While moving the extra wireless adapter from the USB port on the top of the casing to one of those behind, I must have done something to my monitor as pushed it against the wall on the right and then leaned onto it (while bending down to look at the sockets). I have no idea what's happening, but some bizarre bs is appearing on my screen.
In the above image is my screen whenever I turn my monitor on or do anything to change the resolution (including playing games in full screen mode).
A closer look at the dust on my brand new monitor.
When I turn off Smart Image using the monitor's software, this is what I get - normal sharpness but with the words still there.
Using the Print Screen function does not capture the words. The screenshot would show the screen to be normal. Also, the buttons on the side of the monitor no longer work. I cannot turn my monitor off now except by using the switch at the power socket.
This is very annoying because I cannot fully enjoy my games now. I wanted to replay Mass Effect but with this problem, I don't feel like it anymore. I cannot play the game in full screen mode because once the monitor changes to the game's required resolution, the line returns. Alt-Tab causes the line to return too, so I can't go back to Windows to turn off Smart Image.
The only workaround is by playing the game in windowed mode, which sucks because the largest resolution only occupies half my screen. And the words are still there.
The tech support guy responded to my email at around 4am, after I sent it at 9pm. He told me he had never encountered this problem before and asked me to send him screenshots. I was unable to do so due to the problem described previously, so I took photos and attached it to my next email reply.
12 hours later, I still haven't received a response from him. I've a feeling this is going to be a very troublesome issue that may even involve me spending more money.
The new old extra adapter is also giving me minor troubles. It frequently disconnects from the network, saying it cannot find any. Replugging it works but tiresome. My best guess is that it sucks at heat dissipation because it's always very warm when I take it to check for any physical clues to why it's sucking at its job.
So I've given up on waiting for help before playing. If the tech support doesn't give me a response within the next 2 days I'm going to email again and wait for 1 more day. Failing that I'll have to do something else, like calling them which will most likely end up with me lugging the monitor to their service centre or something.
This is the third time I'm playing Mass Effect, this time with the Bring Down the Sky expansion. I haven't tried the new content yet, but it's just another place to explore anyway, so I'm not exactly dying to go to that part of the game the way I was when I played Broken Steel.
Speaking of Fallout 3, it seems Point Lookout is a pretty good expansion.
Back to Mass Effect, I'm now trying it on Insane difficulty. Now the game is finally challenging. For the last two runs, the only difficult part had always been the fight with the Krogan mercenary and his band while saving Liara. It is difficult because I couldn't figure out any nifty tricks that could allow me to win it without using a single medpack, whether or not I made any careless mistake.
Now on Insane mode, even the fight with the 2 assassins outside of Chora's Den (early in the game) is hard. I died 3 times just now fighting them because my shotgun was rather ineffective at distance and one of them could throw grenades. I could charge into them with my guns blazing but one of them was also using a shotgun which could kill me with around 3 close-range shots.
I still manage to get past them but it took me 2 tries to make me admit that I had to start with my pistol for a gunfight at first and switch to my shotgun if any of them move into a better position to receive my shotgun blasts.
By the way I'm using a brand new Adept, so I can't use Heavy Armours and I'm starting from Level 1 again. Battles are made extra difficult (in addition to the difficulty level and mediocre armour level) by my making a point not to add skill points to long-ranged weapons, ie Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle. Because I've completed the game before, I was able to use either one of these even though my chosen class originally was unable to master them. As a result, I now have a useless skill.
This makes things harder for myself for a number of reasons. First, most enemies have long-ranged weapons, especially snipers who are actually so dangerous they are the first enemies I kill whenever I can. Second, my pistol is my best weapon at long range and it sucks compared to all other weapons. Third, I've always prefered to snipe enemies in this game since most enemies aren't snipers and they frequently leave bits of themselves exposed when hiding behind covers, which make great bullet-receivers.
There are only two ways I can make the game even more challenging:
1) Use the Sentinel class and spend not a single point on all weapons. 2) Avoid all crates.
I'm pretty sure I can finish the game while fulfilling the above conditions but it wouldn't be fun anymore (especially 2). Beats the point of playing the game if I do that.
I've also read a bit more on the Mass Effect sex scene scandal on Wikipedia. It's amazing how people can discuss on American TV what they know nothing about. If the sex scene is offensive then Baywatch must have been porn!!
I am unable to go to the Pirate Bay website at the moment due to a very probable DDOS attack in response to this news. However, I did manage to confirm this news by googling "pirate bay sold". The first result is the blog of Pirate Bay (also inaccessible) with the following excerpt:
30 Jun 2009 ... TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be ... Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. ...
So it's true. If the guys behind the website were convinced enough that this would work, then it probably has a very sensible business model behind it. I'm extremely curious about how this is going to turn out.
Today while moving stuff for the painters to paint a room, I came across this wireless USB adapter that has been left to rot in a corner for a year or two. I originally got this because of a wrong diagnosis. I really had router problems then but mistook it for an adapter problem.
Anyway, I had a crazy idea for it - PLUG IT INTO MY NEW DESKTOP! I know I know - I've already tried such a thing with my mobile USB modem and failed miserably, but hey, there is only a thin line between persistence and stupid stubbornness. Coincidentally the same thin line also lies between bravery and insanity.
You know what? It worked! My ping hasn't been improved, according to my pinging in the Command Prompt and Speedtest.net, but my download speed has been octupled with the addition of a single adapter.
Here's proof.
Before adding extra adapter:
After:
Muahahahahaaha!
The ping was stabilised at 1-2ms between my computer and router, for reasons I'm not aware of. It frequently has been jumping between 1-350ms but at the moment it is not. I still don't understand why.
But when I saw the dramatic improvement (tested thrice with consistent results),
Won another two rounds again as commander in Empires without losses.
*Does hip-thrusting, fist-pulling motion*
Noticed that what I research doesn't really matter as long as I don't get seriously unsuitable stuff like nuclear missiles and only light tanks (which cannot hold nukes, rendering the nuclear research useless). The main thing that is important is to give my team targets, ie pinpoint nearby enemy positions.
It is like a legal wall hack that can only be activated by the commander. The more frequently I update their targets, the more effective my troops are because they'll always know where the enemies are hiding. They don't need to be in direct line-of-sight of my troops to allow me to see them, only be in a certain radius around each guy in my team. Even when my guys don't see them, I can, so I indicate their locations to nearby teammates in the form of red diamonds.
Sometimes I'm amazed by the incredibly mundane stuff that other people post in their blogs and Facebook, which unavoidably reminds me of the stuff I type on my own blog. These things are uninteresting, like the bruise on the leg of a female friend of mine. She has posted pictures of it on Facebook for 4 days so far and isn't expected to stop till it fades completely. And here I am ranting about it.
Anyway, it reminds me of the stuff I type here. I'm sure there are many things you'd scan through and forget, if you'd scan through them at all. I'll not mention what I expect you to find boring because it's a matter of preference. Listing anything may add them to your own mental list.
