音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

The most stressful thing in this week could be in Friday evening when I carelessly typed the SQL statement "UPDATE table SET XX=YY" withOUT appending "WHERE id=xxx". I even wondered after hit enter, that why it took so long to execute this simple command, but soon I realised the irreversible mistake.
At that very moment, my brain felt being stung and squeezed -- perhaps close to the state of being flash-bolted by Seb's agony crossbow, which also because I knew I didn't have any acceptable SQL dump.
Fortunately, quickly I recalled just at the noon, there was a chunk of probably useful custom exported data I did at noon, and things I've affected on the remote DB could be extracted from it. So the issue was solved, sort of. Things for myself, that even after the recovery, I can't assure it's 100% good, but... I'll only say it here. ~_~

Therefore, as a way of letting off steam, I once again began to challenge PsychoBreak AKUMU, which has been pending for a while. It's hard, really hard, although I can't tell which is harder comparing to Silent Hill 2's 10-star result (because I can't do it yet). Last time I stopped in front of the shutter that first time releases Trauma to players. With the long time rest, I had less hard time to pass it, and surprisingly, in the next stage with two zombies + two traumas, I went through without problem at my first try, which was simply shock bolt + throwing all my 5 grenades + one fully upgraded harpoon bolt << apparently I didn't know whether I missed or not, as I was always in panic at this difficulty. But just due to the large consumption of ammo, I redid this checkpoint, which went better: shock bolt + 2 grenades + a few shotgun shells.

Then, Laura again! I had to finish it in two days with a good rest -- I've already lost count in how many times I ran into my unexpected death due to bear traps, bombs or whatever. Although I attempted to burn her up, I quickly gave up as I felt it would be so hopeless in AKUMU. I got stuck in Friday night, and finished within 3 tries in the next day. The following boss stopped my Saturday progress, but still, I passed it on Sunday within 5 tires.
I do believe such a longer rest yields a better condition to pass.
And thus, I wish I can pass the sequence with waves of zombies with fireworks, rifles, and machine-guns in next week easier!

Some handmade grissini for today (finally I can use up my bottle of rosemary that has literally expired many years)!

And, time to say good-bye to Canon IXUS210 and say hello to Sony DSC-HX400!
↓ It's a rainy evening, with these dark clouds.

Thanks to "Mastering Digital Cameras" and Mastering Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO and Exposure, I feel much better with most settings on the new HX400, in which many were not available on IXUS210. That author also had books on how to take good photos, but I personally prefer to only get the basic knowledges from experts, as for the artistic aspects of a photo, I'd rather find the way of expression by myself -- Every one is different!
Nonetheless, no matter what, I can't switch to flickr even though its 1TB storage sounds delicious. ^^;

Finally, the make up of the "lantern-motif" drawing is going well, although showing the sign of moving into a more fantasy-ish atmosphere instead of a retro, Orient and even "grotesque" one.

It seems impossible for me to play Bio7: [1] It's in first person, [2] NONE of the previous characters appear, so I eventually decided to watch people playing it.
The coming new full CG film is much more of attention of the series' fans.

And actually, Bio7 was also my background video earlier when I was working with the newest (idea was born in mid-March though) art work, based on the "lantern song" from "yorlga II" as mentioned before.
I'm good at making moe illustrations in a dark and evil environment. :3

However, while I initially had the intention, I'm not planning to draw a real lantern in the background, at least for now. The make-up drafting process was kind of out of expectation, which didn't take a whole day. As a quick note, major props will be glowing bins, flowers and floating lights in the night. -- A chance to improve skills related to make glowing effects~

Interestingly, even the Noriko band can't recognise most titles from that album, in which "this" song is indeed simplified as "lantern". xD

Thanks to another yorlga inspiration, I've yet decided my next target theme:
"KINEMA MOSAIC", FINALLY!
And I want to try on some military uniforms, still all girls though... (ΦωΦ)

Almost all that I wanted to record. Too short as an entry? I'm totally aware of that. The reason was straightforward too:
Persona 4 is fun!
Yet sadly I just learned how to upgrade my gears in the middle May in the game's timeline. <= Apparently I never read the text carefully enough. If I didn't find it, I would die miserably in Rise's dungeon... ¬_¬

Each time on Monday, when my colleagues ask me how my weekend is, a quick answer from me is "dying" -- Digitally because of Psycho Break AKUMU.
For so many times after doing a "should-be-no-problem-on-normal" sequence with lots of deaths, I just yelled "CHECKPOINT PLEASE!!" xDD

It is stressful, although it's fun or I'm never trying. Yet, I decided to switch gear by running another fresh round of biohazard 4 professional mode.
So that fresh means starting from zero without any stuff inherited. My first time pro round was largely helped by the second costume which made Ashley invincible. I personally thought it was quite a good start for people new in pro. Yet this time, besides that I wanted to get rid of that less professional help, I don't like Leon's 2nd costume at all. As I had over 10 rounds of bio2 playing experience, nothing would be better than his RPD uniform.
And this round took me nearly a whole day totally, in which I died 179 times (I tried not to "retry" too much so I could see the real number of death)! lol

