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2011 Mar 29 aya


Guy Blade Guy Blade---06:22:00


Infrastructure Upgrades
I've had a 19" rackmount for holding computer equipment since I built one my junior year of college. I've found it to be very handy and to scale well over time and as my equipment needs have changed. Lately, however, I had been annoyed with the difficulty of managing cables in the case that I'd built and with the accessibility of the back of machines. Doing some looking around, I found that Amazon had gotten into the business of selling rack equipment. Like other things, their prices were extremely competitive and for $325 (with free shipping), I eventually decided to replace my aging medium density fiberboard rack with something a bit sturdier.

Old rack mount
The Old Rack (foreground) with the New Rack (background)

The new rackmount came in a surprisingly compact box. It was 7 feet tall, but the cross-sectional area was less than 24 square inches. Of course, this box's density was very high and the "as packed" weight was 68 lbs according to make bathroom scale.

Assembly was rather easy; the new rack came in about 8 pieces which are held together with heavy-duty bolts. Though it says that it should be assembled by two people, I had very little trouble assembling it by myself. Actually assembly took less than an hour. Transferring equipment from the old rack and clearing floorspace for the new one took most of my effort.

New rack mount

Unfortunately, there was one thing that I wasn't adequately prepared for with the new rack. My old rack was less than 35 RU in total height. The new rack is 45 RU. Adding in the height of the non-usable top and bottom areas, the thing is over 7 feet tall. With all that space, I installed several of the smaller machines near the top. Despite having dozens of computer power cables, I only actually have about 2 that are longer than the standard 6 feet. As such, I have a couple of uninterruptible power supplies on a stool until I get replacement cables.

New rack mount

I also learned during the dismantling of the old rack that I had a lot of redundant equipment. I had at least 7 ethernet cables that were only plugged in on one end lying around in the rack. Presumably, this had been from me replacing equipment and never adequately cleaning up after. I also discovered that I had at least 10 uninterruptible power supplies. Given that I only have 8 machines in the rack, this is a bit of overkill. I know that some of the have died, but I never actually labeled which are bad. I've since identified one as definitely bad, but I probably won't know for sure about the others until the next power outage.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, though getting it out of my apartment may be a bit tricky...

Incidentally, I disassembled the old rackmount and put it in my closet. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with it, but it is too big to move around easily and has just enough sentimental value that I'm reluctant to toss it right now. Maybe we'll see when I decide to move.

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Guy Blade Guy Blade---02:24:00


Brick by Brick
Earlier this month, I played through 3D Dot Game Heroes. Like many things, I've been distracted and have only now gotten around to writing a review for it.

3D Dot Game Heroes is a parody / homage to the 16-bit era, top-down, action-adventure games of the mid-nineties. Specifically, the game most often reminded me of A Link to the Past. You take the role of a Hero (or Sage or Prince) and must go recover the six orbs to create the Light Orb and use it to defeat the Dark Bishop and his attempts to resurrect an ancient evil Dark King using the (unsurprisingly) Dark Orb.

Of course, the plot sounds ridiculous and hackneyed because it is deliberately trying to invoke the memories of those older games. Over the course of the game, there are numerous references dropped to various other games--people inside bomb-accessible caves who force you to pay to "fix their door", enemies who have "secret[s] to everybody", NPCs trying to trade their copies of Demon's Souls for the game you are currently playing, and other such fun bits. Taken together, it is a rather humorous little narrative that is built.

The gameplay in 3DGH is somewhat similar to the 2D Zelda games--you have a sword, you can have one "active" item, and you can block or dash. These make up the key abilities of the hero. The main difference, however, is that your sword is generally of a size best described as "unreasonable". Being at maximum health causes your weapon to be gigantic--often spanning an entire axis of the screen (or if you're using a fully upgraded infinity plus one sword both). Unfortunately, this leads to my main complaint about the game.

The game seems to be built so as to be played with the player's weapon at maximum power at all times. Being even half a hit point short of maximum health causes the weapon to revert to a far smaller and weaker version of the same. Although it is sometimes still usable, I found that losing a single tick of health would usually quickly spiral out to death due to the increased danger of having a shorter and weaker weapon. This kind of statistical instability led to some frustration on my part.

3DGH also seems to have decided to include the most annoying feature that has mostly been left behind in modern games: the lost forever item. In fact, the game has a large number of completely unclued quests which are lost forever if you do not do engage them at specific times. Worse yet, one of these quests spans the entire course of the game with a checkpoint between each major area. Miss a single checkpoint at the quest is failed. Not all of nostalgia is good.

Overall, I found the game entertaining, though I eventually resorted to a FAQ in order to find the unclued quests which were being triggered by quest advancement. If the game had cleaned up these few areas, I would have been able to recommend it without caveats. As is, however, I have to say that it is a niche title aimed (essentially) at people who are in their mid to late 20s.

3D Dot Game Heroes: 0

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