The cost of a faulty power supply

When a power supply makes strange noises, it's a sign. It's most definitely a sign you shouldn't ignore, especially if you own a 5 year old Antec. I chose to ignore it and had to live with the consequences.

One morning, I turned on my home theatre PC to watch something, and there was the most disgusting noise coming from the power supply. Seconds later, smoke was billowing from the rear and I knew I was screwed.

Parts salvageable include the optical drive and expansion cards. Everything else appears to be dead and a nasty smell is coming from the motherboard. A good chance to upgrade, I suppose so I went and bought $200 of parts. The shopping list:

• Intel Pentium G620
• ASRock H61DEL motherboard
• 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 memory
• LG 12x Combo BD drive

Hopefully this setup has enough grunt to play the latest Hi10p h.264 content everybody is going on about.

RIP Dennis Ritchie

One of the fathers of Unix and the C programming language has sadly passed away today. Farewell to a man who has influenced computing in an unbelievable manner. dmr, you are one of the greatest computer scientists of all time.

Multi-volume, incremental backups using GNU tar

As I can never seem to remember the commands used for creating a multi-volume tarball with incremental backups, I'm posting this here to remind myself.

The following command creates an archive that spans multiple disks, and creates a .snar snapshot file for incremental backups.

gtar -M -L length[suffix] -g /path/to/snapshot.snar -cvf /path/to/destination.tar /path/to/directory




It would be wise to specify a length that is smaller than the destination as we don't want to fill up the destination backup device to the last byte. The snapshot file can be stored anywhere, as long as it can be accessed when the next incremental backup is performed. For example:

gtar -M -L 1385770M -g /pool0/tapes/home.snar -cvf /media/backup/home.1.part01.tar /home




Will begin creating an archive of the home directory on your backup media with the name home.1.part01.tar. Once the volume size has reached 1385770 megabytes (roughly the size of a 1.5TB disk), tar will prompt you for the next file. Swap media and specify the name of the next volume by entering:

n /new/path/to/home.1.part02.tar




And continue the backup. Happy backups, and remember that "doing nothing", while a valid backup solution - will not guarantee the safety of your data.

UPDATE: due to a lack of functionality on the part of GNU tar, the prompt does not allow you to enter a new path into the prompt. Thus when specifying "n newtarname.tar", it will proceed to create the new volume in the present working directory. A bit silly, but the problem can be avoided by starting tar inside the directory where you want to create tarballs. For example, cd into /media/backup and run tar there. When the media is full, unmount the media, mount the new one and then you may continue.

Revamped home page

I've been putting it for years but I have finally replaced the clunky HTML 4.0 page with something a little more 21st century. I've selected a blog engine named Typo.

I've been exploring alternatives to PHP based solutions for a while due to my disdain for the language and managed to settle with something based on Ruby on Rails. Admittedly, the installation of RoR on FreeBSD was a little more than painless. Eventually I ended up using rvm to install Ruby + Rails and everything appears to be perky. Here is a simple but well-working guide: https://gist.github.com/746963

I'll be using this home page to mainly explore Ruby development. I've never been a big blogger so I can't promise frequent updates. An "Old site" link appears in the sidebar to remind everyone of the previous mediocrity :)

Game of the week: Rewrite

As part of my new commitment to regular blogging, I have decided to begin documenting games, CDs and whatever else I might have in my personal collection. Anything goes - and I don't think I'll be committing myself to a weekly post. The frequency may vary wildly depending on my diligence.

Without further ado, I introduce my latest acquisition: Key's Rewrite. Rewrite is their latest adventure game and was some 4 years in the making.

Profile

• Company: Visual Art's/Key
• Release date: 2011/06/24
• Original Concept, Project Planner, Art Director, Character Design: Itaru Hinoue
• CG: Na-Ga, Shinory, Mochisuke, Minimo Tayama
• Scenario: Yuuto Tonokawa, Romeo Tanaka, Ryukishi07
• Music: Shinji Orito, Jun Maeda, Maiko Iuchi (I've Sound), Soushi Hosoi (hosplug), Ryo Mizutsuki (KIYO)
• OP: Runa Mizutani - Philosophyz
• OP2: Psychic Lover - Rewrite
Synopsis at vndb

The packaging is quite large. It's definitely the largest game box I have in my collection but I'm sure it's not the largest game box ever.

Included inside the box are the following items: Phone strap, alternate DVD jackets, Weiss Schwarz TCG card, Lycee TCG card, radio CD and Official Guidebook "Rewrite of the Life". The guidebook includes various illustrations, character introductions, musical scores for OP Philosophyz and ED Kami no Kanata e and some other random stuff.

