This weekend I received word from Oracle that I passed the MySQL 5.6 developer certification exam I took in December. I am now officially an “Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.6 Developer”. Hurray! Achievement unlocked!
I ended up not having time to do the 5.6 DBA exam prior to going on vacation last year, so I’m looking forward to taking it within the next few months. It will be interesting to see what Oracle’s finished and out-of-beta exams look like.
Long Live the Queen is Hanako Games’s latest video game production in the graphic novel simulation genre. Released in June 2012, it cleared Steam Greenlight in November 2013. Despite the increased attention and popularity, it sadly wasn’t enough for the game to be shortlisted for the 2013 IGF awards.
The game lets you play as the character Elodie, whose mother has died one year before she is eligible for coronation. Elodie’s mission is to train to become a queen while running the kingdom. The game’s roguelike mechanics present scenarios with political intrigue, politics, assassination attempts, and military invasions.
Each week Elodie selects classes and completes an action such as asking her father for advice or visiting the treasury or dungeons. Long Live the Queen is stats focused and the learning curve involves understanding how the information relates to the storyline. It’s not always obvious what options are available or how much further Elodie needs to train to conquer obstacles.
The gorgeous anime graphics are very much an acquired taste. I found the overdone pink princess theme enjoyable after my second or third playthrough.
The depth is not apparent at first, but each attempt at the throne took approximately two days. After several untimely deaths, I eventually finished the game after playing every day for about a week. The replay value is enormous, and there are at least three or more character builds that can win the game.
Long Live the Queen is a highly entertaining beautiful and deadly roguelike princess simulation. Hanako Game’s exciting and cute take on Game of Thrones is worth it.
Source: Purchased on Steam.
I finally conquered Long Live the Queen, a princess training simulator by Hanako Games and Spiky Caterpillar. The game records a log of your choices and the results of each turn. I’ve posted mine below the cut.
The Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 livestreaming project for cancer research is almost at a close. And it’s so well done and so skillful it’s blowing my mind — a rather significant amount of my week was consumed watching these speedruns live.
Here are my favorite moments:
I’m also told there was a one life original Contra run and a few other spots that were amazing too (actually the whole thing really is tops). Each run is archived so eventually I’m going to casually watch the rest of the runs I missed.
The real question for me is if there any games I’m so good at, so skilled at, that I could speedrun? And are there any that I would want to train on? Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest could qualify. I’ll have to think on it.
Here’s a video from my first successful livestream on twitch.tv. I beat the first level of Super Hexagon! And died a short time later.
January begins the Year of Amiga I’m undertaking throughout 2014. I’m starting with the very basics including emulator exploration and catching up on the early and later years of the platform.
Amiga Emulators (Windows)
I enjoyed fast success with WinUAE after supplying it with rom images. WinUAE has a nice configuration setup and the UI was fairly self-explanatory considering the program’s large feature set. I’ve decided to try both emulators by alternating them through the first few games.
But what to play? And more importantly, what to play first? I discovered that archive.org — the Internet Archive — has back issues of all of the major English language Amiga magazines!
I remember reading Amiga World, but looking through the magazines there’s over a decade of coverage to explore. Most notably Amiga Format, which started later than the others but ran until the year 2000! That’s…not that long ago. Really.
I plan to spend the next couple weeks putting together a schedule of Amiga games and maybe an application or two to play this year. There’s so much good stuff for the Amiga and I think that’s the only way I’ll get through it.
I’m coming into the New Year with a bit more ambition and planning than I did the previous. This is what I hope to accomplish in 2014.
Concrete goals:
General goals:
In all I’m looking very much forward to the new year for its own sake. I feel very positive about my life at this particular moment in time and I’m looking forward to the year ahead.
Happy New Year!
Canfield Casino Museum
My mother lives within walking distance of the famously hunted Canfield Casino museum in Saratoga Springs, NY. After hearing the museum was five minutes away by foot we walked over to check it out. Thankfully they were open a few days after Christmas during my holiday visit.
The museum was staffed by a volunteer who was quite nice to us. The first couple floors had some interesting artifacts and outfits from the 1800’s and early 1900’s. The casino area itself was small but fairly cool — I’d never seen a roulette wheel in person — and it had a neat projected display on a mannequin that explained it’s history.
When I got up to the third floor, the floor reputed to be haunted, my phone’s camera went on the fritz. The camera started going off by itself and every photo I attempted on my own crashed the device. The phone camera then unexpectedly took a picture after the entrance near the stairs, crashed, and my attempted photos of the red room killed it again each time. After turning my phone on and off at least 5 times and adjusting the settings I was finally able to continue taking pictures.
There wasn’t much mention of paranormal activity at the museum itself. Some cards were put up on the wall noting that in 2010 the location was featured on Ghost Hunters but not any specifics. When my mother and I returned home we watched the episode on YouTube.
I also uploaded my photos of the trip to my Flickr account. Sadly most of my photos of the 3rd floor are missing, including many I took after the crashing spree seemed to have finished. There’s a beautiful religious room with catholic displays that didn’t take at all, as well as my initial red room photos and a neat wall sized bureau display on the left side of the 3rd floor entrance.
If you’re in town and near the museum it’s worth a look. It didn’t feel especially spooky but the casino is neat and the period clothing and room displays are definitely worth seeing.
2013 was a busy and chaotic year for me. Earlier this year I posted what I hoped to accomplish in 2013, and I think I was largely successful at hitting most of the points. I also think I spent 2013 making better life decisions and following through on them.
I made progress towards cooking and keeping myself in better physical shape. I rediscovered Kathy Smith workout videos including a video I used in high school (now in DVD format!). I experimented with a software development career change involving less front-end and more back-end work. I released a very small video game I made in one hour for the Ludum Dare 48 hour game competition and was gratified with the feedback. I also launched this website and blog.
I read more than I did in 2012 with a wider variety of material. I was happy to discover new indie titles and I feel I became a better reader through experimentation. I also rediscovered my love of audiobooks and my appreciation of fantastic narration.
I attended Game Developer’s 2013 briefly and mostly skipped genre events. I enjoyed watching videos in the GDC Vault and I think I will continue with a largely online level of participation in the future.
Overall, this year passed very quickly and I feel my time counted well. I plan to take next year month by month and pay closer attention to my progress forward.
