All I can say is thank God the White Ranger is on our side, because the world in Casshern looks a little grim. The movie looks kickass though. We get a whole hell of alot of pundits opining that CG actors might one day take the place of real ones, but movies like this and The Matrix make me wonder if actual animation could be supplanted by live action.

Of course, with people like the guy who did “Voices of a Distant Star” rolling his own animation on what is basically a home computer, animation could never really die. But then I’d love to see a renaissance in American animation. Hand drawn animation, that is. I’d love to see Pixar break away from Disney and spearhead a return to animation’s roots as well as advancing the state of the art. And everything I’ve seen from those guys indicates that they hold Art in a high regard. But then hell, they are Mac heads. I’d be one too (or a Linux head) but I have too much love for Ragnarok Online and… you know… actually getting things done.

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Sorry about last week, I think I was clinically dead there for a while. See what I had starts with a headache right across the equator of your forehead (if they have equators) and then progresses right into full on vomitting for a few days. Myself I just felt really queasy for about a week and didn’t really want to go that far from my home. I guess it varies from person to person.

While I spent all of my time in bed, I got quite a lot of Disgea played. I am now the proud owner of Priere, Marjoly and a few Surts from the level right before Baal. I still can’t even scratch the bastard though. His specials also eradicate my level 2000 Surts as well. It looks like I am going to have to follow Sallah’s plan and gradually work my way up with the Stronger Enemies bills and enemy combining until I can capture level 9999 Surts. Then its all stealing Baal’s stuff and beating the crap out of him. Then I just have to buff up for Prinny Baal and then start working on getting a Yoshitsuna and so forth. Basically after Baal then its just playing around.

I’m really happy with Priere and Marjoly though. They are very fun characters. Priere more than Marjoly, but that’s obvious from their strenghts. Priere is more of a melee fighter with a pair of distance special attacks and Omega Heal. Marjoly is a fairly powerful witch. See she has all the Tera spells and a special called Dark Conjuration. The only problem though is that she is a “monster” class character and cannot equip a Staff. So no range/power boost from Staff Mastery levels. Priere though… wow. She can dish out the damage something fierce, and can take it too, with her high ass defence and Omega Heal.

I got Priere very cheaply though. I found out that if you throw her and her hench-demons on to the single-square columns that surroud her level then they just don’t attack. You can Winged Slayer them all day and follow it up with an Inferno and they won’t do a damned thing. Cheap yes, but effective.

Marjoly I got legit. Well, almost legit. Nine of the characters I brought out served as a smokescreen allowing Priere to knock off Marjoly’s Priests. Once they were out of the way it was a battle of attrition. Marjoly would hit Priere with a Tera Wind (Priere being weak to wind) and then Priere would Omega Heal. Whenever Marjoly would attack instead of casting a spell Priere would counter, and because they both have something like five counters, Priere would do some decent damage. And then be free to Omega Heal next turn. Because she had an Exodus on her (I levelled the Testament I got from Etna’s Diary to 30 and found the next better Royalty item on the way, then levelled it to 30) and her own Legendary Arcadia (The best Royalty item) as well as a Legendary Lucifer Force and a Legendary Nirvana, she was able to outlast and eventually win.

Baal is still unstoppable. When I get that Super Robo-Suit off of him and that Nemesis in the hands (claws?) of my party then the fun will start.

Priere is my girl though. I think that movies of her in action speak louder that words. That’s from La Pucelle, and she still has that attack, just picture it doing about 5,000-20,000 damage a hit.

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So, I’m watching Paranoia Agent and really enjoying myself. I’m befuddled by the fact that people are confused by the dream sequence in the middle. I mean there are several reviews that actually think that when her stuffed animal starts talking to her that it is really happening. I mean come on people, this series is more realistic than that. The old man balancing the equation in the parking lot that ends up equalling the episode’s main character’s apartment number is really atmospheric. I mean really good stuff.

I just need to know what the opening theme is titled. I know it is Hirasawa Susumu, but not what the title is. I could just download some of his albums, his stuff doesn’t sound bad. I just want this song in addition.

Also I am paring down my list of shows I’m watching. Now I watch Naruto, Planetes, and Paranoia Agent. Gunslinger Girl, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and R.O.D the TV will be downloaded but marathoned when I have time. I need to catch up on my Witch Hunter Robin, and all that.

