: The Da Vinci Disappearance - It was nice to play some content I’ve not seen before when replaying the series with my girlfriend to show her the full story of Assassin’s Creed. The Da Vinci Disappearance was refreshing and exciting. It even surpassed my expectations, having read the story before. The presentation is superb and includes elements which made for an enjoyable change of pace from the main game.
• FTL: Faster Than Light - Impulse buy after having watched its overview video. Fun, but very hard. I’m playing on Easy with Advanced Content On but wasn’t able to finish it once yet. Incidentally I made an acquaintance last week who also happened to play it on the iPad and has not yet managed to finish it either.
• Secret Files: Tunguska - Love the series. Tunguska is our current Companion Gaming title.
• Pokémon Y - Picked up Pokémon for a day to swap pokémon with a relative over the holidays.

Novels

• Killer Frost by Jennifer Estep - A fitting end to a wonderful series. Delighting, amusing and extremely satisfying. Will look into the author’s other series. I have also downloaded another in-between story that’s currently only available in German on iTunes for free.
• No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty - a book about hints and helpful procedures for aspiring novelists which intend to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo. I’m not yet sold on the concept of writing extensively for only one month, but on the other hand I do indeed have the tendency to keep a lot of projects just lingering around when I should be dedicating them enough time and motivation to finish them. The book was recommended to me by Stefan.
  I’m not yet finished with the book as of the time of this writing.

Videos and movies

I watched Madagascar in German. Didn’t like it. I liked last holiday’s Puss in Boots a lot better.

• Escape Goat 2
• Goat Simulator
• FTL Advanced Edition
• Tabletop simulator
• NES Remix 2
• Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn on PS4
• Half Minute Hero: The Second Coming
• Broforce
• Strike Suite Zero: Director’s Cut
• Fract OSC
• Daylight

Podcasts

• Directional 6 - Paper Manuals

Listened to an episode of Directional because I read a lot of the articles @viticci writes, but wasn’t particularly entertained.

Summary: 6 games, 20 videos

Interestingly, it seems as if holidays actually slow down my writing process.

Video Games

• Fable 3 - Almost done with the achievements in this one. Can’t say I enjoyed most parts of the game. Weak presentation of the story. Might be due to me comparing it with Mass Effect or other series instead of a single title. However, one look at Grandia proves that even a single game can be an epic all by itself without having to rely onto sequels. Side note: I absolutely adore Grandia to this very day.
• Plague Inc. - I wanted to try the iOS version of Plague Inc. immediately after I watched Polygon’s Overview video on the game. I found it to be - as mentioned in the video - quite hard. It took me several tries to finish one game on Easy difficulty and to this day was not able to complete a game in Normal mode.
• Gyromancer - Gave in, bought the DLC, completed the accursed Challenger’s Door. Finished collecting achievements. Dare I say that the summons in the DLC pack are seriously and severely overpowered?
• Guild Wars 2 - I dove back into GW2 for a bit after having purchased a new MacBook. I still tend to like it even though some systems have become quite complex and the April update changing so many of the existing systems. I am very fond of the new wardrobe system and spent a while looking through all the different outfits available for my Sylvari lady thief.
• Dungeons of Dredmor - Had some time to kill - a reason that often sends me back to entertaining, shorter games like Dungeons of Dredmor. Which I always, always want to write ‘Dredmore’.
• The Elder Scrolls Online, Beta - I am a fan of The Elder Scrolls and have been since I played Morrowind. I was bored by Oblivion but Skyrim saved the series for me. The Elder Scrolls Online however, did not. I missed the feeling of being the central part of the story. I felt unimportant and even lost at times which is a huge deal breaker for an MMO. Some people say that it’s hard to tell the NPCs from the players - it’s not. Players are the ones jumping around stupidly and sprinting hectically from place to place.

You are the one who will save us. And this guy over there. And that guy. And that other one.
~ Markus

Videos

• Deus Ex Shortfilm - Since I consider myself a fan of Deus Ex: Human Revolution I just had to check out a well-done fan-made movie about the title.
• TED: The NSA responds to Edward Snowden’s TED Talk by Richard Ledgett
• Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig

Polygon has a new series called ‘Overview videos’ in which they play a game for a certain while and try to explain as well as show what the game is about. Most parts of the series tend to clock in at about 20 to 30 minutes and are at least slightly amusing. I think they really help to demonstrate what the game is about and I vastly prefer those to video reviews. I still read the written reviews of more interesting games for that matter. I tend to watch nearly all of those to get a good impression of what’s new in gaming.

