Turtling with static defenses works very well against RA3 AI. Throw in some artilleries/aircrafts and one can stay in base forever.
Just when I got rid of my preference for static defenses, single player mode instills it in me again. Damn!
Last Sunday, Jaedong vs Tempest, Zerg vs Protoss. Jaedong lost. Holy fuck! Tempest must have been celebrating really hard after that because he beat the Number 4 SC player in Korea (according to official ranking list). Holy fuck! Can't really believe Jaedong lost. The defending champion of this series lost in the round of 32. Un-fucking-believable!
They could shove all those stats they showed at the beginning up their asses because those numbers proved nothing. Jaedong had 9.3-9.8 out of 10 for almost every aspect of his gaming skills except for Macro which he got an 8 out of 10. Tempest's scores were mostly in the 7 to 8 range except for Macro which he had a 9.5 out of 10. Which means that even though Tempest has an advantage over Jaedong's weak point, he should not have won.
But he did.
It wasn't the micro. Jaedong's micro was superb but the problem was in his strategies. Even a noob like me saw that something was wrong when he used a strategy that relied heavily on Hydralisks. Somehow, despite it working for other players, it did not work against Tempest. Plus Jaedong did not seem to pay much attention to the Corsairs that slowly killed enough Overlords to get his Supplies in the red, stopping him from training more units till he spawns more Overlords.
His Scourges started spawning only when Corsairs were attacking, which means they always arrived too late. It was like Jaedong didn't really care, seeing them as minor annoyances.
Of course, the main problem was with his Hydralisks being unable to stop the flood of Zealots. True, Zealots are strong, like Orc Grunts in WC3, but it takes 4-5 Gateways to spawn enough of them in a short period of time, making the whole strategy easy to spot.
Which means Jaedong knew the massed Zealots were coming but was unable to prepare adequately for it. I blame his dependence on Hydralisks (which includes his unorthodox upgrade of ranged attack damage instead of the standard Carapace level 1). This strategy was very offense-oriented but does not seem to be effective against a combined force of a lot of Zealots and a few High Templars to throw some Storms.
I know I'm not a good player, just stating the obvious here. I think a combo of Zerglings and Mutalisks, the standard, would have worked better.
Completed Fallout 3. Nice game. I'd expected an ending similar to Oblivion's because, after all, it was almost like playing Oblivion, with the same graphics and all. Fortunately for me, I disliked how Oblivion ended ( I prefered things to actually end when they end) and Fallout 3 did finish properly.
I had to make a choice, to save myself or greatly improve the lives of many people. I hope I got the best ending - I've been a good guy throughout the game and my karma level was Paragon. I tried 2 endings, out of the estimated 200+. One was to say that I would, but stood there and did nothing. It ended with me being alive but the place was destroyed. That was unintentional because I didn't know that I had certain information hidden among my notes. I then reloaded the game and used it, sacrificing myself in the process.
Either way, I was unable to continue playing the game after that, quite unlike Oblivion. I also expected an ending in which I saved both myself and everything else, but it seems to be impossible. So far, I'm unable to find a list of possible endings of the game and could only come up with a list of factors that affects the endings, including my karma level and certain actions I committed during the course of the game.
About 70% of the people online seems to believe that the ending sucked, but I'm already used to my protagonist dying at the end, especially after playing NWN2 and Planescape: Torment. If the developers decided not to include one in which everyone gets to live happily ever after, so be it. It's a great game after all, with a style that is so interesting. According to Wikipedia, the term for it is "retro-futuristic", an apt name for the sort of fiction that includes a mix of 1950's artworks and technologies (like computers that still used vacuum tubes) and futuristic sci-fi stuff( like sentient robots and plasma guns).
Indeed, it was an excellent experience to kill monsters, robbers and robots with 1940s oldies in the background. I turned on GNR radio all the time whenever I'm in range of the station. It was quite interesting that one time I was slashing at someone and noticed the song was about "hack and slash" or something like that. I didn't know they sang about these things in those days.
Also, it made me learn to appreciate those ancient music. After listening to those 20+ songs for 20+ hours, I can remember some lyrics of some of the songs. Since I've never played the Fallout games before, such a mixture of old and new stuff was quite refreshing. It also made me think about how impossible the whole world in the game was.
To develop plasma weapon with vacuum tubes instead of chips would require supercomputers the size of Singapore, probably. I remember back in primary school when one of my teachers, some old guy, told us that in the past, some of the best computers the world took up the space of an entire room. I bet those computers can't beat even this laptop I'm using now to type this rant. They wouldn't have near enough processing power to create such technologies, let alone design one that could be mass-produced. I'm not even going to discuss the fact that vacuum tubes were notoriously fragile and unreliable.
It was inevitable that I compared the Fallout world with reality. After all, it made use of many things that used to exist. Right from the start, the game used the Pip-boy logo for its icon. The art style of Pip-boy was reminiscent of those old advertisements I saw in the past. In the Vault 101, everything was in a style that was already outdated 2 decades ago, like the hairstyles of the adults and the radios. I had thought the background was that the nukes landed in the 1960s or something until I saw the dates on some documents.
It was less "old" after I left the vault because everyone looked like some kind of scavengers. Though everything was wrecked and in ruins, the cars everywhere was from the 60s or so. Only the people and their weapons looked futuristic.
Also, Little Lamplight. Come the fuck on, where did those kids come from if there were no adults allowed?!?! It doesn't make sense. Maybe I'd have gotten a clue if I went to Bigtown with that teenage that got kicked out after reaching his 18th birthday, but I didn't. One notable reason for replaying the game, for me, is that I never got to visit many places like Bigtown and Paradise Falls. It was like an invisible line existed from the NE to the SW of my map and everything on the NW half of the map was unexplored.
Next time I play the game, I'll explore all those places and find all the Bobble-heads. I only found one this time. Played without any hints except for the Gary vault (to find some hints as to why everyone was a clone of "Gary") and the ending because I wasn't satisfied by my first choice.
Wonder how long it will take for me to be able to replay the game. 3 months like Mass Effect? Or more? Probably more. Mass Effect >>> Fallout 3 in more ways than one despite Mass Effect's ending being slightly cheesy with my Shephard standing there like a statue. I was like," Oh fuck that's ghey..."
LOL!
I'm also quite curious about the whole story of the Fallout world. What was the Commonwealth that Zimmer was referring to? What happened to Europe and Africa after the war in 2077? Did they survive and become the political superpowers?
Maybe I should play the previous Fallout's to find out. Fallout 2 was released 10 years ago. The graphics looked similar to Ultima 8's. Also, their endings were narrated by a wall of text instead of cinematics, which means even Planescape: Torment could beat them (but Fallout 2 was release 2 years before Torment).
Oh well, I'll just get them and play when I'm out of better games.
Looking at those years, I'm quite surprised how games have changed in just a decade. I know it's nothing compared to the almighty Internet, but still, I never noticed how short a time it was since the last good 2D RPG was made. It was like once the 21st century began, all games have to be 3D to be good.
Wonder how games will turn out in 20 years' time. Maybe they will be playing holographic MMORPGs and RTS then. It would be fucking comvenient if I could play RTS with voice-recognition softwares. Sometimes things move so quickly I wish I don't have to click and the units would move however I want them to.
Better still, if only I could move the units with my thoughts alone. Things would be so much smoother. I always have difficulty clicking on the spots I aim for. Always takes 1 large swing and a smaller move or 2, which makes me lag by precious milliseconds. Maybe I need to adjust my mouse sensitivity or maybe my coordination just sucks.
My bro got Dead Space but I'm not planning to play that. Thought it sounded like a nice game until I found out it was basically a sci-fi zombie game that relies heavily on slashing on the right parts of the monsters. As if shooting at monsters wasn't enough, they had to make a game in which monsters couldn't be killed and must be disabled by dismemberment.
Also beat RA3 Soviet campaign. It was gay! I played the final mission on Hard and all I needed was a fucking wall of Flak Turrets and Tesla Coils. Didn't even need Tesla Troopers (or whatever they're called) to boost my Coils. Gay! With that wall and an early Vacuum-whatever-the-Superweapon-is-called plus my Magnetic Satellite and space junk dumping ability, I was able to disable the Allied Superweapon and rape his base. I sucked up 2 tanks and threw them in together with my Superweapon. I thought it was an overkill because before my Vacuum was halfway done, the Collider was already destroyed. Also used my Bounty ability on it for extra cash. Was pumping Kirovs en masse then and needed more cash.
Sunday 30 November 2008
Friday 28 November 2008
Rant 237 / Dos Tres Siete
Women with generous cleavage must have strong backs. When they put on a heavy backpack, they must probably feel like it's easier to walk. Why don't they have a reverse hunch? Like they tilt their head backwards all the time the way people who carry heavy stuff on their backs tilt forward? Instead of hunchback, why don't they get hunchfront or something? Or is it because the hunch is hidden by the flesh and makes their upper torso look even more oversized, albeit in a pleasant way?
If they trip, do they really need to stretch out their hands to break the fall?
Oh wow, so I suck. I've been playing this Soviet mission that began with the assassination of the Japanese Emperor followed by the destruction of the palace grounds. The former was easy, the latter is still too hard for me.
I tried a few strategies. The first I used was a crappy teching style that involved building few tanks and teching all the way to the Kirov. Didn't work because I got raped before I got the first one out.
Second, I tried the mass anti-armour tank strategy. Didn't work because that Japanese Oni-whatever walking mech giant raped my tanks at full force. Sorry if you don't get the "at full force" joke completely.
Third, I spammed infantry, mostly anti-tank guys and some Conscripts. Worked for a while but I couldn't attack. Also, my ally got destroyed after a while and I couldn't help him. I did get about 10 Kirovs but it seemed that they suck against the Japanese. After that, I got killed destroyed too.
So now I realize I cannot just spam 1 kind of unit. If I spam armour, the Oni-whatevers will rape me. If I spam infantry, I will need more than 2 barracks to both attack and defend, but I'm too demoralized to try that now. I think I'll build 4 raxes to spam loads of antitank and make 1/5 of the army Conscripts.
The one obvious fault with this is that tanks can just roll over my men. So I will need to create a bloody tsunami of soldiers to overwhelm each of the 3 bases. Overwhelm them with shit. And I'll skip the Kirovs. All that will take a very long time to amass...
Oh hell, I'll just lower the difficulty back to Medium.
Wait a min! I can just visit all the Red Alert 3 forums for hints. LOL!
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!'"Cribbs said. "They kept shopping."
Strategies for RA3 are quite different from the rest because of the limit of 1 refinery to 1 ore mine, unlike the olde days when I need to build several collectors to maximize collection efficiency. Which means income is rather limited and has become the same for everyone in their main base no matter their skills and APMs. Just as well, because it's so hard to use the individual skills of the units if you have a mix of several units in your army.
Just when I managed to set my display settings of Fallout 3 to Low, I find it too low. I'm happy that it doesn't lag anymore, as in the screen moves almost as quickly as my mouse, unlike the 0.5s lag when I was on the default Medium settings. However, now I can't see my enemies soon enough. The range where enemies appear in my view is shorter than the range of a bloody Missile Launcher. I know because I just got attacked by a Super Mutant that attacked me with 2 missiles before I got close enough for him to appear. That's way too close! I have to see them before they see me because I'm not a melee specialist!
Somehow Fallout 3 is making me nauseous too. Either I've been eating too much or there's something in the way I move in the game that affects me.
I'm also not getting enough ammo for all my guns. Even the Craterside Supplies back in Megaton has run out of ammo for sale for all guns. I'm now using my solid wooden baseball bat (dmg 6) as my main and using my guns only when it's dangerous to get close, like when I fight Fire Ants. Good thing I have an immortal dog that tanks for me, or I'd have died a dozen times over by now. If only I can create custom armour for my dog, it would be like those attack dogs in RA3, except tougher. Those RA3 dogs can get squashed by tanks; I bet Dogmeat can destroy a tank by biting off the armour piece by piece. That dog is stronger than my guy who's wearing armour and a helmet.
The game is interesting enough, but it suffers one shortcoming that is similar to that in Oblivion - everyone looks quite similar, especially the white ladies who all seem to have large foreheads. Not to mention I keep seeing men who look just like the protagonist's father.
It is somewhat easy in that with a decent set of armour and enough Stimpaks, even a baseball bat is a good weapon against giant ants and huge ogre-like mutants.
Okay finally bought my books. The last time I said I bought books off opentrolley.com, I hadn't bought them yet but had all of them in my Shopping Cart. I thought I was going to buy them then but wanted to wait for a few more hours in case I suddenly remember books that I had forgotten.
When I decided to finally buy them, I had already closed the browser to restart my com. When I reopened the browser, the website did not save what was in my cart! Oh well, service is slightly lacking compared to acmabooks but still, they have all the books I want. No choice. But I forgot the whole list of books I had chosen that night, so I gave up.
Chose my books again yesterday.
The books I bought:
(The latest of the Sword of Truth series)
Confessor
(The latest paperback in the Runelords series)
Worldbinder
(The Mars trilogy, apparently an excellent classic sci-fi series recommended by quite a number of people at Amazon.com)
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
(The 1st trilogy of the famous Dune series, thought this is something I cannot miss if I start to read sci-fi)
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
(The 1st trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever)
Lord Foul's Bane
The Illearth War
The Power that Preserves
(Just because I like how V always wears a Guy Fawkes mask and sounds so cool using all those words that begin with a "v")
V for Vendetta
Somehow I can't make myself reread the Hyperion series because I still remember the ending of the Rise of Endymion and hate how it ended. I have already forgotten most of the plot but I still remember the ending quite clearly. Damn, I may have to store this series in the bottom shelf and bury it in the rest of the shitty books that include those by Robert Stanek. Books that I cannot make myself touch again. Yea I have castes for my books too. Those by Robert Stanek are automatically placed in the Untouchable caste.
