–zetstream

Source: Programmer salaries and the glass ceilings — forcing happy programmers to become managers.

Yup, I’m screwed.

Under some extreme circumstances, I’m trying to finish everything as soon as possible. Important things like getting a job, getting a car, and going to school. Other less important things like maintaining the journal and all sorts of web mastering need to be handled too. Side jobs that keep popping up along with poor time management are really getting the best of me. I’m about a week behind on that stupid journal, and since I really don’t often communicate with people, I might as well post abridged entries from the journal. That won’t happen until I get caught up though, and I’ll probably start from the present post.

I’ll find out in a few months if life’s awesome or blows, even with extremely hard work.

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Originally the problem started when the VPS that we had from Network Redux started running slow as hell. cPanel was crawling, not to mention just loading up pages. Dan had asked NR to switch the VPS over to a new server in September 1, 2009 and they JUST did it last week. Here’s a breakdown of each machine:

Old VPS
CentOS, cPanel
A) Quota reporting showed everybody to be at 0 MB; it wasn’t functioning at all.
B) The whole server was running as slow as molasses

New VPS
CentOS, cpanel
A) Files were missing from hexial.com, my account, and Jack’s account. These were the accounts that were over quota. Obviously quota reporting had been fixed at this point, and the server decided to randomly delete/append whatever files for all of the accounts to not exceed their set quota.
B) PHP.ini was probably f*cked up.
C) Something about, “Error in UKNOWN on line 0 of .” That makes a lot of sense right? Unknown, and line 0. For those of you who don’t know how to program or read code, that doesn’t make sense to those of us who can either.
D) open_basedir functions got raped.
E) Database access was screwed.
F) hexial.net/~[account] wasn’t (and still isn’t) redirecting properly.

We decided to use my account to test backup restoration. My Super Vanilla Bear (Michael Bentley) was kind enough to store our backup on one of his servers, so we transferred it through and remade the account…same problem. We moved everything over to impact009.hexial.net as a subdomain…oh hey the front page is working! Oh wait, I can’t access anything else…

Something in config.php for phpBB is messed up, or the mySQL database itself, otherwise, everything else has been fixed for the most part. hexial.net/~account redirection is still a little screwy. This site will no longer be used as a proxy or as a FTP server. If I’m going to do this, then I’ll do all of that somewhere else, because Dan and I have had numerous issues with Network Redux, and I have had numerous issues with shady web hosts in general.

I definitely cannot host Anime-Toshokan’s releases here due to space limitations. If I ever get around to it, then I’ll set up the file server from my home computer again. It honestly only takes two minutes (literally 2 minutes…), but I really don’t feel like doing it…

Ajay showed me this last night; I find it rather hilarious. Update: As of 8:52 p.m. the note as been deleted. There were at least 35 responses. Gentile provided the bulk of the arguments against Kelli’s note, and basically a bunch of people call Kelli a dumb bitch (whether they posted or not). Kelli started calling Gentile, Josh Muraki, and Will gay.  Her statements mostly became more incomplete, and thus it seemed like she didn’t get most of her points across to anybody. Anybody defending her couldn’t even get past the first line of “Dear Dumb Bitch;” (one person even admitted to it) and it became an open-flame war. Our winner however, was Rebecca Ann Buckner, a friend of Kelli’s who was the most racist person I’ve ever seen. She gave me that vibe of a woman who’s been so “abused by men” that she couldn’t really take a man’s statement seriously (quote: “first of all are you a man or a woman”). Though I can get the first few responses, the last few among Ian, a fellow named Ryan, and Rebecca were the most hilarious. This was the best troll ever “caused” by me, yet I didn’t actually post anything besides unrelated quotes. It seems like all participants left for dinner at the same time, and that’s when Kelli “accidentally” deleted the note.  I can’t really give a more descriptive summary, because I was blocked from the note since early morning, so I skimmed through the responses on Ian’s account.

Highlight of the note:  Somebody said Gentile is lucky that Kelli’s boyfriend didn’t know where to find him.  That’s right folks, Gentile was sooo lucky.  /Sarcasm

I almost really don’t care to post the pics that Ajay was able to take.  His were of the posts from early in the morning, when hilarity peaked towards the evening.  Fail on my part guys, unless somebody has them or can tell me how to actually datamine my Firefox cache files.

If you notice any inconsistencies or errors, then please notify me.