• Overview: The Yawhg
• Overview: Fable Anniversary
• Overview: The Elder Scrolls Online
• Overview: Dark Souls 2
• Overview: Thief
• Overview: Plague Inc Evolved
• Overview: Hearthstone
• Overview: Nom Nom Galaxy
• Overview: Luftrausers
• Overview: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes
• Overview: Infamous: Second Son
• Overview: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
• Overview: Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster
• Overview: Mercenary Kings

Summary: 7 games, 1 novel, 1 season of videos

games

• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag - I really don’t remember what I was doing in February in ACIV, probably participating in a community challenge or working towards 100% synchronization.
• Assassin’s Creed II - The other Assassin’s Creed game in which I had not had 100% sync before.
• Mass Effect 2 - I am not playing this again. Not a single chance. I have been watching for a bit while my girlfriend has playing this on Casual and it hasn’t been a lot of fun. Predictably, I’d say, when one knows the dialogues by heart after playing the game five times.
• Mass Effect 3 - My girlfriend wanted to play the Geth Server level again and we didn’t have a savegame which was recent enough, so I rushed through the Geth dreadnought. I had almost forgotten how funny it is to one-shot everything on Casual.
• The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Faith - The Wolf Among Us was something that I wasn’t sure what to think about when I first read of it. Given that it was free for a day before Christmas I decided to download it and finally got around to give it a try. I liked that you are notified about the consequences of your actions and that you always have a number of different option for your next action. Adding a timer to many decisions certainly necessitates that you don’t overthink what you are going to to, because you have to decide the next course of action now or else… The game is a bit difficult to stomach in its over the top depiction of violence which makes it hard to recommend.
• Gyromancer - Finally I was able to obtain the last few achievements of this puzzle game. While I tremendously enjoyed most of the gameplay, the special puzzles needed for the Challenger’s door are incredibly annoying and require a certain amount of skill, patience and a ridiculous amount of luck. That’s because very often you will be waiting for a certain combination to be nearly ready only to suffer from an enemy’s ability to destroy your carefully constructed match.
• Fable 3, including Fable 3 Understone Quest Pack - to be perfectly honest it’s not the best game. Far from it if I’m precise. I might turn some thoughts about F3 into a future post but I intend to finish playing the game first.

novels

• Meines Bruders Mörderin by Irene Rodrian (German, Amazon Promotion) - An Amazon promotion, again. I’m slowly working through this. After all, I got one more free book from iTunes too. Can’t have enough books. I am always somewhat annoyed by the fact that I only get free German books but they’re gifts, so let’s not be picky. I’ll put them out with the junk if they’re bad anyway. The short version: It’s a murder mystery, setting up the scene for a series of novels involving a new private investigation agency of five women who meet through solving a crime in Barcelona. I enjoyed reading it and this is probably one of the very few cases in which I’ve thought about obtaining the sequel to a promotional work.

videos

• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - recently I had a feeling of nostalgia and watched Ghost in the Shell again. Back when it was airing on MTV I had only seen a couple of episodes, so it was nice to see the whole season. I like the concept of Stand Alone Complex and the way it portraits the hacker central to the events in the series, the Laughing Man. At the time of this writing I have already watched several episodes of the 2nd GIG.

Summary: 4 games, 1 cartoon

Games

• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood - I only played a little part of ACB this month since I got AC4 as a birthday gift.
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift - A little bit more. I looked into the Clan Privileges and found the system to be a lot more extensive than I initially thought. I soon discovered that there were actually really useful privileges that allow one to speed up the process of learning skills, leveling up your party and providing significant bonuses in battle.
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag - In one word: awesome. I have recently completed the game by which I was truly amazed in multiple ways. It is my second favorite game of the series so far, next only to Brotherhood. Pirating is fun for itself, but packaged into an Assassin’s Creed game, the whole fun is stepped up another level. Although I spent quite some time chasing boundless collectibles and sinking legendary ships as well as cursing and sometimes screaming about several ridiculous bonus objectives I can finally state to have completed almost everything the game has to offer - save for three Abstergo Challenges out of 100. Also I keep singing the see shanties from time to time, a fact that really makes me smile and shows how the game has made a lasting impression.
• AC Initiates - Metagame, browser based. Unlock stuff and background material about the whole AC franchise. Mostly a chore, but sometimes unlocks items in the games.

Cartoons

• Bob Morane, episode 3: In der Eishölle - Well, wiki isn’t particularly helpful here. I loved the animated series back in the days of watching SuperRTL.