My Indian friend recently enlightened me on how the Indian social caste system is like. It seems that the system they taught us in secondary school is an extremely simplified form of it. In fact, there are many subclasses within each caste. I cannot remember the details, but whoa, no wonder he has no wish to go to India. Life would be so complex and his choice of girlfriends would be severely limited. LOL!
4chan is so crazy sometimes. I find it hilarious how people would give fake advice, tips and stuff and many others would join in and exclaim how useful they are. Like recently someone posted a link and said that it was a video of Emma Watson's nip slip. It turned out to be a rickroll. When I returned to the link, everyone was exclaiming how epic her tits were and how people should take screenshots before Youtube delete it. Of course I joined in the fun.
Another time, a long time ago, I remembered some guy asking for advice for some skin problem on his penis and everyone recommended Bengay, which is like Tiger Balm, that stinging cool paste stuff meant for muscle aches. I smile everytime I think of how it would feel if someone would put that on his penis.
Sometimes, Anons can spontaneously develop a group mind temporarily and it can be quite fun.
If they trip, do they really need to stretch out their hands to break the fall?
Oh wow, so I suck. I've been playing this Soviet mission that began with the assassination of the Japanese Emperor followed by the destruction of the palace grounds. The former was easy, the latter is still too hard for me.
I tried a few strategies. The first I used was a crappy teching style that involved building few tanks and teching all the way to the Kirov. Didn't work because I got raped before I got the first one out.
Second, I tried the mass anti-armour tank strategy. Didn't work because that Japanese Oni-whatever walking mech giant raped my tanks at full force. Sorry if you don't get the "at full force" joke completely.
Third, I spammed infantry, mostly anti-tank guys and some Conscripts. Worked for a while but I couldn't attack. Also, my ally got destroyed after a while and I couldn't help him. I did get about 10 Kirovs but it seemed that they suck against the Japanese. After that, I got killed destroyed too.
So now I realize I cannot just spam 1 kind of unit. If I spam armour, the Oni-whatevers will rape me. If I spam infantry, I will need more than 2 barracks to both attack and defend, but I'm too demoralized to try that now. I think I'll build 4 raxes to spam loads of antitank and make 1/5 of the army Conscripts.
The one obvious fault with this is that tanks can just roll over my men. So I will need to create a bloody tsunami of soldiers to overwhelm each of the 3 bases. Overwhelm them with shit. And I'll skip the Kirovs. All that will take a very long time to amass...
Oh hell, I'll just lower the difficulty back to Medium.
Wait a min! I can just visit all the Red Alert 3 forums for hints. LOL!
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!'"Cribbs said. "They kept shopping."
Strategies for RA3 are quite different from the rest because of the limit of 1 refinery to 1 ore mine, unlike the olde days when I need to build several collectors to maximize collection efficiency. Which means income is rather limited and has become the same for everyone in their main base no matter their skills and APMs. Just as well, because it's so hard to use the individual skills of the units if you have a mix of several units in your army.
Just when I managed to set my display settings of Fallout 3 to Low, I find it too low. I'm happy that it doesn't lag anymore, as in the screen moves almost as quickly as my mouse, unlike the 0.5s lag when I was on the default Medium settings. However, now I can't see my enemies soon enough. The range where enemies appear in my view is shorter than the range of a bloody Missile Launcher. I know because I just got attacked by a Super Mutant that attacked me with 2 missiles before I got close enough for him to appear. That's way too close! I have to see them before they see me because I'm not a melee specialist!
Somehow Fallout 3 is making me nauseous too. Either I've been eating too much or there's something in the way I move in the game that affects me.
I'm also not getting enough ammo for all my guns. Even the Craterside Supplies back in Megaton has run out of ammo for sale for all guns. I'm now using my solid wooden baseball bat (dmg 6) as my main and using my guns only when it's dangerous to get close, like when I fight Fire Ants. Good thing I have an immortal dog that tanks for me, or I'd have died a dozen times over by now. If only I can create custom armour for my dog, it would be like those attack dogs in RA3, except tougher. Those RA3 dogs can get squashed by tanks; I bet Dogmeat can destroy a tank by biting off the armour piece by piece. That dog is stronger than my guy who's wearing armour and a helmet.
The game is interesting enough, but it suffers one shortcoming that is similar to that in Oblivion - everyone looks quite similar, especially the white ladies who all seem to have large foreheads. Not to mention I keep seeing men who look just like the protagonist's father.
It is somewhat easy in that with a decent set of armour and enough Stimpaks, even a baseball bat is a good weapon against giant ants and huge ogre-like mutants.
Okay finally bought my books. The last time I said I bought books off opentrolley.com, I hadn't bought them yet but had all of them in my Shopping Cart. I thought I was going to buy them then but wanted to wait for a few more hours in case I suddenly remember books that I had forgotten.
When I decided to finally buy them, I had already closed the browser to restart my com. When I reopened the browser, the website did not save what was in my cart! Oh well, service is slightly lacking compared to acmabooks but still, they have all the books I want. No choice. But I forgot the whole list of books I had chosen that night, so I gave up.
Chose my books again yesterday.
The books I bought:
(The latest of the Sword of Truth series)
Confessor
(The latest paperback in the Runelords series)
Worldbinder
(The Mars trilogy, apparently an excellent classic sci-fi series recommended by quite a number of people at Amazon.com)
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
(The 1st trilogy of the famous Dune series, thought this is something I cannot miss if I start to read sci-fi)
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
(The 1st trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever)
Lord Foul's Bane
The Illearth War
The Power that Preserves
(Just because I like how V always wears a Guy Fawkes mask and sounds so cool using all those words that begin with a "v")
V for Vendetta
Somehow I can't make myself reread the Hyperion series because I still remember the ending of the Rise of Endymion and hate how it ended. I have already forgotten most of the plot but I still remember the ending quite clearly. Damn, I may have to store this series in the bottom shelf and bury it in the rest of the shitty books that include those by Robert Stanek. Books that I cannot make myself touch again. Yea I have castes for my books too. Those by Robert Stanek are automatically placed in the Untouchable caste.
My Indian friend recently enlightened me on how the Indian social caste system is like. It seems that the system they taught us in secondary school is an extremely simplified form of it. In fact, there are many subclasses within each caste. I cannot remember the details, but whoa, no wonder he has no wish to go to India. Life would be so complex and his choice of girlfriends would be severely limited. LOL!
4chan is so crazy sometimes. I find it hilarious how people would give fake advice, tips and stuff and many others would join in and exclaim how useful they are. Like recently someone posted a link and said that it was a video of Emma Watson's nip slip. It turned out to be a rickroll. When I returned to the link, everyone was exclaiming how epic her tits were and how people should take screenshots before Youtube delete it. Of course I joined in the fun.
Another time, a long time ago, I remembered some guy asking for advice for some skin problem on his penis and everyone recommended Bengay, which is like Tiger Balm, that stinging cool paste stuff meant for muscle aches. I smile everytime I think of how it would feel if someone would put that on his penis.
Sometimes, Anons can spontaneously develop a group mind temporarily and it can be quite fun.
Wednesday 26 November 2008
Rant 236 / Fallout 3 > Red Alert 3
So I managed to save my money in the Trade Up game in Facebook. From $4.7M last week I'm now back in the healthy zone of $5.1M. It's not even my doing - everything is rising! Didn't matter what I bought because of that. Any Tom, Dick and Harry can make a hundred grands easy, as long as they don't touch currencies because
1) they're bugged - prices displayed =/= prices you actually pay
2) all of them don't move much except for the Yen, which is now dropping slowly.
Tested Red Alert 3 v1.04, which is the latest version. Seems pretty nice, except they were too easy. Should have played at Hard mode or something. It's so ghey, I captured the enemy bases with engineers instead of destroying them. It counts as "Destroy" as far as the objectives go. Oh wow...
Anyway the gameplay is still quite the same except they threw in special abilities for all units, greatly diversifying the possible strategies. Does require quite a bit of micromanagement to make them all work effectively. I think it's almost on par with Starcraft in the need for 1337 microing, though for different reasons. No longer is it just a spamfest the way all the other C&C games were. Now, you need to use the different abilities/modes to make your units more effective in different situations.
Natasha, the new Soviet Superwoman, is freaking powerful. Not only is she the usual 1-shot-1-kill sniper, her bullets fly through people and kills those behind them, as if she shoots lazors from her guns that do not dissipate... And that isn't all - she can snipe drivers just like the GLA Superman from C&C Generals. I think his name was Jamal or something.
Oh wait, I didn't say that's the end of the list! She can't shoot tanks, but she can call in airstrikes that kills most tanks and buildings plus AOE damage in a small radius. She's practically a 4-in-1 combo 1-woman-army! The catch? Her HP isn't as godlike as all her counterparts in other C&C games.
Fallout 3 is basically a post-apocalyptic version of Oblivion. Either I suck or the sign's design was bad, but when I saw the word Megaton on the giant sign after escaping from the vault, I did not see the tiny arrow pointing to the right. I went left and got all the way to the supermarket across the river, but not before finding a scrapyard, escaping from raiders with big guns and finding my dog, which somehow disappeard on my way back to Megaton.
It was only when I got the quest from Will to help him find his father that I realized I must have strayed pretty far from the path I was supposed to go. Coincidentally, I just learnt less than a minute ago that I can travel anywhere by clicking the place in Pip-boy's map. So I clicked on Springvale (can't remember the town's name exactly) and walked randomly. That's when I saw the damned arrow...
1) they're bugged - prices displayed =/= prices you actually pay
2) all of them don't move much except for the Yen, which is now dropping slowly.
Tested Red Alert 3 v1.04, which is the latest version. Seems pretty nice, except they were too easy. Should have played at Hard mode or something. It's so ghey, I captured the enemy bases with engineers instead of destroying them. It counts as "Destroy" as far as the objectives go. Oh wow...
Anyway the gameplay is still quite the same except they threw in special abilities for all units, greatly diversifying the possible strategies. Does require quite a bit of micromanagement to make them all work effectively. I think it's almost on par with Starcraft in the need for 1337 microing, though for different reasons. No longer is it just a spamfest the way all the other C&C games were. Now, you need to use the different abilities/modes to make your units more effective in different situations.
Natasha, the new Soviet Superwoman, is freaking powerful. Not only is she the usual 1-shot-1-kill sniper, her bullets fly through people and kills those behind them, as if she shoots lazors from her guns that do not dissipate... And that isn't all - she can snipe drivers just like the GLA Superman from C&C Generals. I think his name was Jamal or something.
Oh wait, I didn't say that's the end of the list! She can't shoot tanks, but she can call in airstrikes that kills most tanks and buildings plus AOE damage in a small radius. She's practically a 4-in-1 combo 1-woman-army! The catch? Her HP isn't as godlike as all her counterparts in other C&C games.
Fallout 3 is basically a post-apocalyptic version of Oblivion. Either I suck or the sign's design was bad, but when I saw the word Megaton on the giant sign after escaping from the vault, I did not see the tiny arrow pointing to the right. I went left and got all the way to the supermarket across the river, but not before finding a scrapyard, escaping from raiders with big guns and finding my dog, which somehow disappeard on my way back to Megaton.
It was only when I got the quest from Will to help him find his father that I realized I must have strayed pretty far from the path I was supposed to go. Coincidentally, I just learnt less than a minute ago that I can travel anywhere by clicking the place in Pip-boy's map. So I clicked on Springvale (can't remember the town's name exactly) and walked randomly. That's when I saw the damned arrow...
Monday 24 November 2008
Rant 235 / Worship Nyx!
Here's a real epic Starcraft match from www.gomtv.net. It's stork vs keke, round 2. It began oddly and ended very differently from the usual. Both players started the round with strange moves; stork opened with a double Gateway and keke made a fast second Hatchery far from his main base.
It became a match that could be won only by the player who could adapt the fastest to unorthodox strategies. 5-10mins into the game, both of them were still having only the basic attack units - Zealots and Zerglings. I was like "Wtf?" when the commentators mentioned that and I checked the time.
In a normal match, withinin 10 mins both sides should have Dragoons and Mutalisks ready. Instead, both sides either couldn't or didn't expand enough to afford them. keke's second Hatchery was spotted early when stork's scouting Probe found less than the normal number of drones in keke's base. The early double Gateways then spammed enough Zealots to both rush the Hatchery and block the entrance to keke's base, effectively stopping reinforcements from saving the Zerg expansion.
stork spent all his resources on spamming Zealots in order to hold the Zealot barricade at the single entrance to keke's base while a few others attacked and eventually destroyed the Zerg expansion. So he couldn't expand either.
Meanwhile, keke tried to break through the barricade frequently by massing Zerglings repeatedly. The overall lack of success caused him to waste all his Zerglings to destroy Zealots that kept getting replaced as they died. Thus no reinforcement was able to save the expansion. keke did spawn some Zerglings at the second base but they weren't enough - eg, 4 Zerglings controlled by keke weren't enough to defeat a Zealot and a Probe controlled by stork. See the difference that good microing makes?
After some time, keke did break through and tried to attack stork's only base. We all thought that was it, but stork's freaking godly micro skills allowed his horde of Probes and 2 Zealots to successfully defend against a horde of Zerglings. It was almost as if stork was cheating or something. His units were controlled so well, sometimes it seemed they were moving on their own like they were intelligent. This was because he was able to make so many units move in different directions so quickly it seemed like they were moving simulataneously.
Of course the Zerg player was able to get a second wave within the minute, but stork was also able to get some units out. Plus stork spammed Photon Cannons all around the ramp which was the only entrance to his base. He decided to play extremely defensively, using a low-econ strategy.
keke used a low-econ strategy too, sacrificing all chances of expanding to spam Zerglings and 3 Lurkers. Soon, it came to the point where keke attacked. It was basically a slaughter and only 2 Lurkers survived while stork still had 5 Cannons, with an extra Cannon in his base.
So it became a boring stalemate because stork refused to attack and keke couldn't break through the epic turtling.
Suddenly, things became exciting again when keke researched the tech for Overlords to become transports. His army consisting of a horde of Zerglings and about 3 Lurkers climbed into 4-5 Overlords and sneaked into the Protoss base from behind.
