Dark Souls

I finally beat Dark Souls today. It's a tough game. A really damn tough game. But it's worth it.

If you are considering playing it, know that it is punishing and brutal, but also beautiful and smart. It'll force you to think and move quickly at the same time. Button mashing will get you killed quick. You'll have to study your opponents, learn their weakness, and exploit them.

Prepare to die. A lot. Like really a lot. Some areas or bosses truly are unfair and cheap, though for the most part if you learn from your mistakes enough, you'll find a new way through. And a huge plus is that once you finally beat something that you've died 25 times in a row at, you'll find yourself cackling in glee and waving your arms around. Trust me, you will.

I also need to say that the level design is completely top-notch. Some people might poo-poo my following statement, but I wish there was an extremely easy mode so that folks who aren't hard-core gamers could experience this amazing game.

It's hard, dark, beautiful, and cruel, and in the end extremely rewarding.

Although I started off as a pyromancer, I quickly found that the spells were just too slow for me, so I switched over to melee. While I did switch around for a while, I settled in to a build that I kept between the middle of the game to the end.

By far the hardest boss for me was Smough and Ornstein. I eventually got pretty good at killing Ornstein, but once Smough powered up, he had two attacks that one-shotted me. I ended up having to bring in a player and an NPC phantom to beat him. I didn't end up using phantoms to beat any other bosses.
The other boss that gave me a pretty hard time was Kalameet. For the rest of the bosses, I was usually able to beat them at most in 10 tries.

Here are my build stats when I beat the game:

Weapons:
Black Knight Halberd +5
Grass Crest Shield +15
Long Bow +15
Pyromancy Flame +15

Armor:
Havel's Helm
Havel's Armor
Havel's Gauntlets
Havel's Leggings

Rings:
Havel's Ring
Cloranthy Ring

Estus Flask +4

Total Deaths: 676

Upload your save file this website to get your death count checked:
http://darksoulsdeaths.com/

Some Pictures By SBMoore

So my wonderful wife too some pictures of me for a photography class she was taking a while ago. Since I've mostly just put weird pictures of myself out there in the internet, I thought I'd better put some more normal ones up. So here they are.

Learning

I'm trying to continually push myself to learn new software.
Right now, a plugin called Transfuser is my new goal. It's essentially a beat composition program. I absolutely love Strike, so it's going to take quite an effort for me to stick to it. However, it's for the best (I hope).

Back in the WWW

Man, it's been a long time since I've blogged!

Actually, it's been far longer since I've updated this durned page. So much has happened in between. But for now, I just wanted to let you know that I've finally gotten around to updating stuff, including my website, which was down for a while, due to server stuff.

Hopefully I'll be updating stuff again shortly.

OCD Achievements

OK, I've got issues. I know. But, I got the Collector's Edition of New Vegas and I made a vow that I wouldn't install it until I got all the achievements in Borderlands--including the DLC. I'm down to 5! Lord, give me the strength to carry on. And please make sure all the bugs are out of Vegas when I do install it!

Goodbye Sweet Lawn Shoes 2010

OK, I'm not sure how long I've had these shoes, but they have been my lawnmowing shoes for a long long time. Today, I must sadly part with them, for they served me well for long enough. Goodbye, sweet shoes, goodbye!

Zombatar

Here is my Zombatar!

Audio Career

Well, folks,

As of this Monday, I have officially begun my career as an audio dude. I went part time at work to focus on my voice acting, music, and sound effects business. I'm nervous, but spectacularly excited about it.

13 on 14

Just playing catchup here. I was able to take off my ear-guard which was amazing because it was pushing so hard on my head and causing me a constant headache. So now I've got that off and you can see the bandage that covered where they took the skin graft from to help repair my inner ear. Warning: could be gross!

12 on 14

I've taken the pictures, but I haven't able to keep up posting. Here are the shots for 1-12-2010.

