So while I bought the Brie cheese for Christmas I also bought a piece of Camembert. For half the price of Brie, it looks no different from its more expensive cousin. Both have edible rinds and both are young cheeses (ie taste like butter/milk), so they're pretty convenient.
Turns out Camembert tastes like a more mature version of Brie. It's harder, stronger and doesn't suit my tastes. I still prefer the gentler Brie.
Also feels strange to eat these incredibly mouldy stuff. The closest thing to this in Chinese cuisine is probably stinky beancurd, but even that isn't covered by a solid layer of bacteria. As I was eating the rind I was thinking," I'm chewing on penicillin... and it doesn't taste bad at all!"
After more than a week on FoM, I find that a major part of the game lies in the forums. That's where much of the drama is at.
Anyway VI still has our 2 colonies, Kepler's Dome (KD) and Tokyo. I'm still surprised that the GD Senate gave Tokyo to us permanently and no one has tried to take it away. Best of all, the LED and FDC (government police and military) is going to maintain the peace in that city, ie provide patrols and sentries while we rake in the profits.
We still do create patrol groups once in a while for Tokyo but it's mostly to hunt down the occasional gankers. Best of all, Tokyo has Organic Materials which is required to make food. In the futuristic world of FoM, all foods are modified to provide instant physical benefits in addition to supplying nutrition. Basically they're used together with drugs to enable maximum performance during combat.
The Japanese anime artists are so creative, they can come up with concepts that are out of this world. I mean like, nipple armour. That just blew my mind. What exactly is the purpose of such a strategically placed bit of armour on an otherwise unclothed chest? What does it protect the wearer from? Hungry babies?
Speaking of amazing ideas, Iron Chef is totally full of those. Cabbage-wrapped siu mai, bell peppers as main ingredient and etc. Those chefs were incredible.
Mass Effect 2. Looks nice, but after so many over-hyped disappointments in the past by various game companies (C&C3, Spore) I'm reserving my judgement till after its release.
Saints don't grow on trees? Depends on where you are.
Money don't grow on trees? Depends on what you are.
Trees don't grow on trees? That's a lie.
I have to admit, L4D2 loses its appeal after a week or so. It's not scary and never will be, not even with your lights off and mirrors around you. Its replay value is sub-par, though its concept and graphics are great.
Overall I really have to compare it with Borderlands, the other recently released over-hyped game. Both have excellent packaging and great publicity; both fall short of excellent after some actual gameplay.
I don't know what it lacks exactly, but I can't see it being interesting even after a few runs with friends. The replay value is the one element that drags the score down.
Machine guns? Cool! The AK47 really packs a punch and provides semi-decent accuracy at a distance. The problem is that they all feel the same after some time.
Shotguns? Makes you feel godly! One shot, one kill. Nothing can stop you at close range! Until you learn to use a katana, that is. Then shotguns become inconvenient versions of the melee weapon because of the need to reload.
Sniper rifles? One shot, one kill. No rapid fire but you can kill anything with a single round, be it close or far. With some skill and experience, it becomes the weapon of the game. Combine with a good melee weapon and you turn into a force of nature. But godhood gets boring eventually. Where's the challenge in the game if nothing hurts you?
Grenade launchers? You don't know power till you fire one. When you wield one, you're holding the right to laugh at "god-like" snipers. One shot, one kill? I can kill 10+ per shot! Those puny peashooters can lick my balls! Problem is that you cannot refill its ammo and the friendly fire is outrageous. You can, of course, turn off the friendly fire via console commands but it is cheating no matter how you try to justify it.
So I'm finally done with Fallout 3. I've gone through the main plotline thrice, twice with the Broken Steel expansion, found every single place worth finding, encountered all the characters that I can possibly meet and completed all the quests.
There is nothing left to explore in the Capital Wasteland now.
An Australian father forces his teenage son to have sex with a hooker. Now he is going to be charged with rape.
Not sure why the son is complaining. Maybe it was the condom.
The most high-profile cosplayer ever.
Yet another mysterious stranger says "Hi" to me on Windows Live. Not on Messenger, but through those profile pages that I don't remember setting up.
My mum told me not to talk to strangers. They may turn out to be Nigerian princes looking desperately for a way to transfer money from their private bank accounts.
I wonder if I'm going to go insane someday. It wouldn't be very surprising, given that I am me. Maybe someday I'll start to believe that everyone's insane and I'm the only sane one left. Of course that statement wouldn't sound very sane, but that's only because you're insane.
I AM THE ONLY SANE PERSON LEFT! All you crazy fuckers reading this are mad! MAD, I tell you!
I was going to type more, but I can't come up with anything. This doesn't sound very complete though.
OMG Just discovered this thing called the induction cooktop. It's like an electric stove except it works with magic.
An electric stove generates heat in a very primitive way similar to a the tungsten filament in an incandescent light bulb. It has a coil which conducts electricity to generate heat (in the case of the filament, it generates so much heat that it glows).
The induction cooker works like a transformer. It usually appears to be a trendy motor vehicle until it encounters an enemy, at which point it transforms into a gigantic talking robot. This robot is so frickin amazing your food is heated by the pure awesomeness radiating from its presence.
Ok seriously, this cooker works like a transformer used by your city's power grid. It uses AC to induce DC in your pot, causing it to work like the tungsten filament in the light bulb ( electric current + high resistance = heat). The constant change of direction of magnetic field induced by the AC in the cooker generates even more heat in your pot.
To someone who doesn't know about electromagnetic induction, this should definitely look like magic.
EC returns our colony, KD, to us unconditionally. No fine prints at the bottom, no strings attached. Their explanation was that they were trying to fight the GD, probably meaning that they were taking over KD to provoke a response from the LED and FDC. Apparently this failed and they didn't want to appear to be the biggest asshole of a faction in the game.
Now with our home back, another setback appears. FoM is entering the retail phase after who knows how long in the beta phase. In the retail phase, players can still play for free but with several penalties. These appear to be the sort that would force serious FoM players to spend pay 10USD/month.
The benefits of Premium Accounts are as follows:
3x the storage space (3000 items per world)
More than double the inventory space
Promotion to the highest ranks possible
Work off your penalty points 2-3x faster
See other players on the minimap
Carry more weapons
Have an extra quickslot to use items more easily
200% Cloning speed
Buy up to 200 clones
Produce the highest quality of items
No limit to selling items on the markets
Own apartments
Create your own department (if appropriate rank)
Wear civilian clothing
Which would mean that my character is going to get my clones reduced to 10, be unable to produce High Quality items and lose my apartment. I'm not irritated by any of the downgrades to my account except for the inability to produce High Quality (aka QL3) goods. Totally sucks since I will have to find a way to get QL3 weapons and armour instead of just making them.
Been replaying Supreme Commander campaign on Hard mode throughout. Noticed that the original campaign was tougher than those in the expansion. The main difference was that in the expansion, almost the entire arsenal was readily available from the beginning of every round. A few units/structures were introduced later but they were pointless since none of them were at the Experimental level, the highest. What need would I have for Tech 3 warships if I was already spamming Experimental Mobile Factories aka Fatboys that have 20k shield, could built Tech 1-3 land units, amphibious, and have anti-air and anti-land weapons and torpedoes?
The most epic thread I have ever seen. The lesson here is simple:
The drama in FoM continues...