Cashmere is expensive stuff. My mum's woolen imports are partly made of a mixture of cashmere and other materials. Cheaper importers look for cheaper goods which have small proportions of cashmere, maybe around 10%. Such clothes are little different from having no cashmere at all, but in their tags they can honestly indicate the presence of it.
Cashmere is like the ultimate insulating hair material, or whatever you want to call it. It is very warm and incredibly soft; touching a piece of good cashmere is like feeling the clouds in heaven.
But noobs, know there are 2 types of cashmere - the coarse and the fine. My mum only imports the finer stuff, which explains why she doesn't import anything made pure cashmere. Few people in Singapore (and the world) can afford a jacket or sweater made of pure soft cashmere and only the wealthy go for such luxurious items.
My mum aims to sell her goods at the middle-aged middle class, people old enough to discern quality with their fingers and not too concerned with the need for flashiness. Plus fashion for the younger generation gets outdated too fast. According to her experience, goods that aren't sold in the one season they were trendy in cannot be expected to be sold.
For the middle-aged people, clothes can be sold slowly because their fashion don't get outdated within 3 months. This gives time for my mum to actually design her goods, order it and wait for it to ship to Singapore from China and Hong Kong.
Ordering goods in China is a tedious process because it requires a lot of checking. Just because you gave them a perfect picture of what you have in mind (eg by drawing with all measurements done and colour specified to the very shade) doesn't mean you will get it.
Generally speaking doing business with Chinese people requires a lot of travelling, both to entertain each other to improve relations and to check on your goods. Seriously, the price my mum pays for not travelling to China every month is to have to check every single piece of clothes she imports and make minor repairs to around 80% of the imported items.
Also, the next time you find out that the cost of making clothes in China is actually much lower than what you pay in Singapore, don't blame the middleman. Fuel costs are up and so shipping costs are up. Established shops in Singapore also take a comission of at least 30% while the really branded ones take 60% or more. Not 100%, but even 70-80% is possible.
Finally, normal wool is cheap shit; plastics are worse. If you can afford it, go for cashmere. It's worth the price.
I'm a failblogger. I just found out I can change the date and time of each rant. This is already the 380th rant.
A Game of Thrones is confirmed to be made into a TV series by HBO. Actually, not really. They're now about to make the pilot episode which will help HBO decide if they want to continue with the rest of the book. So far progress is still too slow for me. They've only got the director and an actor for Tyrion. I mean, Tyrion's a dwarf and so there can't be many options to choose from anyway.
I joined an Empires game at around 3am, just in time to vote for a commander before the round starts. No one wanted to comm, including me. After the voting period, absolutely no one got into the Command Vehicle (CV) except for a newbie. Apparently a shy one too, because he didn't even dare to ask everyone how to comm. He got into the vehicle but didn't go into the command interface (the bird's eye view of the map). Repeated it a few times before alighting and running away.
I was watching him next to the CV because I decided if no one wanted to comm I'll do it. When he got in I wanted to make sure he didn't suck. After seeing his inability to find out that F2 is the magic button, I was ready to vote to kick him out. Just when I was going into the menu, he ran away.
I went in and did what I always do. My team had an affinity with the highly defensible center of the map, which also gave me extra resources. We abandoned all the surrounding areas except the northwest corner, where our main base was. This gave our opponents about as much resources as we got from the center.
My team camped the center for so long we had almost everything, but they just couldn't go further into the other side of the map. Meanwhile, the enemy comm had a cool idea and got Depleted Uranium Machine Guns (weakest anti-tank machine gun) and Reactive Armour (3rd best armour out of 6 possible). This combination, in the early game, gave incredibly effective light tanks.
As for me in the early game, I did my usual and got Heavy Caliber Machine Guns (which also has DU MG as part of the package) and Reflective Armour. Reflective Armour has slightly weaker HP and its specialty is in reducing damage proportional to the angle at which the projectile hits. A shell hitting the armour perpendicularly would deal 100% damage but half damage if it hits at 45 degrees.
In simpler terms, Reflective Armour requires more skill to use. Just like mortar, it is very good if the driver is good. My team turned out to be mediocre drivers. We had more than enough resources for everyone to get tanks, but our tanks just weren't effective enough to push out of center and northwest.
I also researched other helpful stuff like Extended Range Cannons, but they just weren't enough. The enemy later went for Salvo Missiles, ie 4-8 missiles per shot, which I didn't get. We still managed to hold on while getting attacked on two fronts at main base. Somehow the enemy just didn't bother with the center.
After a long stalemate I eventually got Heavy Tank Chassis, which allowed heavy tanks to be built, just in time to see my Vehicle Factory blown up by enemy tanks. So my efforts to let my team build the best (and most fun) tank were in vain. The two VFs that I dropped later were also destroyed by the tanks before they were built.
So I lost just when the game got fun.
In the following game no one wanted to comm again and they asked whoever had just commed the last game to do it again. Apparently they thought it was not my fault that we lost and I boarded the CV again.
This map was different. My main base was at southeast and the enemy's at southwest. In between the bases was a highly defensibly dam containing only a single refinery (for earning resources). Again, the map was separated with a ring and a circular piece of land in the middle, separated by canyons and connected by bridges. Our bases were on the ring and the giant piece of land in the middle contains nothing and serves as nothing but land to walk on.
The main focus of this map was to take the dam and the north plateau. The dam was the midpoint between the main bases while the plateau is a large flat land with 2 refineries. Holding it would mean holding 2 refineries with one base, which is very desirable.
Initially my team took the dam and tried to get a foothold in the north. Most of the enemy team went north and razed my forward barracks there after a while. I got desperate because losing north usually means losing the entire game, so I built a VF immediately and told them to get a few weak tanks to conquer north. Meanwhile, research was the same as always.
The tank raid worked! I managed to take back my eastern half of the plateau and got a forward barracks up again, this time with tanks to defend with. I also built a wall on the western side of the barracks to block incoming projectiles from the western enemy base.
But within a minute enemy tanks arrived to rescue their dying base. A long tank battle ensued and my team won eventually. But a ninja raid group attacked the lightly defended dam to the south and wrested control from my two guys who were guarding it. A few small attempts were made to retake the dam but to no avail.
Meanwhile, our tanks were slowly encroaching on the southwest side of the map, aka enemy territory. I was planning to get heavies, then nukes, seeing that we were doing quite well. However, our tanks died too frequently at the enemy main base and needed too many replacements. This placed a huge burden on my economy and soon I abandoned the plan to get nukes.
All of a sudden, I hear the automated alert saying that my Vehicle Factory was under attack. I scrolled to my base and witnessed the complete destruction of my main base. It seems a very talented Scout had infiltrated my main base and sabotaged everything. Sabotaged buildings lose health over time and eventually blows up. My Radar and Vehicle Factory blew up just when I looked at my base.
I panicked. I spammed 'MAIN BASE!", "SAVE MAIN" and "KILLSPAWN TO MAIN" (killspawn refers to the act of typing /kill in console to suicide and respawning somewhere else) but it was too late. So I told the team to forget it and drove out before they could wall me in or sticky stun me.
