Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP is the Watchmen of Videogames

Like all right-minded people, I bought the Humble Indie Bundle V the other day, lengthening my Steam library by a few more names and giving me my third copy of Psychonauts. The reason I really bought it (other than the OST for Bastion) was Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP.

I’ve played through the first two sessions last night, and whilst it is very knowing about its mythopoetic structure, I am thoroughly taken with it. It is the most beautiful Amiga game that wasn’t made in the 90s, graphically, musically and experimentally. It recaptures the sense of wonder I felt as a small child, viewing all those other worlds with a belief and willingness that adult cynicism has largely stripped away (and they were all other worlds – not different aspects of one fantasy monomyth, but each varied and surreal in their own way). I can’t help but think that I’m playing it the wrong way, though.

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Virtual Insanity: Part Two – Opening Windows

Hello again! This is the continuing travel log of my attempts to build a new virtual infrastructure, so if you’ve not read part one, this might seem very specific and strange. I’m not claiming to write The Guide here, I’m just jotting down my experiences as I go in the hopes it helps someone (and possibly future me if I go through this again. Hello future me! How’re the flying cars?)

None of this bit is difficult, but there’s enough bits to miss that hopefully this forms a sort of overly-wordy checklist. This is The Part Where Windows Gets Installed.

Systems Center: The Lie of Integration

This is entirely a rant, and only tangentially instructional. It is related to the virtualization malarkey I’m doing at the moment, but won’t actually help anyone set up a similar infrastructure. It might save someone a bit of brain-ache in the future, but mostly, I’m just annoyed.

To recap briefly: I want shiny new virtual servers in a high-availability cluster, and to do that, I have 2 beefy DL380 G7s and a single DL160 G6 to act as a physical DC and administer the VMs. There’s an LTO5 tape autoloader for backups that connects by SAS cable.

My plan was for the DL160 to be running Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage the DL380s, and to run Systems Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) for the backups. Not unreasonable, right?

/sigh

Virtual Insanity: Part One – Let’s Get Physical

This is the start of a lot of writing, because if I put it down in words, it’ll make me believe that I’m in control and I know what I’m doing. I promise you, I’m not and I don’t. Most of this will be disjointed sentences adapted from my hasty notes and vague memories, but some of it might prove useful, or at least entertaining.

It’s also a manual to myself in case I ever go through this again in the future, because there’s a lot to forget and a lot I’ve learnt the hard way.

So. I’m making a new Hyper-V virtual server infrastructure.

The Difficulty of Difficulty

I’ve been playing Fallout 3 recently, and it’s got me thinking, because it’d be more accurate to describe it as trudging through Fallout 3.

I, like so many others, have an offensively long backlog on Steam, and nowhere near enough free time in the next three years to play them all fully, even without the new purchases I will inevitably pick up over that time. I’m not kidding when I say I could quit my job today and not be done with that backlog by next Christmas. So my gaming time is a fairly precious resource, and if I’m not enjoying something, I have plenty of other games waiting to do that for me. But I’m still trudging through – 60-odd hours in now with no end in sight. Why?

Breaking Immersion: First Person is Stupid

Where are your arms right now?

Alright, that one was easy, as you can see them resting on your mouse and keyboard. How about: exactly where are your legs and feet? Not just under the desk, but how far do they reach, what are they near, what would they knock if you span in your chair?

If you closed your eyes, could you still stretch your arm out fully then bend it back in to touch the tip of your nose?

That’s proprioception, the mind’s self-awareness of your own body. Without it you’re a bumbling idiot, as my lanky teenage years can attest. If you don’t know exactly where all your limbs are you can barely function.

Which is why first person view is so fucking stupid.

So

It wouldn’t be WordPress without a crappy first post would it?

So I have enough random ideas for crap to write floating around my head that I should really just start writing it all out. I quite like writing and maybe there’s someone out there who quite likes reading (so long as I stick to short words and smilies, amirite? lulz :3).

Current plan:

• Work tag – for all the crap I deal with at work, yay Win2k3
• Play tag – for when I want to write crap about videogames, because the one thing the Internet needs is someone else with pretensions to game criticism
• Rest tag – for when I’ve written some shitty short story or done good with my camera and need somewhere to throw it

Also: fuck regular updates. That shit never works out. It goes up when there’s something to go up.