EC, suddenly allied with the BoS, declared war on the Global Dominion Senate. Basically the biggest corporation teamed up with the drug cartel to fight the government. Chaos!
Their reason, officially, is that they are unsatisfied with the current system in the Assembly. At the moment, it employs the Party system in which players can form political parties similar to real democracies. These parties have a say in matters regarding laws and stuff.
EC and BoS wants the Colonial Senate back (it was apparently used in the past). In this system, each faction gets a vote in the matters instead of the parties. One advantage is that since few players actually give a damn about the parties, most of us would become more involved in the bills being passed if we have the Colonial Assembly instead. The disadvantage is that all factions get 1 vote each regardless of their sizes, so it really isn't equal.
Hence the war. EC/BoS vs FDC/LED, it looks almost like a World War except it is technically an insurgency instead of an actual war. The reason is that everyone in this game is a Global Dominion citizen, and citizens don't declare war on their own government just to change a law.
From what I've seen so far, the LED and FDC are barely able to hold back the zerg swarms of the EC/BoS alliance. Just today in DMC, my first time logging in after several days, I witnessed the complete domination of the LED/FDC wardens in the prison, leading to the release of many prisoners who weren't there willingly (some go there to work off Penalty Points so that they won't accumulate 5000 PP, which would make them Arrest-On-Sight by any LED members).
I joined them after a while to see how far they went, and it turned out that they went all the way. In fact the whole place was cleared of LED/FDC members till the EC/BoS groups started to dwindle due to boredom. I believe they went in to hack the nodes to accelerate the countdown timer and eventually initiate a Final Battle in the prison. What a joke the police faction will turn out to be if their "heavily guarded" prison gets taken over by a corporation.
According to what I've heard, similar raids are happening in other colonies controlled by the LED/FDC, ie Tokyo, NYC and Paris. It is funny how the government military gets pwned by a mere company and the drug cartel.
In response, the GD Senate has resorted to what they do best - make/change laws. In the most recent announcement, they have stated that several colonies will be handed over to the more law-abiding factions.
My company finally gets Tokyo, which contains both our HQ and the HQ of the FDC. The current home colony of EC (Pegasi 51), together with Paris, is to be passed to the Colonization and Mining Guild (CMG).
What this means is that legally speaking, EC will become homeless while CMG becomes the wealthiest faction just from the royalties from THREE colonies. No other faction will have more than 2 colonies when these changes are implemented.
With EC being so powerful, it's hard to imagine it homeless. More likely, it'll negotiate something to the effect of controlling a colony at the end of this conflict so that it can get a home. Maybe the GD will give it Necar's Field. That would be hilarious.
No one wants NF because it's poorly designed. It is huge, which makes it hard to navigate in this colony because this game doesn't have a map feature, only a minimap. People often get lost there and everything is so far from everything else. At the moment it is under the control of the CMG.
Made some e-cards for the entire BC (I think). Check your emails for an email entitled "Christmas E-Card". Wanted to make a Wedding e-card for RK on that site but it costs money. :(
Some ancient artefacts were uncovered while cleaning some part of the house. One was a cross, now crusted with green rust. The other was a small plastic package containing a now-unidentifiable piece of paper and a tiny pendant depicting Guan Yin on a lotus flower.
Brings back memories of times when things were less confusing and life was just about getting straight A's so that I can get the promised new computer in December. Make me reconsider whether it is actually good to know more about everything. When you knew little, only your life sucks. When you know more, you can see that everyone's lives suck. How is that better?
It's just like technologies. Most people seem to hold this belief that advanced technologies make our lives easier. That's total bullshit if you think about it. Once you are known to use technology to make tasks easier, people automatically expects you to do more to offset the relative ease. Again, how is that better?
You get more, hence you're forced to spend more. Totally reminiscent of the story about the monkeys and the bananas. I can't remember the story exactly, but I think this is how it goes:
A bunch of monkeys were being fed 3 bananas in the day and 2 at night. One day they got dissatisfied enough to decide to ask the farmer to give them more. So the farmer told them he would give them 2 bananas in the day and3at night. The monkeys, upon hearing that they would get 3 at night, thought they were getting more and agreed.
So doesn't this make you wonder where all these is going? This path we walk, where does it lead?
But I digress.
I can't remember how I got the cross. I think I found it somewhere somehow. As for the pendant I bought it from a door-to-door salesman monk. I recall this clearly even though I was still in lower secondary because that was my first encounter with a false Buddhist monk.
He had appeared at my door asking if I would like to donate money in exchange for the charm. I didn't know if I should, but since he was a monk it was probably a good thing to donate some money. So I forked out $2 from my wallet, significantly more than what I give to charity flag-sellers on the streets. He saw that and ask if I could donate more, so I took out the my I had in there - $10.
Now don't take this as a big sign of generosity. I was fully aware that I could ask for however much I donate from my parents since I was not spending it on whatever food or whatever.
But when he asked for more, I thought it was strange. No one I've met asks for more money when begging for donations.
I said no. He then took out a booklet in which apparently everyone who donated signed and stated the amount of donation, and pointed out that all my neighbours were donating about $200 each. The thing was, how was a 13- or 14-year-old kid supposed to scrape up two frickin hundred bucks when his parents weren't around?
My response, as you have guessed, was to inform him that I had no more money to donate. So he quietly handed me the booklet for me to fill in the details and then passed me one of the packets. When I told my parents later about it, they confirmed that he was most likely a swindler. Even if he was a legitimate monk begging for alms, he was definitely not a true Buddhist monk.
"Paradoxes of the human condition" was a topic of a thread that stated quite a number of things I have mentioned before, but in a more concise manner. Here's an excerpt:
1) Human imagination can take them anywhere, dragging their physical bodies along.
2) Humans are capable of the kindest, most noble things, but are also capable of the most horrible and terrifying things.
3) Many humans hope for everlasting life, but are always inventing new ways to destroy each other.
the underdog everyone cheers for the underdog, but no one wants to be one. To take this one step further, the underground music scene is based around this principle. As soon as a band has a radio hit, a truly trendy underground rocker can no longer listen to them.
unending desire we can often have a defunct moderation function in our brains. particularly with things such as money. This can more clearly be seen as a contradiction when it pertains to harmful things to the body/mind, ie. drugs, fast food.
suffering for gain working out hurts but it improves you. etc etc.
Redundant Media The fact that we start to believe things are true simply by them being repeated over and over. These ideologies are that much harder to change the longer they are in place. GO SEE THE LATEST HOLLYWOOD MOVIE, IT'S THE BEST EVER!!
life and death for many it scares the hell outta us thinking about existing forever, but then it also scares the hell outta us thinking about ceasing to exist.
The unrelating inevitable Our willful denial of the inevitable. Our unrelating nature to situations and events that will, if not always, at least often enough become us. Such as the way that when young, though you know you will one day be old(if you continue to live), your mind cannot believe you will be old, or better yet even fathom that you will die one day for that matter. On more of a daily scenario, our ignorance to other people's situations that we know we've been in and will be in, such as getting pissed off at the fast food employee trying to get your order out however a minute too slow for you, when you know you've performed duties that cannot go any faster. Or getting mad when someone forgets something when you yourself forget things.
The last is what I find most frustrating about most people. They behave like certain eventualities will never occur, like some things don't happen to them. Someday, you will die. Someday, something really terrible will happen to you that will make you ask, "Why me?" Someday your parents/grandparents/siblings will die. Someday, your career will be in a most tenuous position, if not ruined. Someday your romantic relationships will end. Someday, if you have children, you will discover a side of your kids that you never thought would exist.