Luckily I escaped amidst the capslocked screams of my team telling me to get out of there. I went north and rebuilt a main base on the plateau. There, I watched as my team suppressed the enemy in their own base while a few other tanks attacked my old main, where the enemy had fortified their position with a new base.
When the heavies got out, we razed our old main and retook the dam, leaving the opposing team with nothing but their main base. At that point, we were running out of tickets, which are used whenever a player respawns. They told me to get Biological Weapons because it helps with the situation. The "situation" refers to the enemy having no ticket left and 11 tickets on our side.
For a team of 16, 11 tickets is NOT a lot. We had started with 200. =(
So I cancelled the current research and went for the Biology section. Biological weapons do average damage when they hit and additional damage over time. Infantries die from this unless they receive medical attention. Tanks too, but at a much slower rate. This means either they focus even more on repairs or they die more quickly. The logic is that without tickets, each engineer who dies cannot respawn, hence becoming even more effective overall.
The research was wasted though, because we destroyed their base before I could finish the research. The enemy CV saw its doom when we took down the VF and tried to run, as any comm would do. Running never turns the game around, but it is fun for the comm and for everyone else to watch. It is basically a live car chase with TANKS.
This comm wasn't a good driver and drove into a dead end. In seconds, my tanks surrounded it on all sides and gangraped it to death. I think there were at least 6 tanks in the writhing mass of steel, some of which were heavies.
We had 0 tickets left.
Just finished Ghostbusters. I've said it before and I'll say it again - it really is an interactive movie. There's a cutscene for every 10-15 mins of gameplay, so it's not easy to get bored. The graphics and voice acting are pretty good, except for the Ghostbusters' secretary in her final appearance, where she did not sound panicky or anything during the cutscene.
Near the end of the game, there are also several puzzles that are more like the BS you get in point-and-click adventure games. Normal puzzles have rules and clues. BS is just BS because all you're given is the objective. You'll have to find out on your own which parts of the environment you can interact with and which objects are useful at all.
There is also some eerie stuff at the end where I had to explore on my own without the rest of the Ghostbusters. It's like one of those Ghost Train rides in typical amusement parks, except you can move at your own pace. There are a few of such solo trips near the end of the game.
Because these trips are totally harmless, the replayability value of this game is very low. Part of the fear that the atmosphere creates is that I may die and no one would be there to rescue me. During the first run, I wouldn't know that I can't be killed during the solo journey, so it keeps me on my toes and make me go cautiously and slowly. If I play this again, I'll know that there is nothing to harm me so I'd just run through it. I'm not saying there are no ghosts/monsters though.
The game is rather short too, compared to most of today's RPGs.
There are also quite a number of references to previous Ghostbuster movies, so it is advisable to watch them beforehand or, at least, read Wikipedia's article on the Ghostbusters. In fact much of the game happens in the same places as those in the movies.
Music videos back then were so different.
Weird. 2 famous American celebrities died suddenly this week. First was MJ, now it's Billy Mays. Billy Mays was a TV salesman who was amazingly good at what he did. If you watch his informercials on Youtube you'll definitely get hooked and want to buy the products. Just like MJ, no one really knows why he died.
One of my worst nightmares have come to pass. NO INTERNET!!!
Here's the story:
I've been getting a weak signal from my router, so I was looking for ways to improve that. One way was to move the modem and router to a closer location, but I couldn't do it till everyone else is asleep.
At around 3.30am just now, I tried to move my modem by unplugging it from the splitter (which splits the connection from the cable point to both my TV and modem) and bringing it to somewhere else, only to discover that the cable point over there is an outdated one from ages past.
So I brought it back and screw the cable back in exactly the way it was. Only there was one problem: NO CONNECTION!
For unknown reasons, though everything was exactly the way it was before I did anything, the modem was unable to connect to the Internet. I googled for every possible phrase and name related to this and tried everything I found, to no avail.
An hour later, I had to resort to calling tech support over at Starhub. Fortunately it's on 24/7 to cater to Singaporeans overseas (I think).
The guy at Starhub was asleep, as expected. He sounded quite awake at first but eventually his speech changed into something quite close to mumbling.
Given his mental state he was still very polite, I'll give him that, but totally useless. Everything he could read out from his manual, I've already tried. Several times. Everything. Hell, I've even tried something he didn't ask, which was to switch the ends of that cable (because both ends are the same). Also done about 4 times.
In the end, he suggested the final resort - house call. He would send someone over to my place to check on the modem to find out what was wrong. First thing I asked at that point was the service charge for that. According to the Starhub website, there was a $50+ fee for something related to such a service but I couldn't quite recall the conditions.
He told me there would be no fee if the problem isn't related to the network or computer. I'm pretty sure my problem cannot be in MY network nor can it be in my computers. You see, I've done all of the following:
1) unplug 1 or both ends of wire and replugging 2) turn off modem and wait for 2-5 minutes before turning on again 3) connect laptop directly to modem via ethernet wire 4) connect modem directly to cable point 5) do 1 and 2 at the same time 6) do 2 and 4 at the same time 7) check the ends of that cable to see if anything was not as it should be 8) unplug both ends of cable and switch the ends for the splitter and modem 9) do 8 and 2 at the same time 10) bash head on wall repeatedly
Okay, I'll admit that I didn't actually complete step 10, but I was pretty close to doing it. That wall was so tempting... so... tempting...
So now I've got an appointment in the evening. The earliest he could find in his file was between 6.30-8.30pm tonight, 12 hours from now. I'm pretty desperate, so I'm not complaining.
At the moment I'm using the portable USB modem with shitty ping that I can't play games on, so I'm handing it to my bro later when he wakes up. It may also help to alleviate his mood problems when he finds out. My mum should be fine without her MMO for a day. It sucks to play games when they're repainting the area near her computer anyway.
EDIT:
It's 6.45am and I've discovered that everything is okay again! What the hell is going on? That modem gave me so much trouble for 3 hours and suddenly the problem just disappeared! My best guess is that it takes a very long time to connect after powering up. At least 10 minutes.
Car companies around the world are doing badly these days. The world's number one automaker, Toyota, is such deep shit that its new boss isn't expected to save the company and make it profitable again within the next 2 years. One clue is that last year's net loss was its first since 1938, the year after Toyota was founded. The strong yen isn't helping either, by making their cars (eg most Lexus are made in Japan) more expensive.
On the other hand, they're actually not that bad. General Motors is both in the red and horribly in debt. Toyota's actually in pretty good shape, relatively speaking.
This month's E&T magazine had a large article on green cars. According to it, many countries are ordering electric cars in bulk. Electric cars may sound green, what with the complete absence of exhaust, but you also have to take into account the source of this electricity. For example, if your source is a petrol-burning power plant, you'd be greener if you'd just use a petrol car. Each time energy is converted, some of it must be lost. From the power plant to your wheels is a much longer chain than from your engine to your wheels, hence it's actually worse.
In Singapore, most of the electricity comes from burning gas which is cleaner than most except wind, solar and nuclear power. It is actually quite environmentally friendly if Singaporeans would drive electric cars, but the car-chargers would need to be built and that would take quite a bit of initiative.