A Protoss Corsair (anti-air aircraft) flew past but missed them and went on to harass the Zerg base. I think stork saw that it was defenseless then. Meanwhile the Protoss army was massed at the ramp for defense. So nothing stopped the Overlords from entering the base.
The Zerg army alighted out of range of sight of the Protoss base and entered on foot. stork was helpless against the attack because before he knew it, they were already attacking his one and only Nexus and it was all he could do to try to evacuate his Probes. stork losing??!?!
He didn't defend - stork went all out offensive. So keke began to raze all structures to the ground. If all structures were destroyed, the player would automatically lose. So he was going for that and ignored the enemy's army.
stork did just the same thing, going for the Drones at first, then the Hive and everything else. Both bases were defenseless and were getting destroyed.
Then the screen flew to a single Probe that was... collecting minerals next to a freaking Nexus. Unbeknownst to keke, stork DID expand just before the attack! But the new Nexus was barely complete and had only 1 Probe attending to it. keke had only an Extractor. In the end, both players lost their mains but stork had one Nexus and one Probe left, excluding the armies and Cannons, and each player had about 20-50 Crystals (not enough to build anything significant).
Thus, keke lost.
Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer in 24) is the highest paid TV actor in the US, earning 350k per episode. I never expected that when I first saw him in his role in the movie "Dark City".
Episode 6 of Pro At Cooking is out. This time Dave made a vegetarian dish and hired a vegan as his assistant chef. I think he's improving because I find this latest episode better than the previous 5. The actress, his assistant, sucked at acting though. Dave probably suck at acting too, but he doesn't use much emotions on screen to make it obvious, no smiles or stuff. It may look like he's acting cool but I think it's just his way of hiding his lack of acting talent. Oh well, at least the show is funny.
So it turns out that photoshopping lotus seed pods on any human body part will make an incredibly gross picture. It doesn't matter which, as long as the seed pods are pasted on it and coloured to beige or anything close to the colour of the skin.
In fact, someone did print such photos on greeting cards or something but people vomited at the sight of them. For me, I just get goosebumps whenever I think of the photoshopped nipple. I don't think anything can beat that, not even pictures of giant cysts being cut open. Heck, the disgust I get from seeing mutilated corpses and gory stuff doesn't even compare to what I feel from looking at that picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trinity_explosion2.jpeg
This is the picture of a nuclear explosion, 0.16 seconds after explosion. Who would have thought that something so terrible can also be so beautiful at the same time?
Why do I keep using the same phrases over and over again? My vocabulary is shrinking. Must be because I'm not reading enough. It's hard to read when I don't have a lamp that I can move around in the room, plus it's troublesome to bring books over from home together with my laptop.
The most important reason is because I'm not forgetting any of the plots. Gah! Except for A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm not bringing them over because I know I can't sleep when I read them. They're just so good and at some parts, they incite such strong emotions in me. Like those from Tyrion's point of view because he always gets so mistreated by his own father even though he's a better man than Jaime will ever be. Hey, at the very least he doesn't fuck his own sister! His only crime was that he's born a dwarf, but it is true that he is a giant nonetheless.
Here's another Starcraft match quite similar to the one described above, except even closer. Very close, in fact. This game is more epic than the last game I described. Take a look, it's crazy at the end.
It became a match that could be won only by the player who could adapt the fastest to unorthodox strategies. 5-10mins into the game, both of them were still having only the basic attack units - Zealots and Zerglings. I was like "Wtf?" when the commentators mentioned that and I checked the time.
In a normal match, withinin 10 mins both sides should have Dragoons and Mutalisks ready. Instead, both sides either couldn't or didn't expand enough to afford them. keke's second Hatchery was spotted early when stork's scouting Probe found less than the normal number of drones in keke's base. The early double Gateways then spammed enough Zealots to both rush the Hatchery and block the entrance to keke's base, effectively stopping reinforcements from saving the Zerg expansion.
stork spent all his resources on spamming Zealots in order to hold the Zealot barricade at the single entrance to keke's base while a few others attacked and eventually destroyed the Zerg expansion. So he couldn't expand either.
Meanwhile, keke tried to break through the barricade frequently by massing Zerglings repeatedly. The overall lack of success caused him to waste all his Zerglings to destroy Zealots that kept getting replaced as they died. Thus no reinforcement was able to save the expansion. keke did spawn some Zerglings at the second base but they weren't enough - eg, 4 Zerglings controlled by keke weren't enough to defeat a Zealot and a Probe controlled by stork. See the difference that good microing makes?
After some time, keke did break through and tried to attack stork's only base. We all thought that was it, but stork's freaking godly micro skills allowed his horde of Probes and 2 Zealots to successfully defend against a horde of Zerglings. It was almost as if stork was cheating or something. His units were controlled so well, sometimes it seemed they were moving on their own like they were intelligent. This was because he was able to make so many units move in different directions so quickly it seemed like they were moving simulataneously.
Of course the Zerg player was able to get a second wave within the minute, but stork was also able to get some units out. Plus stork spammed Photon Cannons all around the ramp which was the only entrance to his base. He decided to play extremely defensively, using a low-econ strategy.
keke used a low-econ strategy too, sacrificing all chances of expanding to spam Zerglings and 3 Lurkers. Soon, it came to the point where keke attacked. It was basically a slaughter and only 2 Lurkers survived while stork still had 5 Cannons, with an extra Cannon in his base.
So it became a boring stalemate because stork refused to attack and keke couldn't break through the epic turtling.
Suddenly, things became exciting again when keke researched the tech for Overlords to become transports. His army consisting of a horde of Zerglings and about 3 Lurkers climbed into 4-5 Overlords and sneaked into the Protoss base from behind.
A Protoss Corsair (anti-air aircraft) flew past but missed them and went on to harass the Zerg base. I think stork saw that it was defenseless then. Meanwhile the Protoss army was massed at the ramp for defense. So nothing stopped the Overlords from entering the base.
The Zerg army alighted out of range of sight of the Protoss base and entered on foot. stork was helpless against the attack because before he knew it, they were already attacking his one and only Nexus and it was all he could do to try to evacuate his Probes. stork losing??!?!
He didn't defend - stork went all out offensive. So keke began to raze all structures to the ground. If all structures were destroyed, the player would automatically lose. So he was going for that and ignored the enemy's army.
stork did just the same thing, going for the Drones at first, then the Hive and everything else. Both bases were defenseless and were getting destroyed.
Then the screen flew to a single Probe that was... collecting minerals next to a freaking Nexus. Unbeknownst to keke, stork DID expand just before the attack! But the new Nexus was barely complete and had only 1 Probe attending to it. keke had only an Extractor. In the end, both players lost their mains but stork had one Nexus and one Probe left, excluding the armies and Cannons, and each player had about 20-50 Crystals (not enough to build anything significant).
Thus, keke lost.
Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer in 24) is the highest paid TV actor in the US, earning 350k per episode. I never expected that when I first saw him in his role in the movie "Dark City".
Episode 6 of Pro At Cooking is out. This time Dave made a vegetarian dish and hired a vegan as his assistant chef. I think he's improving because I find this latest episode better than the previous 5. The actress, his assistant, sucked at acting though. Dave probably suck at acting too, but he doesn't use much emotions on screen to make it obvious, no smiles or stuff. It may look like he's acting cool but I think it's just his way of hiding his lack of acting talent. Oh well, at least the show is funny.
So it turns out that photoshopping lotus seed pods on any human body part will make an incredibly gross picture. It doesn't matter which, as long as the seed pods are pasted on it and coloured to beige or anything close to the colour of the skin.
In fact, someone did print such photos on greeting cards or something but people vomited at the sight of them. For me, I just get goosebumps whenever I think of the photoshopped nipple. I don't think anything can beat that, not even pictures of giant cysts being cut open. Heck, the disgust I get from seeing mutilated corpses and gory stuff doesn't even compare to what I feel from looking at that picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trinity_explosion2.jpeg
This is the picture of a nuclear explosion, 0.16 seconds after explosion. Who would have thought that something so terrible can also be so beautiful at the same time?
Why do I keep using the same phrases over and over again? My vocabulary is shrinking. Must be because I'm not reading enough. It's hard to read when I don't have a lamp that I can move around in the room, plus it's troublesome to bring books over from home together with my laptop.
The most important reason is because I'm not forgetting any of the plots. Gah! Except for A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm not bringing them over because I know I can't sleep when I read them. They're just so good and at some parts, they incite such strong emotions in me. Like those from Tyrion's point of view because he always gets so mistreated by his own father even though he's a better man than Jaime will ever be. Hey, at the very least he doesn't fuck his own sister! His only crime was that he's born a dwarf, but it is true that he is a giant nonetheless.
Here's another Starcraft match quite similar to the one described above, except even closer. Very close, in fact. This game is more epic than the last game I described. Take a look, it's crazy at the end.
Rant 234 / Indecision
Will I be able to get anywhere if I decide to switch to Linguistics and Multilingual Studies? If I ever study again after these 4 years, this will be my first choice. Thinking about these 2 years, I find that the only modules I actually liked were the foreign language courses. Then again, they were all at the basic level and I didn't ace any of them. Oh well...
No wonder I'd never heard of it - this course started this year! It will definitely be easy for anyone to tell me to "go for it" because they aren't the ones taking it. An Engineering degree is much more practical, I believe, but I have little interest in it. Maybe I should, but I'll be the first among my cousins, brother and I to take a relatively useless degree. Oh wait... maybe not. I do have a cousin who did his PhD in some history-related major. :P
Hmm............................
This will be one of the biggest decision I'll ever make, a life-changing sort of thing that I rarely resort to.
Tough one. This LMS major isn't "proven", while Mechanical Engineering is. There are few stats for LMS, while with M. Engineering I'm practically guaranteed a job (but not guaranteed a well-paying one because I'm also including jobs that I'll be overqualified for). Only reason in favour of LMS is my interest.
Tough one. One of my cousins told me to choose my major based on interest. I never took that advice because he comes from a wealthy family and he can study anything he wants. In fact, he's already got 2 degrees. I, on the other hand, need to have a degree that I can actually use to make a decent living. I have no idea if LMS is one of those.
Tough one. I want to decide later, but that is the procrastinator in me talking. That may also be because I have two papers for my core modules tomorrow. What I'm thinking now is that if I actually decide to switch, these papers won't matter.
Tough one. I can't make such a decision in a day. Too much haste for a decision of this magnitude. If I abandon these papers, that would be no different from making the decision now. No, too rash.
I want to see my results for this semester before deciding, but it will be too late. I want to know if I can even graduate with an M. Engineering degree with ease. I think I won't, but I want further confirmation.
If I switch my major, there will not be a chance to reverse it. I can't reload a saved game here. Plus if I have to begin from first year, which is quite likely, I'll be 3 years behind everyone else my age. Fuck!
I see I have no choice but to procrastinate. I must wait for myself to cool down a little before deciding. Perhaps I shall email the proper office to ask about how I can switch my major. Wonder if I even qualify for the course.
No wonder I'd never heard of it - this course started this year! It will definitely be easy for anyone to tell me to "go for it" because they aren't the ones taking it. An Engineering degree is much more practical, I believe, but I have little interest in it. Maybe I should, but I'll be the first among my cousins, brother and I to take a relatively useless degree. Oh wait... maybe not. I do have a cousin who did his PhD in some history-related major. :P
Hmm............................
This will be one of the biggest decision I'll ever make, a life-changing sort of thing that I rarely resort to.
Tough one. This LMS major isn't "proven", while Mechanical Engineering is. There are few stats for LMS, while with M. Engineering I'm practically guaranteed a job (but not guaranteed a well-paying one because I'm also including jobs that I'll be overqualified for). Only reason in favour of LMS is my interest.
Tough one. One of my cousins told me to choose my major based on interest. I never took that advice because he comes from a wealthy family and he can study anything he wants. In fact, he's already got 2 degrees. I, on the other hand, need to have a degree that I can actually use to make a decent living. I have no idea if LMS is one of those.
Tough one. I want to decide later, but that is the procrastinator in me talking. That may also be because I have two papers for my core modules tomorrow. What I'm thinking now is that if I actually decide to switch, these papers won't matter.
Tough one. I can't make such a decision in a day. Too much haste for a decision of this magnitude. If I abandon these papers, that would be no different from making the decision now. No, too rash.
I want to see my results for this semester before deciding, but it will be too late. I want to know if I can even graduate with an M. Engineering degree with ease. I think I won't, but I want further confirmation.
If I switch my major, there will not be a chance to reverse it. I can't reload a saved game here. Plus if I have to begin from first year, which is quite likely, I'll be 3 years behind everyone else my age. Fuck!
I see I have no choice but to procrastinate. I must wait for myself to cool down a little before deciding. Perhaps I shall email the proper office to ask about how I can switch my major. Wonder if I even qualify for the course.
Sunday 23 November 2008
Rant 233 / One Mad Rant After Another
Remember the computers they used in Minority Report, the virtual keyboards and touch screens? It turns out there is at least one company developing such technology already. In fact, one of their top guys is the science advisor for that movie!
It is important to know why you're doing everything you do. At least to me. I cannot do anything without a purpose despite whatever bullshit I spout. In fact, to confuse others and just to make my life more exciting (ie just for the heck of it) are some of the purposes that certain actions can serve.
I wonder if everyone actually does that, or do they all just live life to "have kids someday", "make it in life" or "retire by 40". Or better still, they've never thought about it and have been living life the way they thought they're "supposed to".
"Because my parents told me to study hard, get a good job, start a family and retire to take care of my grandchildren someday."
Damn, I really want to hear someone say that from the bottom of his/her heart. That would really be one of the best days ever, because I'd be seeing a true organic robot. Replacing "my parents" with "the media" works too.
What made me think about this was this girl I know who seem so emo all the time I'm surprised I don't see scars on her wrists. She's always so insecured and the first time I met her, I already could recognize that. The first clue was her makeup, or the large amounts of it anyway. She's only in her early 20s and she's using as much as some of the teachers I had who were in their 50s. Worse is that she's not even ugly to begin with.