In life, shit happen. That's why I never understood why so many Americans did not have any savings to survive on when the mortgage crisis hit. But I don't mean just financial and physical buffers, but also mental preparation. Think of the one thing/person that you cannot afford to lose. In all likelihood you're probably wrong, since it is natural to take many things for granted these days. But still be prepared to lose it/him/her, just in case.
Not having a backup plan in order to increase motivation to succeed? That idea is utter nonsense. There are always elements in life beyond your control. You can slip and fall and break something in your body. You can suddenly discover you have a slipped disk in the most unpleasant way on a totally ordinary day (one of my officers experienced that during my army days, just collapsed in pain all of a sudden and could only writhe in agony till the ambulance came). Or more commonly, you can get cancer.
Of course you cannot be prepared for everything, but certain things like financial troubles are common enough to be worth the preparedness. Insurance helps. I've heard that some people don't believe in insurance. Well, insurance saved my family when my father passed away and all our money was locked in his bank account (he was something of a male chauvinist). Without the quick response of the insurance agents we would not have been able to pay the hospital and funeral bills till the government was done checking my late father's wealth and taking its share, which took months.
Insurance isn't about having money to offset the pain, it's about making sure that you can survive just in case something goes wrong.
On a somewhat unrelated note, NTUC Income sucks balls compared to AIA. My father had bought policies from both and Income not only gave less, as expected, but also reacted much more slowly. The AIA agent behaved almost like a family friend and did nothing delay the process. I don't care if all your money was being invested and it takes time to get them back, someone just died and we need money to pay the bills.
Anyway, the thing about redundant media is true. If something is repeated enough, it becomes the truth. Ever wondered if what you've been reading in the history books is true? After all, none of us has seen anything that happened over a hundred years ago. Was Hitler really such an monster? He may have the most epic k:d ratio ever, but since when is killing inherently "evil"?
Now that I'm no longer a newbie in FoM, I find that I had a few misconceptions about the game's politics. Yes, politics. This game is very much about politics.
First of all, the police aren't always at war with the clans. The Global Dominion(GD) has anti-drug laws, so while the Law Enforcement Department(LED) has to enforce that, the Brotherhood of Shadows(BoS) has to make a living by selling drugs. Making and selling drugs are all the BoS is good for, really. Drugs are useful and are usually in demand because of their various ability-enhancing properties (eg one drug makes your shots more accurate).
Second, the Mercenaries of the Blood have the ability to make departments at lower ranks for a special reason. The MotB is actually more like a loose coalition of many bands of mercenaries that fought in some wars, according to the fictional history. So these departments are the cells of mercenaries. The large number of groups of mercenaries and the decentralization of power it causes are important aspects of this faction.
Third, the FDC doesn't really do anything at the moment. They are supposed to protect humanity, but there is nothing in the game to protect us from. Aliens have been sighted attacking FDC squads on Necar's Field (a planet owned by the Colonization and Mining Guild aka CMG), so I'm guessing they're testing alien NPCs for future updates. Alien raids! Yay!
Vortex Inc, my company, is the smallest faction in the game. This is probably why someone put a hit contract on our base planet, causing mercenaries to attack us all the time. At the moment, many VI employees are producing and stockpiling armours and weapons in case of larger attacks. Also, all mercenaries from the cell that took the contract and all mercs not in any cells (freelancers) are to be Killed on Sight (KoS) if spotted on our planet. Serious business. I've already killed and been killed many times, and have participated in dozens of patrols so far. The killing doesn't seem to be ending though.
The Eurocore (EC) is the largest faction in the game after the LED and FDC. I don't know why, but they have the most manpower and hence the richest. I understand why newbs and noobs join the LED and FDC (for a sense of power over the "civilians"), but why EC? Someday I'll find out.
The CMG has been keeping a low profile for some reason. No idea what they're planning, but everyone is always doing something.
The Guardians of Mankind, often seen as the "hippie" faction, maintains a high profile by organizing "heal-raids". These special raids are the complete opposites of the normal raids performed by the BoS and MotB because they don't kill people. The gist of it is that they run into other faction's bases and fire at everyone with their proprietary Cryotech Mediguns (only this faction can produce them), which heals instead of causing damage. Then they dance. The hilarity of these trips makes sure everyone in the game knows about them (quoting from one of them during a raid," Sucks for you to have so much health!"). Also, they're nice people and are allied with my company, so they have helped us defend our base quite a few times and sent out patrols for us occasionally.
Old song, I know.
Kanye may be an ass, but he makes good music. The above embedded video has a crappy stream rate. Use this link for a better Youtube stream.
In L4D2 I have observed players who don't seem to listen. Or maybe my headphone is making a big difference. In this game, you are not supposed to rely only on your eyes to spot the undead. Hearing them is a much better detection method because it doesn't have a limited angle.
Actually hearing is one of the most important things in modern FPS games. It's not just about shooting the things in front of you; it's usually the attacks from behind that kills. That's why playing these games without sound is a large handicap - you're blind for about 180 degrees behind you.
I first found out about this in Natural Selection. In this game, by the time you can see the aliens you're probably 0.1s away from death. All the aliens specialise in hit-and-run attacks except for the Gorge which builds structures. Listening for alien noise (footsteps or breathing) is the only way a Marine can prevail when he encounters an ambush.
Same with L4D and L4D2. They didn't design the common infected zombies to scream for better audio ambience. It annoys me that there are players who would join a game set to Advanced or Expert difficulty and doesn't react when a zombie runs screaming towards them from behind. Them getting killed may be a problem since the game requires a lot of teamwork, but it gets worse when they don't react after ones of us get disabled by a Special Infected. While one of us is being clawed by a Hunter there he is shooting at normal zombies like they're the top priority and I'm too far to help.
Another whine I have to make is on how some players don't seem to use their melee weapons. Sure you can't hit anything over a meter away, but at close range it's the only weapon that can kill everything in front of you with one hit. All it takes to hold a horde while trapped in a corner is to time your left and right click so that they alternate precisely to kill then push the next wave away and kill again (left click = attack, right click = push/elbow). If no Special Infected attacks, it is possible to stay alive that way indefinitely.
It's way, way better than spamming shotguns no matter that some of them have no cooldown time between shots. They don't killed everything as surely as a good ol' machete or katana. In fact, you actually don't need to waste ammo on normal zombies because they're all 1-hit-kills for melee weapons. I use a gun on them only to cover someone's back from a distance or for fun. Other than that, guns are only for killing special zombies. Hell, I use melee attacks on them too if they're near, except for the Boomer for obvious reasons (obvious if you play the game).
Some players think the melee weapon is more of a backup weapon. I say the guns are the secondary weapons.
Saturday morning, 19th Dec. Logged on to FoM just in time to find myself in the middle of a battle between KD Defense (KD stands for Kepler's Dome, our base colony, and KD Defense is an ad hoc army formed in response to the attacks) and a Mercenary cell named "We Ain't Bitches" (WAB). I was surprised when I saw about 10 of my fellow VI members with their guns out and firing at my direction.
Then I turned around and saw the mercenaries firing back. I had teleported right smack into the centre of a shootout! So I whipped out my trusty Orbit XB Infineon (High Quality, self-made) and started firing. When the other VIs saw me they probably thought I had charged out from their side and so they ran out too. I was close to dying by the end of that battle but the mercs died before they could fire that last fatal shot at me.