Things that need data:
Damage/Shot and Range Calculations in V.A.T.S. for weapons with spread greater than 0.
Frame Data for weapons in V.A.T.S., specifically recovery time.  It may be possible to better manipulate invincibility frames with that knowledge.

This build is based on min/maxing a near-perfect (non-addon) character for combat.  There’s a lot of room for variation, and the same end-result can be achieved in multiple ways.  Its emphasis is based on high-AP, infinite AP recovery, ranged V.A.T.S. combat.  Thus, burst is maximized while damage received is kept to a minimum.  Of all of the 0-SPRD weapons Lincoln’s Repeater is my recommendation at 50 DMG and 25 AP per shot.  The Alien Blaster deals 100 DMG at 20 AP per shot, but ammunition for it is extremely rare.  I’m too lazy to compare and analyze the rest of the weapons (ie. the usefulness of certain non-0-spread weapons at certain distances), so this will be updated sometime in the future.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Cap:  70
Damage Resistance Cap:  85%

Skill Points Needed For Max = 1300 (13 Skills x 100 Points for max)

Base Skill Points = 13 Skills x 15 Points = 195

Tag! (Non-Perk) = 3 Skills x 15 Points = 45

Total Bobblehead Points = 13 Skills x 10 Bobblehead Points = 130

Minimum Total Book Points = 9 Skills x 50 Book Points + 46 (Barter) + 44 (Speech) + 48 (Small Guns) + 48 (Energy Weapons or Science) = 636 (Note:  Comprehension Perk Needed)

Maximum Total Book Points = 9 x 50 + 48 (Barter; evil Tenpenny Tower completion) + 48 (Speech; evil Tenpenny Tower completion, Contract Killer Perk required) + 50 (Small Guns; Lawbringer Perk required) + 48 (Energy Weapons or Science) = 644 (Comprehension obviously needed)

Quoted from FarirKalb:  “There are only 23 Barter and Speech books, but if you finish Tenpenny Towers quest the evil way, the alternate tower has a duplicate of each, bringing the total to 24. Also, one of the Speech books goes by a different name, Paradise Lost, but works exactly the same.

There is a Speech book inside the building for the Contract Killer perk, inaccessible otherwise. The Lawbringer perk has the same thing, but a small guns book.

One of the Lockpick books is situated underneath an object where you cannot reach it without lots of explosives and some luck; if you can get to it, there are 25 in total.

Each of the houses has the science theme, but the Tenpenny house gives a Science book while the Megaton house gives an Energy Weapons book; you cannot get both.

Also, Melee and Barter have two books that spawn on a highway near Temple of the Union, but they only spawn after you do Head of State. They exist, however.”

Total, Minimum Number to Maximum Skill Points Before Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:  1006 to 1014 Skill Points (with Comprehension Perk)

1300 – 1006 – 10 (Cyborg) = 284 Maximum Skill Points Needed From Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

1300 – 1014 – 10 (Cyborg) = 276 Minimum Skill Points Needed From Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Thus, this concludes that a minimum of 3 base Int is required to max out all skills (4 is needed for Comprehension, and the last point of Int can be gained from a bobblehead).

Items:

Lincoln’s Repeater:  50 DMG/Shot, 25 AP

Tribal Power Armor:  +35 DR, +15 AP, +5 Melee Weapons, +1 Str, +1 LUck
-1 AGI

Ledoux’s Hockey Mask:  +25 AP

Lucky 8 Ball:  +1 Luck (Note:  Make sure this is not in your inventory when you pick up the Luck bobblehead.  Luck 8 Ball is very glitchy, especially when used in conjunction with Ranger Battle Armor or the Almost Perfect perk from the Broken Steel add-on.)

Quest Perks:

Survivor Guru:  +6 Critical Hit
Ant Might:  1 Strength, 25% Fire Resistance (Ant Sight if starting Perception is 8.)
Barkskin:  +5% DR

Originally, Barkskin (even according to the official strategy guide) gives +5% DR and +1 END.  It was fixed to give only +5% DR in the final version of Fallout 3.

Starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:

Str:  1
Per:  9
End:  9
Cha:  1
Int:  3
AGI:  10
Lck:  7

Levelling Perks:

2:  Black Widow/Lady Killer
3:  Intense Training (Str)
4:  Comprehension
5:  Intense Training (Str)
6:  Toughness
7:  Gunslinger
8:  Commando
9:  Strong Back
10:  Bloody Mess
11:  Finesse
12:  Life Giver
13:  Sniper
14:  Mysterious Stranger
15:  Cyborg
16:  Action Boy/Girl
17:  Better Criticals
18:  Intense Training (Str)
19:  Concentrated Fire
20:  Grim Reaper’s Sprint

Only Comprehension is required for maxed skills, so keep that in mind if you want to deviate from this build.  Since Strong Back only requires 5 STR and 5 END, you can remove one Intense Training.

Total S.P.E.C.I.A.L. at level 20:  52 (out of 70)

Str:  1 + 1 (Bobblehead) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Intense Training) + 1 (Ant Might) + 1 (Armor) = 7
Per:  9 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
End:  9 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
Cha:  1 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 2
Int:  3 + 1 (Bobblehead) = 4
AGI:  10 – 1 (Armor) + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10
LCK:  7 + 1 (Armor) + 1 (Lucky 8 Ball) + 1 (Bobblehead) = 10

Action Points:  65 (Base) + 20 (10 Agility) + 25 (Action Boy/Girl Perk) + 25 (Ledoux’s Hocky Mask) + 15 (Tribal Power Armor) = 150 (Maximum Possible)

Damage Resistance:  35% (Armor) + 4% (Helmet) + 10% (Toughness) + 10% (Cyborg) + 5% (Barkskin) = 64%

DR is capped at 85%, and can be permanently increased to 84%.  If you decide on getting Nerd Rage! as a perk, then keep in mind that the benefit you’ll get from it under 20% HP will only be 21%.  That means you’re only using 42% of the perk.

Fire Resistance:  25%

Build-Exclusive Calculations:

Coefficient = # of skills affected x 2 (Since 1 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. = 2 Skill Points in each skill that it affects)
Luck Coefficient = .5 (13)
x = S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Value

Str:  2x (Melee Weapons)
Per:  6x (Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick)
End:  4x (Big Guns, Unarmed)
Cha:  4x (Barter, Speech)
Int:  6x (Medicine, Repair, Science)
AGI:  4x (Small Guns, Sneak)
LCK:  6.5x (All Skills)

We will use the “Total, Minimum Number of Skill Points Before Levelling and S.P.E.C.I.A.L.” value:  1006

1006 + 14 (Str) + 60 (Per) + 40 (End) + 8 (Cha) + 24 (Int) + 40 (AGI) + 65 (LCK) = 1020 + 247 = 1006 + 251 = 1257

1300 – 1257 = 43 Skill Points From Levelling Needed

Let x = # of level-ups that yield 14 skill points, and y = # of level-ups that yield 13 skill points.

14x + 13 > (or equal to) 43
14x > 30
x > 2 1/15 (or 2 Remainder 2) = 3 (Rounded up)

Level-ups Needed = x+y
Level-ups Needed = 3 + 1
Level-ups Needed = 4

Theoretically the Lone Wanderer only needs to be level 5 in order to max out all stats with this build.  Here’s a visual example:

Level 2:  13 Skill Points
Level 3:  27 Skill Points
Level 4:  41 Skill Points
Level 5:  55 Skill Points

In actuality, at this point we have not yet received the Cyborg Perk from level 15 or the Intense Training perk from level 18.  Thus, our Lone Wanderer would need a perfect grand total of 43 – (-2) (Final Intense Training not yet obtained) = 45 skill points from levelling.  Cyborg was not taken into account in the previous math anyway, so it can be excluded here.  It is therefore still possible to maximize all skills at level 5.

Take a look at the Guitar Hero series. GH3 was what really made the series famous, along with the artists that it featured. Most people of our generation are well aware that songs like “Through The Fire and Flames” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” were some of the most grueling in any rhythm game back in the day. Here’s an honorary mention for “The Legend of Max” before you DDR players murder me. Moving on, Neversoft decided to make the following GH games much more casual-friendly (with the exception of Guitar Hero: Metallica). Of course, there’s no problem with making games more accessible, but the problem lies with the route they went with: nerfing Expert note charts. Since when were casuals experts?

A long time ago, a Score Hero thread raised the issue of the steep difficulty of GH3, specifically tiers 7 and 8 on hard and expert. Many of those songs were charted by former Score Hero members, so the difficulty wasn’t surprising. A Neversoft developer did state that he wanted his daughter to at least be able to complete these songs on hard; fair enough.

