Monday 28 April 2008

Rant 131 / Exams Doubleplusungood. Bellyfeel Unluv Exams.

Watched episode 4 of Pro at Cooking. Another episode of a cook with attitude. Every episode he would have a different hot female assistant, but he had forgotten to sack the one from episode 3.

So in this episode, when she arrived, he said," Oh yea, I totally forgot to fire you last episode."

Then he takes a deep breath, and continues," Okay, you're fired."

And he closed the door.

Anyway, this episode's chilli sauce is too complicated for my noob skills. And too many different types of peppers to buy.

"If you get this in your eye. You will die."

ROFL!!





A funny (in a sick sort of way) discussion on some forum:

Original post: I just had my first wet dream ever (20 here). And it was about my mom being drunk. She had put on some make-up and she looked nothing like she did usually. In fact, she looked EXACTLY like a hot girl I knew. She made me caress her breasts and other shit like that and then I started cumming. I awoke immediatly.

Fuck, I feel sick now. Please someone explain this faggotry.


One reply: It could be worse, you could have dreamed it was your dad...

Another reply: I had this horrid dream in which my dad and I had very uncomfortable sex. My face looked like >=0 for a full week.


These posts are probably lies. Still, they're hilarious.




A new record! Setting 70 threads last night, with rest times set at between 2-7s, I have just donated 5.7m grains donated in 10 hrs. It didn't crash! I feel like I'm a good person now. Probably just a temporary condition. I'll go back to being evil soon.






I think I'm getting the hang of Newspeak, after 3 nights of reading the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Read about half the book and part of Orwell's explanation of Newspeak at the end of the book. So I've managed to translate a few things into Newspeak.

Exams doubleplusungood. Bellyfeel unluv exams.

Translation: Exams are extremely bad. I completely hate exams, all the way from my guts.

doubleplus = superlatively
ungood = bad
bellyfeel = completely,totally feel/believe that
unluv = unlove = hate


Am I good or what? :D



BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

Sunday 27 April 2008

Rant 130 / Big Brother Doesn't Necessarily Come With Communism IRL

Somehow Baldur's Gate 2 isn't capturing my interest the way Neverwinter Nights 2, its expansion and Torment did. Maybe it's because there are just too many side quests. Even before I leave the first tutorial dungeon, I already got my first side quest.




It's strange that there is no custom map for Kane's Wrath out there. There are a few, but none of them are things like Art of Defense. Where have all the map editors gone?? It's boring to play the normal maps.




The Japanese are so damn creative at sexual fetishes. Now there is even a PC game that simulates a train molester. Holy cow! According to a certain forum discussion, the whole point of the game is to successfully have sex with 3 unwilling women on a train (not simultaneously though).

Apparently, the other passengers on the plane aren't going to scream, the girls are going to enjoy being molested/raped and it's actually possible to have sex in the crowded trains of Japan. What a wonderful form of public transport it is. Train sex! 100 years ago, it was believed that no one could have sex on trains, just like the way people thought that flying was impossible for humans. Look it this! Molest simulators FTW!

Also according to some of the members' translation, this game was really made as a practice for the game designers, and that if it sells, they'll include more ladies for the guys to feast on.

Oh, the perverts!

Oh, the genius!

Who needs enlightenment to get to Nirvana anyway?




Finished Ilium and Olympos again recently. Might have mentioned it before. This should be the 3rd time I read them. Seriously, Dan Simmons is the only writer I know who can successfully combine gods(Zeus!!), Greek heroes(Archilles!!), Shakespeare(The Tempest!!), robots (moravecs!!) and genetically modified humans into a single epic tale.

My belief is that Archilles, in this story, ended up as an immortal. His probability of dying at the hands of Paris was changed, at birth, to 100%. Meaning: there is no other way for him to die except by getting killed by Paris, lover of Helen. But Paris was killed by Apollo halfway through the war! Therefore, he cannot die!

His battle with Zeus at the end may be the best fight ever written. I don't know, but I thought that the characteristics of the fighters were the reasons for it being so memorable. One was arguably an immortal who cannot be killed by any means, while the other was the King of all gods, the most powerful god in the pantheon of Greek gods. The best part was when Zeus tried to shoot Archilles with Odysseus's best bow at point blank... and missed.

That really drove home the point that his probabilities of dying by Paris's hands was at 100%. There really is no way to kill him because the Universe will make sure he doesn't die. This power is far greater than that of any superhero ever conceived, except the God of several major religions, that is, if u consider Him a superhero.

Too bad some Greek heroes never appeared in the story. I'd love to see Heracles making an appearance, but I think he died before the Trojan War. I'm not too familiar with Greek mythology. It was nice to see Atlas making a short appearance in the story as a statue. According to some variations of the myths, Atlas was turned into stone when Athena showed him the head of the Medusa.

In the story, the only point where I got confused was when they revealed that the Mount Olympos where the god lived were actually on a different planet as Ilium. I had the impression that the Mars on the original Universe was the one that contained Ilium. Then they said they were on Earth. It was only till later when I figured out that Setebos switched our Mars with Ilium-Earth, and the Greek gods were living on our Mars that was transported to another Universe.

I guess the most memorable thing in this story is Archilles and his unique form of immortality. Most other immortals in fiction can be killed, but don't age(Highlander). Or they can be killed, but they always rise again(Planescape: Torment). Or they can remain alive and conscious no matter their physical state(liches in some stories). But Archilles cannot die simply because he cannot die!

I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four now.

WAR IS PEACE!

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY!

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!

And never forget, Big Brother is Watching You!


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Saturday 26 April 2008

Rant 129 / Everything Is Costing More Except Downloaded Stuff

Finished Planescape: Torment. It took about 3 days of intense concentration but I got the best ending. I had the help of a few walkthroughs because the game's maps aren't exactly user-friendly.

This game is the first I've every tried in which the final boss fight is OPTIONAL. Yea, with enough stats, I managed to talk my way through. LOL! In fact, talking is the only way to get the best ending.

The music in this game is fantastic, and it's not relative to the standards of that era. Whoever composed them really is good at creating sad music, and there are so many touching scenes in the game (it's all about dying after all).

And the characters are well-designed with great depth. Everyone's got a big background story, some of which are tied to the hero's past.

And the scriptwriters were the best! Because they were not able to create every single scene in CG, they had to describe everything not shown as vividly as possible, yet not make them too long.

If they had made this game using today's technology, it would have been a far greater masterpiece than Neverwinter Nights 2.

The combats were quite easy in the last dungeon even though I was a mage with the minimum DEX throughout the game. With an epic dagger found late into the game, I totally had to rely on it to kill everything. There was nowhere that I could rest and replenish my spells, so I had to be stingy with them.

Fortunately, knowing that money no longer matters in the last dungeon made me buy 300 healing charms, the game's equivalent of a potion. That was the best choice I made in the game on my own. Together with the bug that allowed me to use an item in the Inventory without wasting a round, I kept myself at full HP all the time.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of the game was not the last dungeon, but the several parts in the Outlands, which precede the final dungeon. First reason is that right before I entered the portal, I was unable to afford many healing stuff. Second, I needed a lot of healing stuff in the dungeons in the Outlands. Third and final reason is that there were no shops available for a long, long time after a certain part.