But that was only the beginning. I was invited to the KD Defense group, which I joined before I logged on to the VI Ventrilo server. There I found that despite having about 20+ buddies in the army, there were only about 8 of them on Vent. Worse is that many players not on Vent aren't being told the orders spoken there.
So as I ran with the group to the next place under attack, I helped to translate the spoken orders into the chatbox. I didn't take any screenshots during battles but someone else did. Here's one taken by a member of an allied faction, the GoM.
They sent about 15 guys to help us defend our home. Great allies. In the above screenshot they were in the vanguard and had just encountered the mercs. More reinforcements from our side arrived later and wiped the enemies out.
That was the final battle. After the mercs got exterminated we heard from our spy (he was listening in the mercs' Ventrilo server) that the leader of the merc faction(MotB) removed from their list of goals everything that involved our colony. No longer will they come here at all, at least for now, except for mercs who have accepted contracts. We don't mind the loss of business from them (we get money when they mine materials here) as long as they don't bother us.
From our calculations, we have also made huge gaping holes in their pockets. Dying costs money because in the game, dead people are automatically cloned back with their memories intact. Clones may be cheap, but it's still expensive when you die often.
Winning is always followed by celebrations. Here, we made a victory line with our allies. We're the dark green. They're the white and light green. (I'm not Nageth. His name is displayed because he's in my crosshair.)
With the declaration of truce and the news of the removal of KD from the mercs' list of goals, we had a 10-gun salute for our dead (who were cloned back to life).
Well we weren't exactly trained in this so we just fired randomly into the air.
Watching the original Iron Chef shows now. Since the episodes were in alphabetical order instead of chronological, I've just watched the first abalone battle.
First of all, ABALONE PASTE? I have never heard of that before.
Second, several huge fresh abalones were used only to make a broth. These were not eaten later, only the broth was used.
Third, abalone steaks cooked in butter. Enough said.
So the original Runes of Magic poster was first created by the well-known Azazel1944 from Deviantart. It was edited by some other people after he sold it to Frogster, but he could still recognize it.
All the equipment in this picture can be found in the RoM diamond shop. The developers actually made those equipment using this so that players can have their characters look almost exactly like the three people shown.
If you don't know this artist, he's a very talented guy from China and seems to be a big World of Warcraft fan. He's famous in some circles for his amazing WoW-inspired works. If you want to see his drawings, google "Azazel1944" with or without "deviantart". Some are not work-safe though, ie don't visit his gallery at work.
A new city was released in FoM today. Paris was in the game previously but taken out some time ago. It was the HQ of Eurocore back then. Now that it's back, lots of political drama occurred.
In a secret deal with the FDC (the military), EC had very quickly managed to convince them to let them have Paris because it used to be theirs. When my company found out about that, our CEO protested against the agreement because Tokyo, currently under the jurisdiction of the FDC, is the site of the VI HQ (my company). If we can't get our HQ back, how can they allow EC to have theirs?
The CEO of EC then tried to persuade my CEO to join them in a war against the FDC, to help them take back Paris. My CEO disagreed.
For either or both of these reasons, the EC CEO got pissed off and declared war on us. Not the FDC, but us! They are the wealthiest and largest faction after LED and FDC while we are the smallest in the game. Some conclusions are obvious at this point.
Then things got even more confusing when a GoM member reminded everyone, in the forum, of a tiny legal problem regarding the whole issue. According to the GD laws of the game, the FDC does not have the authority to decide who gets which colony. If anyone wants the control of a city/colony, they must have the approval of the Global Dominion Senate.
Hence, both our CEOs really did nothing useful whatsoever. In addition, the High Command of the FDC claims that they were not even aware of this so-called "deal". However EC is not backing down on the war. Their CEO insists that we're the reason for them not getting Paris. Our CEO gives us a different story, saying they are angry because we didn't agree to help them fight the FDC. Though we're small, we have GoM as our ally. Together, our VI-GoM alliance forms a significant military force.
So now we fight a losing war, trying to hold on to our base as we wait for the FDC to get the Senate's nod before helping us. GoM are great buddies but they can only spare so many men while defending their own colony from EC attacks.
Now to the technicalities of the war.
The way to take over a colony and gain control of it is to hack the various "nodes" in the map and kill our members. When these are done frequently enough, a countdown timer is started. If we kill their members the time increases, while them killing us decreases the time . Once the timer reaches zero, the Final Battle (FB) begins. On the other hand, the timer is stopped when we kill enough of the enemies before they kill more of us.
The FB is not really a huge fight but more of a race. Both factions must hack as many nodes in the colony as possible and the winner gains control of it.
At the moment we are only a few hours away from the FB. But it's already almost 1am and I have difficulty staying up any longer. It seems I will be missing the Final Battle. Since I cannot do anything physically, I have spent most of my money on several hitmen contracts to kill a total of 21 EC members. I'm hoping that this would help, even though members of EC now know my name due to the loose mouths of the Mercenaries. Yep, I'm expecting bounties to be placed on my head now.
(Next morning)
Servers were taken down last night after I left due to connection issues. The FB did not take place. The developers say the problem lies not in the bandwidth but in their codes. Whatever it means, they are going to spend at least a few days to revert their "protocols", so no FoM for a few days. :(
Last night I confirmed something I had only suspected. My adapter's problem connectivity problem (ping jumps frequently from normal to 1000+) is caused by its physical contact with my mouse's wire. The solution is to gently lift the wire and pull it away. Time to change the USB socket of the adapter.
Replayed Fallout 3 as a Small Guns specialist. In this game Small Guns refers to any conventional weapons (rifles , pistols, etc), but not the big ones like Missile Launchers. Weapons of that size among our modern weapons are under Big Guns, which also covers Gatling Lasers and Flamethrowers.
Really much harder than going melee. I guess despite being designed as a shooter, the game mechanics favour melee more.
First it's the ammo supply. In the early game I never get enough ammo and money to buy ammo. I barely get enough for Stimpaks, let alone repairs. I just hold several different guns using different ammo types so that when one breaks/runs out of bullets I just switch to another gun. It was only until half the game was over that I was able to afford to buy ammo from vendors instead of surviving on what I scrape up from the floor.
Second, most of the guns in the early game don't have the automatic fire mode. Using the Hunting Rifle at long range is fine, but when you're battling your way through a maintenance shaft underground, 90% of the monsters are found in cramped little tunnels. Without VATS, I'd be dead all the time. VATS allows the computer to shoot for me with a certain probability of success depending on distance, condition of weapon and surface area exposed in my direction. It also, for some reason, makes the shots slightly more lethal and wears off the weapon faster.
Third, reload! Having used melee weapons all the time in my previous runs, reload feels totally like downtime to me. It's like I'm forced to be disabled each time my gun needs a new magazine. I cannot heal myself when I'm reloading, which leaves me no choice but to find a place to hide before my ammo runs out. Very different from melee battles, in which all I do is run towards the enemies and spam mouse clicks.
It took some time to get use to these, but I managed to finish the game quickly without going for many sidequests. In fact I was only at level 19 when I finished the Broken Steel campaign. Too easy, even at the hardest difficulty. The ability to hit Tab at anytime is basically the I-WIN button of this game.