It would not take much because car-charging stations would basically be a power cord with an electric meter and a coin/bill slot. They can be built anywhere near electric cables which are practically everywhere, even if you don't see them.
I believe they should be built in parking lots. Throw in a timer or something and people can just "park n plug". It'd be better than having to drive to a petrol station. All car parks have electric lights, hence the presence of power cables, hence car-chargers can be easily installed. Then every evening when people return home from work, they can just plug in the chargers before leaving the car for the night.
With Singapore being so small, a NiMH battery which can last up to 200km is more than enough. Most people just drive to work and back anyway, so they don't need more than 100km per day. In fact by checking my cab fare receipts I find that the distance between Buona Vista and NTU via PIE is around 15km. A full charge on such a battery can last 6 days for me (to and fro makes 30km per day).
As a last resort, I've switched my mum's mouse with mine and asked her to tell me if the cursor behaves erratically. So far she hasn't given me any negative feedback which is not exactly good news. Or maybe she doesn't notice. I wouldn't have noticed it either if not for the need for perfect mouse control when playing FPS games.
So maybe I should just stick with this arrangement, she use the new mouse while I use the old, which isn't giving me any problem.
The Last Remnant has a big problem with its battle system. For the scale that it has, it is actually very simplified. What it lacks is an AI good enough to read the minds of players.
To explain what I mean, here's an example.
In the early part of the game, I have 3 groups of 3 characters. During battle, I'm offered about 6 possible commands to give to each group. These commands encompass the orders for all the people in the group, eg X-attack Y-attack Z-special move.
80% of the time, there is a command for exactly what I want them to do, but there are turns when I want to do something that is not given, eg resurrect a dead group, or heal and attack. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that dead groups don't benefit from victories. So in a few boss battles when I lost a group or two, I was forced to leave them dead and prevent them from reaping the huge rewards that they should get by beating a boss.
Another situation is when I know the enemy can deal a lot of damage in a single turn and one of my groups is slightly hurt. In this case, I want to heal them preemptively because I'm not sure if it could withstand a large attack without full HP. However, the AI rarely allows healing when it's 80% HP, so it somewhat pisses me off.
House! Its latest season is finally completed, so I'm now watching it 3 times a day. After all that CSI, House is such a fantastic show to watch. In fact I feel like removing all the CSI:NY from my possession because it's gross and not interesting enough to offset the grossness. After House I have another season of Prison Break. =D
My home is being repainted. They began yesterday morning and the plan was to complete the job in 6 days. Yesterday morning was for surveying the whole flat, discussing which paint to use and bringing all the equipment over. The two men then spent the entire afternoon painting the ceiling of my bedroom and the whole of the other bedroom.
They just finished my room today. Now my room is dusty, but before mopping it was sandy. All that dirt was from the repair of the ceiling in my bathroom. There was a crack and part of the paint was drooping down. It seemed to me the paint was ready to drop off, but apparently it was much more serious than that.
The contractor/renovator/whatever (there were only him and his assistant working here) took a look and knew the problem was not just peeling paint. He took a long handle and hit that cracked part hard several times. Paint and concrete fell, revealing a rusty rod inside. I knew they had a mesh of metal rods inside because I saw it during the upgrade of the entire building, but I wasn't supposed to see those after.
It was then that my mum, who was also watching, told us that she had called the HDB and some inspectors did come. I assume it was when I was staying in the hostel because I was completely unaware of this. Anyway they took a look, knocked that part a little and told her it was fine.
If it was really fine, the contractor would have made just a round hole, not make a chunk of concrete fall.
So he fixed that with some paint and plaster, which explains the sand in my room. The bathroom was easy to fix with a broom and lots of running water. Spent half an hour cleaning it so that it would feel perfectly clean when I step inside.
But I can't just use a hose to clean my bedroom, which sucks. Now I'll just let it be a little dusty and wait for the housekeeper to come next week. Good thing I have mats everywhere.
The Last Remnant is frustrating. I'm too used to fixed commands and a lack of randomness in combat in games. In this game, the special attacks are randomly triggered, though some other players have found that they are triggered by certain conditions (but not all the time).
Which pisses me off, because when the battles get tough, I want complete control! I want each unit to do exactly as I think they should do. But yesterday when I was fighting a difficult battle with an opposing army, certain problems arose that made me stop playing the game and considered installing another.
The first was when I had lost 2 of my 4 unions (this is what they call the groups in the game, but it sounds kinda like some sort of marriage to me). I was just waiting to die when suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the (barely alive) unions was offered the option of using a special move.
I used it, not knowing what would happen. It wiped out half the enemy unions and hit the bosses for unknown amounts of damage. IF ONLY I HAD THAT EARLIER, I WOULDN'T HAVE LOST HALF MY ARMY!!! WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT OF THAT MOVE IF IT IS GAME OVER NO MATTER WHAT???
Hence I dislike the randomness. And I still lost that battle.
Second, they should make Standby and Heal Yourselves a standard option in every turn. In another try of the same battle, one of my union had around 5% HP remaining. I was giving 6 possible orders, none of which was for recovering health. IT IS DYING! WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE STILL WANT TO ATTACK WITH MAGIC WHEN IT IS FUCKING DYING???
None of the other unions had the option of healing other unions either. Seriously, wtf?
So I've installed Ghostbusters. It's actually a pretty good game, quite like an interactive comedy. But I miss the classic Ghostbusters theme song. I kept expecting it to play during the game but so far, I haven't heard any trace of it.
A slight problem that required a little getting used to at the start was the slow camera movement. I know it's a third-person shooter, but it feels more like a first-person shooter with you visible in the screen. Hence the movement should be as sensitive as the usual FPS, but it isn't. It's okay because I got used to it after a little playing.
Apparently the old rumours of a possible third Ghostbusters movie was transformed into this game. This is the third movie, albeit an interactive one. Most importantly, all four of the original ghostbusters were involved in voice-acting for their digital counterparts.
The characters are quite livelike, but they still feel unrealistic like NPCs in Fallout 3 and Oblivion. For example, when they follow you, they stare at you. Real people would rather stare at the walls when they follow you into an elevator.
The NPCs are also nothing more than decoys during battles. The most useful thing they can do is help you up when your health bar empties. I've watched the health of monsters when they attack the ghosts and their attack sucks compared to mine. The only reason I help them up during a fight is so that someone will help me up when I go down. If not for that I'd let them stay down when they fall.
One thing about this game that I really like is the lack of choices. Sometimes it's annoying to choose what I think helps me rather than what I would pick if I were him. No Good/Evil morality and such, just watch the cut scenes and catch ghosts.
Basically it's a simple action RPG with lots of cut scenes, a humourous script and excellent graphics.
After moving the computer back into the room, I've placed my desk in a different location. I had removed a certain stack of dusty stuff from my room, hence I was able to place my desk in a less obstructive location. However, my wireless signal became worse.