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New article up. That babbing i’m always doing about a fileserver/data abstraction article, well i’ve gotten off my ass and written it. Be warned, its a long one.

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So yeah, the site for Silent Hill 4 is now “Pre-open.” The official Japanese site, I should say, lest any of my readers say “But Brooks, what’s with this rich heiroglyphic language?”

I’ll be up front with you, Silent Hill 3 didn’t do much for me. Once the initial wierdness was over, the damn thing almost played itself with the linearity and so forth. This new one looks… wow. All i can say is i’ve got headphones on, but the sound with the preview movie they have up almost drove me to rip them off and leap back a few times. I don’t know about those big thing with the baby doll heads. This may be more game than I’m ready for.

So go watch it… just lights on and maybe not with headphones.

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So yeah, more Disgaea news: My Legendary Amano-Hahakiri is now Larharl’s. My Majin has a COSMIC BLADE! I mean, no Yoshitsuna, but I have to steal that thing from a level 3000+ Item God. That won’t be happening anytime soon. And I’m almost done with my King Orb, but I am running into my limit now on level 70. Better than 40 like my Destiny Lens, but still. I think it is now time (with my almost 40 million hel) to start buying and running item after item until I have a Level 1900 Armsmaster for my Testament so as to go foreward with my Winged Slayer Levelling plan. I may take a break to get the Sword Squad and the Fist Squad up to level 1000. Just for grins.

In other news: Why the hell is a decently sized picture of the Rood from Vagrant Story so damnably hard to find? I’ve been looking all week and I found the official one, another official one, and a wallpaper. The writing is all blurry, but the official one on white might be acceptible. See, the plan is, as it always has been, to get that symbol tattooed on me. Some silly location like the back to my calf. It would be hidden by almost all garmets. Also unlike my back, my calf is viewable to me directly, allowing for checking on work. I just need to find a competant artist who won’t, you know, try to rob me or fuck up something as complex but overall simple as the Blood Sin.

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There we go, the Archives are now functional again. Turns out that permissions were and issue (aren’t they always?) and also the whole “creating all new files” thing takes a while on rebuild. Lowering the amount of files in each rebuild batch gives a much greater chance of not running into the old 500 Server Error. The sweet spot seemed to be between 5 and 10. That certainly took a while though. Thank god I was occupied with copying the entirety of a Microsoft Office CD (Yes we have sufficient licenses for this procedure).

So now my archives are “/mt-archives/year#/month#/entry-id.html.” Not all that elegant. When I think of a replacement for entry-id I’ll go back through all of this again to emancipate myself from the application layer. See, rather like my desktop computing experience, I am working to distance my data (Archives, entries, etc) from the application I use to manage my content. Date seems to be a good organizational scheme. In the future, if were to follow Martin’s example, I might change that to “/mt-archives/authorname/year#/month#/entry-id.html.” I don’t share well though, so there is little chance for other authors in this space.

More Disgaea over the last few days, and now I am close to finishing level 99 on a Legendary Star Orb. More of the same as the Plastic Nose: Boredom for 50 levels or so, then 40 levels of “Check ‘Characters’ for stealable items, if exist throw Rogue into stealing position, else proceed. If exist ‘Gatekeeper’ throw Scout, use Inferno, move to Gate; else throw Majin (greater move range) move to gate.” or on Item King/General levels “Kill everything that moves. If there are convenient (or inconveniencing) Geo Symbols, blow them up.” The first 40-50 levels take less than a minute a piece with my Rogue and Etna doing the throwing, with other characters thrown in to compensate for distance and odd approaches. The next 30-40 take a little longer with the stealing. The rare level that takes more than one turn will take longer, but have better loot.

Loot, on the whole, consists of any Nirvana I can get my hands on and most any Level 39 weapon I see. In some cases only Legendary versions will do: Guns, Axes, and Monster classes are all saturated with Normal versions of 39s. Any Cosmic Blade will be mine. Immediately. No shoes as Legendary Angel Sandals are easy to find. Usually only Legendary Destiny Lenses or Providences will be worth it. Any Chaos or Universal Orb: the damn things are worth too much to overlook. A Legendary Galactic Muscle would be nice. Any of the “weird” items will also be grabbed. I’ve got an accelerator, and any of the other items like it “ETC” items with only one type. I think Guts, Beauty and Ears are all Uniques, so mayhaps only Teeth will be easy to find.