Left 4 Dead 2 really is better than its predecessor. More weapons, yes, but also more varied scenarios. Now the game is not just about finding tactically sound locations for killing zombies but the final round of each of the four campaigns are also designed to be different from the rest.
Take for example the campaign entitled "The Parish". The final round is a race across a bridge filled with broken gaps and car wreckage. There are few if not no safe corners where you can have your back protected and a clear view in front of you. And not to forget, zombies everywhere all the time. One strategy I have found to work, after playing it twice, is to run like there is no tomorrow. Forget teamwork and forget covering your back, it's every man for himself when the bridge is lowered for you to cross.
The first time I completed that round, it was not me who survived but someone else. He just ran like hell and used the Adrenaline Shot when he encountered the Tank. The shot gives a temporary speed boost and extra HP, so basically he ran like the wind and used his AK47 to clear his path.
I did that the second time and won. Everyone else in my team died, with the last person to fall involuntarily sacrificing himself to distract the Tank from me. When I saw the Tank, I looked at my grenade slot expecting a Molotov, which would burn the Tank till it dies in about half a minute. BUT IT WASN'T! I was holding a Pipe Bomb, which would not kill the Tank. And since I expected a Molotov, I was running straight towards the Tank. OMG FFFFFFFF...
Good thing I was also holding an Adrenaline Shot, so I used that instead and ran like crazy. Didn't even bother to look back till I couldn't hear it anymore. That was when I spotted the big thing bashing my last living fellow Survivor who was already lying down and saying "WTF?" on chat. Oh well, let's not waste this speed boost.
Since the other two were already dead, the cause of which was probably slow reflexes, they were probably watching me. Couldn't lose the round because I had already abandoned them to their fates. Just after I turned back to continue running, the zombie hordes arrived on the scene. Not the usual 5 zombies running towards you as experienced at the beginning of the bridge race, but a whole freakin swarm of screaming blackness.
I THANK MY NOOBNESS THAT I HAD TAKEN THE PIPE BOMB! This grenade beeps very loudly to attract zombies and explodes after a few seconds. Excellent zombie magnet, perfect for the situation. So I threw it to my left like a little boy playing fetch with his pet dog, and all the undead ran towards the bomb instead. Wheee!! Good boys!
I never noticed when it wore off, but my speed boost finally ended some time before I saw the rescue helicopter. I was checking my ammo and HP with a glance when I saw that, but I was already in the clear. So close! The chopper was right there. At the moment someone could have played
and it would be perfect. No, no one did and nothing is perfect. With just two zombies running towards me ahead, I easily gunned down the first and elbowed the second, then I was on the chopper!
Here's the demonstration videos of this stage by some website I've never heard of. It's quite different since they actually used teamwork. Maybe that's why it ended the way it did.
Another final round that I've tried so far is the one in Dead Center. This one is located in a shopping mall and the objective is to gather fuel tanks so that we can drive a race car (which is on exhibit) to safety. The containers are spread across a large part of the multi-storey mall, so there was a lot of running involved too.
I never did finish this even though I was shown what to do. Basically due to the car being on the first floor , we had to run to the containers, pick them up and throw them down, all the while covering each other from zombies that come from everywhere. Seriously, it's amazing how many zombies can run out from the washrooms. It's like when people get attacked by the undead their first thought is to run towards the safety of the cubicles.
The difficulty is in the lack of railings. They're all metal bars with big glass panes, and guess what happens to them when we're spraying gunfire everywhere to hold back the zombie avalanches. So without them, we easily fall off and get separated from the rest of the team. Many things can make us fall, ranging from simple panic to Jockeys. When that happens, let's just say that lone wolves in L4D2 are always zombie food.
The third (I've only tried 3 finales due to lack of hosts) one is in Dark Carnival. This campaign ends with the Survivors attempting to attract the attention of the rescue choppers by turning on the light show of a rock band. Lots of fireworks and loud music, which obviously would make the stage a zombie magnet.
Nothing too original about this finale. It's the standard sort from L4D1 where players hold the area till the rescuers arrive and then they run to them. Not too hard to finish since most L4D2 players are experienced enough from their time spent in L4D1. Just find a corner and shoot, that's all.
Also spent a few hours on this new MMORPG called Face of Mankind. This game is quite different from the normal go-out-and-kill-monsters type of game because there are no monsters involved. As a sci-fi game, it is based on a imaginary future in which people have discovered teleportation and colonized other worlds.
First thing about this game that I learnt is that there are 8 factions - 2 government armed forces, 3 underworld clans and 3 corporations. Basically the armed forces and underworld clans are always fighting and the 3 corporations provide the resources for the wars.
The Law Enforcement Department (LED) is the police force. I tried it at first and it was interesting. Their special abilities are scans, the power to arrest criminals and the ability to use stun weapons. Scans are the futuristic version of a body search, in which one can find out if the person is carrying illegal items like drugs. Penalty Points (PP) is what makes people criminals. These are gained by committing felonies and lost by spending time in the prison at DeMorgan's Castle which is run by the LED faction. Stuns are required to disable criminals in order to arrest them.
But I got bored of doing guard duty as a policeman, so I went on to try the Vortex Inc. As an employee of Vortex, I get 90% discounts for transports, which is the only way to move goods between planets. How is this important? Well for example certain things can only be mined at certain planets and after making a certain item for sale in New York, I find that half the cost of making the item available for sale from scratch is made up by the transportation fee. That's after the discount. This privilege is given to us because Vortex Inc invented and owns the teleportation system known as the Vortex Drive.
The other armed force apart from the LED is the Freedom Defense Corps, ie the military. While the police maintains order in the cities, the military does the heavy work outside. Their special abilities are the same as the LED's except they can't see the PP of the people they scan. In place of that is the ability to see fellow FDC members on their minimap. I think it's supposed to help in battles. Also, while the LED gets exclusive access to everywhere in the prison (they run the place), the FDC gets the same for a giant spaceship, which is supposed to protect humanity. From what, I don't know.
Now back to the corps. The second corporation is the Eurocore. Its fictional history says that it is what eventually became of the European Union. Its special ability is that its employees get excellent discounts when making goods from raw materials.
The third is the Colonization and Mining Guild, which is the result of Man's space colonization. They get big discounts for mining raw materials.
Finally, the clans. The most prominent clan is the Brotherhood of Shadows. Their special ability is the illegal drug production. I've never tried drugs but supposedly it helps with many things including fighting capabilities (more stamina, etc). The catch is that they cannot mine for materials and this applies to all three clans.
The second is the Mercenaries of the Blood. They can't make drugs but they can form departments at lower ranks. Not sure how that is supposed to help with anything, but it must be quite beneficial in some way.
The last is the Guardians of Mankind. They believe they're fighting a corrupted government, the Global Dominion, which controls the LED and FDC. The GD isn't a playable faction. Anyhow, these guys are pretty rare from what I've seen. Their special abilities are cheaper clones (aka resurrections), clones start with more HP, they heal for free at medical terminals and they are the only ones who can make the XL-size medkits. Most importantly, GoM is the only faction that can produce medic guns that heal with their rays.
This game is NOT player-friendly. You don't get special PVP protection at the beginning. I got ganked twice while AFK in New York City as a police before I realized there are people who do nothing but look for AFK people to kill. The game has no NPC guards to guarantee safety, so all guards are human-controlled and thus not very alert and suck at shooting. You'd be surprised by how much friendly fire I saw during my one day in the police force.
