Ket's Site

Welcome to my little corner of the internet. It is essentially just a microblog.

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  1. Filesystem Blog: Hello Web

    A few weeks back the laptop that I had set up for programming died. I still had my laptop, however that has none of the tools I use for development on it, no ssh keys and so on. Deciding it would be more effort than its worth to set up my environment only to have my new (second hand) laptop arrive in the post once everything is configured to my liking, I chose to wait. Well, computer games get boring quickly and I wanted to do something else, so I opened up notepad and I designed this little website, attempting to make something that looks like a pad of paper. I was rather pleased with how the simple look turned out so decided to publish it here. [img]/images/2019-11-19_21-43.png[/img]

    Once my new laptop arrived I initially made a small site using PHP and SQL, however I have done this exercise many times before and it was a little boring. To make a change I decided to build a site that uses standard files and directories to store posts, comments and other information, rather than the normal database. At this point it may have just been wise to create a static site without the need for any PHP at all, but I wanted it to be a little more interactive with comments and maybe some other things in the future, so here we are; besides where is the fun in using something that just works when you can have the fun of putting it together? In the process of creating this site I learnt a couple of things as well, and also had to ask myself a few questions, such as:

    Is this secure? Whereas with an SQL database where I am used to using a product that has already had a lot of thought put into security, plus a community of people constantly reviewing, and fixing security holes. For instance fixing bugs giving users the ability of accessing data they shouldnposts..post.commentbirtht a huge issue or something to get hung up on, I have simply resorted to storing these dates in the file names instead.

    The outcome of this little project can be found on GitHub, and anybody is free to modify, use and share it under the GPLv3 licence.


  2. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Final Thoughts

    That was pretty awful. The game is basically a small set of tedious levels leading to boss fights, the problem being that you don't get any reward for actually playing though the levels, and running past everything trying to kill you seems to be a much better option; there is nothing at all stopping you from doing so. Also, in most cases, enemies (as far as I can tell) spawn endlessly, making sticking around to kill them all the more pointless. Due to this what you are left with is a series of boring boss fights where you spend your whole time blocking and dodging hits while your energy bar recharges.

    The story is also a little strange. Don't get me wrong, it was fun to play the bad guy in such a black and white franchise, but you kind of turn good which is a shame. Also, strangely, if this were to be the accepted story between Star Wars Ep. 3 and 4 it would mean that Darth Vader is essentially responsible for founding the rebellion as a means to take down the emperor - maybe that is still the case, I am not sure, I haven't watched the new movies.

    The game certainly isn't worth revisiting again, and I don't think I will bother play the second game in the series, or any other hack and slash in a hurry.


  3. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - First Thoughts

    This isn't actually the first time I have played this game, as it was the very first game I played on my XBox 360 many years ago. I didn't have too many memories of the game, other than it looking beautiful and hating the boss fight combos, but not enough to stop me enjoying the game and having an all together positive memory of the whole thing.

    Jumping back into the game I expected it to look terrible, as you often do going back into games that looked amazing when they first came out years ago. Surprisingly the graphics actually somewhat hold up. I am also very surprised that now I am playing again I remember much more than I thought at first; such as entire level maps or just whats around the corner waiting to surprise me in particular areas.

    The game is very hack-and-slash-y, which for me is a bad thing, but so far it has provided enough of a challenge to keep me interested through the first couple of levels.

    The story is rather fun as you take the role of Vader's apprentice who he is toughening up to overpower the emperor with; but it isn't worth getting too invested in the story as (if I am remembering correctly) all events from games between Star Wars episode III and the Disney acquisition have been written off. I have not kept up with the franchise's movies since Disney took ownership so I guess I still get to experience the story the same way I would have in my first play though.

    One thing that does show the age of the game is that the menu controls are utterly bizarre.


  4. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Invisible Walls

    This game is riddled with invisible walls. There was a time when it was very common in a lot of games, but I feel like I haven't played a game with any in some time now. Maybe I am just playing the wrong games to run into them (har har) or maybe level design has just gotten much better in the last 11 years.


  5. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood - Final Thoughts

    Having just finished The New Order, which I loved, I was very excited to play The Old Blood, the next game in the series. I was gravely disappointed by what I stepped into. From the very start it felt as though it lacked the story of The New Order, the levels felt clunky (I really hated the wall climbing thing, every location for it looked terrible and felt in every way worse than an improvised ladder or anything else they could have used in its place.) and I was very confused why a mass of Nazi guards would be patrolling random underground caves . I felt annoyed about being forced into so many shoot outs when the first game let you use stealth more often, and didn't feel over the top when it didn't have the option. Nothing about this game felt right.

    Then it started raining Nazi zombies and what little hope for a great game I had vanished. To top it all off the final boss battle was a joke, with a large monster to kill that didn't really do any damage at all and the only difficulty coming from Nazis spawning directly behind you every few seconds. Why would they not just shoot the giant monster that is killing all of them as well? Why were they crawling out of little holes in the wall like little sisters out of Bioshock? Why didn't the two people that went in before me face the same horde of zombies I did? On 'Uber' or in other words the highest difficulty I coasted through this game very quickly, though it was so bad I don't think I would have wanted it to go on much longer. The only good part was seeing the cutscene at the end that lead directly into where the story for The New Order began.


  6. Wolfenstein: The New Order - Final Thoughts

    I absolutely loved this game from start to finish. The story, gun play, stealth and music added together to make an experience I feel was on the same level as the great Half Life 2. It is worth playing on a harder difficulty as on the lower levels it feels like you are just coasting through, however it is an all round great game that I would happily revisit at any time.


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