Rant 154 / OUTSIDE - THE NEW MMORPG

Read that Golgo 13 is a pretty good anime. Now getting some. Couldn't find any of its manga though, which is the medium that made it famous for 40 years. Damn.

Eureka Seven movie announced about 4 months ago. Since they are using a "different mythos" it probably means it's going to be a whole different universe, only thing is that they're going to have a boy and girl who look identical to Renton and Eureka. Don't know if I actually want that.

Was reading a thread on 4chan's travel board of some guy who wants to go backpacking and needs advice on which brand of tents to get. Suddenly I realize I know nothing about backpacking tents. Now that I've read about them, I still don't know how they're set up. Do I stick poles into the ground if I'm using a hoop tent? More questions.




Was testing out imeem.com to check out their tracks. It fucking sucks. Really, none of the tracks I wanted were from the albums. Almost all were remixes. In the end I logged out without trying to remember the password. Fuck it. Not going to add music player in the blog anymore.

Just watched 2 episodes of Golgo 13. Holy fuck! This guy is fucking godlike. Sniping a head inside a plane's cockpit at a distance of 2 click is fucking insane. Plus he was using a modified rifle with an extended barrel and larger cartridge. And the target was standing in between the 2 pilots and screaming at them. And he had a perfect headshot right in the center of the forehead. Keeps me from forgetting that animes aren't real.

Visited this Nihon Mura at the Cathay after watching Dark Knight. Good movie, followed by good food. The white mushroom wrapped with bacon and grilled on charcoal thing was good. The sushis were all at 99cents each, so it wasn't too bad. The miso soup made me realized how different it's supposed to be from those instant stuff I use all the time. Usually I don't order it but this time it just looked different. Even though it was rather expensive, it was worthed the prices.

And they have this High Tea Buffet from 1430 to 1730hr on weekdays. The price for students is $14.90++, includes 1 Juice of the day and free flow of soft drinks and tea. But only includes the sushis on the belt as the actual food. No desserts, no donburi and etc. Doesn't seem worth it. Their sushis are good but not as good as the other stuff. Worth the price only if someone wants to test his limits while eating somewhat good food. Not the best, but worth the price.

Rant 153 / Nothing Goes Nowhere

Three Legs Cooling Water, containing 200mg of Gypsum Fibrosum extract, is supposed to be cooling. I just downed 2 puny bottles together with some mixed nuts while watching the last Naruto movie. This is going nowhere.

Another bomb blast in India. The last one happened less than a month ago. What on earth is happening to India?

Watched a fakesub from DB after the movie. Very entertaining. Nothing amazingly hilarious, but the subtitles are full of shit consistently throughout the episode. It's probably good that I have no idea what they're actually talking about so that it appeared that they were really saying all those things with straight faces. Whoever those morons were who thought the show was funny because of this episode, they can do the Universe a favour and shoot themselves in the head with a shotgun. The starting theme song's subtitles were already mocking the show, saying it doesn't deserve a great song like that. The ending theme's were about the singer who wanted to be doing something else, somewhere else. In one part of the show, the two main characters were discussing how the scene was dragging for so long. It'd be retarded to think the subtitles were real. In fact, almost nothing was translated.

Very entertaining. Going to get the rest of their fakesubs.

4chan is still down. What a pity.





I have become almost nocturnal now. I can only sleep after 6am and wake up after 4.30pm. Once I woke up only to sleep after dinner, which was at 5.30pm, and woke up again at 8.30pm. Then I slept at 7am. Wtf is happening to me?? Why am I not sleeping later and later now that I'm actually sleeping in the day? I think I'm a night person. Or early morning. Whatever.

Been watching the games on www.gomtv.net/classic. The semi-finals were nice, but were not as entertaining as some of the matches back in the quarterfinals, where the more daring tactics were tried and could succeed. Things like the Dark Templar rush, where the protoss player techs up to the invisible Dark Templar as soon as he could while building a mere token force for defence. Then he gets a Shuttle and the DT out, sends the DT in the shuttle and quickly get the shuttle into the enemy's base.

