Second Acension :)

After the first ascension, I put away nethack and lived for almost eighteen months without it, but then all-of-a-sudden I found myself at a loose end and in need of some distraction... what to do? what to do?

!! WARNING: spoilers ahead !!


actually since Ascension #1 I had played only one game and it was truly ignomious as my lv20 wizard with ascension kit zapped himself with FoD while trying to cast dig.

Note to self and others: when learning FoD, ensure that its key-binding is something distant from the other spells that are regularly used. ie 'f'=healing 'g'=FoD is not a good combination.

Note to self and others: if you cast a spell and want to cancel it (eg forgot what you were casting, or think you mistyped) Never press '.' and never press 'Esc'. '.' casts the spell on yourself, and 'Esc' casts it in which ever direction was used for the last spell (quite possibly being '.'). It was the second case that killed my guy. Always choose a direction.. preferably one away from pets, etc.

so... Ascension notes for #2:


Getting started...
Another Wiz-Hum-Neu. Such a good class.

Wand of wishing on level 2.. life is good. wished for 2 blessed scrolls of Charging but only got one uncursed, +2SDSM, magic marker. charged wand and kept it for later.
soldier ants were tough, but AC=-11, sleep spell, magic missile sorted them out.
unicorns were tough, but again AC=-11 was sufficient protection
magic lamp in mine town.. too easy
#enhanced divination. Identify went from 75% fail to 0%. Awesome.
gargoyle was slow but hard-hitting. do not let them hit you.
warhorse was very hard-hitting. do not let them hit you.

Moving on...
at this point, my guy was doing very well with good kit and all the basics. and max #enhanced attack spells

next big step was 2xcursed genocide for nurses while on lv1 sokoban. this was very beneficial except that I got trapped naked next to an Ettin Mummy who very nearly killed me. I think I inscribed Elbereth, put on some armour, wished for a ring of regen, and then set about the mummy.
Note to self and others: when nurse dancing, stand on the upstair of Sokoban lv1. Its very safe there and there is an escape route. My max hitpoints increased from 65->168 :)

Ran through the quest easily.. it turns out that the Dark One is 100% magic resistant so this time I just beat him up.. not to hard at all.

The Eye of Aethopica is totally awesome. I had forgotten about its magic regen rate which meant I could cast attack spells essentially non-stop.

Sat on a throne and was granted a single genocide. I chose 'mind flayer'. useful, but ultimately they aren't a big problem if you have detect monster / esp etc to see them coming. I could have chosen something else.

Cleared the castle and valley of the dead.

Preparing for Gehennom
I prepare for Gehennom with as complete kit as possible. No point making it hard down there.
Returned to minetown to purchase -9AC of protection
polypiled and got an Amulet of Life Saving :)
refreshed all spells
got WoW
wished for SBoPolymorph
wished for helm of brilliance
wished for magic marker
wished for Mojollnir.. failed :(
wished for gaunts of Dex
after preparations, I only lacked the following nice stuff: means of levitation, genocide L, teleport control.

Gehennom kit: AC-39, reflection, helm of brilliance, gaunts of Dex, magic resist and cancel, most intrinsics, teleport wands/ring/spell and teleport control ring, FoD and other spells, Speed boots, Eye of Aethopica, AoLS etc.
ie the whole shebang.
#enhanced divination for permanent monster detect is Awesome. A must-have.

Gehennom
wrote genocide. cost 30. genocided L. found ring of telport
haste is twisted, and no wand of speed. boots of lev are my only lev device so I wasn't 'extra fast' which was very annoying.
Shock trap on chest broke: ring of regen, wand of cancellation, and ring of slow digestion :(
found SBoTeleportAway :)
Paid off Asmodeus.
Juiblex engulfed and made me sick. quaffed PoExtraHealing, zapped dig, cast magic missile. done. Note: always walk around with PoXtraHealing and WoTeleport... just in case.
Vlad was easy
Orcus was easy (reflection is of course essential)
WoY was easy (FoD)
got the amulet!

Ascension preparations
At this point, my wiz was unassailable by anything in the dungeons... except for one thing. I used my last two wishes for a ring of lev, and a blessed figurine of an Archon. I didn't realise the figurine has a 20% chance of turning nasty, but I would have done it anyway.
The archon hurt a lot, and was a massive time waster.. it kept summoning monsters and casting afflictions on my wiz... very very frustrating compared to having an awesome pet. (and I had sunsword +5 to give it)

Ascension kit:
AC-39
all the basics: armour, intrinsics etc.
Main bag: blessed bag of holding with wands, scrolls, potions, gems. no books,armour or other heavy gear.
Backup sack: potions of holy water and scrolls of remove curse in a backup sack
Leviation: levitation ring and potions of levitation
Dig: wands and spell of Dig
InstaKill: FoD and wands of Death
Healing: Con=18, spell and potions of extra heal
Teleport: wands, scrolls, and spell.
Specials: cloak of displacement, intrinsic invis. both very helpful for dodging combat. Ring of conflict, wands of cancel (should have tried using this more)
Pet: tried variously gray dragon, pit fiend etc.. none were particularly useful.
Trap detection: crystal ball 4 charges + confused gold detection x 2.