I started out with nothing but 20k credits. In the LED I had to buy armour and weapons but in VI someone gives out newbie gear for free. It's cheap and I could easily afford it, but later I realized that every credit counts because mining stuff, producing goods, transporting goods and selling goods cost credits (taxes are imposed in the case of sales of goods). Also, anything that isn't a production component can only be produced if I buy the modul (aka recipe) which costs thousands of credits each.
Quests come in the form of objectives. 5 are given at any given moment and you have to complete 3 to refresh the list. The 5 are randomly chosen according to the priorities of goals set by faction leaders. For example in the LED the highest priority is to maintain peace in New York City, so at least one of the 5 is always guard duty at NYC, which is done by standing in sight of either anyone or clan members, depending on the objective description, for a certain period of time (at least 30mins game time or about 15 minutes real time from what I've seen).
As a VI employee the corp's top priority is to gain economic monopoly in the home planet of the BoS, so two of my 5 present objective is to produce goods and sell stuff there. Maintaining peace at VI's base planet is of Normal Priority only, so only one is guard duty there.
Anyway it's not actually fun if you want to kill monsters regularly. I find it interesting only because making money is always fun. Producing items at the cheapest rates possible and mentally laughing at the fact that my seemingly reasonably competitive prices are in fact horribly inflated never fails to entertain.
Now I see how big companies make so much money. People would find raised prices reasonable if they don't know how much it actually costs to make the items and are used to those numbers on the price tags. And don't say that people have to eat. What are they eating? Gold bars?
FoM is serious bizness. At least, it is to some of the policemen. I've been camping at a prison gate while waiting for my raw materials to be mined (it's automatic, you just need to wait) because it's always safer to be camping near a heavily guarded place. I tell you, those guys will shoot at any trespassers. It's just like a real prison!
It's not just that they shoot to kill, but they don't even allow anyone to stand on the ramp leading to the sealed gate that only non-newbie LED (police faction) members can open. If you stand on the slope, they would give a warning before firing. Those guys don't joke about their protocols. They don't even allow guided tours!
But in the end it's safe there, unlike in other places they are supposed to control, like New York City.
Safety is important because when we're mining or manufacturing stuff, we often go AFK. The production and mining system is such that the costs of the process is directly proportional to the speed of it. You shorten the time you wait, you pay more. In addition to that is that if the machine is working faster, it heats up faster too. So more speed requires more cooling, which in turn requires more money. Personally as a newbie I set it to the lowest possible setting and camp at the prison gate. Let the police guard me while they guard the gate.
But the prison world, DeMorgan's Castle aka DMC, doesn't have everything. In fact, all planets only have some raw materials available. So I do have to visit Tokyo sometimes, which sucks because I have to find some really isolated spot. Still, it's doable and I haven't died in a while.
Entertainment is usually available at the gate just because it's heavily guarded. Lots of people would go there to tease the guards or try to run through when it's opened for the LED to enter. It's kind of like IRC but with fake identities and purposes. The drug smugglers would push their limits of the law by asking the guards if they wanted illegal stuff. Sometimes someone would throw a grenade at them for fun. Other times people try to troll the guards.
Once yesterday about 20 members of the Brotherhood of Shadows travelled around the public part of the prison in a train formation and tried to annoy the guards by bunching around one of them. Eventually the guards did fire at them, but there were over 20 of them so it really didn't make much difference.
So after a few days of playing, I see that roleplaying is very important in this game. In my company there is a department for taking transport contracts from other factions and even a R&D department. In the LED faction there is a Internal Affairs Department that investigates crimes committed by their own members. In fact I just sent them a complaint, with screenshot shown below attached, of a police officer who tried to stab me thrice while I appeared to be AFK and within a few hours they told me they were handling it.
Now my faction's base planet is being attacked by the Mercenaries. According to other members, some people may have made a contract with the mercs to attack us. It won't destroy the faction, but we will lose the discounts we enjoy while at home. So it's still a very serious matter.
As for the title, the answer is yes.
I was curious when I saw a video on Youtube's homepage about putting on makeup.
1) I don't visit Youtube often. 2) I was mining stuff on FoM and didn't have much to do. 3) I have never seen a girl put on makeup before, other than a few glimpses on TV or in films.
As I watched her put on her eyeliner and mascara and whatever on her eyelids, all I could think about was how uncomfortable it must be. I mean, don't those hair on the brushes touch the eyeballs occasionally?
The other thing was how much time it took. It really must take some motivation to spend half an hour to paint your face, then some more time at the end of the day to un-paint it.
Also noticed how many tools she has. I swear she has more beauty products and brushes than the number of spare parts and tools in my late father's toolbox. And they're all just for her face.
So I was wrong. Sora Aoi is part of the cast of 娘王 Virgin. It seems you really can have everything these days.
OMG McLobster!
Available in Canada. T.T What am I doing here?
ANNO 1404 is a good game. It actually made me lose track of time for hours. There were only 2 things that gave me a sense of time's passing - the reminder to take a break that plays every 2 hours and the autosave that stops the game for a few second every half an hour. Once I managed to hit 6 hours and the game said that I "really should take a break".
There is something special about relocating resource production sites from the mainland and reworking the goods transport network every once in a while to accommodate the growing population.
My bro bought a new wireless adapter for his own laptop because the one in his laptop doesn't support Wireless-N mode. Setting the router to Wireless-N Only mode wasn't easy. I had expected no trouble at all, but for some strange reason my computer couldn't connect to the network when that mode is on.
B/G is fine, but N is not. The network is visible but it says the router does not respond when I connect. My bro did not have this problem. What the heck?
It took some random experimentation to find out that I had to disable the wireless security before connecting in N mode for the first time. Only after that can I change the security mode back to WPA2. I haven't tried to restart the computer/connection, but I'm not eager to try.
Why? Because Wireless-N mode freakin rocks! Now my connection speed is even faster than before.
This is what I got in my first test after I switch to this mode. I did 3 more tests after this and the download speeds stayed at about 38Mbps. Upload speeds remained at between 4-2Mbps.
My guess is that this is because most of my neighbours are not using Wireless-N, and Wireless-N is inherently faster than B and G.
Seriously, I'm not pushing any limits even if I download stuff at 1Mbps now. This is insane. I'm having much more bandwidth than I need. I'm taking into account my family's usage too. At the time of the tests, my utorrent was running and my bro was playing TF2 with Vent on.
Edit: It's ok to restart. Guess the security just needs to be disabled only for the first connection attempt.
I don't know what exactly it is about this wallpaper that made me use it as my desktop wallpaper right away.
It never occurred to me until recently that you can make garlic toast by rubbing garlic onto a piece of toast. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!? That's such an easy way to do it!
I think it says BK was selling this 7-layered Whopper for 777 Yens. Since a Whopper Double has 2 layers, this should be a Whopper Septuple. IT'S SO BIIIIIIIIIIG!!!
Disclaimer: The following two paragraphs contains incredibly twisted facts and may give you nightmares and/or scar you for life. S_H is not responsible for any negative effects on readers who are unwilling to scroll down without reading it.
I just found a really disturbing fact. Most guys actually did have incestuous sex with their mothers at least once. That is when their mothers give birth to them. Technically, when your penis is in a vagina, it is usually considered as penetrative sex. Hence, you probably had sex with your mother before and for months, you were in pretty deep inside her. Also, you fingered and fisted her.