If done quickly enough, the enemy should not have any turrets to detect the DT. Then he just massacres the enemy SCVs and.. gg. This doesn't work when the enemy is a zerg player, since zergs start with the Overlord which detects invisible units.

But in the semifinals, there were some amazing tactics like the Reaver rush that Baekho loves so much that he tried it in all 3 matchs, all of which he lost. Similar to the DT rush, he sneaks the Reaver into the enemy base using the shuttle. Reavers do heavy AoE damage at the cost of slow firing rate, slow movement and the need to manually build its ammo. The skill level involved is obscene, since the moment the Reaver alights, it has to shoot immediately and board the shuttle again within the second so as to avoid fire from enemy land units.

However, this will do away with the requirement of a complete lack of enemy's detection units/structures. Instead, all this needs is for the enemy not to have anti-air stuff to kill the shuttle, near the base.

Unfortunately, though the rushes were successful in the first two games, Baekho was completely outclassed by Flash, who is officially the best Starcraft player in the world right now. I was surprised when Baekho tried it again in the second game, seeing how he lost the first despite the rush. However, he was more successful in that game, killing more SCV than he did in the previous. In the third game, though, his Reaver died to a few randomly placed Vulture mines before anything happened. It was a stupid freak accident that caused him to lose control of the situation right there and then.







Something I found on the net that made me chuckled.

"Important Roman Catholic leaders and Otakon staff have frequently claimed that attending Otakon is not effective in preventing AIDS. In addition, otaku-friendly websites such as 4chan have aggressively questioned the efficacy of abstinence at Otakon. They argue that attending Otakon should not be promoted as a way to fight AIDS because the virus that causes AIDS is small enough to pass through Naruto headbands and Bleach masks and can hide in any stick of stale Pocky purchased in the dealer's room. To further prove said case, the non-profit HIV research group, OtaAIDS, has determined that:

1. Dicks carry AIDS
2. AIDS has high statistically high transfer rates among homosexuals
3. Everyone at Otakon is a dick.
4. Otakon is gay.
5. Hence, everyone who goes to Otakon gets AIDS.

8-8-08: Otanational AIDS Day"

Rant 152 / Snuff?

4chan has been down for a long time. I've been visiting their cooking and travel sections for some time now, and this downtime made me bored. Those hackers have been DDoS attacking 4chan for DAYS! Apparently, its a 3-5Gb DDoS attack.

A DDoS attack can be described as a spam of "hi" messages from computers to servers. A computer, when connecting to a server, always begins with a form of "hi". If you spam it like crazy, which isn't that hard since this message is in the range of mere bytes, one can overload the server and kind of kill it. This present one hitting 4chan is estimated to be in the range of 3-5 gigs, which is some serious firepower.

So now I'm bored. I went to wikipedia and typed in a random word. This time, I typed "snuff". This is a word I remember from one of the short stories in Foundation by Isaac Asimov. In the book, it was implied to be some form of powdered drug taken nasally by the wealthy.

Apparently, snuff is a real thing. It is actually powdered tobacco that used to be the drug of choice by the social elites in Europe, including Napoleon. Take a pinch and sniff, and that's all it takes. Seems interesting that such a drug isn't used widely to replace cigarettes. In fact, since there's no burning involved, it may even appear to be a healthier choice.

This drug obviously won't get into your lungs. It's not supposed to be and anything that gets past your nose will get stuck to your phlegm. But smoke is different. Cigarette smoke dulls your cilia, which sweeps stuff out of your windpipe, and gets the stuff right to your lung. Therefore, instead of both nasal and lung cancer, you'll only get nasal cancer, if it is even proven to be carcinogenic.