The Elemental Planes
Earth,Fire,Air. all easy. Use dig/magic missile/FoD etc to get out of engulfing
Water. I forgot the portal moves, and I was low on trap detection.. ensure 5-10 detections available.
Ring of conflict was occassionally useful.
ESP/enhanced

The Astral Plane
oh dear.. the astral plane. this is about 10x harder than everything else.
first of all, I had my ring of conflict on and got three angry angels instead of a friendly one.
I let pestilence stand next to me. BIG mistake. He constantly made me sick and I went through six potions of ExtraHealing before having any chance to fight back.very concerned.

The big incident was when I killed a lowly cockatrice, but an Angel picked it up and started hitting me with it and _at the same time_ pestilence got up and started making me sick again... between stoning and sickening there was very little time to do anything. I was 1st-turn sick and 2nd-turn stoning, and then immediately after fixing it I was 2nd-turn sick and 1st-turn stoning. Argh. Fortunately, the conflict enraged goons killed pestilence for me and I zapped the angel with a wand of teleport, and fixed my remaining ills. I was totally out of potions and lizards and had been literally 1-turn from death for about 10turns running.
Note to others and to self: treat pestilence with more respect.
Note to others and to self: do not leave cockatrices on the ground. put them in a sack and/or in your backpack (with gloves on).

After that scare I was more careful and dodged around the other riders without incident.
The alter was the third one attempted again... is it always the third one?

Dealing with Angels: teleport away. They resist and/or dodge wand of death and finger of death

Dealing with Famine/Pestilence: finger of death (after dropping the Amulet to save power). Wand of death often misses and can't be relied on at short range.

Dealing with Death: just avoid. I had no decent way to do long-range physical attack.

Ascension
The choir sings...

Conduct:
Genocide 5 monsters
Used 13 wishes
Never changed form.

Diving..

My feet were good enough on Monday to have another go. Still a bit sore though and I had a lot of nervousness as I don't want the crashes to recur. So I decided to avoid the big takeoffs and decided to teach myself a back 1 1/2, 1/2 twist (3metre). Although it is a relatively simple dive, I had some horror crashes on it when I was younger due to nerves. So there was more inertia than usual to overcome. Also, I haven't done anything backwards off the 3m for about 15 years so there was some catching up to do.

over the course of 90mins, I started with some appalingly weak back pin-drops off 3m, back sommies off 1m, back sommies off 3m, back sommie 1/2 twist on 1m then decided to go for it. I was as nervous as for some much trickier dives, but it all went according to plan and I put a few in before calling it quits.

Pretty happy with myself, and ready for some new challenges.

next on the list: back 1 1/2 on 1m then 3m. reverse 1 1/2 1/2 twist once I get the back one nailed down.

Da Hu Peking Duck is now Verboten

I have been to Da Hu many times and even chosen it for birthday functions. However, my most recent visit (May 2006) was a great disappointment. The staff were incompent and surly, the decor continues to deteriorate and the food quality is falling. Also, the clientele is now almost entirely Western which doesn't bode well for the food authenticity and value-for-money.

re the staff: one incident out of many was particularly memorable: While in the process of ordering peking duck plus some other dishes they presented the duck - clearly one prepared for someone else that they foisted on us - while we were still inquiring about the menu options!! unbelievable and when asked about it they feigned mild retardarion. They may not have had to act much.

The food was generally a bit disappointing, but to be fair they are still capable of producing some good dishes. With a lot of competition in Melbourne, though, there is no reason to choose Da Hu.

Review - Pacific Seafood BBQ Richmond VIC Australia

Shop 8
240 Victoria St
Richmond 3121 VIC
Phone: (03) 9427 8225

(also Shop 1
210 Toorak Rd
South Yarra 3141 VIC
Phone: (03) 9826 3838 )

A well known bistro-style restaraunt, which is always very busy. Haidi and I went with a group of 8 and were seated after 20mins (no reservation made). This is actually a very good result given that they are generally packed with lines snaking down the road.

In the tradition of Victoria Rd eateries, the pace and bustle are frenetic and the service is fast but not particularly refined, polite or pleasant. The immediate presentation of a complimentary beef soup starter was welcome, but the repeated attempts of our waiter to sell a folorn parrot fish in their live tank were not.

The food, however, is fantastic. We had: mandarin pork (large serve, very tasty), an excellent plate of fried squid, BBQ duck which was very flavoursome and not too oily and a magnificent beet fillet with pepper sauce. The beef was an excellent cut, incredibly tender and well flavoured. I am a great fan of peppered beef jerky, and the fillet was the prototype of what jerky aspires to be. Various green vegies and some miscellaneous dishes were also well executed.