In the end, the hero found his mortality, but the ending was not disappointing. It was a very satisfactory ending with the possibility for a sequel, though it's already been 9 years since its release. Sad. A sequel would have been nice.

In summary, great music, unforgettable plot. My theory is that developers these days tend to spend more resources on impressive graphics than on character/plot development. Torment is an example of what RPGs are meant to be. More story!

Time to go on to Baldur's Gate. I had completed the beginning till the part where I finally escaped the prison, before I started on Torment.

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Something's wrong with my aircon. Every time I turn it on, a sour smell is emitted for a while. Takes about 10mins to dissipate. Smells like old sweat. No idea why, but the smell's not horrible enough to require a repairman. Hopefully it's not because something died in there.




Are South Koreans really xenophobic? It'd make sense that they are, in general, because their gaming scene has no foreigner whatsoever. So far, there has been only 1 American commentator. Not even a player. Racism?

Friday 25 April 2008

Rant 128 / Overdrive!







Starting this article with a 5MB Flash. Never forget what Japanese Flash artists on crack can accomplish.

This isn't a new flash movie. It can be found on Youtube. I just managed to find the flash download version on some website. Forgot the link. But now I can play this on Full Screen Mode!! Weee!





Started playing Planescape: Torment. Graphics are undoubtedly outdated, but it was released a long time ago. The game itself is good. The plot is quite original. Instead of saving the world, it's about saving the protagonist in this game.

The hero, this time, is an immortal. He cannot remain dead. He can be killed, but he will always rise again. As far as I can tell, the story is about him finding a way to finally die forever.

The good thing about this is that it's hard to get to the GAME OVER screen. It's still possible, like when he gets eaten or trapped forever. But the autosave feature is so amazingly efficient, it saves almost everytime I pass through a door. So there is little need to save manually. But out of habit, I always maintain 3 different saves other than the autosave and quicksave, just in case my mistakes don't become obvious immediately. It happens.

There are few bad points about it, but they are all due to the game being so primitive. For example, I can only buy one item at a time. I.e., I cannot buy 20 potions in one shot, and I have to click BUY 20 times for that.

It's not a big deal. The worst problem is that the AI it uses to plot a path when order the guys to move to a point sucks. First, it pauses everytime I click, so when I need to run quickly round a corner, I cannot spam clicks like I always do. Second, the AI just plain suck. It walks into walls when walls block their paths. I guess I've been spoilt by modern AIs like those in Neverwinter Nights 2.

It sometimes, in a way, crashes. Somehow my com just cannot process the magic effects fast enough, so they often turn out to be giant black rectangles. Worse, my screen freezes when the effects are huge. I accidentally found a solution to this when I pressed Alt-F4 when the screen first froze. I was returned to Windows, and Windows asked me whether I want to change my display to 16 colours because it cannot run the game properly in its present colour scheme. I chose to maintain the present display settings.

Then the game asked me whether I'm sure I want to quit. I clicked "No". This brought the game back, and the screen was not frozen anymore. This is my wonderful solution to frozen screens due to games being too old. (fucking vista)

I love the game. I just spent 10 hours straight playing it. I didn't even bother to get more water to drink. Heck, I didn't even eat a thing till 8pm just now. This is how good the game is, to me.

And the lack of GAME OVER helps too.






Found this news article recently. It's from 2 months back. It's about this 18-yr-old kid who is now legally a sex offender. Wow...

Apparently, at 16, he met this 13-yr-old girl in a teen club who told him she was the same age as he. They had sex, someone found out, he got charged for statutory rape. GG.



Consequences include "kicked out of high school, thrown out of parks, taunted by neighbors, harassed by strangers, and unable to live within 2,000 feet of a school, day-care center or park....prohibited from going to the movies or mall with friends because it would require crossing state borders, which he cannot do without permission from his probation officer."

Holy shit.

So you see why premarital sex is bad? Who knows whether the girl is lying? :P

"One neighbor came to the house and told Mary he wasn’t going to leave them alone until they took their “child rapist” away, so they moved". Mary is his mother.

The kid is WRONG! Their whole FUCKING COUNTRY IS WRONG! It's not his fault. It's the fault of his country's culture. USA, land of the free.

The general public cannot handle true freedom. True freedom only happens when everyone has to fight for himself, protect himself and live for himself. Once there are rules, once there are LAWS, there is restriction, the antithesis of freedom.

True freedom is anarchy. People cannot handle that. People want the illusion of freedom while living in a protected society. The U.S. excels in that, giving the illusion of freedom.

People are allowed to own guns, but they cannot use it as they wish. They can worship anything, but the majority of the population will just ostracize the minorities.

But in a way, there is some freedom, in terms of sex. And this led to this kid's situation. People cannot handle true freedom. This is an example. Give them freedom, and they won't know when to restrain themselves. Kids having sex. Is that pedophilia?

Not exactly. To be a pedophile, one must be an adult.

This question came to me when I was in lurking in 4chan. What if those guys who seem so interested in CP are really kids themselves?? (CP means Child Porn.) Wouldn't that be understandable???

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Talking about 4chan, that forum is pretty interesting. I rarely go to their most active section, the Random section (aka /b/), but I have been there before. Some of the people there are sick. Avoid /b/. Visit /ck/ instead. Full of recipes!




Back to Torment I go!

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Rant 127 / The Best Days In One's Life Comes Right After The Last Papers

Daft Punk. Discovery. One More Time. Aerodynamic. Digital Love. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Crescendolls. Short Circuit. Can never get sick of them. Some of the few that I can listen everyday and not stop it.




Recently been lurking in live.yahoo.com. Found this "DJ" called Mr Hand Returns. It's a virtual party every time he's on. He's just good.





Another truth I have understood. Most girls look better with their clothes on. Something I have seen but not seen.






This Western stall in my neighbourhood that I thought was closing down didn't close down! More steaks! His steaks are steaks, not thin slices of meat! Thick enough to be medium rare. LOL!





My books have arrived!!! But I accidentally ordered an extra copy of "A Feast for Crows". Guess I'll wait for Christmas or something.

But the important thing is that now I have all the books I need to cover a month or so of holidays!

And the following pic reminds me why I should read more:


Translation: What revolves around the Earth? A: The Moon B: The Sun ...

And yes, 56% believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth.







Found a blog recently of this guy who teaches in Wabash College, which is a liberal arts college. He is planning a one-sem course on history of RPGs. RPGs as in Role-Playing Games. Fuck! His students (limited to 20 per sem) has to play (PLAY!!!!) RPGs for the course and have to finish some of them.


FUCK!!!!!

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Rant 126 / Ash Ketchum - He's An Ass Man

From the blog update by Geoff on www.purepwnage.com dated April 14th 2008,

"Adapting to the modern music business is going to be all about convenience. I've been in situations where I have wanted to listen to a particular album that I have bought on CD and I have to choose between searching through a folder/box full of CDs or the quicker and easier option of downloading it from an illegitimate source. Digital downloads are a must for my generation of music consumers.