But it's not. Tests that show that snuff is carcinogenic have been done in the US, but the US used mainly oral snuff back then( oral snuff is a paste which users rub onto their gums and is also illegal in most European country). In their reports, and even in wikipedia, they refer to all types of snuff as "snuff" and makes not mention of whether it is the paste or the powder that it is describing.

Few tests have proven that nasal snuff is dangerous. Better still, it contains no tar and other shit that cigarettes companies put in. Just the nicotine that tobacco naturally contains. The nicotine in cigarettes is the thing that gives smokers the high and thus hook them, while those "tar and other shit" are the main killers. I'm not saying nicotine is not dangerous, but it's way less that than everything else in a cigarette. By the way, no teeth stains and bad breath too.

What might be dangerous is the frequent nasal irritation in heavy users and nicotine. But if you're not a heavy user, then the main danger is just the nicotine. Now compare this with SMOKING.

Because of these, nasal snuff is actually tax-free in the UK, which makes it considerably cheaper than cigarettes there. Instead of quitting totally, smokers can switch to this! They can continue getting their high from the same amount of nicotine but only get the risks from it and nothing else. How much better can it get?

I know smoking is hard to quit. Seen some failures before. Maybe they should consider importing snuff. It's probably way cheaper than those chewing gum or patches (it's just ground tobacco after all), and it allows smokers to continue with their love for tobacco. Plus it's relatively much healthier. Why not?

Maybe it also has to do with the image. I'm guessing that it will irritate your nose and make you sneeze. Probably make your nose runny too. According to a snuff-fan's website, the more expensive but finer stuff is more "sneezy" while the coarser powders are less of an irritant. Weird, but good for those who can't afford the best. Even though the image is not as cool as cigarette smoking, I'm sure with enough aggressive advertising, the image can be changed too.

Not the healthiest alternative, but I'm sure it's the next best thing. After all, even a Pope, Benedict XIII, used to love it.

Rant 151 / Zombie Master Mania

I can play Zombie Master all day, as long as there is a server with more than 12 people in it. These days, I'm getting the hang of being the Zombie Master. Zombie Master is a Half Life 2 mod in which one guy plays as the Zombie Master while the rest are Survivors. The Zombie Master, as his name describes, summons zombies to kill the Survivors while the Survivors try to accomplish the objectives of each map. It's like playing Dungeon Master for the ZM and a zombie survival game for the rest.

Each player gains 10 points per round and the player who has the most points become the ZM for the round. Also, each time you join a server you will be asked if you are willing to be a ZM. If yes, you will be given higher priority whenever you are in a tie with others.

As the Survivor, each map is like an obstacle course for you. Sometimes map designers use creepy houses, sometimes ruined post-apocalytic streets and sewers. Each map has several strategic zombie spawn points and interesting traps like falling cars, lasers and collapsible walls that give zombies entrance. Your job is to accomplish the missions as you fight off monsters with weapons like shotguns, rifles and pistols.

Survivor spraying bullets at Shambler horde.

As the Zombie Master you gain credits every several seconds. At each tick you gain credits proportional to the number of Survivors. Each kill also gives you a bonus amount of credits. Using these credits, you can summon monsters, activate traps or, using more credits, set the trap to activate when a Survivor reaches a point that you choose. You can also move in any directions to anywhere on the map to see everything that is happening.


ZM's view with Nightvision on

There are 4 types of summonable monsters so far, including the Shambler, the Banshee, the Hulk and the Drifter.

The Shambler is the stereotypical zombie that shambles, or walk slowly in a funny way. It moves slowly, attacks slowly but it can throw objects like tables and chairs at you. It's also the cheapest zombie in the game. Cannon fodder zombie.


Shamblers, lot's of them.

The Banshee is a leaping zombie that does little damage but will seriously annoy you with its long jumps. It has low hp, fast attacks, low damage but the fact that it can reach you quickly sometimes makes players panic and run. It is also the most expensive monster.


3 Banshees on the right, one leaping and one scrambling towards the rifle-wielding Survivor. The one in the middle just died from the shot.