Because I'm already so familiar with locations of all the treasures, money wasn't a problem at all for me, and I can always keep my pace with the progress of weapon upgrades.
At about the last 2 or 3 merchant point, I've pretty done maxed my weapon sets:
Red9 - People said it has aiming issues to be unstable, but I didn't feel it, perhaps I've forgotten how blacktail aims long time ago. Any way, I love the sound of Red9, so it'll become my main handgun forever!
Riot gun - It does look better than any other shotguns. So I'm okay to not think about the 100 capacity in the semi-auto. Although the only bad thing is it can't deal with a wide angle, while my playing skill can easily get myself in a bad situation being surrounded by zombies... ^^;
Rifle - I mean the initial old school rifle. I'm aware of that you'll have a bolt-action after each fire, but the bolt-action is especially what I love to see (No specific reason and I just think it looks cool)! Plus, after maxing it, the fire power is a sweet 50!
I basically like to aim and shoot, so I'd rather keep my distance with machine guns or assault rifles. Furthermore, those have generally weak fire-power and bad aiming accuracy. Also, no mine thrower, because I had bad experience with it in bio3. Regarding to the special weapons, like the infinite rocket launcher or the triple-shot handgun (forgot its name...) or Chicago typewriter. Current weapons satisfying me a lot, that it's just fun to use different weapons depending on the situation. I'm never a speed runner, so I don't really care about those super weapons that take the 1 shoot kill. Although I'm planning to still buy them and have a try.

Maybe next round of fresh run I can die less. I indeed learned from my failures a lot in terms of stradegy. I also found that Ashley isn't that annoying really (I'm NOT saying when she speaks nor when she asks you to catch her even though a ladder is available). In most scenes when she's beside, there's always a hiding point or handy checkpoints (I mean the green doors). And thus those more challenging scenes with her would be: [1] she turns the cranks and you'll have to knock the black-robes down while fighting some rushing toward you. [2] while controlling the giant metal ball (don't know what it's called) to smash the wall, as there're always bad islanders coming from everywhere!
The rest scenes are super doable even without a trash bin for hiding: In the village she can go to the clock tower, before the king's grail she can stay in the hallway with the lion statue, etc...
And by Leon himself, I find it's hard at the first time for a few scenes:
- the beginning survival moment in the village blended with one or two chainsaw fights, "hit and away" and shotgun + gernades is important.
- the second (?) survival stage with Luis = a big mess and the hardest to me.
- the big cheese boss fight, I still don't have a good way to fight but I kind of think rifle is the way out.
- the water poll (?) stage that right before Ashley goes up and turns two cranks, I had no good way but kept using the door-checkpoint after killing a few numbers without damage.
- the king grail stage, I know I can head-shot each of them and burst out the bugs, but I'm bad at head shooting... ._.
- the right hand escape or fight, if you don't use the free rocket launcher of course. I need to confess that I missed the rocket shot and had to retry... >_> -- the Salazar boss fight is nothing. I got him down in a minute!
- Jack Krauser fight. I learned from my ~50 deaths, that you can take him quick with the knife, while PUSHING ALL L1/L2/□/✕ BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME for the QTE, so you don't have to think about what to push.
- The 3 Gatling towers stage. I even though I was going to be stuck, but, the point is to silence the middle one, and then rifle the two on the side.
- The final boss fight... It's questionable. My first time pro run was hard, because I had no grenades left (so I had to go and buy a mine thrower). But this time, I got 7 in my box. and it became a little (he still hurts) easier.

Finally, let me declare:
1. the winner in bio4 weapons should be the little knife! As long as you're in a high position with a ladder and your back is safe, you can knife all of them and enjoy the pleasant sound when they fall off. -- Am I the real evil one?!
2. I love Red9 and Uncle Merchant (I like Luis too but sadly he dies too quick)!

3. I believe another reason for bio4 to be so successful is all the mishearing of Spanish? xDD

I happened to see the new publish of Furtwängler conducts Beethoven with a super decent price (previously I mainly hit for some past releases with stupidly high prices), so I got it without hesitation. Together with it, it's a 10 CD set of Tchaikovsky's orchestra works. The Beethoven set would be no surprising as I know how it sounds like. But the latter was indeed "interesting". There's no booklet, and thus I had no clue how these recordings were selected and put together into the 10 disks. For a quick look, things are inconsistent: How could a 199x recording being put with a 195x one, and they are performed by completely different artists! Generally, it's like $2-3 each disk so I was kind of aware of such "abnormalities" and have no complaints. I'd even say I bought this "suspicious" CD box only because of its low price -- just another "weird" yet "great (most performers were the big names)" set of mono recordings into my collection~!