Other than that it’s been really quiet of late. Not many movies watched or anything, I am really trying to keep my head down and save some money. I’ll talk about my rack later this week (pictures to come), drop the pics and movie from the Ice Storm of 2004, and talk about my quest to separate Data from Application in the Desktop sphere. That should be interesting as I love to wax on and on about my file server.

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Not even close to being done with Disgaea. Over the weekend I played more than my fair share of it, and I’ve still only barely scratched the surface. I finished my recruit and Space Marines aren’t half bad. They don’t move very far or jump veruy high, but they have a good counter and are actually better than Majin at the whole gun thing. I just wish that there were more class-specific skills. Like Dark Cannon and Geo Change for the scout. I mean the Rogue’s stealing is good enough for him, but crazy combo attacks for fighters and so forth. Or range increases for spear people the higher they go. I don’t know, I just wish that playing a gun Warrior and playing a gun Recruit was more of a different experience. I mean aside from level gaining they are almost the same.

I did get to level 99 of a Plastic Nose, and the Item God didn’t have a Legendary Opera Glasses, but I didn’t care. See I got a Legendary Destiny Lens from a cyclops a few levels before 99. The Item God himself was pretty impressive. Over 200,000 HP and I think if he had a weapon he probably would have given me a run for my money. Relatively few deaths later I have now one notch in my belt Item God-wise. It does give you a better ending (slightly). There are still some bits of no-so-overwhelmingly-joyous, but it is better than the “Normal” ending I got before. Apparently I actually managed to get an ally murder, but damned if I can remember when.

Fresh from my conquest of the Nose and overflowing with Gency’s I dove at my stash of items and just strip mined every one of them that had two or fewer specialists. I am pleased to say I got them all and am left with only the 3+ specialist items. Only about 25 of those. I did take out an almost equal number though, so go me.

I think that’s when hubris set in, because I tried to storm the Destiny Lens. Well, I got to about level 40 when I ran out of things I could steal. There were amazing items apleanty, of course, but level 400+ enemies hold on to them rather strongly. I took a break there and last night ran thirty levels in a Star Orb so now things are getting somewhat more interesting.

Speaking of items apleanty: I no longer waste my time stealing normal Infernal Armour. To catch my eye it has to be Rare or Legendary. My front line guys are all wearing Nirvanas, and Laharl has a Rare one. To think I was really worried about the Zombie King’s armour in CoO5. All my gun guys have Infernal Guns (second best gun, un-buyable) my spear girls (both of them) have Longinuses (same as the Infernal Guns, un-buyable), my mages all have atleast Chaos Orbs, the Galaxy Mage has a Universal one (Normal, but still). My Prinnies, Catgirl, Thursday and Kutis all have Lucifer Forces (Thursday and the Catgirl’s are Rare); Maderas and Hoggmeiser both have Belial Forces (both rare). If I had bothered to check my charts I would have known that Amon Force is better than Belial and not bothered with the Belials. But they still aren’t bad. Each member of my Sword crew (Laharl, Male Warrior, Knight, Angel, Majin) has an Amano-Hahakiri, and the Majin’s is Legendary.

More Orb running and item grabbing awaits! I need to level up my Sword crew for a while (until I get tired of seeing Winged Slayer after Winged Slayer. I have three 300 Statisticians, so I can give them out freely and whoever makes the kill gets the levels). Then its back to the Destiny Lens. I figure a 1000+ Armsmaster will get even a D-Rank in Swords the Winged Slayer attack pretty quickly.

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Yup. That’s the technical term. Something may be wierd in the permissions, but to be honest I am feeling almost too lazy to care. The archives are basically fucked beyond a certain point, and I’ll get to them later. Let me know if the layout looks bad in another browser than the one I’m using (Firebird 0.7 on Win2k, XP, and Server 2k3) and how it looks bad and I’ll try to fix it. I’m working on Disgaea and watching anime now so no timetables.

And sorry to the person who trotted in with OSX. I’m not using it myself and danged if I can figure out what in my CSS would be different in it… Are you using Safari?