The Hulk is.. a hulk. Big-ass zombie with a high hp, is the 2nd fastest zombie and takes out half your hp with one hit. It is also the 2nd most expensive monster.


Suicidal player attacking a Hulk with a crowbar

The Drifter is the only ranged zombie in the game. By range I mean an arm's length here. May not be much, but it's the best they've got. It does as little damage as the Banshee, but its rapid spray attacks and the fact that each spray shakes your screen violently to simulate some sort of head concussion makes it very useful for the ZM in narrow places. People can't slip through tiny gaps between them because of its disorienting attacks.


A Survivor being attacked by a group of Drifters. Note the slanted view is due to the screen shaking from the attacks.

There is also the Immolator. It is a zombie that starts burning when it sees a Survivor and runs towards him. The fire will burn both the Immolator and the Survivor and when it dies, it will explode. This zombie cannot be summoned in the current version of the game but it can be released by some traps in certain maps.


A close-up shot of an Immolator waiting for a Survivor to arrive

And then, there are traps. Every map has traps that ZMs can trigger. These can range from crappy stuff like floor that breaks and reveal a fire pit to a huge tornado. A ZM can automate it by spending extra credits and choosing a point that activates the trap when stepped on by a Survivor. Usually, experience players will walk back and forth near the traps to trigger such points on maps they've played before. Thus the best way is to manually activate them and with precise timing, ZMs sometimes don't need zombies to wipe everyone out.


An triggered tornado flinging cars into the sky


Unarmed combat with a Banshee


Zombies: Who cares about that last Survivor? Look over here!

Rant 150 / Remove System32 Folder To Improve Computer Performance

The idea that a nation's inflation rate can exceed 100% has never even crossed my mind until today, when I read that Zimbabwe's had reached 2,200,000% on the 16th of July. Meaning, if this goes on for a year, Z$2.2M will become Z$1 at the end. That may be worse than Turkey's old Lira before they revalued it about a decade or more ago.

According to Wikipedia, at independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was valued at about US$1. Then in January 2008... ZING! US$1 was Z$2.5M. The best quote was "By July 4th, 2008 at 5PM, a bottle of beer cost $100 billion Zimbabwean dollars, but an hour later, the price had gone up to $150 billion; the Los Angeles Times further reported on July 15th, 2008 that the printing presses were running out of paper to print the money..."

LOL! Fuck! They'll never even print Z$1000 now because it'll be cheaper to wipe your ass with those notes than to buy toilet paper. And they had just revalued their dollar about 3 years ago! A local one-thousand-dollar-job's Zimbabwean counterpart is a several-million-dollar-job. Who wants to be a millionaire? Heck, I'll be a billionaire if I go there.

In fact, on the 19th of July, they've announced their release of Z$100,000,000,000 notes. That's eleven zeros, twelve digits and is also known as hundred billion dollars. Zimbabwean. That was following a report on June 20th that the estimated inflation rate for the year will be 9M%. Reminds me of those times when I saw people describing Africa as the shithole of the world. Now I realize that they probably were trying to describe accurately.

Rant 149 / Shortbread Seems Easy To Bake...

The Pope preaches in Australia about the need to reduce material desires. Meanwhile, families of those poor sexually abused kids are protesting against the fact that they aren't compensated enough. Not enough doesn't mean they aren't paid enough. In this context, a sincere apology from the Pope, personally, would be good. After all, being abused by a servant of God is very different from getting the same thing from some guy on the streets.

It is also somewhat different from getting it from one's father, though the level of trust broken is almost the same. Priests are holy men, ones whom others trust to the degree that Christians confess their sins to them and know they will keep their deepest secrets. Yet in these cases of sexual abuse, not only is this great trust broken, but so are several other things important for a normal life.

First is the trust in other people. This is basically the cases whenever someone breaks the trust of anyone. When you find out that someone lies to you, your trust in everyone in general lowers by a tiny bit. If you're the liar, it is the same.