I'm not advocating piracy, I'm illustrating the fact that media retailers have yet to match the convenience, simplicity, and quality of illegal sources.
"


This is what I've been thinking all along. Even though I don't listen to music much, I find it strange that people would want to go to a record store to buy music.

Steps to buying music from record store:
1) Find the store
2) Travel to store (Transport = $$)
3) Find CD/DVD from shelves
4) Pay (More $$)

Steps to downloading music from internet sources:
1) Google or find out about website from friends (Computer use of electricity = $$)
2) Search for album/song title
3) Click Download

Anyone who has heard of downloaded music cannot deny that the quality is the same from both sources. Yet the second choice is much cheaper and convenient. That's why iTunes is making so much money for Apple. That's why record stores are closing down one after another.

Stop blaming us consumers. If you can't adapt, if your goods don't sell well enough, why look at us? CDs and DVDs are no longer the best storage medium for small quantities of data. As broadband internet access gains popularity, even games are being so online via download, like through STEAM. If not for the limits of our cables, CDs and DVDs would have long been obsolete. And all the CD/DVD stores would have become museums/antique shops.






Can't stop thinking about the train journey across half the world! Since it is going to take a long time to prepare, I shall plan it for my graduation trip. RAWR!!! This trip will take about two months! If successful, it shall be one of the biggest event in my life.

The trip will be tough. Much of my daily routine will need to be adapted to suit the backpacking/train-riding life. Clothes will be a problem. Maybe I will buy new clothes during the journey while starting with my old clothes.

Personal hygiene will be another factor. I may or may not stop overnight often. If I do, I will still need to find somewhere to stay. I will need to do research on that for all the countries I go through.

And visas. Does the point of entry make a difference? I mean, for example, if I don't go directly to China, will the visa be different?

Sleep and safety. I will probably spend many nights on trains/train stations. This means I will have to sleep in rather uncomfortable places like on the train or on benches. Trains are uncomfortable. Benches aren't safe. The Middle East and/or India and China and Cambodia and Vietnam are not exactly low-crime zones, but I have to go through them all in the journey. I will probably need friends, though they are not necessary.

Not only that, I will be holding on to some cash. I will need currencies from every country, plus some extra money to change into local cash in case I run out of it. This either means some really convenient credit card, or loads of cash.

Personal safety. I will need to exercise a lot before going on this trip. And get some useful gadgets like bear spray. But then bear sprays are classified as ARMS under the law of many countries in the regions that the trip may go through, including Norway. So perhaps a Swiss Army knife is a better choice.

Handphone. I will need auto-roaming and the necessary services to allow myself to call anyone at anytime.

Camera. I want to have a digital camera and a conventional camera. The digital camera may not last as long as I want, and I may not be able to get the right batteries all the time. A conventional camera also gives a different feel to pictures of sceneries and such.

Transportation. I will definitely stop for a day or two in some of the countries I pass through and do some sight-seeing. This means a lot of walking, or looking for transportation. That needs to be researched and planned.





I was quite surprise to read that inflation is actually a healthy phenomenon. I've always had the idea that a society with 0 inflation rate has a perfect economy. This is because if it is growing and yet maintain at no inflation, or maybe deflate, its currency would get stronger against all other currencies. Why wouldn't it be good?

One basic reason is that when a currency gets stronger, it becomes more expensive for foreign companies to buy its goods. It lowers demands for its stuff.

When I used to play Europa Universalis III, I always strived to maintain a zero inflation rate until I can build tax assessment offices, which causes small deflations. This way, my inflation rate will always stay near to or at 0% p.a.. It cannot become a negative rate, aka deflate.

What's wrong with deflation?? With deflation, we may even get back to those days when a meal cost 5 cents or less. LOL!

Inflation seems like an incurable disease, unless one sees it as a relative term. In other words, if it is not seen as a relative term, inflation is when your noodles cost more than before. In relative terms, inflation is when noodles in other countries are also costing more than before.

Thus in the latter, everything is really costing the same everywhere, and it's only the numbers that are changing. But in this case, someday our numbers will grow too big, just like what Turkish Lira used to be before they made a new Lira.

Doesn't that seem like an incurable disease? If so, isn't deflation the cure?

But if that is the cure, it must be applied everywhere for it to work, i.e., deflation must occur in most countries. Woe to those that don't deflate!

Fat chance. It's more probable that I'll get laid within the next 5 hours than this ever happening in the rest of the 21st century.

People are greedy. They want more money. When more people get more money, prices go up. I mean, if you're selling stuff and you see your customers getting rich, won't you jack up the prices just to get your share of the pie?

Also, there really is only so much stuff in the world. Even if everyone has a billion bucks to spend, one can only snatch so much before everything runs out.




To end this post, here's an extremely entertaining post from 4chan:

Sunday 13 April 2008

Rant 125 / The Longest Train Journey On Earth!!! Want!!!!

Just watched my bro play Assassin's Creed. His pimped CPU is allowing him to play it at mostly high video settings smoothly. On a 20-something inch wide screen LCD. Compare this to my laptop. I set everything to the absolute lowest settings. And I cannot get past the 1st scenario in the tutorial. It was a major lagfest. GG.

Now the difference between his desktop and my laptop has finally dawned on me. It is incredibly huge, even though his costs only 500 more than mine. Damn.





Recently, I saw this troll on some forum saying that "God exists" and daring people to prove him wrong. All replies were basically trash except one, which contained reasons that I've never encountered before.

This person said that if God is omniscience, then he would not need to change anything in the universe, because he would have known about all these problems and created everything in such a way that things would not end up in these situations in the first place.

And because God is omnipotent, he definitely would have the power to enforce the above at the very beginning.

Unless He wanted his creations to suffer. Unless he wanted Satan and all other problems in the world to exist. Unless everyone is wrong about perfection and Utopia except me, that perfection is really a balance of good and evil, that a place where only good things exist is not Utopia.

Either these, or He doesn't exist. Proof. LOL!






A flash movie on www.newgrounds.com again brought up the Tibetan issue. Now that I've read more about it, it seems so complicated. In fact, it is just as complicated as the Israel thing.

First, on the Tibetan side, we have accusations from the Dalai Lama that the Chinese are creating a form of apartheid system, where the Tibetans are oppressed. Also, due to a huge influx of Han Chinese into Tibet, they believe that "pure" Tibetans are bound to become extinct. This country was supposedly a peaceful place filled with peace-loving monks.

Second, we have the Chinese side. Tibet was once a starving land. The Chinese, while occupying Tibet, also rescued the Tibetans from starvation. Not only did they send food to the region, they imported rich Chinese soil to the mountainous(thus infertile) lands and taught the people modern agricultural techniques.

I guess it is because of this that racism probably arose. The Tibetans were a pretty poor bunch then, though it's much better now. Their monks, though many, were not farmers. Anyone can guess what they did for the lands that feed them. Buddhist teachings and spiritual enlightenment is pointless when the people are starving. Parents strive to make their children seem like reincarnations of late monks by making them say the right things and memorize certain words, just so that they will be accepted into the monasteries. Therefore, to some of the Chinese who have seen the situation, the monks are a group of lazy people they do not respect, even now.

Of course, China profits from this. By having this land, they gain a direct path to other countries like India. Plus, Tibet does have a few mines. In these ways, both sides prospered.