So now I'm looking for a way to strengthen my router's signal. I have to, because I'm getting a better signal from one of my neighbour's networks! His/Her router is probably right under me, judging from the excellent 70+% signal strength, compared to my router's 60%. Unfortunately the network is secured so I can't just hijack it.
One way I found is to increase the transmit power of the router. It had always been at the default value of 28mW, but the website of the firmware I'm using say that I can push it up to 80+ safely. I've just raised it to 70 and I don't see any difference. Going to set it to 40.
Also from the Status I found that my network actually has very little interference, or noise. In fact it's almost perfectly silent here. The problem lies in the signal from the router, which means it's the distance and the single concrete wall that's giving me the ping problem.
I don't know, but I sometimes get ping spikes. I don't know why this would happen if it isn't caused by noise.
Maybe I should make an antenna, but I'd have to get certain materials from electronics stores. If so I might as well just buy a new antenna.
Or I can move the router.
I've been checking the DD-WRT forums and Wiki for more help. I've been using this firmware in place of the Linksys official stuff because my bro installed this in the router for some reason. I assume it's better in some ways. Now I'm exploring the uses of this software and I found an article on the security of the provided encryption types.
Disabled (no security. Use some other security layer on top, like a VPN)
If your network includes a RADIUS server, you can use the RADIUS versions of the above.
WPA2 Mixed tries to fall back from WPA2 to WPA; similarly AES+TKIP tries to fall back as necessary. These may help support a mixed environment, but your ultimate security will be the lowest level.
WEP is easily cracked. It will stop the most casual roaming users but don't fool yourself into thinking you are secure. You're not.
MAC address filtering can be bypassed by cloning the MAC of an approved device on the network. MAC address filtering is not a substitute for encryption because all data is sent in the clear. Always use encryption when possible.
Oh no! Wait... I have physical access to the router. They can hack into my network, hijack my router and change my password but I, on the other hand, can press the "Off" button.
Of course they can also access my computer if anyone hacks into my router, but the chances of some dude sitting outside my door and hacking my network, out of all the routers in the entire building, is pretty slim.
Why am I still getting a better signal from a neighbour's router?!?!?
A day after MJ's death, 4 out of 10 of the most popular news on Reuters is about this sad event. Despite the fact that children today are now in a safer world, it is undeniable that we've just witnessed the passing of an age and the end of a great man. The last time something like this happened was when Mother Teresa, now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, died 12 years ago. Michael Jackson, King of Pop, Molester of Children, Master of Neverland and Mad Dude Who Hung His Kid Outside His Window has become part of the world's history thus.
The world weeps.
MJ's albums are selling like hot cakes right after his death. Apparently many of his albums are in the top selling charts at Amazon.com.
4chan has also changed the title of its pages for /b/. For now it says "Goodnight Sweet Prince" instead of "/b/" or more recently "tur/b/idity". Usually the phrase "Goodnight Sweet Prince" is used to lie about someone's death. At one time someone used a pic of Eddie Murphy and said "Goodnight sweet prince. Rest in peace, Chris Tucker." Now, this is for real.
My desktop is hawt! This is a double entendre referring to its specs and its heat-production capabilities. Normally if I sleep with the air-conditioner turned on, after I turn it off in the morning I keep both my doors (1 exit and 1 bathroom entrance) and windows shut for as long as it's cooler than the outside.
Now a few hours after I switch off my air-conditioner and after I switch on my desktop, a quarter of the room where the back of the computer is facing becomes warmer than the rest of the room. Except the area near the window because the curtains absorb all the incoming heat from the Sun.
In fact, I can close all my doors until the evening only on rainy days because even on cloudy days, it just isn't cool enough. My room isn't airtight so when the days are warmer, my room heats up faster. Now I can only shut the doors for up to 4 hours after switching off the air-conditioner on a cloudy day.
On sunny days it is much worse. I need a tub (shallowly filled with water to prevent accidents involving water splashes and live electrical circuits) and a small towel to cool myself as I play, even though the windows and doors open to improve ventilation. I can't let the air-conditioner remain on for 24 hours straight because my mum's the boss and I'm not working. Where money is involved, I have little say. Not that I'm complaining because staying in a warm room beats working and gaining financial independence hands down. =D
So right now the best way to cool off for me is to take showers. But that is too much effort for only half an hour of relief, so I'm sticking to towel and tub method. It's just like cleaning myself with the wet towel throughout the day.
I'm also thinking of hanging a small wet towel near the largest ventilator at the back of the computer, but I'll need a small container to keep it wet ( I don't want to wet the towel manually every hour). Which means I need to think up a mechanism that also allows easy change of towel and can be hung easily on the computer (maybe).
I'm not sure about the effectiveness of a wet towel to cool the warm wind blowing out of the desktop and I'm concerned about the possibility of rust on the back of the casing.
Another Fallout 3 video.
I can't believe I fell for this.
An American woman was fined $1.92 million for illegally downloading 24 songs. The hammer of copyright justice strikes again! Downloading $0.99 songs on Kazaa is wrong and she should have known it. Down with vile single-mother-pirates! The word of RIAA is law; resistance is futile! Even mothers struggling alone to feed four children cannot go unpunished.
In this case, they're already showing her mercy by: 1) ignoring the thousand other files that she had downloaded. 2) fining her $80k per song instead of the maximum of $150k.
She could have been fined billions of dollars, enough to allow the RIAA to buy an island or two and form its own sovereign state. Countries have been created with less! But no, they only gave her a slap on the wrist by fining her a mere pittance. What magnanimous people they are! I cannot imagine why anyone would want to oppose them!
All those people who dabble in software piracy needs to learn the consequences of their evil deeds. Downloading files through Kazaa is always wrong and software pirates will end up suffering in the depths of Hell or reincarnate as a bacteria in a dead elephant's yeast infection, depending on their religion. God, Allah, Buddha,Yahweh, the Jade Emperor and the RIAA forbid file-sharing and everyone should heed their words.
I was copying stuff from my old external hard disk to the new when I met yet another problem: "The file "^&(*&%*(*" is too large for the destination file system."
I was like "Wtf I have 800+Gb remaining!"
But after a few more tries having the same response, I had to google for an answer. It turns out my 1TB hard drive was in FAT32 format. Now I've heard of this name before but I've never found out what this and NTFS mean. What I learnt from the googling is that FAT32 has a limit of 4Gb on its files.
So all the files large than 4Gb cannot be copied to a FAT32 hard drive.
Then came the next headache: I'd have to format the hard disk to change it.
NOOOOOOO! I've copied 100Gb of stuff over and deleted some of the successfully copied files from the old hard disk! It would be a long while before I can finish acquiring them all again.
I had to find another way! Scanning through all the various pages relevant to this problem, I eventually found this article in a blog. It shows me how a single command in the Command Prompt (Run as Admin before typing) can convert my external hard disk into NTFS without deleting anything!
Thank you Internet! Thanks Scott!
For the lazy, the command is
convert h: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
where H: is the external drive. Evidence that it works displayed below.
Even after so many years of DOS-less Windows, the Command Prompt is still irreplaceable as a tool for computers. (I don't know about Macs.)