11 on 12

OK, so I didn't get around to posting pictures yesterday, so here they are now. I'm really not in that much pain, but it is very uncomfortable. I've got splints in my nose, so I can't breathe through it, so my tongue constantly becomes a dry piece of leather. I also have to sit and sleep with my head propped above my chest, so that makes it a little hard to get good sleep. However, I am still very thankful that I am in very little pain and that I'll be able to breathe better and hear better soon!

Surgery Image Blog

Hi Folks,

As usual, it has been a while. Tomorrow morning at 6:50 AM, I am reporting to Methodist Hospital, where I will have two procedures done: Deviated Septum and Ear Drum repair. I figured it might be interesting to have some before and during recovery photos of my face. So, here is the day before surgery.

I hope to hear from you guys soon. Hopefully much more clearly.

Android

I've got AT&T and I want an Android smartphone.  I don't want a freakin iTunes.  Oh wait I mean iPhone.  Nope, I meant iTunes.

Damn you AT&T get on the boat so that I can get on the boat!

Please.   Please.  Please.Please.

Discovering old CD's

I'm currently in the process of ripping all my CDs.  This is an extremely scary and daunting task, because I've bought way too many and I was a member of BMG way back when, so I've got way too many.

I still want to keep some CD's so I can have a nice snobby collection for display (tempered with some of my guilty pleasures of course).  However, I have two tubfulls of CDs and I'm slowly going through them.  What a task.

Anyway, I ran across a CD by Plain Jane Automobile.  It's just a little 5 track EP that I picked up when they were opening for Ours I think.  I don't too often buy CDs at shows because I usually have the artist's I came to see music already and I am rarely too impressed by the opening band.  Anyway, I picked this up because it was superbly energetic and the lead singer's voice was great.  I had forgotten about this and just wanted to give them a little shout out--great band.

Check them out.

F'ing Macs Y'all!

BTW, I don't how Quicktime updates behave on Macs, but it's really starting to feel like Realplayer to me.  First off, it auto-installs iTunes-I don't remember if I could uncheck it or not, but when it is a "trusted" software I usually don't read though any of the update notes, I just click yes.  OK, that sucks, whatever--I'll uninstall iTunes.  Whoah, now if I click yes one more time without reading, it will install Bonjour.  That I can uncheck to finish, but that's sneaky-mean.  Oh wait, crap now it needs to restart my computer.  OK, I restart my computer for iTunes.  Now I want to uninstall it.  Oh sweet, now I have to restart my computer again so that iTunes can finish uninstalling.

All just because I clicked yes to a Quicktime update.  Does it suck this much on Macs?

:(

Quicktime=Realplayer 2009?

Art of War

So tonight, we debuted our movie at an actual theatre.  It was awesome.  There weren't as many paparazzi as I expected, but there were also more people to view it than I expected, and it was amazing fun to actually see all of our combined work put together and displayed on the silver screen.  Congrats to everybody who worked on it and thanks to everybody who showed up.

Here are some pictures that I took whilst there.

Kit Kat

We just got a cute new little kitty named Kona.  Sara had the most terrible idea to go to the humane society--you know, just to look.  That doesn't really work, though, when the kitty looks up at you with those cute little kitty eyes and then says, "Could you please take me home so that I can stop crying these little kitty tears of abandonment?  I don't mean to guilt you, though."

Yikes, is she cute.  We'll have to see how our other cat Maui feels about the whole situation.  We've got Kona confined to our bathroom and the two are glaring at each other underneath the door.

TKs Games

I started a new blog called TKs games where I'll be posting most of my gaming related stuff. I will also review stuff, too. Yay for things.

Illustrator Blues and Greens

OK, so here's the first sort of illustration I've made that I'm going to continue working on. I know what you're thinking--gee, Tori, that looks like a 5 year old drew that. I know I know, and I agree. However, I'm doing this mostly to learn how to use Illustrator because I think it could be a great tool to develop my website with. So, at least for now, check this out.

P.S. any Illustrator Pros out there who see this and have some great tips for me, please don't hesitate to let me know!

Learning to Draw

I'm trying to learn illustrator right now and it is kicking my butt. Adobe makes wonderful products but they are insanely user-unfriendly. Yucky, homes! But I shall prevail. Unless I don't.