Guitar Hero: World Tour came along, and it was an absolute joke. Many songs were sightread full-comboed on expert by veteran players (I’ve sightread FCed a few so far), and the more difficult songs such as “Hot for Teacher” and “Satch Boogie” were easily sightread. To give you an idea of my skill level, I’m only ranked 2,358 as of June 30, 2009, so I still have a long way to go.

Let’s take a look at Guitar Hero: Smash Hits. Bark at the Moon’s solo was slightly nerfed. Bridge 1 and and the “red snake” on Through the Fire and Flames were heavily nerfed. Was there a need for this? These songs were meant to be completed by only the very best players on expert. Try anchoring green and flailing your fingers through the intro now. You’ll probably get past it.

Super Smash Brother Brawl went this route too. Sakurai did not want a competitive environment, even in Super Smash Brothers Melee. Though Melee’s meta-game was a complete accident from his point of view, Sakurai succeeded in his goals with Brawl. For all of you nay-sayers that keep saying, “Give it a chance; new advance techniques will be discovered!” please note that it’s been over a year. Brawl is still slower with no recent discovery of major adv. techs, and Meta Knight is the god with no true counter.

If you’re an avid gamer, then you already know that there are very few games out there that are even remotely difficult on even the very hardest difficulties. Some exceptions recently are Devil May Cry 4, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and Resident Evil 5: Hell and Hell mode, Master Ninja, and Professional respectively. However, even such games will lose their challenge upon mastery (speedruns are a great exhibition of skill mastery and luck manipulation). That’s when gimping ourselves as players comes in.

Ever played Halo 2 or Halo 3 with skulls on Legendary? How about straight-character challenges or low-level runs in RPGs? Am I the only one who finds it ridiculous that we gamers have to gimp ourselves because our games are inherently too easy? Everybody and his mother seems to have the Complete Campaign: Legendary achievement. Games shouldn’t be losing their replay value after a few days or a week.

The last thing I want to mention about this subject is World of WarCraft. There is nothing challenging about it except for PvP (player versus player), though the bigger problem there is composition and class balance. As for PvE (player versus environment), all a competent player needs to do his put in time to learn fights and gear up. The fights are always the same, and unlike many other games, the encounters are the same every single time. Let’s face it, many players aren’t competent enough to learn the encounters, or they don’t have enough time to earn their gear. 10-man raids for these types of people are fine and all, but leave them out of hard modes, and don’t make current gear ridiculously easy to obtain with every following patch. I believe the true difficulty here lies with being able to find competent players and not a fail group, being lucky enough for an upgrade to drop, and having further luck with winning aforementioned upgrade.

On an equally random note, happy belated birthday Paige; my apologies.

So what does all of this Halo nonsense mean?  Frame rate lag, and a lot of it.  I’m estimating that the game was running at about 20 FPS.  Ever played anything at 20 FPS?  It sucks, though it would’ve been fine if it didn’t stay like that for a few minutes, which is unacceptable for a speedrun.  This made me realize why enemy numbers never scaled with difficulty, but rather only accuracy, damage, and defense.  It doesn’t make sense that a battles for control over the most over the most important relic in the universe are fielded with a handful of units.  At the end of the day, casualties on each side are probably about 100. I can’t help but feel that the XBox 360 would be able to handle more if the the graphic filters were toned down a little.

Games with would-be large-scale battles will have at least one of the two following qualities:
1)Terrible framerate
2)Mobs that do nothing

Anybody who has ever played Kingdom Hearts 2 or the Dynasty Warriors series will know what I’m talking about. The 1000-Heartless Battle is what I’m referring to in KH2. 90% of them do absolutely nothing until you run up to them. In Dynasty Warriors 2 to 6, you can surround yourself with ten enemies on Chaos Mode, and only one or two will try to attack you at the same time.

Dynasty Warriors has always had this problem, though with varying solutions. Nobody really notices the limit on the number of player-mounted animals that are saved during a battle, but MOB pop-up and terrain rendering is VERY noticeable. What then, has undoubtedly changed with every iteration of Dynasty Warriors that chokes the system’s resources? The graphics. I like my games to look nice, but not at the expense of gameplay. I’m fine with future DW games looking like DW3 if it means that I can actually experience the atmosphere of a battlefield in the Three Kingdoms era.

So the next time you see a game with amazing graphics, think about what the system’s resources are being used for and the factors as to why your game may lag every now and then, and why consequentially the A.I. is maybe terrible or erratic. Of course it’s not always the graphics, but personally, how something looks doesn’t affect how I play beyond 2D and 3D.