Product impressions

It's been about 2 months since I've played this game through its entirety and it still left a lasting impression on me. In many ways the plot was flawed, endings were unsatisfying and the game was tediously long. Especially for me whose understanding of Japanese is extremely limited, it was a difficult game to comprehend. Nevertheless I do appreciate that the game robbed over a week and a half of my life and it left me thinking about a lot of things. Rewrite does fit the typical Key formula of a comedic first half, tragedy striking and ending with some kind of redemption.

But that is where the similarities end. The scenarios themselves are nothing like I've ever seen from Key and thankfully it's been a fresh and welcome change for me. In particular, I've never seen the level of action, politics and mystery featured in Rewrite until now.

Key has a reputation for producing extremely long games. I'm not sure how they can afford to even have development cycles to the tune of 4 years. At least you know that if a game took a long time to make it must be good? :) In any case, this is the longest piece that Key has ever produced, ahead of even CLANNAD and Little Busters Ecstasy. Be prepared to devote 80 hours of your life to this game.

Graphics

Not too much to complain about here. I've always been a fan of Hinoue's nostalgic art style. As always, there is a hint of mediocrity which I actually welcome. I did notice that there was a disparity between the proportions of characters in-game compared to the CG. Not annoying, but rather strange. Unfortunately the game goes for long periods without any unlockable CGs, and then suddenly hitting you with a whole lot in one shot. On the flip side the CGs are all gorgeously drawn and there's plenty to unlock. The second opening is an anime cutscene produced by the relatively unknown White Fox studio. It was beautifully animated - hopefully it is a hint for an upcoming Rewrite anime :) It is clear that they are no pushover, and they have proven that in the latest Steins;Gate anime.

Another complaint is the noticeable lack of character designs for characters which may have been minor, but still had a good number of lines featuring them. More on this in the next section. Also noticeable is that the main characters are rarely seen outside their school uniform for the first half of the game. I am sure they could have done with some more outfits during time off from school :) The game features a new engine named "SiglusEngine" which meant upgrades in the visual department - including a bump up to 1280x720 resolution. However, the game was sluggish for unknown reasons at various times on my notebook PC.

Sound

The sound track of Rewrite is well balanced and the level of quality is high. All the heroine's themes are a delight to listen to. Orito delivers with his action scene BGMs while Mizutsuki delivers with her melancholy themes. Jun Maeda is mostly absent from the score this time around which is a shame. On the other hand, I doubt he could have done much to make the sound track much better than it already is. The original soundtrack weighs in at some 63 tracks for over 2 hours of listening pleasure. My only complaint in this department is the lack of voices for minor characters that had more than "just a few" lines. Of course, they are not drawn either so it is a definite disappointment.

Scenario and plot (spoiler warning)

Without spoiling too much, I can say that the satisfaction level of the heroine paths varied. Kotori's route was a definite winner for me since I am a sucker for nakige. Chihaya's route was one of the better ones, yet somehow left a lot of unanswered questions. Shizuru's route was rather unrewarding since barely anything happened, Akane's route was probably the most long winded and tedious route I have ever played in my life. Her ending did made up for that shortfall and was rather heartwarming. Lucia's route is definitely for the tsundere fans but turns out to be a long winded exhibition of teenage angst. Her classic tsundere traits make her extremely cute so she should not be under-estimated, however.

In the end, this game is really not about any of the aforementioned girls. Your hardships with each of the heroines will be greatly rewarded if you bear with it and just wait until MOON and TERRA routes. I'm not too sure what was going on in MOON route (I will have to replay this sometime), but TERRA is definitely something different. It was definitely a make-or-break in scenario terms for Rewrite and thankfully it was a make. It makes a nice attempt at tying up the game and answering all those unanswered questions you had - I guarantee you, you will have a lot of them.

To sum it up, this was an awfully strange game. It may not quite fit the "Ren'ai Adventure Game" genre it was supposedly labeled. I struggled to find these so called elements of romance throughout the majority of the game. It features things I have never seen in a Key work before such as dinosaurs, environmentalism, secret societies, war and violence - the list goes on. I'm not too sure if the absence of Maeda as main scenario writer has anything to do with this. One thing I do know is that this game is prime material for an anime adaption. It has the chance to reach demographics far beyond that of previous games such as Little Busters and CLANNAD. It's definitely worth a play if your Japanese skills are up to it. Unfortunately I would have to slot it below CLANNAD, AIR and Little Busters as a "favourite", but it's still a bloody good game for what it's worth, if not a little unnecessarily long. Good job Key! I'm awaiting your next game.