So, a friend of mine asked me to remove his real name from the writing he did over at our old, soon-to-be removed blog. When I inquired about his reasons for wanting to do so I was given the answer that he doesn’t want his name to have any hits when entered into a search engine.

I respect my friend and I have the utmost respect for privacy. On the other hand I think that having your real name next to your writing on the web creates a sense of responsibility. It makes you think and carefully pick your words and phrases instead of puking all your thoughts onto the keyboard because no one will ever be able to connect them to your persona. Many people want their name to stand for something, be it quality, reliability or something else entirely.

Given this line of thinking I was curious and asked for the reason behind this intent. He stated that has almost completed his education and is about to start applying for different jobs. He doesn’t want his potential employers to find anything about him on easily accessible sources.

I have to admit that while I respect his decision and already took the content down after mailing him an archive with his posts, I don’t understand the motivation at all. Is there a reason to cover one’s tracks when one writes about his personal interests and they remain fairly mainstream things?

Personally, I tremendously enjoy writing this blog - it’s an outlet for my creativity, it’s my home on the web and it’s a place I can use to share stories, helpful articles and just my thoughts with whoever wants to read it. I have even found myself using it on my letters of application and potential employers have talked to me about having checked out my blog and having seen articles related to the work I was applying for - or even just stuff that happened to be among their own hobbies.

I don’t write for a particular audience when dumping my thoughts like this. Letting the thoughts flow and the words stream out of my fingers helps me clear my mind. There are quite some posts on this website that have started their lives as scribbles or singular sentences in Day One, the diary app that I adore. Such as this one.

Summary: 5 games, 1 movie, 8 videos

I want to check out Risk of Rain, since it sounds interesting and got a splendid review from Polygon. However, I’m a little skeptical about playing it since I get angry very easily when playing video games against the computer. Interestingly I don’t have a problem losing against other people.

Another interesting thought that recently entered my mind is the purchase of a Playstation 3 which should be heavily discounted by now. I’m considering Journey, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX as well as the Ratchet and Clank franchise. For non-exclusives I’d prefer to stick to the Xbox 360 version. Fortunately, as is the way of wikipedia, there is a list of PS3 exclusive titles. This is a long-term plan however.

I got some gifts: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, LEGO Battles Ninjago, Deponia and an NDS version of The Guild - have a short review of that or a more positive one, in German. Due to some games being just that interesting and work for university I haven’t been able to play/test these in 2013.

Games

• Pokémon Y
• Skulls of the Shogun - was free for one day before Christmas. Since I’ve heard only good things about it when it was released for XBLA I thought I’d try it out and was pleasantly surprised with its amusing atmosphere, its great humor and its gameplay. My favorite point about the game is the music, which is just so well done. It doesn’t lull you in but provides an easy background for your tactical thinking.
• Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - had the chance to try it during the holidays. I will stick with my decision to rather not move while playing video games. Meaning: I don’t like the Wii.
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift - I played the hell out of my Final Fantasy Tactics Advance copy back then and intend to do the same with this one. Tactics series games are amongst my favorites for mobile entertainment.
• Tiny Thief - was distributed as one of Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas gifts. Has adorable animations and a enjoyably whimsical feel.

Movies

• Puss in Boots (German, “Der gestiefelte Kater”) - Turns out that sometimes there *is* good stuff on television. I am fond of the Fruit Ninja re-skin accompanying the movie and just had to see it.

Videos

• Bananasaurus Rex’s solo eggplant run in Spelunky - Polygon wrote a fascinating article why this is an indication for what to expect in gaming and streaming for the near future.
• Julia: An LLVM-based approach to scientific computing - Very interesting typing system, however I am pretty sure I missed a lot of mathematical basics as well as more CS theory. I wish the presenter would’ve talked a lot slower.
• Developer Toolchain for the PlayStation®4 - It was interesting to hear how the development of the PS4 and its toolchain influenced Sony to upstream changes. Due to the secrecy involved this presentations contains some horror stories like “the merge with upstream changes took about 3 months and was done by a single person”. Sony’s developers will spend a lot more time upstreaming patches if this talk is any indication.
• Bringing clang and LLVM to Visual C++ users - The efforts to bring clang and LLVM integration to Visual Studio are fascinating. I highly recommend this talk.
• Emscripten: Compiling LLVM bitcode to JavaScript
• Building a Modern Database with LLVM - Improving performance of modern distributed databases. Builds on top of HDFS, not Hadoop.
• An Interesting Approach to Reverse Engineering Apps
• Managing Macs at Google Scale

Summary: Quite something, long time overdue.