In the eyes of the Chinese, the Tibetans are an ungrateful people. They sacrificed their precious soil and food in a time of turmoil to feed a people who are unable help them in return. And now that the Tibetans are not as poor as before, they kill Chinese people. What atrocity!

Alas, things are never that simple. The love for one's land, culture and people are always naturally within humans who have lived their whole lives in their homelands. So the Tibetans want independence. If they were to be granted that, China will lose dignity, prestige and a few resources. It will be painful for China, but it will, by no means, be too damaging to them overall.

Meanwhile, the Tibetans will lose 90% of their government's revenue. The people will need to start paying taxes. They will lose direct access to their food supply from China. There will be chaos because their new government will have a hard time solving this problem and many others. China will probably embargo them for decades to make up for their losses. Which will make the Tibetans lose confidence in their new goverment unless something drastic is done. Like propaganda. Or civil unrest will be rampant.

Or perhaps the Dalai Lama will save the day. Buddhist teachings will feed the people. Prayers may turn edible. The lamas will start to farm. Who knows?

In the end, it really is hard to say who is right. I mean, how much of the history we read is even accurate? Even if they are, both sides have valid reasons to do what they are doing, and to stop doing what they are doing. The western media is just doing what they've always been doing - making foreign issues seem more serious while ignoring their own countries' problems.

Why don't the U.S. get rid of all the homeless people, drug addicts and racism in their own lands before trying to save other countries??










Here's an exceptionally fantastic idea. I want to take the longest train journey possible without going in a loop, from Singapore. From Singapore, one can take a continuous train ride all the way to, as far as I knew before googling, Vietnam.

But now with some research, I found this blog here and this blog detailing what can be the longest non-continuous train ride in the world without going in a loop.

In the first, the blogger did it in the year 2000, and he travelled through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Turkistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Originally I expected it to end in Scotland, but I guess going through Norway would make it even longer. But the total cost is pretty huge. In 2000, it cost this guy US$4000! 1000 for visas since he didn't wait in each country, 1000 for tickets and 2000 for accommodation.

But the thing is that this trip is kind of like backpacking through Asia and Europe, except this uses mainly the train. But the idea is fantastic! I thought of it during dinner last night. Somehow it just popped into my head.

What this guy did was just take trains and stop a while at each stop. He'd walk around, take photos and stuff. Sounds like quite an intense journey though. It took 30 different trains and 60 days! The planning must have been seriously tough. He must have had to do some research on all the train schedules, know all the necessary languages and where to get accommodation when he had to stop and wait.

The main difficulty would be the language barrier, I guess. Without knowing the right words, I would not be able to ask for help. The visas wouldn't be all the bad now since travelling through most of EU only requires a single visa now. I will need visas for all the Asian countries and Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless, I seriously want to try this someday!






Apparently, Europe and Asia is really a single landmass. The only reason we were taught them as 2 continents is mainly due to cultural and historic reasons. And some social inertia. Probably coz the Europeans want nothing to do with Asia. And Australia will cry if everyone finally agrees that Asia and Europe are one continent, coz it will be so lonely. LOL!

Friday 11 April 2008

Rant 124 / Eye Haz Kane Danz Video In SWF Format! Wheee!

Watched a video of some guy who got totally pwned by Anonymous on Youtube. Paul Fetch is his name, and apparently, he offended Anonymous in his videos. One of his videos was supposed to be of him declaring war on Anon, or something like that. This video is no longer available on Youtube.

Another video of his has over 5000 comments, presumably from members of Anonymous.

These days, all sorts of people use the name Anonymous to do anything they want without fear of consequences, simply because it has become an established name of a random group of random people. But because of the novelty of the randomness of this group, people don't seem to understand that Anonymous is merely the sum of all internet users. They have no specific purpose. What gives Anonymous the notoriety is the part that consists of all the losers who vent all their frustration on the net. They are the ones who give prank calls, the comment floods, Youtube flag abuse and etc.

On a scale of 1-10, the morality of Anonymous is 1 to 10. On the scale of 1-10 for their violence in real life, 0. Despite all their death threats and blah blah blah on the net, no one has been killed by Anonymous. Thus, most of what Anonymous says is just talk.

The news articles make Anonymous sound like a coordinated group, gang or society (Internet Hate Machine ROFL!! Nice one Fox LOL!! Now you are a real life hate machine because of all the hate you're inciting against Anonymous with your inaccurate reports written by people who don't understand them!), but this is not correct. They are more like a loose network of people who visit many internet forums, especially the #chan imageboards, and post things anonymously. In the case of the Operation Chanology and such, it started as someone who spammed posts of comments that incited hostile feelings against Scientology, and somehow many people were affected to the point that they acted together.

It is like some guy screaming stuff on the streets, saying things that will work up the passersby until they form a mob. And in this case, an angry mob.

There is no rule for Anonymous because as long as you even read the forums where people post anonymously, you are part of it. And you quit the day you stop visiting them. Nothing more.

So in short, the part of Anonymous currently working against the Church of Scientology is merely another mob, except this time they work mainly in the Internet and hide beneath a cover name - Anonymous. Seriously, the majority of the /b/tards don't care.

Rant 123 / OMFG THE LONGEST POST EVER!!! PLEASE BE PATIENT!

Finally know what the Rule 34 of the Internet is:

"If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions."

This rule is so true!!! Seeing the porn of so many cartoons/shows has left me mentally scarred for life. Fuck, who wants to see Simpsons porn?!?!? They looks so alien! It's like watching animal or alien porn!!! Or Mickey Mouse......... seriously.

But then, it's not so bad because there is porn for just about every anime series and video games featuring human chicks (like DOA) in existence.

Now this is one reason why I keep saying that the Internet is a shithole. If I ever have children of my own, I will definitely not let them surf the net without my supervision. Not ever.





Okay going to test out a flash movie on the blog. Made a gmail account on the spot just for the google page account so that I can upload flash for free. This is the smallest flash movie (fliptopbox.swf) in my collection. Only 837k. The others range from 3-5M.







In the preview, at 3.50am now, it took only about 5 seconds to load. All thanks to this blog.




It is quite scary how easy it is to convert people to Christian beliefs. Here's a Christian comic that seems to persuade its readers to believe in Creationism, which is the belief that there was no evolution and God made all. I have some comments for some of the arguments but please read through the whole comic before reading my words.





Notice how the non-believer is portrayed as a rude bigot?

While the good Creationist student is a patient, polite young man. Already, it is easier to trust the words of the guy who seems to be the "good guy". Even if it is illogical, it is only human to judge a person by his looks at first. And oh yes, the name-calling habit of the teacher. However it is the spirit of science to think critically and question everything, and come to conclusions by logic, experiment and debate. So it's correctly portrayed at this point.

See? Another attempt to discredit the teacher. Obviously, if such teachers exist, they serve to only disgrace their country's education system, but do not reflect the attitudes of all scientists.

And more bigotry. What else can I call it?

Unfortunately for Creationism, no one saw God making everything either. In defense of science, I can only say that all that were derived from unbiased logic and recorded observations. It is "believed by faith" only by those who do not understand the science behind the theories, just like you believe by faith that your car engine works because of thermodynamics. On the other hand, maybe it works only because God made it work... So what does it say about God and global warming?