From now on you will never look at your mum the same way again, if you're male and it was not a C-section. Now you may grab your head and scream in agony, motherfuckers.
Tired of low interest rates and risky investments? Here's a new one - invest in Somali pirates! For a low initial premium of a rocket-propelled grenade, you can make up to 75000USD in just over a month! Most importantly, there are no Nigerians involved!
Shit I was so close! Instead of fried chicken in a can, there really are canned whole chickens! The gel thing is the jellied chicken broth. But chickens are so common everywhere in places where people can afford this (ie developed countries) that I don't see the point of it.
Notice that the second pic looks as if the can was giving birth to a whole, hairless chicken?
Finally got a new oven. This one is bigger and has a rotisserie. Now I can finally bake cakes and bread or roast meat! CAKES! But first I'll start with bread. Baguette sounds simple enough, just need flour, salt, warm water, yeast and a little oil. But according to many people, it won't come out exactly the same because home ovens cannot go above 250 degrees Celsius. Apparently it's supposed to be baked at extremely high temperatures to vaporize all the water quickly to create all the holes inside.
No idea if I will ever use the rotisserie though. Maybe I'll make char siew someday lol!
Putin is basically the Russian version of Lee Kuan Yew, except with an even harder iron fist. He's most likely never going to leave power, even after retirement age. Unlike presidents and prime ministers in democratic countries, this guy's been at the top for years. He may not have been the one who built his country from scratch, but it did get filthy rich under his reign.
I don't understand why he would even bother to consider becoming the next president again. He obviously doesn't need to. Even after stepping down, the new president basically lives under his shadow. Big news about Russia almost always mention Putin, but not Medvedev. It's like the latter is there just to fill the space.
I think the biggest difference between him and all the other world leaders is how he improves his image as times change. I don't believe I've seen any prime ministers attend hip-hop concerts or pose half-naked for photos.
It just gives a different feel.
Anyway he also described the nouveaux (French masculine term for new, feminine term being novelle) rich as a problem. He doesn't seem to like how they show off their wealth. The thing is, doesn't this happen everywhere? When people get rich suddenly, they are usually unable to change their mindset of spending whatever they have fast enough.
I mean, their way of thinking is exactly how they get rich quickly. To make lots of money, you have to work very hard and/or sell your soul. But how does one motivate oneself to do so? With promises to buy this and that when they have the money. It is the lure of spending money that made them wealthy in the first place, not the security of having money. It takes time for the urge to buy stuff to disappear as the novelty of it wears off. It's like turning from "OMG I like that! I must buy that!" to "Yeah I can afford it but if I buy it, will I just put it somewhere and forget about it?"
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!! Just made 2 attempts at making bread. First time, too much water (slightly over 2 cups), dough didn't rise. Second try, perfect dough, didn't rise still. FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!
4 cups flour, somewhere between 7/4 to 2 cups of warm water, 1 tbsp instant dry yeast, 2 tsp coarse salt. Mixed water with yeast, then added flour and salt. Dough formed at second try, very sticky but undeniably solid. SO WHY DIDN'T IT RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEE????????????????????
I'm blaming the fuckin yeast for this. It's supposed to expire on the last day of next year! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE!!!!!
I picked Friday night to do it because the housekeeper comes on Saturday. Now it's Saturday and I have a bowl of 3-hour-old dough and a bag of 7-hour-old white goo. I can make some kind of brick from them and kill people with it, but it would be a waste of electricity and no one has pissed me off like these bread-making attempts did.
I'll retry tonight, with a new bottle of yeast.
Also, 4 cups of flour and 2 cups of water DOES NOT FORM DOUGH! IT FORMS GOO INSTEAD!
If there's anything that can render me speechless, it's the following image series.
Left 4 Dead now being sold for $7.49 just for today. Judging from the prices, they were right! L4D was actually the beta for L4D2!! They were probably testing the Director AI with that game and sold it as an actual game when everyone who bought it were really their beta testers and not actual consumers.
Just a suspicion.
I don't get it. Why is there a difference between adding instant coffee into the water before and after microwaving it?
It is undeniable that it does not turn out the same. If the powder is added before microwaving the mug of water, you get a nice layer of foam on top. If not, you don't. Does the heating causes bubbles to form from the coffee? It can't be, because the water receives just as much heat in both cases.
Why the foam?
From what I've read so far, they're planning to make all the items always available at Lockerz when beta is over. Problem is that all the prices will increase a lot (some say quadruple, others quintuple). Then again, earning PTZ will also be easier.
I think I can see how it works, but it will take a lot of cooperation from other companies. Using PTZ for discounts means the website will give them publicity if they sell their goods there. But they will do so only if Lockerz has enough users to make it worthwhile, hence the free stuff they're giving out even before it is officially opened.
There are also other sources of revenue. One is the videos section they are making. Maybe it's going to emulate Youtube or some streaming TV show website, or maybe they will post trailers of new movies and games.
It's very ambitious but with the sort of funding their free gifts imply, it may work.
Anyway they've added more stuff to the list of redeemable stuff. Now they have a large collection of TV series DVDs and movie DVDs. In the other 2 non-electronics section they've added mugs and T-shirts with their own brand and the ability to guarantee that you can get the item you want in the next restock. The last is not as good as it sounds, mainly because it costs about 4.5-6 times as many PTZ as the items themselves. For example, a "guarantee" for any item that costs below 250 PTZ requires 1500 PTZ.
This means they are favouring people with fast fingers and those with lots of friends and/or fake emails accessed via proxies.
Seriously fast fingers are required to get the most popular stuff, like the PSP. Apparently it really does go out of stock within the first minute. How people can fill in all their particulars (address and name and phone number) so quickly is actually not a mystery. Many use the auto-fill function in their browser to do that.
The thing is, it never loads for me!! The connection sucks! By the next restock I really am going to have enough for a PS3 or a 360!! IF I still don't get anything then, I will have enough for a freakin Acer laptop by the following restock, unless they finally end their beta stage before it happens. (The 10.1" Aspire one D250 laptops are going for 1k PTZ.)
Having all these PTZ in my possession without the chance to spend it is really annoying me. I don't want to have this much by the end of beta and find out that 800 PTZ doesn't mean shit anymore.
All of the tattoos are probably real, or at least I'm sure those swollen ones are real and taken just after they were done. The last one should have an entirely blue background. Pussy.
Just one word: NO!
This made me want to play Fallout 3 again. Would this run be the third or the fourth time? Can't remember exactly anymore.
Fallout 3 exposed! Only people who've played Oblivion will understand the humour of the final frame.
You can use this to scare children. "See? If you play too much computer games you will end up like this guy!" And your kids will tremble in fear... or mirth, or both.
Watched Food Inc, the documentary film. The chickens made me realise I was out of chicken nuggets in my freezer and I felt like eating some.
The way they raised poultry and cattle reminded me of the concentration camps I saw in the 9th episode of Band of Brothers. It was, in fact, worse than the way the Nazis treated the Jews, but not by much. At least the animals get fed when they're hungry.
Anyway I knew they were raised in very crowded conditions, but that turned out to be the least of their problems. The animals are basically treated as non-lifeforms, like walking pieces of food/products. I described it to my mum and she said it's normal practice to do that. She grew up on a farm in China that raised chickens and pigs, so I trust her on that. Back then her family used cages with a similar feeding system and similar living space. Huh.