And now on her Facebook she's like "Why can't I live a happy life?"
What on earth is she talking about? What she should be asking instead is, "Why can't I be happy?"
Everytime I read the stuff she types on Facebook or MSN (both of which I can't avoid and I'm already avoiding her blog because of the sheer amount of emoness that bursts out of the screen I can almost drown in the torrents) I can't help but think of one line said by the fictional character Richard Rahl in the Sword of Truth series, "Think about the solution, not the problem!"
And I find that all she seems to do is think about her own problems. Seriously, someone please convert her to Christianity or something if she's not already a devout believer in something other than that her life sucks. At the rate it's going, Jesus is going to be the only one who'd love her. Or some equally emo guy who would finally find his soulmate... (Gah double the emo! Imagine their combo blog power!) But anyway, last I heard she's attached. Maybe he's the sort who likes insecured girls. I have problems with insecured girls.
I may not be the only person who believes that everything in life can be analyzed, but she sure isn't one of them. Once a problem is analyzed, the root found, a solution can be made. Only thing is, she doesn't do that and seems to just stare at her problems and cry.
Perhaps that is what you get if you ignore your problems too long, letting them fester and grow like tumours till they get out of control. I can't say I'm above that, even I like to escape from my problems. Difference is, if shit happens I don't cry about it because I know I deserve it, even if I don't learn from it. :P
I just hate people who whine about things they probably deserve. Whenever I hear that I'd always be thinking," Oh screw that! You brought that onto yourself and now you're pissed that it happened?"
But I don't say that out loud. That would be inconsiderate. Civilization demands that we lie in order to be nice people. I can't defy that and still be civilized, right?
http://www.break.com/index/british-reporter-terrified-of-rollercoaster.html
When you are too scared to ride a rollercoaster, watch this video and remember her bravery. You can tell she's the sort who would wait for her friends outside while they take all the rollercoasters in the amusement park. Especially at the end when she almost vomited. Good thing she didn't eat before this ride. That guy was really inconsiderate though.
Thinking is the hardest job in the world. It looks simple but it's easier to be a labourer than a business owner. It pays better, though.
Mushrooms! Mushrooms are cheap and they are good! Straw mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms. Shitake mushrooms. Just need a piece of meat to make some broth and throw in the mushrooms when it's hot! Man, why is so hard for my mum to understand that plain food is good! Just because they're associated with poor health doesn't make them taste bad.
So I realized that spending about S$400-500 a month isn't considered thrifty. Last month I spent around $530 total while this month I spent $200 in 3 weeks. Most of my money went into food, especially my grocery trips that can cost up to $80 including the transport costs.
I really should get a fridge next semester if my roommate doesn't already have one. This can allow me to save costs by cooking real food more often instead of relying on canned food. Canned food costs the most money according to my budget and now that I've finally gotten sick of canned food, I have more reasons to cook fresh food in the future. Or semi-fresh, anyway. Small fridges suck at keeping things cold when you have drinks in there. You tend to open it often to get something to drink.
Plus I've learnt that those bottles of soy sauce that states on the label that it should be refridgerated after opening can last at least two months at room temperature if you keep it in a drawer, aka a dark and dry place. Butter can last at least 3 weeks.
Without a fridge, I've been testing around with how long things last in Singapore in normal temperature. Pork can last at least a day even without using salt. But then, maybe it's also because I have this drawer stuffed full of balled up plastic bags that can keep things cold for several hours.
Anyway, the only way I can cut down further is by not taking taxis at all. This should cut my budget by about $100. This isn't something I want to do because it sucks enough as it is just to leave home knowing I'll be having another week of shittiness stuck in campus. The discomfort when I take public transport will only make my life much worse.
Buses - I hate it when my knees push painfully against the seat in front. I can avoid it only by opening my legs but this would push against the legs of the person next to me. MRT - I always prefer to stand if it's crowded. If someone sits next to me I'll have to close my legs. As a large person, it actually takes constant effort to keep my legs closed. I can still remember the time when I was slimmer and that wasn't a trouble, but that's many years ago. So whenever someone sits next to me, it gets really tiring on my inner thighs after roughly 30mins.
Therefore, cabs. Large people are not meant to take other forms of public transport, not in Singapore.
So the guy my mum took care of for her friend, also his mother, is finally gone. After 5 years, he has finally graduated secondary school from Normal Academic stream. If I've never mentioned this before, well the long story really doesn't have much for me to mention. And did I say it's a long story, in case you're going to ask any questions?
He told my mum he's guessing that he'll be getting quite a few aces and pass his English. I don't know. I've never observed his work before. Hell, I don't even talk to him. No big deal. I rarely talk at home anyway. Me and my bro live most of our home lives in front of our respective computers. Him with his omnipotent desktop and me with my humble laptop.
But anyway, I don't believe he's going to pass his English. Neither do I believe he's going to get more than a single ace, if at all. He's probably judging the standards with his prelims and that's pretty inaccurate. I know for a fact that neighbourhood secondary schools always pimp up everyone's prelim scores to improve confidence.
The fact is, if I'm a lousy student, he's way worse. And I know I suck as a student. For years I've been wasting my parents' money by ignoring my private tutors. Mostly by not doing homework and spending all my tuition times doing them and having nothing to ask. The fact is I never knew what tuition was for. What was there to ask?? Nothing requires understanding, only remembering. All I needed to do was to do everything so often it becomes a sort of muscle memory.
Anyway, back to the main story. He disliked tuition and was unafraid to voice it out. After getting scolded (sometimes quite loudly) by the tutor for who knows how many sessions, he finally decided to retaliate by making her quit. I don't know the details other than he told her in her face that he's firing her. I didn't know what he was trying to accomplish, but it pissed her off enough to quit.
But it was already halfway through his final year, and my mum knew how pointless it would be to get a new tutor so late. So she persuaded her to stay using all her persuasive powers. The tutor lasted another few months before quitting for good. She was immune to persuasion by then.
And so he went on without a tutor. Man I wish I did that too, but in a more peaceful way. I'm a pacifist. And his English still sucked then. He never stopped failing his English tests and exams. Maybe an exception once in a while, but the general trend had always been below the passing grade.
Therefore, I don't see how he was going to pass his English at O levels.
It's different for everyone, though. For me I have to make a conscious effort to fail English. Kidding I am not. I deliberately failed my General Paper to repeat JC just so that I can get a 2nd chance at passing my F-Maths. And I almost passed! I was surprised at the AO grade for my GP that year because AO means "barely failed".
I can still remember the time during the exam when I was deciding how to fail. Should I just hand in a blank script or at least write something. I decided to write a decent amount of stuff to pass the time. For the comprehension I did everything but the AQ section and only wrote a 6 lines of summary. As for the essay, I wrote 2 pages and left every alternate line blank. Didn't care if the essay was incomplete. I expected a full-blown F. I can still remember all that because I was wondering if I was writing too much.
Back to the main story again. I don't believe he'll pass his English. At the very most, I expect the lowest possible passing grade. And I seriously don't believe he'll qualify for JC, no matter what he said. But he's not coming back anyway. He's going to use his O Level grades in HK, where he's from. He may get into the pre-U courses, but the Fail is strong is this one! And the Doubt is strong in me.
I won't wish him luck either, unless we're talking about the bad kind. He's not a good person. He's been caught fiddling with wallets and my "coin mug" in my home on several occasions. Even the part time cleaners we hire every week are more honest than him.
My mum's getting old and doesn't have a good memory, so we have no evidence that he stole anything. However, there is no reason for him to even touch her purse in the middle of the night...
Now that he's gone, there still won't be much difference in my life at home. He doesn't disturb me, only my coin mug when I'm not around. I only want to know his results, which my mum has to mail to him when it arrives. He's one of those people I'm really curious about. I want to know how people with little self-control and discipline will do when they get older. Seeing those middle-aged contruction workers and labourers isn't enough. I want to witness the process of turning an energetic teenage loser into a haggard whiny old man with an ugly wife. I already know the results, I just want to know the how of it. Curiosity.
Wearing branded goods makes no difference in my eyes. He does that and I don't respect him any for that. He comes from a poor family because the sole breadwinner passed away a few years ago, yet he doesn't work even though he's the eldest. His mother doesn't make much.
I believe that is precisely why he likes branded stuff. People like me have experienced what it is like to have no desires because we were given more than we wanted. Hell, my parents used to buy me stuff even when I never asked for anything. I think I've been some sort of a nihilist since childhood lol!
But other people seem different. They like expensive goods just because they've got the right brands. What I've derived from my observations is that most people never had enough since they were born. They have never been through a time when they're given things even when they don't want anything. They've always wanted something they couldn't get.
Part of me blames the mass media for that. In a way, the internet is the best way to save money. Not just for the software piracy, but because there are fewer ads that catch your attention. And it's all just visual, no audio. To see a burger is one thing, to hear "it tastes good and you know you want it" is quite another.
Some people want stuff for reasons I cannot understand. I think they want them just for the sake of having them, which I cannot understand. Am I too pragmatic? I don't own anything that I won't use.
For example, what's the point of having an iPod with a freaking huge capacity? Store vids? With such a puny screen, I can't see the point of that other than using it as a portable hard drive. Or the purpose of having that latest phone filled with new purposes I know for sure you won't use?
Is this the fabled Materialism? The desire of owning stuff just for the sake of owning them?
If that is so, and if that is as rampant as I think it is, I weep a little for humanity.
This is sad, no?
These people are misguided, they find no purpose in life and so they spend their money to prove to themselves that what they're doing, what they're earning, serves a purpose! They don't know what else to do with their money that would make them happy. This is derived from the belief that money makes people happy.
That's just a guess.
And so I weep a tear for Mankind, out of pity.
It is important to know why you're doing everything you do. At least to me. I cannot do anything without a purpose despite whatever bullshit I spout. In fact, to confuse others and just to make my life more exciting (ie just for the heck of it) are some of the purposes that certain actions can serve.
I wonder if everyone actually does that, or do they all just live life to "have kids someday", "make it in life" or "retire by 40". Or better still, they've never thought about it and have been living life the way they thought they're "supposed to".
"Because my parents told me to study hard, get a good job, start a family and retire to take care of my grandchildren someday."
Damn, I really want to hear someone say that from the bottom of his/her heart. That would really be one of the best days ever, because I'd be seeing a true organic robot. Replacing "my parents" with "the media" works too.
What made me think about this was this girl I know who seem so emo all the time I'm surprised I don't see scars on her wrists. She's always so insecured and the first time I met her, I already could recognize that. The first clue was her makeup, or the large amounts of it anyway. She's only in her early 20s and she's using as much as some of the teachers I had who were in their 50s. Worse is that she's not even ugly to begin with.
And now on her Facebook she's like "Why can't I live a happy life?"
What on earth is she talking about? What she should be asking instead is, "Why can't I be happy?"
Everytime I read the stuff she types on Facebook or MSN (both of which I can't avoid and I'm already avoiding her blog because of the sheer amount of emoness that bursts out of the screen I can almost drown in the torrents) I can't help but think of one line said by the fictional character Richard Rahl in the Sword of Truth series, "Think about the solution, not the problem!"
And I find that all she seems to do is think about her own problems. Seriously, someone please convert her to Christianity or something if she's not already a devout believer in something other than that her life sucks. At the rate it's going, Jesus is going to be the only one who'd love her. Or some equally emo guy who would finally find his soulmate... (Gah double the emo! Imagine their combo blog power!) But anyway, last I heard she's attached. Maybe he's the sort who likes insecured girls. I have problems with insecured girls.
I may not be the only person who believes that everything in life can be analyzed, but she sure isn't one of them. Once a problem is analyzed, the root found, a solution can be made. Only thing is, she doesn't do that and seems to just stare at her problems and cry.
Perhaps that is what you get if you ignore your problems too long, letting them fester and grow like tumours till they get out of control. I can't say I'm above that, even I like to escape from my problems. Difference is, if shit happens I don't cry about it because I know I deserve it, even if I don't learn from it. :P
I just hate people who whine about things they probably deserve. Whenever I hear that I'd always be thinking," Oh screw that! You brought that onto yourself and now you're pissed that it happened?"
But I don't say that out loud. That would be inconsiderate. Civilization demands that we lie in order to be nice people. I can't defy that and still be civilized, right?
http://www.break.com/index/british-reporter-terrified-of-rollercoaster.html
When you are too scared to ride a rollercoaster, watch this video and remember her bravery. You can tell she's the sort who would wait for her friends outside while they take all the rollercoasters in the amusement park. Especially at the end when she almost vomited. Good thing she didn't eat before this ride. That guy was really inconsiderate though.
Thinking is the hardest job in the world. It looks simple but it's easier to be a labourer than a business owner. It pays better, though.
Mushrooms! Mushrooms are cheap and they are good! Straw mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms. Shitake mushrooms. Just need a piece of meat to make some broth and throw in the mushrooms when it's hot! Man, why is so hard for my mum to understand that plain food is good! Just because they're associated with poor health doesn't make them taste bad.
So I realized that spending about S$400-500 a month isn't considered thrifty. Last month I spent around $530 total while this month I spent $200 in 3 weeks. Most of my money went into food, especially my grocery trips that can cost up to $80 including the transport costs.
I really should get a fridge next semester if my roommate doesn't already have one. This can allow me to save costs by cooking real food more often instead of relying on canned food. Canned food costs the most money according to my budget and now that I've finally gotten sick of canned food, I have more reasons to cook fresh food in the future. Or semi-fresh, anyway. Small fridges suck at keeping things cold when you have drinks in there. You tend to open it often to get something to drink.
Plus I've learnt that those bottles of soy sauce that states on the label that it should be refridgerated after opening can last at least two months at room temperature if you keep it in a drawer, aka a dark and dry place. Butter can last at least 3 weeks.
Without a fridge, I've been testing around with how long things last in Singapore in normal temperature. Pork can last at least a day even without using salt. But then, maybe it's also because I have this drawer stuffed full of balled up plastic bags that can keep things cold for several hours.