Even though the rock layers was dated 212 million years old, the skull was dated 160,000 years old. Wikipedia cites a book which I can't check, while this comic cites a seminar, which I can't check either.
Also according to Wikipedia, the prevailing opinion is that Lucy should be classified under Australopithecus afarensis, which is a hominid. Her knees are evidence that she normally walked upright, which monkeys rarely do.


Lucy: I'd not be so sure that "nearly all experts" agree on that.
Heidelberg Man: The jaw was merely the first of the pieces found. More were found later in Heidelberg.
Nebraska Man: One of the favourites of creationists, this claim was really found to be a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake.
Piltdown Man: A famous hoax. Kinda like the South Korean cloning expert.
Peking Man: Totally ridiculous how it disappeared. It just vanished suddenly during WWII on its way to the US.

That was an ancient method. Modern tests include potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating, which are amazingly more accurate than this "circular reasoning".

I don't know, maybe this comic is old, but I've never heard of the gill thing either.

Yep, it helps us shit and absorbs small shocks. But it's not a "vestigial organ", but a vestigial tail. A remnant of a tail that is no longer useful as a tail, it now serves a new purpose - to help us shit.

Losing anything is not against the theory of evolution. Remember those blind deep sea creatures? Well, there are also many species of insects in newly explored deep caves that are completely blind and white, which means they have lost some or all parts of their eyes and pigments. They evolved by losing these features while gaining others, like hypersensitivity to motion in the air or ground.

Evolution is not like an engineer upgrading a machine by adding better and better features. It is more like someone tinkering a machine, adding and removing by trial and error. Those that work, prosper and proliferate. Those that don't, die quickly.

Ahh... quantum physics. Everything in that area is highly debatable. Nobody knows much in that area anyway, and there're really too few ways to find out. How do you detect something that is smaller than photons, which is the tiny particle that forms light and energy? You have to shoot something out and wait for it to bounce back to know another object exists, but if that object is too small to block your "something", what then?

Nobody knows, but we're still trying to find out. Waiting for the next Einstein to arrive.

Here's the best part. There's something here that may not come to the reader intuitively: where's the evidence? Nothing is depicted here but the Biblical quotes. Yet somehow you'd absorb all that at face value. See the effects of all the positive/negative portrayal of characters in this comic?

And more bigotry from the blasphemers...

Now everything he says is right? No one argues his words. This comic isn't even arguing properly. It is a one-sided presentation of all the loopholes in the theory of evolution. This is a depiction of what science should not be - biased, lacking in logical deductions from recorded observations and relying on other non-scientific factors to persuade.



And don't forget: Christianity has nothing against slavery. Got Christian slaves? Want!

Thursday 10 April 2008

Rant 122 / Poutine = Cheese Fries + Gravy = Sounds Delicious

Emailed most of my fake motivational posters to the BC a couple of days ago. No reply as of today. Either they're lacking in e-manners or they didn't receive it. Whatever.






No idea why I have to wake up at 12am. Been sleeping for 6 hours since 2 days ago, which is 3 hours less than my optimum. Yet I'm still waking at 12am tonight. Heck, I slept at 6.30pm just now and woke at 11.30pm. So I kept myself calm and forced myself to sleep again, but I woke up again at 1am feeling refreshed.

Strange. I'm becoming nocturnal, in an unorthodox sense. Usually nocturnal people sleep in the morning, but I sleep in the evening. Wonder what's going to happen if I ever need to go out in the evening. Probably skip a night of sleep.

But I'll be buying Half-Life 2 Ep1 after exams, which means I'll most likely be playing in the U.S. servers. So my current sleeping hours are perfectly fine for that.Woot! Zombie Panic 2 coming in 20+ days' time!




Another great news for me just now. Code Geass R2 is out and subbed!! RAWR!!





Yay! Another 1M donated in the past 3 hours. Can't remember how many I made before restarting the bot at 1am.





Find that putting my laptop on this large plastic board (that once served as a box cover) only cools it as efficiently as if I placed it on my desk. Its upper left corner where the most active ventilator is always gets very hot. Maybe someday I should get a fan or something and a modified board. Or maybe one of those cooling boards or whatever they're called.

Testing a GIF file again.
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us




Found this article describing the best audio/video system I've ever seen. I was speechless when I saw the pics. See it for yourself. This is probably what rich people do when they finally think they've made enough.




Found this song by Bobby McFerrin called Don't Worry Be Happy. His a cappella songs are pretty good. I guess from the sound of it he makes those drum-beat-like sounds by hitting his chest. Usually these beats coincide with his consonants (sounds of t, d etc), but when those beats are not accompanied by consonants, it sounds like short interrupts in his songs.

Overall I thought he was damn good at a capella. I've always found it hard to keep a the rhythm without some sort of cue/help while singing a song.


Finally got a copy of the film Soylent Green. WOOT! Probably going to watch it after the exams. Can't wait.



Just checked my yahoo mail after a month of neglect and found this email from acmabooks about some minor damage to one of the corners of my copy of Feast for the Crows. They gave me a choice of either a discount of $1.83 or a new copy which would require another 2-14 days. They stated that they were waiting for my reply and the email was 8 days old lol! Anyway of coz it was too little, so I asked for a new copy. A longer wait is fine, since I'm having exams anyway.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

Rant 121 / Teh Intarweb - The Only Place In Existence That Is Worse Than Africa

Success! Another 3 millions grains of rice generated and still counting. As of this moment it's at 3.46million grains.

But then, I have been running it at 80 threads since 6pm and it's 6am now. It began spamming at a rate of 11X grains/s at first but right now it's at 81 grains/s. The threads are starting to crash I guess.

And it appears that the bot doesn't need the online dictionaries anymore. It has been relying on its internal dictionary throughout the night! Woot! Godlike internal dictionary FTW!




Found this picture from 7chan yesterday that made me laugh out loud. Apparently there was this thread in somethingaweful.com that asked for people to turn porn pictures into non-porn pictures. What a novel idea! Here's a pic from that thread. Fucking hilarious.


Of course I went to browse through www.somethingaweful.com then, but everything there sux. There was nothing funny to be found, so I didn't bookmark it. In fact this is another website that I'm going to forget about.






A few months back, there was this documentary on Discovery about how the FBI lures pedophiles from the Internet and catches them. The online chat is easy, but then they have a woman with a really squeaky (read girly) voice to handle the phone chat which follows. Throughout these conversations, the FBI woman pretends to be an underage girl, while the pedophile pretends to be a teenager. Through the phone chat, she gets the guy to go to her house, where the door is unlocked, and tells him to strip and wait for him from upstairs. Once he's done, the FBI officers run down the stairs and arrest him. Justice!

But apparently the FBI isn't the only group of people who do such things. Many guys on the net hates pedophiles too, me included. But this is how some of them handle it:




This isn't the only screenshot of such conversations that I've found, but this is the best among all. It has also helped reinforce the idea in me that there are no girls on the internet, only guys with voice-changer programs. "Girls on the net" is a myth, just like masturbation among Asians and that girls surf internet pr0n.