But after half an hour of copying, the status window showing how much time is needed suddenly disappeared. I decided to turn it off to let it rest, but I was unable to "safely remove" it. So I googled and found a blog advising readers to go to Properties and under the Security tab, deny access to everyone but the owner.
I thought this desktop would be the owner, but when I closed the Properties window, I was unable to access the hard disk. So I thought that since I could finally switch it off I'll do so and return after supper to fix it.
But when I switched it on again after an hour, it still didn't allow access. It was bloody scary. I thought I was going to have to format the disk to regain access, but fortunately, the Security tab was not inaccessible, so I just allowed access to "Everyone" again and solved the problem. What a relief!
It is strange how the US is supposed to be suffering from economic woes and still make so much news about space travel. First we have the new Orion replacing the current shuttle. Next they're having probes to survey the lunar terrain. Finally, Richard Branson is making the spaceport a reality in New Mexico.
All those times when my laptop crashed while I was playing Empires, it was because of my antivirus and not RAM/graphics card/whatever. There's this thing called "paged pool memory" and it seems that security and antivirus programmes use a lot of it. When my games need more of it and my NOD32 refuses to share, the games crash.
Found this out because my game just crashed while I was playing. So I googled and eventually found this page. And on another forum some guy explained the page pool memory to the others:
The paged pool is a certain marked section of RAM which can be paged, or moved to virtual memory if necessary. The nonpaged pool, on the other hand, must remain in RAM and cannot be moved to VM. Virtual Memory is basically just hard drive space allocated to emulate RAM. VM accesses are a LOT slower than RAM accesses, so paging is not a desirable thing to do unless necessary. The size of the paged pool is allocated by the kernel at startup of Windows. As far as I can tell, it is determined by looking at the size of physical memory, and virtual memory (which is probably determined by hard drive size).
I'm going to try to increase my paged pool memory from around 250Mb to 400Mb. Hope I'm not making things worse.
Apparently I have an anonymous secret admirer. Somewhere last night someone messaged my handphone with "我爱你", (English translation : I love you). I saw it this morning and was amused by the amount of fail in this SMS. I guess today began with a good (and funny) start.
Obviously it's a message meant for someone else. This means this person must have taken some effort to muster his courage before sending it - and then he sent to the wrong number. It has to be because the other possible scenario is that someone sent this to his girlfriend, in which case he would have sent it to a pre-recorded number that would prevent him from sending it to me.
Two possibilities here. One, he doesn't realise this and is still waiting for a response from... yours truly. (I'm laughing as I type this because I can do that). Or two, he realised this and felt really embarrassed.
This is so useful! I can now trick my mum into believing that I have a girlfriend. LOL! All this lie needs from me after that is for me to go out more often on "dates". Oh wait... too much trouble. Fuck that.
Anyway I have no idea who sent it to me, so I replied with the following:
"Generally speaking, you aren't supposed to send 我爱你 to random phone numbers. Try to use the right number next time. =)"
I'm serious. I just sent the above exact same words. XD
My mouse cursor loves to teleport to a random corner. I've been getting this problem after I installed this corded Logitech Internet Pro Desktop keyboard and mouse set. What I got from my googling is that I need to install the latest driver or use it on a different surface.
Firstly, I cannot install the driver. It is incompatible with my O/S and this product can't be found in Logitech's website for reasons that escape me. Hence it has automatically used some sort of default driver and is able to provide basic functions. The other buttons like Volume +/-, Email and Mute are currently useless without Logitech's driver. I don't mind really, because I don't need them.
Secondly, I've been using my laptop's mouse on the exact same surface for 2 years without this problem. Therefore, it is unlikely that the surface is messing with my new mouse.
So I contacted Logitech's tech support. The guy's first reply was under the assumption that I was using the wireless version, making most of the advice he gave useless. However, one thing that I'm trying now that he mentioned was to plug the mouse in without any adapter, KVM switch and USB hub.
Well I don't know what a KVM switch is, but the mouse does have an extra converter thing at the other end. The mouse cord has a USB plug, but it comes connected to this special device that changes the end to the old mouse plug (the circular one with the tiny pins inside). I'm guessing that this is the KVM switch so I unplugged this and stuck the mouse into a USB port.
Anyway, this should be useful for anyone using an optical mouse:
The surface on which you use the mouse plays an important role in its tracking. The optical sensor must use the pattern on the surface to track the position of the cursor. Therefore, using the mouse on a glass or otherwise see-through surface will inhibit the ability of the sensor to track the cursor. Also, if you are using the mouse on a reflective surface, such as a mirror or shiny metal desk, you may experience tracking problems. In both these situations, try using the mouse on a mouse pad or piece of paper. By using the mouse on a white sheet of paper, you can also conserve battery life. Other surfaces that have been known to cause tracking problems are:
Some wood grains
Grooved surfaces
This is directly copied from the troubleshooting section of Logitech's website.
I just learnt a new Command Prompt function. It's pathping. For example, simply type "pathping google.com" to trace the route to www.google.com from your computer. I've just tried it and was surprised to see that www.google.com is the 16th stop of the electrical signals from my desktop.
I was actually searching for an answer to why my internet connection pauses for about 10s occasionally. It may be because of interference, but I'm not sure. There are two possible solutions: switch the router's channel or switch the mode to B-only or G-only. I have my command prompt opened and ready so that the next time it pauses I'll ping my router.
And just when I finished typing the above paragraph, an alert appeared next to the SAVE NOW button on this page warning me that it was unable to connect to google.com. So I pinged my router repeatedly and sure enough, there were several General Failures and some 300-400ms pings.
My guess is that it was because I had changed my router's mode to Mixed instead of B or G-only when I was encountered problems while setting up my desktop's wireless connection, and maybe there has been a new addition in the vicinity using Channel 1. So I've changed both.
Now, wow! My signal strength since I first turned on the desktop had been 3 out of 4 bars. Now it's staying at 4 bars and the signal percentage, according to the D-Link Connection Manager, has improved from around 50% to 70%.
Now that I'm looking at the Manager's list of routers nearby, I see that two of them are using Channel 11 and the third is using 12. So it wasn't interference from them, but the results clearly show significant improvement after the changes. Weird.
I'm encountering one problem after another. After the internet issue came the sound issue. Halfway through the final episode of Chuck the sound stopped. I unplugged my headset, plugged in again and everyone was fine. So I thought it was nothing.
While I was playing Empires the sound stopped again. I did the same thing and it was solved. But when 5 minutes after I returned to Empires, it stopped again. This time, re-plugging my headphones didn't work.
I tried to update my sound card driver (btw my sound card is built-in that's part of my motherboard) but apparently it's already the latest version. Disabling and re-enabling the headphones didn't help either.
Eventually I unplugged it and plugged the pins (mic and sound) into the socket at the back of the computer. Good thing the cord is long enough. I haven't tested it in Empires since then because it's getting late. Will do it tomorrow.
I readjusted the computer. I had originally placed it on the floor on my right, but I thought it would be really hard for the housekeeper to mop the floor. This is made more dangerous because one of the fans is on the front lower side of the casing. Plus the additional wires are really making a mess on the floor.