So, apparently I was in a little over my head during the last few months, doing stuff for university, working a bit, worrying, being sick and generally not in the mood for writing which is a shame. This will be a cleanup post in which I try to collect everything related to consumed media that I haven’t already put up or linked to in the Reading tips. Since I was still busy during the pre-Christmas time I added parts of December’s media to the list.

I’ll begin linking video games to http://mobygames.com from now on. The site seems to be large enough and respectable enough to hold quite a lot of information while not being wikipedia. Its gaming focus is something I prefer over the much more general information source that wikipedia is. Scratch that. While revising this article and transforming it into the threefour-month-monster it is now, I figured out Mobygames wasn’t adequate. Read: they didn’t have an article on the newest Pokémon games. Generally I’m not too fond of Metacritic since there are many ways in which this rating collection system is being abused, be it by hiring companies or game sellers. However, they are a good source of information, which is my main reason for linking there.

Movies

• Prestige (German)
• Romeo Must Die (German)
  Watched old DVD again. In German. Synchronization issues are gross. Believe me, their lips are wrong.
• 21 (German)
• Assassin's Creed: Lineage
  ACL is part of the ACB collector's edition and shows a part of Giovanni Auditori's life before the events of AC2. It provides additional background information.

Games

• Assassin's Creed 2
  Played AC2, finished AC2. Nothing exciting here, just redoing stuff to get up to speed for part 3.
• Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
  I love the Ace Combat series and replayed part 6. Had a blast even though I still remembered most missions. Part 6 doesn't suffer from any annoyingly difficult passages.
• Terraria
  More Terraria on iOS. Not as much as I thought though. Talked to Chris who told me that Hardmode is not yet implemented in the iOS version. Interesting when you take into account that this is about half of the game in the PC version.
  Haven't been able to check out the Christmas update yet.
• Pokémon Y
  I'm enjoying my pre-Christmas gift. I've always like the Pokémon games, having played the first, second and third as well as fourth generation. I skipped the fifth generation since I thought there was nothing new to see. My main gripes were (and still are) with the ways the player character is controlled. I preferred the touchscreen controls of Pokèmon Ranger to the control pad of the major games.
  Finished the main story line on the train. Will now try to get more Pokémon and eventually reach the pinnacle of what's realistically achievable without cheating or heading to faraway places only for the distribution of some legendary. Waiting for the Celebi promotion that will be introduced together with the Pokémon bank. Might be the first time I'll legitimately have one of those not encountered in the game on a standard playthrough.
• Tiny Death Star
  Killed a lot of time. Realized time is valuable. Stopped playing after getting bored due to a lack of variety.
  Haven't checked out the Christmas update.
• Kingdom Hearts
  Rediscovered my love for Kingdom Hearts's mix between Disney and Final Fantasy. Finished the game in about 40 hrs, doing most of the things except for fighting Sephiroth and getting Sora's "Cheer" ability. I hate the 100 Acre Wood with passion. I used an old save of mine to replay the Sephiroth battle instead of maxing out the party's level again.
  Furthermore I spent many hours reading in the Kingdom Hearts wiki, looking up details on the universe and on the games I won't be able to play due to not owning the respective console. Note: a lot of video game consoles got at least one release of Kingdom Hearts - however, while they are all canon, they are not all relevant for understanding the entirety of the plot. I look forward to playing KH3 sometimes in the future. Although that requires the purchase of a new console. I think my wallet may be silently crying in the next room.
• Prison Architect
  Manuel showed me the alpha build distributed through STEAM and it seemed like a nice game. The animations when contruction workers build objects are adorable. The story elements and animated narrative sequences are likable as well. I was reminded of Theme Hospital, an old favorite of mine back from when I loved playing a demo of the game for PS1 but never bought an actual copy.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
  Started ACB, my favorite part of the AC series so far. Looking forward to playing The Da Vinci Disappearance.

Let's Plays

• Final Fantasy VIII (German)
  I'm quite fond of FF8 myself - as you might be able to recognize from my logo being a symbol taken from the game - and talked my girlfriend into watching a German LP of the game with me.

Magazines

• Progress edition 08/2013 (at least that's what I think, I lost my girlfriend's copy on the train)
  The magazine had some interesting topics and parts of the writing were really good. However, the "gender gap" recently introduced into German writing makes enjoying longer texts a pain. The stylistic hell it presents to the reader strikes me as unbearable. I am fine with being called anti-feministic or conservative for this attitude I firmly believe that the "gender gap" transforms the joy of reading into something akin to a gargle with acid while trying to focus on a mentally exhausting task. It's made unnecessarily hard by something for which I personally fail to see the point.