Hmm... I'm testing an animated GIF here...
Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us



My books aren't here yet!!! But then I haven't been reading novels much these days. Need to keep myself at minimum energy so that I can maintain my sleeping hours till my body clock is tuned properly. Better to be damn shag at the proper time than to be "kinda tired", at least for now.

One of my books that I ordered is out of stock!! Rise of Endymion! Gah! How can I miss that book when the sequel is arriving with the rest of them?? This means I can't read 2 books out of the 8 (I think) that I ordered. BS!!! Bloody Acmabooks! Update your website properly pls!

Guess I will just have to wait....





Was reading the featured article on Wikipedia on Suleiman the Magnificient, one of the greatest Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. What really caught my attention was not how great he was, but how sad things turned out after him. One of his eight sons, Mustafa, was known as the best choice to be his successor, so talented that the Austrian Ambassador hoped that his country would not have to deal with him in the future. Luckily for him, due to court intrigues, Mustafa was killed by his father.

The Sultan who succeeded Suleiman in the end was a useless guy who spent all his time getting drunk and left all his duties to his Vizier, which should mean his Prime Minister or something like that. It was very fortunate for him that this Vizier was a very good general/ruler too, so the empire was not greatly affected. But then, he did not help his empire expand or grow - all he had accomplished was to maintain the status quo. Compared to his father, he was shit. It was claimed that he died when he slipped and fell in the bath while drunk.

Then most of the Sultans in the subsequent generations were pretty useless too. Basically the decline of the empire began with the death of Suleiman. Even though some of the later guys had some successes somewhere somehow, they were not enough.

For example one of them is described by historians to have been the closest, among all the Sultans in Ottoman history, to toppling their northern rival, Russia. But he did not quite manage to accomplish that because of riots within his empire. He had to return and pacify his people, and by doing so, he missed that golden opportunity.

Another example was one of the Sultans around the World War One era, who started to implement reforms to save his country. By then, the Ottoman Empire was really militarily impotent. But because of the size of the Ottoman Empire, there was a great inertia against his changes and everything he tried was either too little or strongly disapproved by everyone.

After all that, the Empire disintegrated during the period between the two World Wars (specifically in 1922) and the final remnant of this once-superpower is now known as Turkey. Yes there is still a Sultan(ErtuÄŸrul Osman OsmanoÄŸlu, Prince of the Ottoman Empire (full title : Devletli Necabetli ErtuÄŸrul Osman Efendi Hazretleri) )but he doesn't rule at all nor given a place anywhere. Heck, he was only given Turkish citizenship in the recent decades and he is still living in the U.S. It's pretty sad how royalty lives when the kingdom dies, especially if they are compared with their ancestors.

On a lighter note, I want to try their Turkish coffee!!!!! If I ever visit Turkey someday, there are two things that must be done: visit Hagia Sophia and drink Turkish coffee. Man, they make their coffee sound damn good!






Feminism. How do I put it? It's fine with me, but only up to a certain degree. Women want to be treated equally. They want to have the same jobs, same opportunities, same sort of lives as men. Basically, they do not want to be seen as the weaker sex. Fine.

On one hand, they want to be courted more than they want to do any courting. They want guys to ask them out. They like guys who treat them like princesses during dates. Lesbians are acceptable, gay men aren't. For safe sex, men are the ones who have to cover up their sensitive parts while the ladies get the full pleasure. To look gorgeous, all that a woman needs are breast implants. Nightclubs only have Ladies' Nights, never Gentlemen's Nights. When a female accuses a male of molest/rape, she always get the sympathies. When a male accuses a female of molest/rape, he always get the ridicules. When a female stumbles into a male washroom, she only gets strange looks and curious glances. When a male stumbles into a female washroom, all hell breaks loose. When a woman cries in front of a camera, she is a victim. When a man cries in front of a camera, he is a dramafag.

But on the other hand, to argue for the feminists, we do have several valid reasons. Women give birth. Women have periods. Rape/molest victims are usually female. No one seriously believes that Virgin Mary was really a virgin. Britney Spears. Women have often been oppressed in the past. Balding women are much more unacceptable than balding men.

But let's look at things from another point of view. If men are the ones who give birth to babies, imagine how many babies would have been born alcoholics. Imagine how big the penis would need to be. Imagine the pain for the ladies then.

Men don't have periods. But men have the insatiable lust that drives them crazy, force them to make stupid choices and be easily manipulated.

No one really cares if Virgin Mary was a virgin.

Britney Spears.

Women have frequently been the actual rulers behind the kings and emperors of many kingdoms and empires. There have also been many women who are as powerful, if not more powerful, than other men of their times.

Men bald more easily.

Finally, some women are just not that attractive, yet they seem to believe that they are. Evidence: girls who wear revealing clothes when they are not well-endowed (either have too little or too much). Confidence is fine, but if you end up being single forever after demanding too much from the guys, don't blame it on them. Same for the men - don't blame the women.

And if anyone is still wondering why more people are remaining single as the years go by, blame it on feminism. Here's a clear example.

Tuesday 8 April 2008

Rant 120 / "Pwn" Is Not "Pawn", But A Stronger Version Of "Own", Which Means "Trash"

Found 2 problems with the Ricemaker bot.

First, I was wrong when I guessed that the bot crashes due to Connection Time Out's. In fact, I find that threads can disappear without crashing the bot. I discovered that when I used 5 threads while doing something else. When I checked the bot after a while, only 3 threads were appearing. Therefore, I concluded that crashing threads =/= crashing bot.

Second, apparently something is very wrong with its usage of dict.org. Started last night, when I found its accuracy at 5% and generating rice 10+ grains/s with 30 threads. So I expanded the command prompt it was in and saw that every single entry that uses dict.org to check for definition gives a wrong answer. Absolutely no idea why. When I tested dict.org myself, the definitions I get were correct.

I guess I have to make it skip dict.org now. Another command to add to its starting commands.... it's already pretty long and inconvenient as it is now:

ricemaker.py -t50 -l2 -m7

and now I have to add "-bdict.org" too.





Tried baking salmon just now. The notion of baking fish started last night when I woke up. I remembered this piece of salmon left in the freezer for more than a month and was wondering if it was still edible. Since it was probably way past its expiry date, I took it out and opened it to see if there was any odour.

It was frozen, so that was no smell. Being too lazy to wait for it to thaw before testing again, I sprinkled black pepper on it liberally, wrap it with its original wrapper and put it in my fridge for a slow thaw cum marination.

At 7.30am, I started to prepare my breakfast. Took out the salmon, thought it smelled slightly wrong. But I decided that the baking process will solve the problem. With a piece of butter-covered aluminium foil, I wrapped the salmon up neatly and placed it in the oven. Using the maximum heat at 230 degrees C, I baked it for 14mins.

The recipes I checked on the Net either stated about 17mins at 175 degrees C or "depends on the size of the salmon". So I decided on 230 degrees at 14mins, which is about the same, to me.

When I took it out finally, it didn't smell as wrong anymore, but it was not cooked thoroughly, so I put it back in and baked for another 15mins at 230 degrees.