Anyway, the only way I can cut down further is by not taking taxis at all. This should cut my budget by about $100. This isn't something I want to do because it sucks enough as it is just to leave home knowing I'll be having another week of shittiness stuck in campus. The discomfort when I take public transport will only make my life much worse.
Buses - I hate it when my knees push painfully against the seat in front. I can avoid it only by opening my legs but this would push against the legs of the person next to me. MRT - I always prefer to stand if it's crowded. If someone sits next to me I'll have to close my legs. As a large person, it actually takes constant effort to keep my legs closed. I can still remember the time when I was slimmer and that wasn't a trouble, but that's many years ago. So whenever someone sits next to me, it gets really tiring on my inner thighs after roughly 30mins.
Therefore, cabs. Large people are not meant to take other forms of public transport, not in Singapore.
So the guy my mum took care of for her friend, also his mother, is finally gone. After 5 years, he has finally graduated secondary school from Normal Academic stream. If I've never mentioned this before, well the long story really doesn't have much for me to mention. And did I say it's a long story, in case you're going to ask any questions?
He told my mum he's guessing that he'll be getting quite a few aces and pass his English. I don't know. I've never observed his work before. Hell, I don't even talk to him. No big deal. I rarely talk at home anyway. Me and my bro live most of our home lives in front of our respective computers. Him with his omnipotent desktop and me with my humble laptop.
But anyway, I don't believe he's going to pass his English. Neither do I believe he's going to get more than a single ace, if at all. He's probably judging the standards with his prelims and that's pretty inaccurate. I know for a fact that neighbourhood secondary schools always pimp up everyone's prelim scores to improve confidence.
The fact is, if I'm a lousy student, he's way worse. And I know I suck as a student. For years I've been wasting my parents' money by ignoring my private tutors. Mostly by not doing homework and spending all my tuition times doing them and having nothing to ask. The fact is I never knew what tuition was for. What was there to ask?? Nothing requires understanding, only remembering. All I needed to do was to do everything so often it becomes a sort of muscle memory.
Anyway, back to the main story. He disliked tuition and was unafraid to voice it out. After getting scolded (sometimes quite loudly) by the tutor for who knows how many sessions, he finally decided to retaliate by making her quit. I don't know the details other than he told her in her face that he's firing her. I didn't know what he was trying to accomplish, but it pissed her off enough to quit.
But it was already halfway through his final year, and my mum knew how pointless it would be to get a new tutor so late. So she persuaded her to stay using all her persuasive powers. The tutor lasted another few months before quitting for good. She was immune to persuasion by then.
And so he went on without a tutor. Man I wish I did that too, but in a more peaceful way. I'm a pacifist. And his English still sucked then. He never stopped failing his English tests and exams. Maybe an exception once in a while, but the general trend had always been below the passing grade.
Therefore, I don't see how he was going to pass his English at O levels.
It's different for everyone, though. For me I have to make a conscious effort to fail English. Kidding I am not. I deliberately failed my General Paper to repeat JC just so that I can get a 2nd chance at passing my F-Maths. And I almost passed! I was surprised at the AO grade for my GP that year because AO means "barely failed".
I can still remember the time during the exam when I was deciding how to fail. Should I just hand in a blank script or at least write something. I decided to write a decent amount of stuff to pass the time. For the comprehension I did everything but the AQ section and only wrote a 6 lines of summary. As for the essay, I wrote 2 pages and left every alternate line blank. Didn't care if the essay was incomplete. I expected a full-blown F. I can still remember all that because I was wondering if I was writing too much.
Back to the main story again. I don't believe he'll pass his English. At the very most, I expect the lowest possible passing grade. And I seriously don't believe he'll qualify for JC, no matter what he said. But he's not coming back anyway. He's going to use his O Level grades in HK, where he's from. He may get into the pre-U courses, but the Fail is strong is this one! And the Doubt is strong in me.
I won't wish him luck either, unless we're talking about the bad kind. He's not a good person. He's been caught fiddling with wallets and my "coin mug" in my home on several occasions. Even the part time cleaners we hire every week are more honest than him.
My mum's getting old and doesn't have a good memory, so we have no evidence that he stole anything. However, there is no reason for him to even touch her purse in the middle of the night...
Now that he's gone, there still won't be much difference in my life at home. He doesn't disturb me, only my coin mug when I'm not around. I only want to know his results, which my mum has to mail to him when it arrives. He's one of those people I'm really curious about. I want to know how people with little self-control and discipline will do when they get older. Seeing those middle-aged contruction workers and labourers isn't enough. I want to witness the process of turning an energetic teenage loser into a haggard whiny old man with an ugly wife. I already know the results, I just want to know the how of it. Curiosity.
Wearing branded goods makes no difference in my eyes. He does that and I don't respect him any for that. He comes from a poor family because the sole breadwinner passed away a few years ago, yet he doesn't work even though he's the eldest. His mother doesn't make much.
I believe that is precisely why he likes branded stuff. People like me have experienced what it is like to have no desires because we were given more than we wanted. Hell, my parents used to buy me stuff even when I never asked for anything. I think I've been some sort of a nihilist since childhood lol!
But other people seem different. They like expensive goods just because they've got the right brands. What I've derived from my observations is that most people never had enough since they were born. They have never been through a time when they're given things even when they don't want anything. They've always wanted something they couldn't get.
Part of me blames the mass media for that. In a way, the internet is the best way to save money. Not just for the software piracy, but because there are fewer ads that catch your attention. And it's all just visual, no audio. To see a burger is one thing, to hear "it tastes good and you know you want it" is quite another.
Some people want stuff for reasons I cannot understand. I think they want them just for the sake of having them, which I cannot understand. Am I too pragmatic? I don't own anything that I won't use.
For example, what's the point of having an iPod with a freaking huge capacity? Store vids? With such a puny screen, I can't see the point of that other than using it as a portable hard drive. Or the purpose of having that latest phone filled with new purposes I know for sure you won't use?
Is this the fabled Materialism? The desire of owning stuff just for the sake of owning them?
If that is so, and if that is as rampant as I think it is, I weep a little for humanity.
This is sad, no?
These people are misguided, they find no purpose in life and so they spend their money to prove to themselves that what they're doing, what they're earning, serves a purpose! They don't know what else to do with their money that would make them happy. This is derived from the belief that money makes people happy.
That's just a guess.
And so I weep a tear for Mankind, out of pity.
Saturday 22 November 2008
Rant 232 / ARGH! My Phone! It Doesn't Turn On!!! ARGH!!
Watching Scrubs Season 7 now. I wonder how many couples out there are like Elliot and Kevin - that they marry because they want to get married and not because they love each other from the bottom of their hearts. Of course a guy would love a girl that way when she's getting intimate with him, but when the guy becomes more lucid, does he really love her? And how many would have their Carla and Perry to ask them the right questions?
Maybe in many cases he realizes that he doesn't really love her - too late, and it finally ends in a divorce. Sad, the children. How many of them really love their pets more than their partner?
But how can a guy wake up when he is in a relationship before it's too late? By isolating himself from her for a few weeks? That would work if he is actually mesmerized by her gorgeous looks and not actually in love, ie love her for her body and not for her self. By forgetting for a moment how she looks and actually think about her as another person, he may remember the more negative side of her.
It is hard to actually tell when you're in the early stages and you're madly in love because of the chemicals in your brain. It is practically impossible to differentiate what you're feeling from the more shallow sort of love. Which would mean that every relationship is a gamble, whether you say that to your girlfriend or not doesn't make a difference.
It is pretty hard to control it though. Not impossible, but close to it. Life is complex enough as it is, throwing love into the equation doesn't help at all. Even though I believe in keeping life simple, love is the one major factor I have difficulty with. It's a great dilemma. On one hand I know it's bloody complex and will complicate my simple life tenfold, on the other hand, well everyone knows what's on this hand.
Like Mark Twain once said, 20 years from now I may regret what I didn't do rather than what I did.
I am very unwilling to give up the simplicity of my life. I've already stopped lying most of the time and prevented myself from having more desires. If it gets any simpler, then I'll be no different from a dead person. But if anyone ever threatens me with death, I'll be immune to that. I guess I can say I don't fear death - it just further simplifies my life.
If I ever get into a relationship, all my plans for a peaceful and quiet self-euthanasia when I finally get seriously sick will be for naught. I will be adding another chain to my soul and that is quite a price. If I ever hook my neck to this chain, it will have to be very, very rewarding. More rewarding than what I'm seeing right now with other people.
Sometimes I wonder why certain couples are couples at all. Others I wonder if they're together only because they both extremely insecured. Soulmates of sorts, lol. Huddling with each other because they fear they would stay single forever if they don't stick with each other. Better than nothing, that's a common philosophy.
I love this musical loop. Warning: May make you very hungry. Weebl always makes good flash stuff.
Profiteroles = cream puffs and it's true, they shit on sausage rolls!
Another Weebl musical loop about waffles.
Wouldn't you be happier if you did? I know I would.
And here's a fan-made flash of MK vs DCU. Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Mainly SubZero vs Batman and Scorpion vs Superman. The graphics are a little poor (especially SubZero's sprite) but the concept was nice. And I like Scorpion.
Come here!
Yet another loop by Weebl, I Love the Internet.
Me too.
And for anyone who knows the game Guitar Hero, here's Bike Hero. No screenshot.
Dad links son's suicide to 'The God Delusion'
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81459
A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.
As I've said before, some people just can't face the world alone. This guy was a devout Christian until he read the abovementioned book, became an atheist and committed suicide. Who says religion is bad? Some people need to be delusional to stay sane and alive!
But it is hard to believe that coincidences do happen. Probability doesn't seem to affect how things happen. Before I played Urban Dead, I never knew that a 25% probability of finding an item means you can click 40 times and not get it! Seriously, the game gave me a whole new perspective of how events with slim chances of happening can still happen. Once, I clicked to search for a Syringe over 30 times to find only 1 even though the probability was 12.4%, which means I should have found at least 3 by the 30th click!
But no, life doesn't go that way. Another time, I found 5 Syringes in 20 clicks. That is how it works. But some people just can't see it that way - they think that something has to be affecting their chances so that rare events happen.
The thing is, probability only works for large groups. Reminds me of psychohistory again because I've always thought that it was a mix of mob psychology and statistical analysis.
I can't remember how many weeks it has been since I've stayed here without going home. 4 weeks? Or 5? This proves to me one thing - my home is where my computer is. I can stay anywhere as long as I have my own computer and broadband internet access.
Pork broth. I made pork broth for dinner. After weeks of canned food and canteen food, I made something light for myself. Used nothing but half a tablespoon of salt and a small piece of pork and a teaspoon of chicken stock. Can't remember the weight. I bought a piece of lean pork and cut out a quarter of it (the only part with a little lard on it) to make this broth. The rest, I sliced it cook them piece by piece so that they're prefectly boiled.
Perfectly cooked pork is fucking pwnage if done right and the meat is fresh. You won't even need soy sauce to improve the flavoour. Of course, it's all guess work. How long you put each slice in the water depends on how thin the slices are.
Then again, I've always loved boiled pork for some reason. But it has to be just right - completely cooked but barely. And eaten when it's hot or it will dry up and harden. So I can say I had a little pork steamboat. Sliced lean pork in pork broth.
Same with beef, but beef is rather expensive compared to pork. In fact, cooking with beef this way will leave a freakin good broth at the end and I'd use it if not for the price and my budget. And it will be much faster too because it will be like dipping each slice of beef in the hot water for a few seconds before eating.
But the broth took me a whole day to make. Put in 750ml of water, salt and the pork and heated it till it boiled. Boiled for a few minutes, covered it with the lid and turn off the heat. I repeated this process for about 3-4 times before dinnertime arrived. Made my room hot though. Had to open my door a few times for ventilation.
But it was worth it. I will do it again in the future.
Unfortunately, my non-stick pot has finally become high-stick. Everytime I cook rice in it, I have to scrape them off or scrub the bottom really hard. Oh well, I knew this would happen sooner or later. I'll just have to cook other things after the rice to soften the rice stuck to the pot. I have been cooking my hot chocolate after cooking rice lol. There are usually only 1 or 2 bits of rice in my chocolate, so it's totally fine. The rest usually dissolves and doesn't do anything to the flavour.
After the chocolate I'll have no choice but to wash it. Rice may not have a strong flavour but chocolate surely does. However it will be easier to wash without the hardened rice stuck at the bottom. I can also just boil water in it for a while, but making hot chocolate would serve 2 purposes.
Just a few more days to the final paper - Fluids Mechanics!!! There will also be 2 papers before that but Fluids is the module that makes me worry the most and want to see the most, because it is the hardest subject I'm taking this sem and it's the final paper.
What waits for me at the end? Red Alert 3, the first 3 seasons of Tenchi Muyo! anime, all 14 episodes of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure anime, bacon(!!!!) and perhaps some travelling.
You know you want some! I just need to figure out how to roll the bacon around the cheese while it's still hot.
Can't get the Waffles tune out of my mind! Must... keep... listening.....
This is cool. A definition of nihilism. According to this essay, I'm an social/existential nihilist.
A direct way to describe it might be 'detachment from everything'.
Without a higher moral judge, nothing beyond life goes punished or rewarded. The fundamental moral quandary is that in order for moral rules to have validity they must have an ultimate arbiter, otherwise right and wrong dive into confusing waters of relativism. That ultimate arbiter has always been God, the final judge, where the buck stops, where even Earth's most evil and wicked run amok with free will get their comeuppance. The Bible says the Earth is the Devils domain (Isaiah 13:11 & Revelation 12:9, even though the Bible also says God created the Earth, Genesis 1:1). If that's what everyone expects, then that's all it will ever be. As a Nihilist I say it's our domain and we can make it a hell or a heaven. But as long as we prejudge the decision absolving ourselves of responsibility then it probably will be a realm for the Devil.