Second is the trust in the Church, which is the one thing Christians should trust above all else, except for God Himself. In this case, it refers to the trust of all Christians in that country, in the Church, and to a larger degree, the people around the victims. At the moment, the Church is becoming less trustworthy by the minute.

Third is the precious innocence that children should always have until their teenage years. This is the one thing that no apology, in words or in cash, can help heal. Heck, even Time cannot help in such a situation. Sexual abusing children is the one thing that no punishment can do justice for. Well, unless the child is willing and happy about it, and this only appears in fiction.

The Church may spend a significant of their budget on covering up all these sex abuse cases around the world, but it cannot do that forever. There is something terribly and fundamentally wrong with their system. Holy men are NEVER supposed to molest kids. There should not even be the tiniest possibility that it can happen. Yet now it can. So now, the perfect trust is gone.

The servants of God and His counterparts in other religions are NOT JUST PEOPLE! People sin, priests should not! "To err is human; to forgive, divine" does not apply to priests in sex abuse cases! They are the people who guide other to Paradise, Nirvana and Enlightenment! They are the people who show others how to live the right way! They are NOT SUPPOSED TO MOLEST CHILDREN!

Yet it is becoming increasingly common to hear of priests molesting little boys and girls these days. Masturbation in secret is no longer enough for them. And some of them are MARRIED! And so I ask," Why is that so?"

In Christianity, God is omniscient. All priests know that. Therefore, they should know that even when they did what they did. Therefore, in their hearts of hearts, they have admitted that their needs come before God. Because they know God knows what they have done. And He sees it as wrong and they shouldn't have done it.

And they do not admit it nor confess until the children do so first.

I'm not sure if this is being done, but all such priests should be excommunicated right at the moment that they are found guilty. This is not done as a form of punishment or as a gesture of Justice, but to prevent such history from repeating itself. Kinda like tumours, which you must remove no matter whether it spreads or not. They just don't belong.




Was reading some cosplay forum on 4chan the other day. LOL at all the whales dressing up as some sexy anime characters. Seriously, be kind to others, fat people. Cover yourselves up, no matter if you're male or female or both. I'm fat, I'll admit. But working in an office environment in the past taught me that fat people, old people and anyone who is ugly can look nice in the right outfit. But NOT WHEN YOU'RE DRESSING UP AS MAI FROM DOA! FUCK! A RED WHALE! MAN THE HARPOONS NOW, MATES!







Looking at the pic below, I realize my tan lines from this long break is illustrated in it. I think you can guess which I'm referring to.

Rant 148 / FileSharing Will Never Die! Media Companies Should Adapt Instead Of Wasting Resources To Sue People

Considering whether I should join an overseas attachment program organised by my uni. France isn't in my list, since only the research option is available. I'd prefer the study programs, which is offered by unis in Switzerland and the US. A shame that Canada isn't available. But it is on the list of another program which requires a GPA of 3.5 and above. I'll need divine intervention to hit that score by the end of this year though.

Therefore, if I ever go for this, I'll apply for those in the US and India. My 3rd choice would be Switzerland. US would be first because it's right next to Canada, which is where I want to go. India's second because Indian food rox and their spoken English is not that hard to understand, as long as I stay in the campus(lol). Switzerland is 3rd because one of the two universities requires me to take French level 3, which is also the end of the Beginner level. The other doesn't, but I've only taken French and German level 1. Seriously, just because they claim that that isn't necessary doesn't mean I won't need to improve my German and French before going there. I'll definitely need them when I go travelling during the vacations.

But after dreaming a dream, one must always wake up. One of the selection criterias is the academic performance. Mine's shit. As for the interview and CCA records, the fact that I'm in the exco of my Toastmasters Club should solve those two. Ah, I'll just apply during sem 2 this year for this attachment program in next year sem 1, and see what happens.