At last, it was done, after 30mins of waiting. I eagerly poured it out, with the melted butter and all, onto my plate. I cut out a small piece and put it into my mouth. It didn't take long for it to happen. What struck me at that point was the truth. It was not my 1337 skills that affected my cooking. Not was it the lack of spices and stuff.

The fish was really way past its expiry date.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING! SKIP THE FOLLOWING PART IF YOU ARE STILL AN INNOCENT LITTLE KID WHO CANNOT STAND EXTREMELY OBSCENE IDEAS!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!




Was looking through a list of videos in some forums yesterday when I saw this video's description: why u shouldn't stick something into your urethra.

Being a sane young man, I thought it was a funny video about dildos stuck in pussys, so I clicked on it. While I waited for it to load, I checked its comments. And thank whatever powers that are out there that I did. The comments ranged from short ones like "..." to something about "forks and pens" to extremely tortured screams like "OMFG YOU SICK BASTARD!"

That kinda made me close the browser tab right away. Close shave, but the idea still gives me the shivers now. Seriously.

Brrr...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------









Noticed that one of the worst time to use the Net is about 8-10am. My bot crashed a lot during these few hours whenever I have 10 threads or more running. People shouldn't surf for pr0n so early in the morning. Kidding. I know everyone checks his/her email and etc at this time when they arrive in their offices, or even at home. Sucks.





After the last few days' torture, my sleeping hours have finally stabilized at a more acceptable time. I am beginning to start sleeping at 6pm and waking at 12am. Happened the day before and yesterday. This is much better than sleeping 6am, at least for now. Sleeping at 6am is the best because I get to do everything in the silence of the night, but only when school is not an important factor.






Seriously, why "Free Tibet"? Those protesters are morons. Tibet doesn't need to be free. Tibet should not be free! Shit, if Tibet wasn't part of China all these years it would still be the mountain shithole today that it once was. If not for China's help, they wouldn't have developed shit! Even the Dalai Lama understands that.

What the Dalai Lama is a measure of autonomy. He doesn't want Tibet to be separate from the wealth of China. He just want a separate system for Tibet. But all those idiots with their ignorance and hot blood just want to "Free Tibet". How can an independent Tibet survive in the world today? What do they have but rocks? They don't even have enough flat land to build on!
Entrepot? LOL!!!

The "Free Tibet" supporters should read a little more on what they're really protesting for, or do the world a favour and shoot themselves in the head together with the skeptics of global warming.

And many of those reports we see are phrased to make it sound different from what really happened. Like the casualties. Not all reports on the Net mentioned who were killed, and without stating that it was mainly the Han Chinese who were the victims, many people would assume that it was the Tibetans who were killed fighting Chinese troops.

True that the Tibetan genes are probably going to be replaced by the Chinese genes in the future, but without China to depend on, they're going to live really shitty lives. According to the Wikipedia's article on Tibet's economy, "the Central Chinese government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditure."

Free Tibet. Genius with a capital "G".

So, should they lose their Tibetan identity or live in poverty and under constant threat of a Chinese invasion? And who's going to support their independence? Are they going to be like Taiwan, sucking up to the U.S. 24/7 just to prevent China from completely pwning them with a sneeze?

Both ways are shit, but if they would just think about their descendants, perhaps turning into Chinese is a preferable choice compared to making their kids' future look dark as Hell. I mean, all Chinese people have ancestors who suffered that fate. When the First Emperor conquered all the kingdoms, they lost their identities. It became worse when he unified the Chinese language and burnt all those books. It happened again at the end of the famous war between the 3 kingdoms. So, Tibet, you aren't anything special in the eyes of the Chinese.

So far in every leg of the Olympics torch relay, there have been pro-Tibetan protesters making trouble for the torch-bearers. This is sad and stupid. The world is full of fools.

Pro-Tibetan separatists,






I have spoken.

Monday 7 April 2008

Rant 119 / It's Not That Bad. It's Worse.

I found this website www.7chan.org yesterday. Full of Internet trash. Of course, even in the rubbish dump, there are sometimes hidden gems to be found. So it is the same with this website. I'd say that 90% of its contents is junk that people need not see, but once in a while I find something funny that is worth the search.

There is porn, but I don't need to go any further into that. Generally, I don't touch such sections since there are usually things that I don't want to see in there. Like Goatse (/shiver). But they have a rather large section of it, so it's worth a mention.

The best section should be their /wp/, or wallpapers section, where users request and post nice wallpapers that are often clean, i.e. no names and websites on them. Took a few of their sky-themed wallpapers.

Their /b/, a.k.a. random section, is the essence of the Internet. That is where all random shit goes, and when I say "shit", I mean shit. To summarize what this section contains in the style of the American netizens, I need only 3 words: "fail" and "EPIC FAIL".

This should describe most of the anonymous users.

But then this is...

So, really, 90% of everything you find is trash. However, there is still that pulling force that makes me want to search for forums like this. It's...



According to Wikipedia, this website is also a "stronghold" of Anonymous. I'm really only interested in their Project Chanology. Though Scientology hasn't affected Singapore yet, thanks to its strict censorship, I'm still somewhat unhappy that it is successful in attaining tax-exempt status in countries like Australia, using the reason that it is a religion.

Fuck that bullshit. Non-violent protests FTW! In some of the protests, they actually rickrolled the Church of Scientology (CoS). Utterly pointless, but funny, thus catches attention.

To understand rickrolling, one must first see the Wiki definition of "rickrolling".

There, if you've clicked on the link, you've just been rickrolled.

If you still don't understand this, imagine you are reading an article on the net, then you spot a link that says something that attracts your eyes, like "New C&C3 Expansion Announced! Click here to see trailer!". You click on it, just like the way you click on this link. All you see is this campy music video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up".

It is basically a trick, a joke. Instead of saying,"You've been tricked!", with this you say," You've been rickrolled!" Thus "rickroll" means "to trick someone into watching the music video of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley". And in the case of Project Chanology, they played the song during the protest, and apparently this is also a form of "rickrolling".






The following picture has a good point...


So that's it for now. Can't put too many pics or it'll take too long to load.

Saturday 5 April 2008

Rant 118 / Divided We Stand, Together We Fall

Slept quite early yesterday - somewhere between 1830 - 1900hr. Was quite happy, expecting to wake up at about 4am like my bro, since I slept quite little that night before.

But alas, life doesn't always turn out the way you expect it would! I woke up in the dark, refreshed, and stretched out my right arm to get my handphone. I flicked it up, and looked at the time. WTF!?!?! 11.47pm?!?!? I couldn't believe my eyes, so I went out to look around. Sure enough, my mum was still hard at work in front of my bro's 20+ inch wide screen LCD monitor (She sleeps at around 1-2am).

Holy Shit! I thought my lack of sleep will help me get through the times when my body is becoming accustomed to staying awake, namely 12-4am. But no, it didn't help. So I decided not to sleep in the morning, not to sleep during the new sleeping hours of my body clock (10am), not to sleep in the afternoon, and held on till evening. With help from 3 packets of instant tea (yep I'm sensitive to caffeine, thanks to my abstinence from coffee and tea, and my rare contact with Coca Cola)

So I'm still quite awake, even if it's been 17 hours since I came awake. I totally couldn't mug after I woke up last night, so I played till 7am. Neverwinter Nights: Mask of the Betrayer. Then since my mum wasn't up yet, I decided to cook some breakfast for myself to make myself stay awake with the energy input and the work (not because of hunger). Surprisingly, sleep deprivation doesn't make me feel hungry. Yes my stomach does growl at the appropriate hours but I don't have the motivation to eat. My mouth stays as dry as normal times even when I see food.