Hence the difference between passive 'social' and active 'political' nihilism is that one accepts whatever happens within futility and pointlessness while the other destroys/creates meaning and value. Which path a person takes is a personal decision within the limits of ability and that means one does have choice; existence is not predetermined or fatally ordained. However default answers and the compulsion of conformity shouldn't be overlooked. Reality is contextual.
The nihilist is unorthodox, a tradition-violator, driven by the inner-force, and not attached or tied down by contemporary superstitions or beliefs.
Being a nihilist is not about futility, self-destruction and giving up, although those feelings are inevitable they are absolutely not the final product, merely a critical stage. Remember that as long as you are alive you're changing the world if by no other means than your sheer existence.
The rest of the stuff was too extreme for me. The writer is a radical political nihilist and is trying to convince more people to see the truth. I don't care if other people see the truth. Let them be, as long as they do not disturb me. That's what I mean by being a social nihilist.
To me, there is no point in trying to convince everyone that all the values they have is artificial and futile in the ultimate picture. I'll just live and die quietly because there is no reason for me to do anything else. Meanwhile, I'll have some fun and live comfortably till the end.
But for most of the stuff about Nihilism, reading them is like hearing an echo of my thoughts through the years. Here's a better link for anyone interested in the website because it's a summarised form of all the important stuff.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3494296/Michael-Jackson-converts-to-Islam-and-changes-name-to-Mikaeel.html
MJ converts to Islam. Not much to say about that, but worth a mention.
Maybe in many cases he realizes that he doesn't really love her - too late, and it finally ends in a divorce. Sad, the children. How many of them really love their pets more than their partner?
But how can a guy wake up when he is in a relationship before it's too late? By isolating himself from her for a few weeks? That would work if he is actually mesmerized by her gorgeous looks and not actually in love, ie love her for her body and not for her self. By forgetting for a moment how she looks and actually think about her as another person, he may remember the more negative side of her.
It is hard to actually tell when you're in the early stages and you're madly in love because of the chemicals in your brain. It is practically impossible to differentiate what you're feeling from the more shallow sort of love. Which would mean that every relationship is a gamble, whether you say that to your girlfriend or not doesn't make a difference.
It is pretty hard to control it though. Not impossible, but close to it. Life is complex enough as it is, throwing love into the equation doesn't help at all. Even though I believe in keeping life simple, love is the one major factor I have difficulty with. It's a great dilemma. On one hand I know it's bloody complex and will complicate my simple life tenfold, on the other hand, well everyone knows what's on this hand.
Like Mark Twain once said, 20 years from now I may regret what I didn't do rather than what I did.
I am very unwilling to give up the simplicity of my life. I've already stopped lying most of the time and prevented myself from having more desires. If it gets any simpler, then I'll be no different from a dead person. But if anyone ever threatens me with death, I'll be immune to that. I guess I can say I don't fear death - it just further simplifies my life.
If I ever get into a relationship, all my plans for a peaceful and quiet self-euthanasia when I finally get seriously sick will be for naught. I will be adding another chain to my soul and that is quite a price. If I ever hook my neck to this chain, it will have to be very, very rewarding. More rewarding than what I'm seeing right now with other people.
Sometimes I wonder why certain couples are couples at all. Others I wonder if they're together only because they both extremely insecured. Soulmates of sorts, lol. Huddling with each other because they fear they would stay single forever if they don't stick with each other. Better than nothing, that's a common philosophy.
I love this musical loop. Warning: May make you very hungry. Weebl always makes good flash stuff.
Profiteroles = cream puffs and it's true, they shit on sausage rolls!Another Weebl musical loop about waffles.
Wouldn't you be happier if you did? I know I would.
And here's a fan-made flash of MK vs DCU. Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Mainly SubZero vs Batman and Scorpion vs Superman. The graphics are a little poor (especially SubZero's sprite) but the concept was nice. And I like Scorpion.
Come here!Yet another loop by Weebl, I Love the Internet.
Me too.And for anyone who knows the game Guitar Hero, here's Bike Hero. No screenshot.
Dad links son's suicide to 'The God Delusion'
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81459
A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.
As I've said before, some people just can't face the world alone. This guy was a devout Christian until he read the abovementioned book, became an atheist and committed suicide. Who says religion is bad? Some people need to be delusional to stay sane and alive!
But it is hard to believe that coincidences do happen. Probability doesn't seem to affect how things happen. Before I played Urban Dead, I never knew that a 25% probability of finding an item means you can click 40 times and not get it! Seriously, the game gave me a whole new perspective of how events with slim chances of happening can still happen. Once, I clicked to search for a Syringe over 30 times to find only 1 even though the probability was 12.4%, which means I should have found at least 3 by the 30th click!
But no, life doesn't go that way. Another time, I found 5 Syringes in 20 clicks. That is how it works. But some people just can't see it that way - they think that something has to be affecting their chances so that rare events happen.
The thing is, probability only works for large groups. Reminds me of psychohistory again because I've always thought that it was a mix of mob psychology and statistical analysis.
I can't remember how many weeks it has been since I've stayed here without going home. 4 weeks? Or 5? This proves to me one thing - my home is where my computer is. I can stay anywhere as long as I have my own computer and broadband internet access.
Pork broth. I made pork broth for dinner. After weeks of canned food and canteen food, I made something light for myself. Used nothing but half a tablespoon of salt and a small piece of pork and a teaspoon of chicken stock. Can't remember the weight. I bought a piece of lean pork and cut out a quarter of it (the only part with a little lard on it) to make this broth. The rest, I sliced it cook them piece by piece so that they're prefectly boiled.
Perfectly cooked pork is fucking pwnage if done right and the meat is fresh. You won't even need soy sauce to improve the flavoour. Of course, it's all guess work. How long you put each slice in the water depends on how thin the slices are.
Then again, I've always loved boiled pork for some reason. But it has to be just right - completely cooked but barely. And eaten when it's hot or it will dry up and harden. So I can say I had a little pork steamboat. Sliced lean pork in pork broth.
Same with beef, but beef is rather expensive compared to pork. In fact, cooking with beef this way will leave a freakin good broth at the end and I'd use it if not for the price and my budget. And it will be much faster too because it will be like dipping each slice of beef in the hot water for a few seconds before eating.
But the broth took me a whole day to make. Put in 750ml of water, salt and the pork and heated it till it boiled. Boiled for a few minutes, covered it with the lid and turn off the heat. I repeated this process for about 3-4 times before dinnertime arrived. Made my room hot though. Had to open my door a few times for ventilation.
But it was worth it. I will do it again in the future.
Unfortunately, my non-stick pot has finally become high-stick. Everytime I cook rice in it, I have to scrape them off or scrub the bottom really hard. Oh well, I knew this would happen sooner or later. I'll just have to cook other things after the rice to soften the rice stuck to the pot. I have been cooking my hot chocolate after cooking rice lol. There are usually only 1 or 2 bits of rice in my chocolate, so it's totally fine. The rest usually dissolves and doesn't do anything to the flavour.
After the chocolate I'll have no choice but to wash it. Rice may not have a strong flavour but chocolate surely does. However it will be easier to wash without the hardened rice stuck at the bottom. I can also just boil water in it for a while, but making hot chocolate would serve 2 purposes.
Just a few more days to the final paper - Fluids Mechanics!!! There will also be 2 papers before that but Fluids is the module that makes me worry the most and want to see the most, because it is the hardest subject I'm taking this sem and it's the final paper.
What waits for me at the end? Red Alert 3, the first 3 seasons of Tenchi Muyo! anime, all 14 episodes of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure anime, bacon(!!!!) and perhaps some travelling.
You know you want some! I just need to figure out how to roll the bacon around the cheese while it's still hot.Can't get the Waffles tune out of my mind! Must... keep... listening.....
This is cool. A definition of nihilism. According to this essay, I'm an social/existential nihilist.
A direct way to describe it might be 'detachment from everything'.
Nihilism can appear very complicated because in the present moral milieu it's necessary to describe it in the terms of negatives and being against this or that. It's about accepting what is and working within that framework to generate a lifestyle of efficacy and natural perspective. Too often our modern hi-tech planet makes us think that if it looks confusing and it takes a Germanic scholar to analyze it then it must be complicated. What I'm saying is that you don't need any of that shit. You don't need to believe in God or Beelzebub or anything else that can't be verified or tested in any way. 
You don't need to believe that human nature is intrinsically evil or in original sin. It takes so much vain effort to struggle with good and bad. Normal people literally torture themselves with ethical and moral quandaries in self-created dungeons that ultimately never matter. For this reason the nihilistic philosophy takes a beating in the arena of ideas because it's just a nothing ideology. That's why I like to call it an anti-ideology. It simply doesn't play by those rules because those rules are arbitrary; they exist only in the social-mindset. And if other people want to live within that self-torturing, intellect numbing fantasy world then I'm not going to stop them; have fun ... hating life.
Without a higher moral judge, nothing beyond life goes punished or rewarded. The fundamental moral quandary is that in order for moral rules to have validity they must have an ultimate arbiter, otherwise right and wrong dive into confusing waters of relativism. That ultimate arbiter has always been God, the final judge, where the buck stops, where even Earth's most evil and wicked run amok with free will get their comeuppance. The Bible says the Earth is the Devils domain (Isaiah 13:11 & Revelation 12:9, even though the Bible also says God created the Earth, Genesis 1:1). If that's what everyone expects, then that's all it will ever be. As a Nihilist I say it's our domain and we can make it a hell or a heaven. But as long as we prejudge the decision absolving ourselves of responsibility then it probably will be a realm for the Devil.
Hence the difference between passive 'social' and active 'political' nihilism is that one accepts whatever happens within futility and pointlessness while the other destroys/creates meaning and value. Which path a person takes is a personal decision within the limits of ability and that means one does have choice; existence is not predetermined or fatally ordained. However default answers and the compulsion of conformity shouldn't be overlooked. Reality is contextual.
The nihilist is unorthodox, a tradition-violator, driven by the inner-force, and not attached or tied down by contemporary superstitions or beliefs.
Being a nihilist is not about futility, self-destruction and giving up, although those feelings are inevitable they are absolutely not the final product, merely a critical stage. Remember that as long as you are alive you're changing the world if by no other means than your sheer existence.
The rest of the stuff was too extreme for me. The writer is a radical political nihilist and is trying to convince more people to see the truth. I don't care if other people see the truth. Let them be, as long as they do not disturb me. That's what I mean by being a social nihilist.
To me, there is no point in trying to convince everyone that all the values they have is artificial and futile in the ultimate picture. I'll just live and die quietly because there is no reason for me to do anything else. Meanwhile, I'll have some fun and live comfortably till the end.
But for most of the stuff about Nihilism, reading them is like hearing an echo of my thoughts through the years. Here's a better link for anyone interested in the website because it's a summarised form of all the important stuff.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3494296/Michael-Jackson-converts-to-Islam-and-changes-name-to-Mikaeel.html
MJ converts to Islam. Not much to say about that, but worth a mention.
Friday 21 November 2008
Rant 231 / Financial Dommes?
Coffee creamer powder does not make an adequate replacement for actual condensed milk in the making of hot cocoa. And there is no point in being greedy when you put cocoa powder in the hot water - extra cocoa powder will not dissolve and will not improve the flavour. My two lessons learnt.
Taking the Cyber Security elective this sem gave me an opportunity to read up on hacking stuff for good reasons, ie research for project (mine was on Cyber Espionage). This eventually led me to a certain website that's apparently made for novice hackers aka skript kiddies. Clicking on the blue words will bring you to the website and there's no virus that will pop into your pc the moment you view it. I have 2 good antivirus programs protecting me and I've tested it.
This website is the TEH SHIT! It has all sorts of programs for noobs to use for stuff like DDoS and etc. All illegal, I believe, if you use them for illegal purposes. Some of them were developed for computer security specialists to test the security of computer systems. One of them, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, I've heard of quite a few times. It's for DDoS attacks and supposed to be quite popular.
Obviously, there has to be viruses everywhere in many files, so download at your own risk. I'm not downloading anything, don't want to elevate myself to the script kiddie status. I'll just stick with being an observer. Maybe some time in the future if anyone pisses me off online, I'll do it.
It's interesting, though, because I never knew there are several kinds of DDoS attacks, like HTTP, SYN and TCP. I thought there's just one - DDoS lol.
But reading on, I find that this website is used by some rather dangerous people, dangerous because I'm not good at computer defensive measures beyond a simple firewall and some antivirus programs. Many of the enemies of Anonymous have all their information in the website; some even have photos of their homes posted there. The lengths that Anonymous would go are quite extreme.
Here's a good one under Ruin Life Tactics:
Prostitutes
So some teenager committed suicide after talking to the people from /b/ in 4chan. Apparently he did it on a live webcam site and viewers watched him take sleeping pills and eventually die, and the live feed displayed his corpse all the way till the police entered the room and covered the webcam a couple of hours later. The police arrived only because some viewers realized it was real and he wasn't breathing.
On 4chan, I can almost see how they all told him to "an hero", a slang for committing suicide. But it wouldn't be strange because I see such suicidal posts all the time whenever I visit /b/. It's like there are thousands of people out there pretending to want to die on /b/ to get their attention. No one cares. All they tell you is to "post pictures or it never happened" or "use a webcam".
Moral of the story? Don't go to 4chan for help or advice.
And most importantly, no one feels guilty.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081120/tbs-finance-economy-us-gulf-e65dddb.html
The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, ... the United States has asked Kuwait to forgive its Iraqi debt estimated at around 16 billion dollars.
GG for America? I wouldn't call it "beg" but it isn't too far from the truth, eh?
Will the "United States" finally become separate states now?
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081121/tts-health-disease-ebola-c1b2fc3.html
Scientists said Friday an outbreak of Ebola that killed 37 people in Uganda last year was sparked by a hitherto unknown species of one of the world's most notorious viruses.
Why is Africa such a screwed up shithole? No offense to the richer Africans, but it's like most of the worst things in the world are in Africa. AIDS, malaria, rape and many others. Africa used to be so damned rich in the past. Remember Carthage 2000 years ago? Now it's like a real life counterpart of 4chan. Last few days it was Congo, now it's Sudan. What the fuck? How is it that the whole continent is so screwed up?