So now I have it on the left side of my desk. The wires are all bound with tiny black insulated wires to minimal length to improve wire management, while the power cords are all plugged into this multi-plug on my desk. Now the floor on the left has only a single wire from the power socket to the multi-plug. Very neat.
My room feels so tidy. Now that the path between my bed to the door isn't covered by wires from my laptop and portable hard drive, it feels clean. However, my room does heat up slightly faster now because of my sweet sweet Phenom II X4 955, which is the AMD equivalent of Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9550. The only better options are those in Intel's i7 series. Hence, this is atm the abso-fuckin-lutely best that AMD has to offer.
From what I've read so far, out of the 12 channels available for wireless LAN, only 3 channels can provide optimal bandwidth. These are channels 1, 6 and 11, all 5 channels apart so that their frequency differences are large enough to reduce overlapping while still allowing enough channels to prevent everyone from using the same frequencies.
Apparently, our wireless devices don't only produce signals that are of identical frequencies and often emit signals that have close to but not exactly the right number of Hertz. Hence channels close to each other may overlap, causing interference and noise.
I'm not sure about this but some say that channel 6 is the default for most routers.
Anyway I was reading on this because I had a connection problem again during the afternoon. Strangely, my bro and I were unable to connect to the router at around 1pm even though everything was okay before that. In fact my bro usually starts using his laptop from 7am onwards.
Turning the router and modem off for a minute did not solve the problem, which made me suspect one of them had finally "reached the clearing at the end of its path", quoting from a certain book in my collection.
However, the wired connection between the router to my mum's desktop was not affected, so it ruled out my suspicion. Which was worse, making it seem kinda like the computer version of a typical episode of House, in which the symptoms always contradicted the theories and initial treatment never worked. And it's never lupus. Never.
Anyway, just to rule out all possibilies, I told my bro to change the channel to 9, a random number that just appeared in my mind. It worked! There was only a minor problem - the ping from my desktop to the router was around 100-300ms, ie atrocious. So I changed it to channel 11 later and everything went back to normal.
In the end, I still don't understand why there was a problem with the channel. The D-Link Wireless Manager tells me that my neighbours are all using Channels 11 and 12, so no one should be affecting my network. Unless it's not showing some of my neighbours' routers or certain devices in the area is using the same frequency.
This is actually possible because our microwave ovens use the same frequency range as our routers. But to completely jam my signal? I'm not sure that my oven can do such a thing. No one has even turned it on today! And whatever jammed my signal like that must have been quite powerful.
OMFG YOU REALLY HAVE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!
This made me laugh and say "Wtf?!" at the same time. Don't worry it's Youtube so it's not porn.
When I saw the 3 black guys I was expecting... something else altogether.
I find it ironic that the smokers I know are afraid of removing the filter before smoking. After reading the Dark Tower series I deduced that the filter reduces the impact and flavour of the cigarette smoke, so one day while I was waiting for a friend to finish his cigarette, I suggested that he should remove the filter.
His reply was simple," Siao! You want me to die issit?' ("Siao" here is the Singlish translation of "Are you crazy?" or "You're mad!" and is not the surname.)
I laughed, not because I was trying to make it seem like a joke, but because it was so hilariously contradictory. So he wanted to smoke but didn't want an early death... LOL!
Of course I didn't say that, but I'm sure he appreciated the full meaning behind his actions too. He had to. The idea was so ironic it could rust! Some things are really best left unsaid. I've also suggested the same thing to a few other friends and the responses were all the same.
Here's a mathematical fun fact: Graham's number is one of the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. It is so large than even the form a^b^c^d^..... cannot be used to represent this number in line short enough to be easily read. No, that "^" is "to the power of" and not multiplication.
This number is of such an impressive magnitude it requires a special notation to shorten it to a comprehensible form. Even the order of magnitude, ie 10^x, is so huge I don't think there is a word for it. The final 100 digits of the number are as follows (copypasta from Wiki)
At Sim Lim Square, it seems that buying a camera is very much different from buying a desktop. The main challenge in buying a camera is the haggling. The prices of the cameras in many shops are negotiable. On the other hand, prices for desktops are fixed. The only discounts that can be possible are those you get when you pay by cash because they would round down the prices. What a potential customer really needs to spend his time and efforts on is to find out which shop has most of the components still in stock.
Yesterday I spent half an hour gathering catalogues and comparing prices, only to realize they are all the same. The differences were around a mere dollar, but some components that I was searching for was already missing from those lists at that first stage of my buying process. Half the shops I visited didn't have AMD Phenom II X4 955 and Palit GTX285 1GB on their catalogues at all.
Next I went to Best Price, which was one of the three that had most of what I want. During the discussion with the salesman, I found two reasons that stopped me from buying from them. First, they only perform hardware installation services, ie they do not install the Operating System and device drivers for you. Second, even though I had already circled the closest substitutes for the one or two missing components in their list, it turned out half of all the components I marked there were out of stock, so that what they could give me was a completely different computer from what I'd wanted.
Finally I went to Fuwell, the shop I went to a long time ago to buy my last desktop. It was recommended to me by a friend during NS and it is still the better shop of the two I've visited there.
They had only 1 thing missing in their catalogue - the Corsair 620W PSU. After asking the salesman, several other things were out of stock - Palit GTX285, Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB hard drive, and Microsoft Wired Keyboard and Mouse. For the video card, he recommended the MSI GeForce GTX285 1GB which, he claimed, was the closest substitute. For the hard disk I picked the 500GB version of the original. For the keyboard and mouse he replaced with Logitech Wired Keyboard and Mouse, which costs a dollar less. However, the video card would cost $80 more.
In any case, nothing is perfect. Fuwell has a better selection (and that is actually quite important if you had gone there with a list of components in mind), but their prices are slightly higher. The differences are really not huge; for example I noticed that my RAM was priced at $50 for 2GB when other shops were selling it at $49. Not big, but noticeable.
The third shop I didn't visit. Video-Pro had everything I wanted in the list, but my random walk took me to Best Price first and then to Fuwell. Somehow I just didn't see Video Pro after my first tour.
Anyway, it is also possible that some shops may be lying about certain item being out of stock in order to force customers to get more expensive components. No one wants to buy a worse computer than what they have in mind. I downgraded my hard drive from 640GB to 500GB instead of picking 750GB only because I thought 640Gb was already slightly overkill.
Haha! I just got an email from Runes of Magic saying I can get free a total of 40 Diamonds, 20 for every server on which I have a lv10+ character. I'm a little tempted now, but... THE LAST REMNANT! I CAN PLAY THE LAST REMNANT NAO! MUAHAHAHAHA!
But first, I gotta transfer bookmarks and passwords to my new computer...
Hey... I didn't know desktops these days come with Power Options. Interesting. Another new addition to my QuickLaunch.
Ooo... I'm SO going to play Mass Effect again on this computer. With everything on the highest settings this time, except the Volume.