Also some of my posts (the last two, actually) didn’t show up until I manually rebuild the index. The individual archives won’t rebuild properly (I’m thinking permissions) so I may just wipe this thing clean and reinstall MT/rebuild my directories. I’ve killed a lot of stuff I don’t need, and may have broken some links in the process. So let me know if anything is boned, and I’ll try to get on it. If my ladyfriend gives me coding time. You know how it is.

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Yikes.

I mean just “Yikes.” See I started with the Space Pirate thing that I mentioned Thursday, then when that took all of five minutes (Seriously. Almost 150 levels in about the time it takes me to make a french bread pizza. The Testament which now contains all the Managers/Brokers/Armsmasters/Statisticians and the Providence that contains the stat boosters make any character a levelling machine) I boosted my Rogue back to level 200. Yup, 350 levels in about 20 minutes. Then I just said “Hell, I need a better Winged Slayer from my male Warrior, so lets get him up to level 200.” That took very little time. Then I worked on my Ninja’s Big Bang for a while and before I knew it, he was level 300. Then with that I started mining Cave of Ordeals 3.

Before I start on that phase, I need to let you know about CoO3. As a level it is a big open area with a 3 x 3 grid of eight level 150 cyclopses (cyclopi?) and one level 160 cyclops. Perfect for levelling if you’ve got anybody with a 3 x 3 attack that can do serious damage to each square. Mages will eat this alive, so will Sword guys and Fist guys. Winged Slayer and Big Bang will effectively end the discussion if the guy has a high-end weapon and is level 200 or above.

So yeah. With the a few nuanced tweaks (different weapons and equipment loadouts) I basically figure out how to knock all the enemies down to less than 100 hp each. Then the character I’m levelling comes out with the 300 Statistician I’ve got in the Testament, he usually gains about ten or more levels.

I unlock the Majin class later that hour. I try it (His name is Moe. I plan on one with fists and one with guns named Larry and Curly, and if I decide on another there’s always Shemp) out for a bit and everything you hear about Majin characters is true. They gain levels rediculously fast, are incredibly powerful, have an amaving move and jump range, counter constantly and are just all in all damn near cheating.

He makes Divine Majin less than an hour later and then a half-hour later is level 600 again. He is about to top 700 and he no longer has the Testament. He is just whooping ass. I rarely bring him out unless I’m just tired of dealing with whatever I’m fighting. I bead CoO5 in a few tries (after stopping to level some more guys up. My angel is 500 now). My only regret is that I was unable to steal the Nirvana from the Zombie King at the end. I did get the God’s Hand and it is now the possession of my Ninja. Why not my Brawler? I like my ninja better dammit.

So now I’m working on my Recruit (I have Space Police already and am almost to Space Marine), leaving only the Male Cleric and the Skulls to unlock and I have all the humanoid classes. I’m not looking forward to the Cleric and Skulls. Clerics are such a pain to level and I just flat out hate skulls. Dumb voice, dumb look, and dammit but Mages are both way cuter and exactly the same skill-wise. So no loss there.

Sadly the one FAQ I read was right and the other wrong. Normal items are only 30 floors deep and no Item God, and Rares are 60 and no Item God. So this leaves me relatively high and dry for powerful stuff. I have very few Legendary items and they are all pretty low-level. I guess I could start with a Moon Orb and work my way up to Chaos. I do need levels for my Rogue before he can really steal.

Stealing is the shit though. Most of my Item Bag is Bandit’s Hands now. He has a 99% chance to steal anything from anyone less than level 100. Even then it doesn’t drop off that fast. I’ve stolen a Legendary Orihalc Shield and a Force (i forget if it is Belial or Lucifer to be honest) from the Item King on the last level of the Dark Orb I was trying to get to 99 on.

Thing is, with Moe I can kill just about anything. Now the plan is to clean out some items (I’m looking at you Belts and Axes, you’ve got nothing but Gladiators and Dieticians, but I do need ATK and HP) and then level some people up to about 1000. Or something. I also need to kill about 66 more guys to get the Testament from the Hospital. I could to Cross Point a few times for cash, Orbs and revives. I think I’ll actually take care of that this afternoon. Just as long as I don’t kill the poor little ghosts with my counters.

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