There goes my dream of going overseas for 1 whole year by combining this with overseas industrial attachment. Didn't know until the talk on this program during this afternoon that I can only take elective modules when I'm overseas. Bleh. Some guy I know is doing this and now I know he must have been overloading like crazy. Enough modules to skip one whole semester of school. How the fuck did he do it? Did they allow him to take year 3 core modules when he was in year 2? Holy cow...

And the very worst thing is, I've already fulfilled my requirements for Unrestricted Electives. If I go, I'll be doing extra modules just for the sake of going there. Perhaps I should consider the overseas industrial attachment program instead...





I cannot find any Italian sweet sausage anywhere! I guess I'll need to improvise. I've got everything but that to use this recipe. Just need to buy some beef and onions and tomato paste tomorrow.





Disciples 2 has such great music, especially its battle themes. I look forward to fighting my enemies just to be able to hear them. LOL! So far I've completed about 3 levels in the Elven campaign. The story is kind of cliche because all those troubles were caused by one guy who's just too stupid and rash to listen to sensible commands, and attacked the humans during negotiations. It is obvious their god, Gallean, has gone mad, and how this is going to turn out is what drives me to play. I just want to know what they'll do when they finally admit that they've been listening to seriously bad advice. Maybe all the wild elves will die.

The original game is good, but the expansions were not that well designed. The one thing that really shows that is the Elven units that are available. Obviously several things are missing in their tech trees. Hell, the melee unit's only got 3 possible upgrades. Wtf man? 3 upgrades occupying 2 branches total is not a complete tech tree.

Damn whatever their reasons were for releasing such bullshit.

At least they hired a great composer.




Sexism was once a bad thing. Women were considered inferior to men then, so treating them bad is like rubbing salt on the wound. But now, I believe sexism is just a natural urge to balance things. Men and women are generally equal on most things that have to do with work. No doubt certain trades still have a glass ceiling for women, but on the whole, women are no worse than men these days in their work.



So what's to offset sexism? The fact that men want pussys more than women want penises. All that being nice to someone you will never understand, treating her well and all those additional problems that comes with a relationship, they are just for one thing. Sex. Everything else is just an additional bonus. Yes, love may be involved, but love is but a fleeting dream these days while sex is something you will never stop desiring.

How many couple out there are in love but unable to have sex? Almost none, because such relationships rely on pure love so much only true love can support that.

Yet how many people out there just want sex? Need I say more?

I will never understand how people can breakup after decades of love. All their deepest secrets must have been shared with each other. I cannot stand someone who isn't close to me knowing mine. Everyone has secrets. It's something that makes us human. But I prefer to keep what is mine, mine. Perhaps I will keep my secrets to myself till the day I die, and let them die with me. Doesn't hurt anyone.

Which is one reason why every person's life story is so epic. There are just so many intersting things that happen to everyone. I believe this is pretty obvious to those interested in celebrity gossips. They are just people, yet their lives seem to be so damn interesting that people will risk getting beaten up or shot to take a few photos of their daily activities.

What is the difference between a female celebrity having sex and the hot girl next door doing the same? Seeing both will give you the same huge erection. Yet why the fuss when secret sex vids get leaked? It's their personal lives and that's what makes it so interesting. Also explains why reality TV is popular.

I believe this is why the Paris Hilton vids were such a phenomenon. Her videos were crap and so's her looks. But despite all that, those vids made her famous. People want to know about the lives of other people. The lives of others are always interesting. Few lives are ever uneventful. Every once in a while, something significant must happen in everyone's life.

Once I had hoped that my life could be a completely flat line. Nothing good nor bad happens. But I have long since given up on that. Life just doesn't allow itself to be go straight; it has to have ups and downs. I'm willing to pay the price of having no downs, which is to have no ups, but just because I'm willing doesn't mean it'll happen.

Need to sleep.

Rant 147 / There Is No Spoon? Fork This Cliche Quote!