This reminds me of how with more powerful hardware comes newer revisions of software that whore the same proportion of a computer’s resources, but that’s an entirely different subject.

A big budget – big enough to do the following:
1) Cast Shia LaBeouf as Samuel Witwicky, and one who doesn’t live up to the family name at that.
2) Cast Megan Fox as a useless human who did absolutely nothing compared to any other human in any iteration of Transformers.
3) Assign Bumblee’s, one of the weakest Cybertronians used as comic relief, disguise as a Chevrolet Camaro.
4) Amazing action scenes.

The flaws? The usual: lack of a decent story (deviating from pre-conceived plot lines generally doesn’t work) and bad, sometimes non-existant character development.

The more I watched the movie, the less anything made sense. One of the peculiar things if you’ve watched both movies is that Cybertron was stated to be destroyed, yet we’re getting closer to seeing Unicron with the arrival of The Fallen. This is very strong evidence that Primus and Cybertron are two separate entities in this iteration, or Primus is already dead. Canonically, Primus is the last line of defense against Unicron in all of the infinite, parallel universes. How this turns out will be interesting to see, assuming the third movie doesn’t end up being a “Let’s gather all of the AllSpark fragments/Mini-Cons/Cyber Keys/whatever” stalling fest.

The Matrix of Leadership in the movie was once held by the Primes, attributing evidence to the fact that it’s a fragment of Primus. Though the movie completely removes the idea that it holds the memories of all former Autobot leaders, it still retains the qualities needed to destroy Unicron.

A very disturbing statement made multiple times throughout the movie that Optimus Prime is the last Prime. This essentially makes Prima, Prime Nova, Sentinel Prime, and Vector Prime dead. Vector Prime, being a supreme badass, was often depicted as Ramjet or Galvatron’s opposition. Here’s to hoping we will get to see Galvatron no matter what.

Out of all of the characters introduced, Jetfire had perhaps the worse development. He was weak and feeble. The one peculiar thing about Jetfire is that he knows how to use space bridges. Since space bridges are Autobot technology, it doesn’t make sense for them to give such valuable technology to a mercenary…a mercenary who apparently wasn’t on the Autobot’s side for very long, considering he still has the Decepticon insignia. His only redeeming factor was ghetto-Powerlinking with Optimus into Jet Optimus, an attribute taken from Transformers: Armada. This isn’t really a powerlink, since only parts of a dead Jetfire were used.

Jetfire’s death brings about many anomalies. With his death (wtf?), there probably won’t be any mention of Sky Shadow. Well also won’t see an additional tri-powerlink with Overload into Magna Jet Convoy. Here’s to hoping that Jetfire’s brother, Overcast, actually makes an appearance. Maybe we’ll see Wing Saber powerlink with Optimus Prime into Sonic Wing Mode too.

One thing that was bugging me in both movies: I couldn’t recognize many of the Decepticons and a few Autobots! I saw a Decepticon that that looked eerily like Bulkhead (an Autobot). I laughed a little on the inside when I saw Ironhide beating the crap out of what looked to be like Bulkhead.

The Constructicons combining into Devastator was THE SHIT. Well, until he got one-shotted by a damn rail gun. I was actually expecting Omega Supreme to make an appearance and kick his ass for the one millionth time. Oh well; I guess we won’t see Omega Supreme either.

Optimus Prime is finally at his true power level, compared to his pansy ass in the first movie. However, he gets killed and comes back to life. I don’t know why this affected so many people, considering this marks his 18th death (correct me if I’m wrong), and I want to estimate it to be his 15th resurrection. He’s been killed and resurrected more than Superman AND the entire Justice League combined! This doesn’t even include the times he’s “died” but didn’t lose his spark, nor the many freezes and statis-locks. Hey, at least he didn’t turn grey and possibly crumble (no joke).

One of the twins (Mudflap and Skids) sounds like Bumblebee from Transformers: Animated, even though they’re different voice actors. I found that humorous as well.

So I learned to only watch this movie and any following movies solely for the action. Even the prequel comics and novel to the live-action movies aren’t on par with the other Transformers media. The one thing that really bugs me the most out of everything, however is the thirty minutes (bad estimate and slight exaggeration) of Megan Fox xx Shia Labeouf moments. Keep the irrelevant, long-winded face-sucking out of Transformers kicking each other’s asses please.