And Congo's war has been going on for ever! When will those guys stop fighting and look at the carnage around them? It's almost like a much larger version of Israel but without the religious background. Millions have died over the years and none of them has realized they are just destroying their own world.
In fact, Congo's standard of living is even worse than Somalia, even though it's a democracy compared to Somalia's anarchy. It just blows my mind to see that those guys don't know when to stop. They don't seem to understand their fighting is so overboard that sooner or later there will be nothing left to fight over. I wonder if they still remember why they began to fight in the first place or what they're actually fighting for.
There's also Nigeria that's so fucked by all the oil companies.
And never forget Leopold II of Belgium, one of the greatest man to ever exist. The way he treated his African "properties" I'm surprised Hitler is more notorious.
Missionary John Harris of Baringa, for example, was so shocked by what he had come across that he felt moved to write a letter to Leopold's chief agent in the Congo: "I have just returned from a journey inland to the village of Insongo Mboyo. The abject misery and utter abandon is positively indescribable. I was so moved, Your Excellency, by the people's stories that I took the liberty of promising them that in future you will only kill them for crimes they commit."
Ever Hitler never went that far - he just killed the Jews, not make them want to be killed.
Taking the Cyber Security elective this sem gave me an opportunity to read up on hacking stuff for good reasons, ie research for project (mine was on Cyber Espionage). This eventually led me to a certain website that's apparently made for novice hackers aka skript kiddies. Clicking on the blue words will bring you to the website and there's no virus that will pop into your pc the moment you view it. I have 2 good antivirus programs protecting me and I've tested it.
This website is the TEH SHIT! It has all sorts of programs for noobs to use for stuff like DDoS and etc. All illegal, I believe, if you use them for illegal purposes. Some of them were developed for computer security specialists to test the security of computer systems. One of them, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, I've heard of quite a few times. It's for DDoS attacks and supposed to be quite popular.
Obviously, there has to be viruses everywhere in many files, so download at your own risk. I'm not downloading anything, don't want to elevate myself to the script kiddie status. I'll just stick with being an observer. Maybe some time in the future if anyone pisses me off online, I'll do it.
It's interesting, though, because I never knew there are several kinds of DDoS attacks, like HTTP, SYN and TCP. I thought there's just one - DDoS lol.
But reading on, I find that this website is used by some rather dangerous people, dangerous because I'm not good at computer defensive measures beyond a simple firewall and some antivirus programs. Many of the enemies of Anonymous have all their information in the website; some even have photos of their homes posted there. The lengths that Anonymous would go are quite extreme.
Here's a good one under Ruin Life Tactics:
Prostitutes
- Go to Craigslist
- Click on the state where the target is
- Go to Services, and under that click Erotic
- Call all the outcall escorts--outcall means that they come to you--and make an appointment with the target.
- ???
- PROFIT!
So some teenager committed suicide after talking to the people from /b/ in 4chan. Apparently he did it on a live webcam site and viewers watched him take sleeping pills and eventually die, and the live feed displayed his corpse all the way till the police entered the room and covered the webcam a couple of hours later. The police arrived only because some viewers realized it was real and he wasn't breathing.
On 4chan, I can almost see how they all told him to "an hero", a slang for committing suicide. But it wouldn't be strange because I see such suicidal posts all the time whenever I visit /b/. It's like there are thousands of people out there pretending to want to die on /b/ to get their attention. No one cares. All they tell you is to "post pictures or it never happened" or "use a webcam".
Moral of the story? Don't go to 4chan for help or advice.
And most importantly, no one feels guilty.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081120/tbs-finance-economy-us-gulf-e65dddb.html
The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, ... the United States has asked Kuwait to forgive its Iraqi debt estimated at around 16 billion dollars.
GG for America? I wouldn't call it "beg" but it isn't too far from the truth, eh?
Will the "United States" finally become separate states now?
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081121/tts-health-disease-ebola-c1b2fc3.html
Scientists said Friday an outbreak of Ebola that killed 37 people in Uganda last year was sparked by a hitherto unknown species of one of the world's most notorious viruses.
Why is Africa such a screwed up shithole? No offense to the richer Africans, but it's like most of the worst things in the world are in Africa. AIDS, malaria, rape and many others. Africa used to be so damned rich in the past. Remember Carthage 2000 years ago? Now it's like a real life counterpart of 4chan. Last few days it was Congo, now it's Sudan. What the fuck? How is it that the whole continent is so screwed up?
And Congo's war has been going on for ever! When will those guys stop fighting and look at the carnage around them? It's almost like a much larger version of Israel but without the religious background. Millions have died over the years and none of them has realized they are just destroying their own world.
In fact, Congo's standard of living is even worse than Somalia, even though it's a democracy compared to Somalia's anarchy. It just blows my mind to see that those guys don't know when to stop. They don't seem to understand their fighting is so overboard that sooner or later there will be nothing left to fight over. I wonder if they still remember why they began to fight in the first place or what they're actually fighting for.
There's also Nigeria that's so fucked by all the oil companies.
And never forget Leopold II of Belgium, one of the greatest man to ever exist. The way he treated his African "properties" I'm surprised Hitler is more notorious.
Missionary John Harris of Baringa, for example, was so shocked by what he had come across that he felt moved to write a letter to Leopold's chief agent in the Congo: "I have just returned from a journey inland to the village of Insongo Mboyo. The abject misery and utter abandon is positively indescribable. I was so moved, Your Excellency, by the people's stories that I took the liberty of promising them that in future you will only kill them for crimes they commit."
Ever Hitler never went that far - he just killed the Jews, not make them want to be killed.
Thursday 20 November 2008
Rant 230 / Students Don't Die When You Stab Them During Their Exam Periods
Watching Season 3 of 24, the TV series. Holy fuck the show sucks balls...hard for the first 15 episodes. It may be exciting, but the story is crap. The part I hate most is all the times when Kim Bauer kept pressing people for answers that they obviously didn't want to tell. And she always got answers she would have been happier not knowing. And everyone just seems to love to backstab everyone else. And the enemy keeps changing so much they're no longer "twists" but a sign of an inconsistent group of writers. I mean, they're probably running out of ideas for what they can do with villains so they kill them off and bring in others. One after another. So the tale has become something of a mix of short stories linked by Jack Bauer.
It feels like the actual story really ended with the successful jailbreak and the rest are really impromptu addons created by the writers to make the series 24 episodes long. It'd have been much better if the villains last a little longer, not just for 10 half the series like Hector, who was supposed to be the mastermind at first.
C'mon, it's like one of those RPGs in all these shows. Final bosses die at the end! At most, throw in a real final boss after the one you thought was the final boss for a twist. But if you have 3 or 4 twists they wouldn't be twists, would they?
Totally brings into mind Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. His way of dragging the story with undying Chosens was similar to this, such that killing them makes no difference and new ones will just pop up and ruin the party. Even making them reborn into the opposite genders doesn't improve the quality.
And so it is in 24, because we expect bad guys to die and the story ends there. And FFS the writers are so full of shit that they make so many things happen within 24 hours. Many of those things that happened don't happen all the time, like the baby subplot. What's the probability of all of them happening on the same day??
Okay, let's wrap this mad rant on 24 with "Fuck you Kim stop asking so many questions learn to STFU and you may just live a happier life and all of you stop backstabbing each all on the same day when a major operation is taking place and learn to trust each other a bit!"
Okay that was stupid, but so was the series.
Rule 1 for any Internet explorers: What is seen cannot be unseen. Keep that in mind. Some things, I'd really rather forget after seeing them, but they're just so traumatic I cannot erase them from my memory. Like pictures of people who got shot in the head. Like pictures of a knife cutting into an eyeball still in the socket. Like pictures of a penis, with a knife cutting off the head. Like pictures of an infected penis. Like pictures of rashes on the scrotum. Like huge female human "whales" naked. Like an 80-year-old woman, also naked and on all fours such that the really really really really really really really wrinkly tits are hanging and you cannot recognize what that is between her legs. I thank my parents for bringing me so far away from my grandparents. I will never see old people the same way again.
What is seen cannot be unseen. Remember that and be happy you haven't seen the stuff described above. When you're down, think of this and you'll feel better.
LOL!
Damn, maybe I really should save all those pics and use them on the next person who pisses me off.
"Okay this is a simple psychiatric test. I'll show you a picture and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind."
*Shows picture of a horribly infected and swollen penis, preferably photoshopped with a pencil stuck in the hole for extra effect*
Win.
I find this screenshot hilarious. For any guy who has watched any of the Harry Potter movies, you'll probably ask the same question as the poster after seeing the picture in the screenshot. By the way, that picture is a fake. She has never done any nudes - she's just turned legal this year!
(FYI : sause = sauce = source = source of picture)
So I was wrong. The Yen is becoming stronger constantly, dropping a little for a while here and there but generally rising. The Euro and Sterling have gotten stronger too, against the dollar. Everything else is falling, all the commodities like Corn and Oil and all the ETFs like Dow Jones Stoxx 600 and etc. I'm almost giving up on this game now. There's nothing to buy! I have little idea when they will all stop dropping. Buying now isn't wise because at the rate everything is dropping, they may not recover to the same level as before. Need to read more financial news but I'm having bloody exams.
http://zip.4chan.org/trv/res/79456.html
Here's a useful thread for any traveller - whether it is alright to order a glass of tap water in other countries. I remember my German teacher telling me that she had never done it before coming to Singapore, and decided to try it when she returned to Germany. She told us the waiter got a little irritated because that was all she ordered. According to the people in that thread, that is quite true. No one in Germany orders "stillwasser" which I take to mean "still water" aka non-fizzy water. Unless it's for your dog, in which case tap water is completely normal.
But if you're in Germany, why drink water? There's beer EVERYWHERE!
In another thread http://zip.4chan.org/trv/res/79595.html
this guy described his backpacking trip to Germany in which they carried very little and went around getting drunk all the time and trainhopped for free rides to everywhere.
Wow I just saw one of the most interesting sights ever to exist in the showers - shit! Fuck this place! Obviously someone washed his ass in the showers and didn't bother to make sure all the fecal matter went down the drain. Now little pieces are all spread out on the shower floor in all the cubicles. Can't everyone just learn to use the toilet rolls or, if that is impossible, keep the damned shower cubicles clean?? Fuck! Shit in the showers is way worse than seeing yellow fluid - at least piss is easier to guide to the drain and if I step on it I can just treat it as an antiseptic footwash liquid. Fuck whoever did it and gratz that you've just hit a new low. I hope your future baby will shit on your face when you're asleep and you discover yeast infection every time you go down on your girlfriend. Fuckin shitface fag.
No it's not the deed itself that disgusts me. I've seen janitors break down during my army days because someone passed motion on a toilet cover. What really irks me is that this is done in an university. We're supposed to eventually become the better parts of society, be the higher drones of the workforce (drones nonetheless). Yet people here leave feces in the shower cubicles and do not clean up the mess.
Don't give me shit that it's only one person out of the thousands. There shouldn't even be a remote possibility of such an occurence in the first place! Every single one of us should be above that, way above.
And so another bit of my faith in humanity rots away.
Some time ago, I finally figured out that there are some things in life that are quite similar to the psychohistory concept invented by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series. Psychohistory is a fictional science that is basically mob psychology made mathematical, such that equations can calculate to a degree of certainty how large groups of people will act in different situations.
In psychohistory, the people involved must not know how psychohistory works. None of them must know even very advanced psychiatry so that not a single soul knows even a hint of how it works. This is one of the few major rules that cannot be broken for it to work.
And in life, I find that some rules work only if no one understands/knows them. Nevertheless, I'm stating one here anyway. I may have mentioned them before, I can't remember. Everything we do is right. No matter if you're the greatest philantrophist in the world or the most evil mass murderer in human history, what you do is always right.
Right in the sense that all consequences of your actions are always balanced. There is no action that only has negative benefits for everyone, or the opposite. Even Hitler's 6 million kills/Beyond Godlike streak/6M : 1 kill/death ratio is not wrong in this sense.
Because of his actions, people around the world are now more hesitant to resorting to war. Everyone is now more sensitive to war fatigue. In fact, we have all learnt from WWII that violence alone is no longer an answer to anything. Violence in the modern world can only be part of a solution, quite unlike the days before. Except for the US and certain African countries, but we all know that.
We've also seen major scientific breakthroughs because of the war, eg nuclear science. And Hitler is now the role model for everything a human should not be, including not having his funny little mustache.
In short, everything we do has balanced consequences. A death in the family can be sad, but it can give you release from the past, release from the chains of duty or anything else. Does not matter how atrocious the negative side can be, because there is always a postive equivalent. 2 sides of the same coin in every case.
This world is perfect because of that. Nothing you do can destroy the Universe. The Earth will continue to swing around the Sun for billions of years no matter what kind of deeds you commit. It will not make a difference in the largest picture. Everything seems to adapt to our every action.
But if everyone understands this, then they may as well lie down and die! Life will have no purpose for everyone! But the Earth will not stop spinning on its axis. The Universe will continue to exist.
It wouldn't be nice to force everyone to understand this. It is always important to be nice to other people because there are always consequences to everything, even if you don't see it. Just like if you play a practical joke on someone and you apologize later, his trust in you will still decrease a little. You cannot tell at first, but if you repeat the process enough times, the effects will become more visible. Plus his mental image of you will change accordingly and etc. Despite these, it will still be lots of fun.
This is what I mean by it being similar to psychohistory. People should stay ignorant of certain laws of life and such laws do exist. I'm not in any way insane or smart for understanding this, but I believe I should not be the only person who knows this.
Was reading this Wiki article on Hiroo Onoda, some Japanese dude who didn't stop fighting in WWII until 29 years after his country's surrender. He was the penultimate Japanese to surrender and his story was pretty epic. It was somewhat similar to Castaway in that he was alone for the last few years of his war because his fellow soldiers died one by one during the 3 decades. And he didn't leave even though some Japanese traveller found him and told him about his country's surrender over 20 years ago. Wtf!