Not that this will stop me from eating American meat products. LOL no way am I going to ignore food that is being sold at lower prices. It just allowed me to see that people, generally speaking, would do things against their conscience if it made their lives easier. No matter what we say about loving animals, they're nothing compared to the $5 saved per day.
It makes perfect sense. We have been ignoring our conscience all our lives, so much so that we do it without thinking. Just look at the death penalty. How can it be possible that they're always 100% guilty? Yet they're always killed when sentenced to death, even if the objective truth is that some of them didn't do what they were charged for. We know the system isn't perfect, but we support capital punishment even though it is possible to just give them the life sentence.
The conclusion is that to ignore the conscience is a human characteristic that we have gained through evolution. It is, after all, the "survival of the fittest" and not "survival of the nicest".
But that doesn't mean that everyone would always try to save themselves before others. It is entirely logical to be nice just to make everyone else think they're nice. If the goal is to be loved, it would be possible to devote an entire life to kindness. Such a person would be helping everyone not because he wants to help them, but to gratify himself. Is that really kindness? Why not?
One point I thought one of the first families was mistaken about was how it was impossible to eat healthily and cheaply at the same time (a head of cabbage costs more than a burger). That can be done, but it isn't tasty. For example, products like rice can be bought in large bags and serve as your main source of carbohydrate. Soy beans are cheap too and can make a good source of protein. Basically to eat cheap and healthy is to go vegetarian and buy in bulk whenever you can.
At the end of the film it reminded people to buy from companies that treat the animals and workers with respect. As noble as it sounds, this would really depend on how much extra I'm going to have to spend. If I can save an average of $2 every meal by buying from those "bad" companies, why not? 3 meals a day, 30 days a month, and that makes $180 of savings per month.
And that implies exactly what it implies - my conscience has a price. If you thought the same, then so does yours.
2 months of waiting had made me lost almost all my confidence in Lockerz, but the arrival of the free T-shirt has raised it back a little.
The package came with more than the cheap T-shirt (I bet if I look carefully I'd find the label saying "Made in China"). For just a mere piece of cloth there are 7 sheets of paper, 6 of which appear to be photocopies of the same customs declaration form. The deforestation required to send me this package makes me feel a little guilty, but not enough to stop me from trying to redeem something at the next restock.
Together with the shirt are a big square Lockerz sticker, a big card congratulating me for my Z-Lister status and a packing slip.
This is evidence that shows that Lockerz is likely not a scam. It may also be an incredibly elaborate one, but isn't that a little too paranoid to believe in after getting a free T-shirt? Whether or not it is like the Portal cake, one thing is for sure - this is a freakin good marketing tactic.
Lockerz is still in beta. Wonder what it will be like when it is done, if it is ever going to be done.
Here's a real jaw dropper.
Never seen a receipt like this. It's not just a receipt, not with those numbers on it. This isn't for a meal for 50 people - there are only 6 (see the extreme bottom of receipt)! That makes an average of almost $8000 per person. No idea who they are.
This is not a photoshoppedimage. It's a piece of evidence used in some court case in which the defendant denied it was his receipt, though no one denied this is an actual receipt.
Oh btw about the "20% GRAT" thing, grat = gratuity = tips. Yes, you're reading the decimal points right. That's a seven-thousand-dollar tip there. People have died for much less!
It is said that many American porn actors choose their jobs because they think they can step into the mainstream entertainment industry that way. I don't know if that actually works, but I do know that it does in Japan, for porn actresses.
Just take this recent Japanese drama series, 嬢王 Virgin, for example. It's a TV series starring some of the best-known names in JAV, like Yuma Asami and Saori Hara. Best of all, it's got Reon Kadena, the hottest gravure idol in Japan. I had half-expected Sora Aoi to be on that list too, but we can't have everything.
This ongoing series is popular enough to be made into torrents for download and have Chinese subtitles for it. Perhaps it's because it contains nude scenes, but such things aren't exactly rare on Japanese TV.
Whatever it is that makes people download it, it's proof that in Japan one can enter the mainstream from porn. Probably because porn isn't too far from the Japanese mainstream.
Just tried Anno 1404, an empire-building game (or officially the genre is called 4x games). It is a medieval-themed game revolving around the europeans and the Arabs. The campaign is actually pretty interesting, mostly because of the sidequests that I've never encountered before.
These can include the standard errand boy stuff like bring this much materials to somewhere or kill some ships. The most unique side quest, IMO, is the one that totally resembles Where's Wally. One of the friendly faction would sometimes ask you to arrest spies in your city and you would have to zoom in and search for people with a thin blue outline.
The final round of the campaign is probably the most fun but also the most challenging. The main quest was to build this special mega-structure that required huge amounts of building materials, which changed according to the stage (there are 3 stages, excluding the first which was already done). The higher the stage, the higher the tier of the necessary goods you have to obtain constantly.
That sounds easy, except there is a time limit. You are racing against the enemy, who won't attack you but will finish each stage within a set period of time or at the same time as you, whichever is shorter. I played at Medium difficulty, so I had an hour per stage.
It was not easy at all because in order to obtain the materials, you need to build a town/city big enough to support the economy that can supply you with them. So while I made sure a steady flow of materials are flowing to the construction site, I had to make sure I'm meeting all the needs of the people, who consume the same stuff that I need. While juggling the two I had to watch the time limit. The good thing about all these is that the round couldn't exceed 3 hours.
Then I tried the Scenario mode, which has a few objectives. In the Guildmaster scenario, I have to possess 500k gold, have alliances with all the AI and complete 5 of the Emperor's quests. The first 2 are easy; the third part requires the Cathedral to be built. To complete the same Cathedral as the final map of the campaign, I need 3500 Nobles in my cities. Let's just say that even 2500 Nobles are hard to support despite having half the map under my control. Apparently they changed some settings in the campaign.
The entire campaign at medium difficulty actually feels easy compared to this.
Introducing the new... MOBILE SLEEPING BAG!
Using the latest state-of-the-art zip designs, you can now answer nature's call while still in your sleeping bag! No need to expose the rest of your body to hungry mosquitoes when you can just unzip one leg to relieve yourself!
Best of all, only if you're using this special sleeping bag can you easily escape nocturnal carnivore attacks! Hearing noises that sound suspiciously similar to a bear's breathing? Just get up and run! No need to slowly unzip and struggle out of the clingy bag!
In the unlikely event that a bear actually pounces on you, the 5cm thick cushions will make sure none of its teeth can touch you! If the fangs turn out to be unnaturally long and do indeed puncture your skin, the same cushions will efficiently absorb your arterial blood, allowing you to die violently but stay freshly clean in your dry and blood-free underwear!
And there's more! Buy now and get one of our Mobile Tents FREE! It's based on the same concept as the Mobile Sleeping Bag - a tent with legs! With this you can stay in the comfort and safety of your tent when you are hiking between campsites.
Call 1800-LOLSCAM and order now!
Klondike ice cream cones suck. The ice cream doesn't taste like ice cream. It's like some kind of gel-thing with the consistency of ice cream but not the flavour. The cone is soft and not brittle. Worst of all, it's not even cheap.
I have absolutely no idea what it's saying, but my ignorance probably makes it funnier. Looks like some sort of commercial. Why aren't those on Singapore TV this creative? =(
Extreme civil engineering. I know this is old, but still it's a nice pic =P