Installed Disciples 2 Gold. Suddenly felt like playing it again. Culpa Innata required too much brainwork (or trials and error). Once again, I'm reminded how crappy the intro movies are. Basically just flash movies of artwork, with texts and voice sub. But still, it's a pretty nice game.

Played a bit of Mass Effect again, now on Hardcore. Quoting Tali," Now it gets fun!" Enemies just don't die till I spray lots of bullets at them. Unlike on Veteran diffculty, where enemies die on the first few shots of my Assault Rifles. According to the Mass Effect wiki, on the difficulty I'm on now, bosses have immunities. Haven't encountered one yet, but it sounds pretty challenging. Nevertheless, I always keep 2 spare upgrades of all types at the highest level. And spare armours that are high on Tech/Biotic defense.

In the last game, I kept getting a bug that causes my guns to stay overheated till I reload the game. It's gone now, but good thing I was careful not to overheat my Assault Rifle on the last boss. I had read on the forums, while finding out info on this bug, some guy who got the same bug and overheated his during the last fight and had to use his Sniper Rifle for most of the battle. Very difficult but possible. Curious as I am, I did try to enter the battle with a Sniper Rifle, not knowing what to expect. It turned out the last boss leapt around like a fucking tick. Not a good idea to snipe him.

Perhaps if I ever play a 3rd time to complete all the achievements, I'll increase the difficulty exponentially by using a new character on Insane. But I won't be able to get all achievements on the 3rd run because I was unable to get any of the Allies achievements on my first run. There are 6 of them and each run can only give you 2. Plus I'm a Soldier again on my 2nd run, which means I cannot get any of the Tech and Biotic Achievements.


Flagship Studios has confirmed that it is sacking all its employees!!!! Holy cow! This is the first time I've ever seen a company that produced a famous game die! No doubt the game, Hellgate: London, sucked, but still, with all the publicity it got, I thought it should have at least merged with another company or something. I mean, the concept was promising, the game had real potential, but the ingame plot and quests just sucked. The loot drops vary mainly in the numbers, like the percentage increase in damage and stuff. The types of abilities and benefits of the items are always the same though. That was the greatest reason that stopped me halfway through the game. It gets boring after a while.

But the company just closed down! If they had hired someone who could plan the levels better, the game might still have a chance! Like some of the ex-employess have said, they have the big dreamers, but not the people who could get things done. They knew what can be done to make the game a mega-hit, but I guess something must have stopped them.

I guess they wanted to be on par with Blizzard right from their first game, judging from the fact that the top guys had resigned from Blizzard years ago to found Flagship. What a waste! Plus the USD being in such a shitty state, it really sucks to be an ex-employee. At least some of the top brass forked out of their pockets some money to give the poor guys a month of salary.

Sad. They had worked so hard for so many years on Hellgate. Now, whoever owns the rights to the game will probably stop developing it. At least the Korean company got the right to Mythos, another game that was under development by Flagship. The trailers look great. Yet another game that has great potential. I just hope the Korean guys don't screw it up like Flagship did with Hellgate.

And the comments on this news vary greatly, from a lack of surprise to sadness. Kind of like this...

Rant 146 / Evil At Heart

Beat Mass Effect on Normal difficulty. Nice game. Surprisingly, I didn't get the achievements for playing with an Asari and Quarian squad member most of the time, even though I believe I went through the last half of the game with the Asari and Quarian. Now I think I have to use them as soon as I get them to get the achievement.

Played a little with my lvl 50 Soldier on replay mode. He's godlike even though the enemies are at the same level and I'm playing on Veteran. I think I'll restart my replay on Hardcore difficulty. I just managed to rambo through everything on Eden Prime with just my trusty Assault Rifle (I maxed my skills with Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles). I placed 2 Kinetic Coils IX on it, so now it never overheats!

Plus I get to use all the old skills and equipment. Good thing I kept spare equipment throughout my last game. Now I can temporarily equip the squad members with my old stuff. I'm godlike in Veteran difficulty.