And the Japanese government had to call up his commanding officer, who had become a bookseller after the war, to personally, in full uniform, order him to stop fighting. LOL kinda like reservist, except more dramatic. And that was what he told the traveller, that he would surrender only if he receives direct orders from his officer.
I can't imagine what he must have felt when he finally accepted the truth. He was probably thinking about what the past 3 decades had accomplished, which was nothing. And how he was unnecessarily wasting time and lives all these years.
Funny thing was, this Norio Suzuki (the Japanese who found him) told his friends before he left that he was "going to look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order." I found that pretty funny and hope he finds the Snowman someday. Probably found the panda if he went to China during his journey.
And after 3 decades of fighting, Onoda's rifle was still in working condition. Holy cow! Plus he still had 500 rounds of ammunition. That is enough to supply a small army camp! He probably never used his rifle throughout his guerilla days.
But he is an excellent example of how strong indoctrination can affect people. Despite all those flyers they dropped from the planes and the flyers left by the villagers living nearby, they never surrendered. They were unable to go against their beliefs and accept that their country has lost. He did not surrender even after a fellow Japanese informed him of this, 29 years after the event!
That is the best kind of soldier. Unquestioning and faithful to the last. Sometimes, orders just have to be strange because not everyone has the same clearance level to all information. I mean, low ranking soldiers aren't mean to think and question their orders. If they're supposed to think they would be higher-ranked officers instead.
And officers aren't meant to fight. Generals aren't meant to lead charges, despite all those heroic accounts in human history. Unless they need the morale boost, it is always unnecessary for high ranking officers to risk their lives. Normal soldiers can be replaced; leaders aren't expendable.
An excellent example can be Stalin. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands died during his reign but USSR stayed strong. The day Stalin died, poof! The USSR died with him.
According to this Wiki article on Survival Techniques, I already knew how to test potential food sources. Step one was to rub some on the skin and wait for 15mins to half an hour. If nothing happens, do the same on the lips. If nothing happens do the same on the tongue. If no irritation or anything occurs still, swallow a little bit. If you're fine after half an hour, it is edible.
Saw that on Discovery Channel, a show that taught me how to survive on a life raft if my ship sinks. That guy was showing the viewers how to test whatever you can find floating on the surface of the sea, including seaweed.
But if you wear leather shoes all the time, you probably won't have to worry about food.
Anyway, food is the least important problem if you're lost in the wild because a human can survive an average of 3 weeks without it. Water and shelter are apparently of higher priority. Unless you're in a very cold place, of course, in which case you will need food fast or you'll die of hypothermia. A lot of energy is needed to maintain body temperature in extreme climates.
Wow more drops in the Trade Up game now at 12am 21st Nov. DJ Stoxx is still dropping like a rock. But it's doing better than FTSE 100 because it's dropped by about $500 since I started playing, from $4300+ to $3800+ now. Even Crude Oil has dropped to $54.99. Only thing that is still rising is the Yen, probably a ton of speculators or something buying it. The rest of the currencies are either maintaining(SGD) or dropping(TL). Hell, everything is going down but the Yen. The Yen is like freakin godlike right now according to my records.
It feels like the actual story really ended with the successful jailbreak and the rest are really impromptu addons created by the writers to make the series 24 episodes long. It'd have been much better if the villains last a little longer, not just for 10 half the series like Hector, who was supposed to be the mastermind at first.
C'mon, it's like one of those RPGs in all these shows. Final bosses die at the end! At most, throw in a real final boss after the one you thought was the final boss for a twist. But if you have 3 or 4 twists they wouldn't be twists, would they?
Totally brings into mind Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. His way of dragging the story with undying Chosens was similar to this, such that killing them makes no difference and new ones will just pop up and ruin the party. Even making them reborn into the opposite genders doesn't improve the quality.
And so it is in 24, because we expect bad guys to die and the story ends there. And FFS the writers are so full of shit that they make so many things happen within 24 hours. Many of those things that happened don't happen all the time, like the baby subplot. What's the probability of all of them happening on the same day??
Okay, let's wrap this mad rant on 24 with "Fuck you Kim stop asking so many questions learn to STFU and you may just live a happier life and all of you stop backstabbing each all on the same day when a major operation is taking place and learn to trust each other a bit!"
Okay that was stupid, but so was the series.
Rule 1 for any Internet explorers: What is seen cannot be unseen. Keep that in mind. Some things, I'd really rather forget after seeing them, but they're just so traumatic I cannot erase them from my memory. Like pictures of people who got shot in the head. Like pictures of a knife cutting into an eyeball still in the socket. Like pictures of a penis, with a knife cutting off the head. Like pictures of an infected penis. Like pictures of rashes on the scrotum. Like huge female human "whales" naked. Like an 80-year-old woman, also naked and on all fours such that the really really really really really really really wrinkly tits are hanging and you cannot recognize what that is between her legs. I thank my parents for bringing me so far away from my grandparents. I will never see old people the same way again.
What is seen cannot be unseen. Remember that and be happy you haven't seen the stuff described above. When you're down, think of this and you'll feel better.
LOL!
Damn, maybe I really should save all those pics and use them on the next person who pisses me off.
"Okay this is a simple psychiatric test. I'll show you a picture and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind."
*Shows picture of a horribly infected and swollen penis, preferably photoshopped with a pencil stuck in the hole for extra effect*
Win.
I find this screenshot hilarious. For any guy who has watched any of the Harry Potter movies, you'll probably ask the same question as the poster after seeing the picture in the screenshot. By the way, that picture is a fake. She has never done any nudes - she's just turned legal this year!
(FYI : sause = sauce = source = source of picture)
So I was wrong. The Yen is becoming stronger constantly, dropping a little for a while here and there but generally rising. The Euro and Sterling have gotten stronger too, against the dollar. Everything else is falling, all the commodities like Corn and Oil and all the ETFs like Dow Jones Stoxx 600 and etc. I'm almost giving up on this game now. There's nothing to buy! I have little idea when they will all stop dropping. Buying now isn't wise because at the rate everything is dropping, they may not recover to the same level as before. Need to read more financial news but I'm having bloody exams.
http://zip.4chan.org/trv/res/79456.html
Here's a useful thread for any traveller - whether it is alright to order a glass of tap water in other countries. I remember my German teacher telling me that she had never done it before coming to Singapore, and decided to try it when she returned to Germany. She told us the waiter got a little irritated because that was all she ordered. According to the people in that thread, that is quite true. No one in Germany orders "stillwasser" which I take to mean "still water" aka non-fizzy water. Unless it's for your dog, in which case tap water is completely normal.
But if you're in Germany, why drink water? There's beer EVERYWHERE!
In another thread http://zip.4chan.org/trv/res/79595.html
this guy described his backpacking trip to Germany in which they carried very little and went around getting drunk all the time and trainhopped for free rides to everywhere.
Wow I just saw one of the most interesting sights ever to exist in the showers - shit! Fuck this place! Obviously someone washed his ass in the showers and didn't bother to make sure all the fecal matter went down the drain. Now little pieces are all spread out on the shower floor in all the cubicles. Can't everyone just learn to use the toilet rolls or, if that is impossible, keep the damned shower cubicles clean?? Fuck! Shit in the showers is way worse than seeing yellow fluid - at least piss is easier to guide to the drain and if I step on it I can just treat it as an antiseptic footwash liquid. Fuck whoever did it and gratz that you've just hit a new low. I hope your future baby will shit on your face when you're asleep and you discover yeast infection every time you go down on your girlfriend. Fuckin shitface fag.
No it's not the deed itself that disgusts me. I've seen janitors break down during my army days because someone passed motion on a toilet cover. What really irks me is that this is done in an university. We're supposed to eventually become the better parts of society, be the higher drones of the workforce (drones nonetheless). Yet people here leave feces in the shower cubicles and do not clean up the mess.
Don't give me shit that it's only one person out of the thousands. There shouldn't even be a remote possibility of such an occurence in the first place! Every single one of us should be above that, way above.
And so another bit of my faith in humanity rots away.
Some time ago, I finally figured out that there are some things in life that are quite similar to the psychohistory concept invented by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series. Psychohistory is a fictional science that is basically mob psychology made mathematical, such that equations can calculate to a degree of certainty how large groups of people will act in different situations.
In psychohistory, the people involved must not know how psychohistory works. None of them must know even very advanced psychiatry so that not a single soul knows even a hint of how it works. This is one of the few major rules that cannot be broken for it to work.
And in life, I find that some rules work only if no one understands/knows them. Nevertheless, I'm stating one here anyway. I may have mentioned them before, I can't remember. Everything we do is right. No matter if you're the greatest philantrophist in the world or the most evil mass murderer in human history, what you do is always right.
Right in the sense that all consequences of your actions are always balanced. There is no action that only has negative benefits for everyone, or the opposite. Even Hitler's 6 million kills/Beyond Godlike streak/6M : 1 kill/death ratio is not wrong in this sense.
Because of his actions, people around the world are now more hesitant to resorting to war. Everyone is now more sensitive to war fatigue. In fact, we have all learnt from WWII that violence alone is no longer an answer to anything. Violence in the modern world can only be part of a solution, quite unlike the days before. Except for the US and certain African countries, but we all know that.
We've also seen major scientific breakthroughs because of the war, eg nuclear science. And Hitler is now the role model for everything a human should not be, including not having his funny little mustache.
In short, everything we do has balanced consequences. A death in the family can be sad, but it can give you release from the past, release from the chains of duty or anything else. Does not matter how atrocious the negative side can be, because there is always a postive equivalent. 2 sides of the same coin in every case.
This world is perfect because of that. Nothing you do can destroy the Universe. The Earth will continue to swing around the Sun for billions of years no matter what kind of deeds you commit. It will not make a difference in the largest picture. Everything seems to adapt to our every action.
But if everyone understands this, then they may as well lie down and die! Life will have no purpose for everyone! But the Earth will not stop spinning on its axis. The Universe will continue to exist.
It wouldn't be nice to force everyone to understand this. It is always important to be nice to other people because there are always consequences to everything, even if you don't see it. Just like if you play a practical joke on someone and you apologize later, his trust in you will still decrease a little. You cannot tell at first, but if you repeat the process enough times, the effects will become more visible. Plus his mental image of you will change accordingly and etc. Despite these, it will still be lots of fun.
This is what I mean by it being similar to psychohistory. People should stay ignorant of certain laws of life and such laws do exist. I'm not in any way insane or smart for understanding this, but I believe I should not be the only person who knows this.
Was reading this Wiki article on Hiroo Onoda, some Japanese dude who didn't stop fighting in WWII until 29 years after his country's surrender. He was the penultimate Japanese to surrender and his story was pretty epic. It was somewhat similar to Castaway in that he was alone for the last few years of his war because his fellow soldiers died one by one during the 3 decades. And he didn't leave even though some Japanese traveller found him and told him about his country's surrender over 20 years ago. Wtf!
And the Japanese government had to call up his commanding officer, who had become a bookseller after the war, to personally, in full uniform, order him to stop fighting. LOL kinda like reservist, except more dramatic. And that was what he told the traveller, that he would surrender only if he receives direct orders from his officer.
I can't imagine what he must have felt when he finally accepted the truth. He was probably thinking about what the past 3 decades had accomplished, which was nothing. And how he was unnecessarily wasting time and lives all these years.
Funny thing was, this Norio Suzuki (the Japanese who found him) told his friends before he left that he was "going to look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order." I found that pretty funny and hope he finds the Snowman someday. Probably found the panda if he went to China during his journey.
And after 3 decades of fighting, Onoda's rifle was still in working condition. Holy cow! Plus he still had 500 rounds of ammunition. That is enough to supply a small army camp! He probably never used his rifle throughout his guerilla days.
But he is an excellent example of how strong indoctrination can affect people. Despite all those flyers they dropped from the planes and the flyers left by the villagers living nearby, they never surrendered. They were unable to go against their beliefs and accept that their country has lost. He did not surrender even after a fellow Japanese informed him of this, 29 years after the event!
That is the best kind of soldier. Unquestioning and faithful to the last. Sometimes, orders just have to be strange because not everyone has the same clearance level to all information. I mean, low ranking soldiers aren't mean to think and question their orders. If they're supposed to think they would be higher-ranked officers instead.
And officers aren't meant to fight. Generals aren't meant to lead charges, despite all those heroic accounts in human history. Unless they need the morale boost, it is always unnecessary for high ranking officers to risk their lives. Normal soldiers can be replaced; leaders aren't expendable.
An excellent example can be Stalin. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands died during his reign but USSR stayed strong. The day Stalin died, poof! The USSR died with him.
According to this Wiki article on Survival Techniques, I already knew how to test potential food sources. Step one was to rub some on the skin and wait for 15mins to half an hour. If nothing happens, do the same on the lips. If nothing happens do the same on the tongue. If no irritation or anything occurs still, swallow a little bit. If you're fine after half an hour, it is edible.
Saw that on Discovery Channel, a show that taught me how to survive on a life raft if my ship sinks. That guy was showing the viewers how to test whatever you can find floating on the surface of the sea, including seaweed.
But if you wear leather shoes all the time, you probably won't have to worry about food.
Anyway, food is the least important problem if you're lost in the wild because a human can survive an average of 3 weeks without it. Water and shelter are apparently of higher priority. Unless you're in a very cold place, of course, in which case you will need food fast or you'll die of hypothermia. A lot of energy is needed to maintain body temperature in extreme climates.
Wow more drops in the Trade Up game now at 12am 21st Nov. DJ Stoxx is still dropping like a rock. But it's doing better than FTSE 100 because it's dropped by about $500 since I started playing, from $4300+ to $3800+ now. Even Crude Oil has dropped to $54.99. Only thing that is still rising is the Yen, probably a ton of speculators or something buying it. The rest of the currencies are either maintaining(SGD) or dropping(TL). Hell, everything is going down but the Yen. The Yen is like freakin godlike right now according to my records.
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