Overall: if you don't mind a hectic environment, the food is definitely worth it. The awards on the wall are very easy to explain.

Writing rejection letters

I have been running interviews for a few software dev positions this year, and writing the follow-up letters is suprisingly hard. The rejection letters are by far the hardest.

And if you get it wrong, you might receive a Rejection of your rejection letter!

Diving woes

The diving project is going well in general, except I have a take-off crash about once a week and my toes are taking a lot of damage. Particularly when I'm tired, my legs give way during maximum compression and I crumple over my toes, bending them backwards very aggressively. The short-term pain is not too bad, but I can have trouble walking long distances even 2-3 weeks after an incident. also, its really embarrasing.

I hope I can stop it happening, because it wont be possible to keep up the diving if I can walk or run anymore :(

Set vs.net key bindings programmatically

The following script forms the basis of an automatic system to set vs.net key bindings. Sorry about the formatting.

Note: run DumpBindings first and view the output file to see the command names and the current bindings.


Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports System.Diagnostics
Public Module MikeModule

Sub SetMyBindings()
' bindings for macros only seem to work for the RecordingModule
SetKeyBinding("Build.BuildSelection", "Global::Ctrl+Shift+C")
SetKeyBinding("Edit.SelectAll", "Global::Ctrl+Shift+A")
SetKeyBinding("ReSharperAddIn2005.GotoDeclaration2", New Object() {"Text Editor::F12", "Text Editor::Ctrl+B"})
SetKeyBinding("ReSharperAddIn2005.RefactorThis", New Object() {"Global::Ctrl+R", "Global::Ctrl+Shift+R"}) ' "Global::Ctrl+R, Ctrl+Shift+R" chord
SetKeyBinding("ReSharperAddIn2005.ExtendSelection", "Global::Ctrl+E")
SetKeyBinding("Macros.MyMacros.RecordingModule.CollapseAll", "Global::Ctrl+Shift+F1")
End Sub

Sub DumpKeyBindings()
Dim sw As New System.IO.StreamWriter("c:\keybindings2.txt")
For Each cmd As Command In DTE.Commands
sw.Write("""" & cmd.Name & """ - ")
For Each o As Object In cmd.Bindings
sw.Write("""" & o.ToString() & """ ")
Next
sw.WriteLine()
Next
sw.Close() 'flush and close sw
End Sub

Sub SetKeyBinding(ByVal cmdName, ByVal newBinding)
Try
Dim cmd As Command
Dim cmds As Commands
cmds = DTE.Commands
cmd = cmds.Item(cmdName)
cmd.Bindings = newBinding
Catch
MsgBox("Error setting keys for " & cmdName)
End Try
End Sub
End Module

Masters diving... maybe

I did a bit of searching yesterday for information on Masters diving. It seems to be a small but active sport around the world. Both the UK and USA have a fair few divers, but Australia has maybe ten in total who compete at State and National level. The 30-39 mens had three competitors at the 2006 nationals, and one is a Victorian. Apparently the only training for Masters in Vic is at MSAC, Albert Park.

So, I might just keep flipping off the boards at Box Hill for a while, and will consider joining the MSAC crew. Wish is was a bit closer to my work at Blackburn.

The good news however is that I could probably get a dive list going without too much trouble. My competition performance might not be great, but I could be in with a hunt.

current doable dive list 3m: forward 1 1/2, reverse dive, inward dive, forward 2 1/2, forward 1 1/2 2twist, + something.

Some dives to learn/practice:
short term: back dive pike. reverse dive pike. back 1 1/2 1/2 twist (always wanted to do these properly)
medium term: back 1 1/2. reverse 1 1/2. I did these tuck off the 1m when I was younger, but pike off the 3m would be sweet.
long term: back 2 1/2 (I get nausea just thinking of this dive... can't wait to learn it)

wish list: reverse twister. forward 3 1/2.

in the near future I might work up the 2 1/2 tuck on the 1m and see if I can throw a triple. the 3 1/2 is probably my best shot at a 3.0DD dive. (true for everyone I suspect).

I've been trying to work up a decent reverse summie layout to start some simple reverse twisters.. damn its hard to get that rotation going. oh well...something fun to work on.

diving update

well.. not really an update as I never got around to blogging my earlier efforts.

but, last night I had a some success with forward 2 1/2 pike, and forward 1 1/2, 2 twist. Both big dives for me, and both attempted for the first time in April this year.

but then I had another takeoff crash and bruised both feet and twisted knees a little - on what was going to be my last dive of the night anyway. (when I'm tired, sometimes my thighs just collapse and the full take-off impetus goes towards crumpling my feet. not pleasant.) This one wasn't too bad - should recover in a couple of days.

Best..restaurant..ever

Fat duck, London, has won a prize for "best restaurant in the world.
http://www.fatduck.co.uk/. nice website too, although a bit slow from aus.

the menus and the prices are for the faint hearted though: 90 pounds degustation menu, + 90 pounds for matching wines

AUD$500 per head, anyone? anyone?