So I cooked a heavy breakfast again. Didn't care about my bro. He microwaved last night's leftover fried rice when I went to the kitchen. Anyway he wouldn't want to eat such evil stuff that I was planning to cook anyway. Asked him once, yesterday morning.



Felt like eating bite-sized buttered toast, so I need to cut them properly. With crust, because the crust makes it more crunchy and gives it more "substance". Or else it'll feel like chewing on air.


Yes, that's my "chopping board". I had to balance the paper plate on the round cap and still cut the bread as softly as I can. Turned out pretty good, eh? The usual area where the chopping board is placed is occupied by a pile of vegetables that my mum bought. She didn't expect me to use that space.


And the beef patties. The main course. The almighty processed meat. Of course I didn't cook 10. Managed to tear out 2 frozen patties, whole, and put the rest back.


Eggs. Natural, chicken eggs full of wholesome goodness. Fresh enough to eat raw, but not too fresh that I can still smell the chicken vagina. Not that I'd be able to recognize the odour even if I actually did catch a whiff of it, of course, but you know what I mean.


The toasts, buttered before toasting, and toasted to a state of post-perfection. Man, it was only 4mins at 230 degrees Celsius!


Closer look at the better ones. What did you expect? It was 7am and I was damn bored!


The final product. Note the broken yolk of the upper egg and that the two patties are stacked. Also note the black patches on the top patty. The taste of the patty wasn't affected by the black patches. It may look more seriously burnt in the pic because of the colour contrast, but it wasn't that bad. But the broken yolk was unforgivable! Those eggs were fresh! Theoretically.

That was what I ate this morning and I washed them all down with a huge mug of iced milk tea.

Moral of the story:
a) if that didn't look appetizing to you, never, ever ask a sleep-deprived gamer to cook for you.
b) if that looked delicious, try cooking it! It's easy. Substitute patties with bacon strips to make it even easier.





Finally read the article of "ethics of file sharing" on Wikipedia. I like this reason especially:

A further argument in favour of file sharing is that not all of its users would buy all of the material that they download. In other words, one illegal download will not immediately translate to one lost sale, as many anti-piracy groups maintain. No study has yet been done to ascertain the proportion of users that would buy any of the material they download, if downloading were not available, and there is no currently available method to determine the number of sales that are represented by a given number of downloads.

This is so true. If there were no PS2 games available online or being pirated in the streets back then, no one would have even bought the console itself! They were so damned expensive! Who would have bought Xenosaga Episode 1 for a price that exceeds S$50? Well, other than the die-hard fans.






Then for the opponents, they have:

Opponents of file sharing argue that not only does sharing files decrease the income of the actors and bands; it especially affects the staff that works for them. For the film industry, the set builders and makeup artists take the fall. If someone downloads a movie from the internet, that person may not go to see the movie in theaters or buy the DVD. If that happens then the production studios make less profit or may not be able to recuperate the high costs of production. This leads to salary decreases for employees. It also leads to less financial backing for both mainstream and independent filmmakers because investing thousands or millions of dollars in a movie becomes even riskier.


This is, in my opinion, not exactly true. Think again.

First, do movie stars really deserve the millions they make just for one movie? Do certain singers really deserve the millions they make just by singing about 13 songs that are really digitally enhanced to make it sound better than the crap it really was?

In my opinion, no. They are not contributing to society as much as people like, say, doctors in your neighbourhood clinic. Heck, even mushroom farmers are contributing more to the world than actors. Imagine a world where mushrooms are incredibly expensive, then imagine a world where movies are not affordable by the middle-class people. Which is worse?


Second, if a singer can't sing and requires digital enhancements to sound good, if a movie has no plot whatsoever and relies purely on special effects to attract its audience, should the singer be paid more than the guy on the controls and should the actors be paid more than the special effects specialists?

In the first case, the singer is merely selling her looks. The songs could have been sung by someone else, and with enough digital enhancements they will sound like her voice, only with better singing technique. So, if people refuse to admit that they buy her albums for her looks, then they cannot deny that the guy who improved her songs should be paid more because he's the one who made what they say they're buying it for - the songs! The singer should be paid less, not the employees.

In the second case, what makes the movie sell? The actor or the explosions? Take the latest Die Hard sequel as an example. Without Bruce Willis, the movie wouldn't have sold well. Without the stuntmen, computer effects experts, explosives specialists and etc, the movie would have sold in the first week and gain notoriety for being shit by the second week. Just like Snakes on a Plane. So if anyone should take a pay cut, it definitely isn't any of them!

Third, when it comes to investments being riskier, that's bull! In the first place, they shouldn't even invest in shit movies like Meet the Spartans! They degrade the intelligence of American civilization. Yes, it sold pretty well, but what does it say about the viewers who support this kind of film? And it sold well only because it wasn't released in the holiday seasons, when the good movies are out.

If investors become less willing to take risks, perhaps they will have stricter criteria on what to invest in. Perhaps Hollywood will stop flooding the world with shit. Perhaps they will even hire scriptwriters who actually have this apparently close-to-extinction-among-scriptwriters talent called creativity. Maybe, just maybe, Hollywood will even produce its own original horror movie, instead of the run-of-the-mill gory thrillers! What a dream!

And speaking of that, I think Hollywood is doing to the U.S. exactly what the Coliseum had done to Rome. Back in the past, the Roman Empire had many problems, like rebellions in its newly conquered states. These generated other problems like the huge amount of money needed to be spent on its military, and etc. But with widespread and very accessible entertainment for the masses, the public remained happy or satisfied with their world. Kind of like a drug for the people.

And that is what Hollywood is doing now, it seems to me. By flooding the American minds with harmless, mindless entertainment, the people forget their troubles more often while filmmakers make massive amounts of money helping them do that.

If it very risky to make movies, then why are there so many box office flops these days? I mean, why do so many people want to try bad scripts and gamble that they will sell? It's risky! Isn't it logical that they should think more about it before spending millions of dollars on it?

So if it gets riskier, will they not read through the scripts a few more times, do more research on the directors and etc before making the actual movie? Then won't we get better films more often? Then won't people stop downloading so many movies because more movies are actually worth the ticket prices??

Anyone can tell you that watching a film at home can never beat watching it in the cinema. The main thing that stops people from paying for the movies that they don't believe they are worth the price of the tickets. Is it not true that the price is determined by the customers? If the price is not worth the product, potential buyers will not pay for it.

So if more and more people download movies, doesn't it just mean that the movies aren't worth the current ticket prices? Ditto for song albums.

So my argument is that if more people are turning to illegal downloads, it's only because they are willing to sacrifice the quality of the experience so that they won't have to pay a price that they don't believe to be worth it.

You know, I believe I've said something very similar long ago...