Maybe I should try to rambo with my sniper rifle instead. LOL! Nah, I'll go with Hardcore mode instead, and start on the pistol and shotgun skills. I'll be a friggin weapons specialist by the end of this replay.



Also installed Culpa Innata now. A point-and-click sci-fi adventure game I started on my last laptop before I left for HK. Since my replacement laptop came with a clean hard disk, I have to replay the game now. Good thing I spent most of my time back then reading the ingame texts and appreciating the game environment in general.






Went for the Toastmasters Club Officers Training today. Boring shit. Learnt a little more about other Toastmasters Clubs, like how their SAAs are the ones who handle the F&B. The most important purpose of my presence was to boost our club's number of attending members to 4, which will give us half a point, which is vital to getting an award for our club.





Uploading vids into my laptop takes ages. Just uploading a 1.4gb vid takes an hour. And my disc drive can't read the tiny DVDs that the camera uses. It's going to take forever to upload everything...








I feel so ashamed. I actually found the above funny. Fuck! This is so wrong! But whenever I read slowly from the top to the bottom, I just can't help but chuckle. FUCK! This is so fucking wrong!!! Am I evil or am I evil?

Rant 145 / You Are Always Who They Think You Are Because They Will Never Know Who You Think You Are

It may seem like buttocks at first, but I found this thread on a forum that tried to convince people that this is the side-view of a guy's chest and arm. I couldn't see it until I saw the next picture that explained it.








Yea, the neck is too thick though. I saw it, but it is really is a pair of butt cheeks. LOL!





The reason why societies should take decades to develop from a third world country to a first world one is not because people take a long time to gain enough wealth. I believe it has to do with their ethics. A person who grows up in poverty usually have very different moral standards from one who grows up in a wealthy environment.

That is also the reason why most poor people stay poor. It's not because they were not given the opportunities, but because of their ethics and their attitude towards work.

An example is certain very distant relatives of mine who used to work in a government hospital in China decades ago. They work in the pharmacy and they would give medicines to any friends and relatives who asked for it. Without a doctor to prescribe it, they did not know how many doses the people need. So instead of asking for advice from the doctors which would reveal their illegal activities, they would just give bags of them. Take the meds till the symptoms were gone, I guess their advice to would be. Which is bad advice when it comes to antibiotics.

I bet they didn't see this as wrong. Instead, they might even have thought it as right, if not lawful. Back in those days, people in China were poor. This would help them get well without forcing them to spend the money they'd need to buy food. These people would likely need to borrow money to buy the medicines anyway.

Is this the grey area then? True in some cases, false in others.

Not everyone were unable to afford the meds. How could they have known who really couldn't afford them and who could? Therefore, they must have given them to anyone who seems to be too poor to pay for the meds. Anyone could pretend to be poor.

Such illegal practices would be hard to stop once it starts. It is hard to stop giving out free stuff once people get used to it. Any interruption would cause protests and complaints, even though it was illegal in the first place. Illusions of friendship and good relations created by the Santa Claus behaviour would vanish. So even when people were reaching the level of wealth where they could afford the meds, this would not have stopped.

Ethics.

People find it hard to change after a certain age. And as an adult, one does not expect others to tell them to change, unless those others are people very close to oneself, eg spouse. If the people describe above were your parents, you'd likely grow up with the same views. However, because of the increasing wealth of society around you, you'd see less need for it, thus becoming less inclined to continue what your parents were doing. Nevertheless, you'd not see what your parents were doing as wrong. Most likely anyway.

But the following generation, not being able to witness the practice of your parents, would be more willing to describe it as wrong. In my opinion, it takes at least 3 generations to change the moral standards of a family.

In the end, how can a society grow if the people had moral standards like the above? Thank the powers that be that people aren't immortals. If the habit of turning a blind eye to illegal activites was to become rampant, no community can grow.