I'm crying. The sheer magnificence of The Last Remnant with all Video options on High at a resolution of 1680X1050 (full screen) is making weep tears of joy. After all these years playing the best games on the shittiest possible options and dealing with crashes despite the preemptive actions, this... blew my mind!
Tonight, I will try the same with Empires. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Btw, I'm typing this only because I copying stuff from my laptop.
Now I have the Western Digital 3.5" 1TB external hard disk. Physical size is not a problem for me, so I bought it together with my computer yesterday. And also a 2.5" 320Gb external hard drive for my bro's friend. I thought smaller device wasn't worth the price because for the price difference between these 2 was only $50. The 320Gb cost $129 while mine cost $179 and has three times the capacity of the former. Of course, it was also more than three times as big. Not exactly very portable, but neither is it an issue.
Chuck was a pretty good show. I just finished the second season and it ended in a way that was reminiscent of the Matrix. Oh I can't go any further or I'll spoil the show for you.
Anyway, for those who haven't heard of Chuck, it's a TV series that revolves around this guy named Chuck Bartowski. He worked at a fictional electronics store, Buy More, where he was a computer technician. From what I gathered (I didn't watch the first season), he opened an email from an old acquaintance which contained a top secret CIA thing, the Intersect, containing images that uploaded a whole CIA encyclopedia (or something like that) subliminally into his brain. Hence he became a human Intersect.
From then on, whenever he saw a keyword, symbol or face he would "flash" and remember the relevant information about the trigger. The CIA found out about this and sent two agents to provide round-the-clock protection while they searched for a way to both help him and fight a secret organization known as Fulcrum.
What is impossible? Impossible is a symptom of a narrow mind. The more one thinks is impossible, the narrower the mind. Undeniably, life is much simpler when the mind is narrow - when you give yourself fewer choices in life, complexity can only be reduced. But to hold something as impossible is merely to deny that it can be true; it does not imply in any way that it really is false.
Hence, what is impossible?
Hence, what does it mean to "know", if not to believe with much confidence and faith?
Water is going to be an expensive commodity in the future. In a time not too far in human history, such an idea could only appear in fiction, along with other similarly impossible ideas such as human flight. Water falls from the sky! How expensive can it get? Ridiculous!
70% of the water we use is for agriculture, 20% for industrial purposes, leaving the rest of us 10% to drink, wash stuff and rinse your pee away from your hands. For all the water you use at home, you are really using 10 times as much. Your water bills are peanuts compared to the whole world's.
What do humans really need to survive? The big threes come to mind - 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water or 3 weeks without food will lead to death. In addition, less water means less food.
Already, beverage companies are trying to find out more information about their water usage and supplies. SabMiller found through its research that the growing of barley and etc requires 34 times more water than they use to make the beer from these ingredients.
Such studies are necessary because those who don't do anything about it gets severely punished. Coca-Cola was forced to close its plant in Kerala, India, after a drought because it was accused to using up too much of the remaining water. Even now, there are groups that try to stop Coke from being sold in Indian villages.
Water is precious, now more than ever. Therefore, not bathing for long periods of time is now an environmentally-friendly and economic decision.
Found this video on how to build a D.I.Y. desktop while looking through Hardwarezone.
Basically Vijay, the editor of Hardwarezone, built a computer in front of the camera while giving a verbal step-by-step guide for the whole process. It actually doesn't seem very hard, but looks can be deceptive.
Thermal pastes aren't expensive, so it can be cheaper to build the desktop even if you have to buy a new tube of paste that you won't be using for the next two years.
I'm actually tempted to build it myself now, but the risks aren't worth the price difference.
It's now 10pm on the 18th of June 2009, also a Thursday. I've just finished most of the setting up of my new desktop and have nothing to do while updating stuff. Lots of things need updates these days and the cumulative waiting time for all the programmes for all their updates is really annoying.
The title of this rant refers to what my nose detected as I first turned on my computer. It is the electronic smell of new computers which will fade eventually, and my whole room is filled with it.
Fixing the cables, making them go through that hole in my desk made specially for such occasions and installing all my utility programmes took a few hours. The first to be installed, of course, was the anti-virus. You can't be too careful when it comes to computers.
Then came a slew of other stuff like utorrent, Gigaget, Winrar and TuneUp Utilities. Now it's Daemon Tools and I'll start doing other stuff like transferring data from my laptop. And I'm downloading Half Life 2 here too. It's going to take a long while, what with the Windows updates and etc.
In the meantime, I'm queuing up Empires, Half Life 1 and Natural Selection for download.
And it makes sense that it would crash. My router just went on strike. I had to go out and let it rest for a minute before turning it on again. Now I've set a speed limit for my Gigaget to 200kb/s. It was going at around 600kb/s together with Windows Update and Half Life 2 downloading in Steam. And me surfing the net, searching for more things to download.
Aw, Windows Update is prompting me to restart the computer. I'll let it remain there just so that it won't force a restart in 10s.
Time for bed. Carrying the whole desktop set is hard work.
Lead is used in many plastic products to increase durability. However, many children's toys contain dangerous amounts of lead, especially those made in China. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently, it is not safe for children under 6 to use many Chinese plastic products, even backpacks and lunch boxes. At least, some people see it that way.
So the next time you pack lunch for children, you may want to wrap it in foil wrap before you put it in an imported plastic container.
Paint, too, may contain lead. In addition to increasing durability, lead helps the paint dry faster and acts as a pigment for it. There are laws in the EU and the US that ban paints containing this additive, but the PRC might be a different story. Even if there are similar laws there, chances are they use the cheaper lead illegally in order to maximise profits. I mean, since they dare to mix industrial alcohol, water and grape juice then sell it as wine, then using lead illegally isn't exactly unimaginable.
And yes I know I was wrong.
I think I just received my last straw. My computer crashed while I was playing Empires. It wasn't burning my palms when it stopped working because I had my air conditioner turned on and it was 3am.
It was the sort of crash that repeats the last bit of sound continuously and pressing the usual combinations of keys produce no response whatsoever. The only thing I could do was to hold my power button for 10s to force a shutdown.
This is it. My laptop is asking me to get a new computer. I wasn't planning to buy it tomorrow because I'm not sleeping well and I may make a bad decision, if I need to make any last minute ones tomorrow.
And too bad for the engineer I was covering who was building a refinery; I was firing at an enemy when I crashed.
A new element is about to enter the periodic table. Anyone who has memorised the periodic table will have a new symbol to remember. Good thing mechanical engineers have no need for the whole table. All we need is to learn the different ingredients in the different types of steel and aluminum alloys.
The next book of A Song of Ice and Fire still isn't out yet. What is taking George so long?? Is he really going to do the same as Robert Jordan and die before finishing the finale of the series???
Just tried to toast bacon on bread. What I mean is I put a slice of bacon on a slice of bread and baked it in the oven. Unfortunately that bacon was raw and I couldn't cook it thoroughly before the bread got burnt. I had the take it out when the uncovered parts of the bread began to brown. The bacon was mostly cooked but not completely. There were still some tough bits that needed chewing. So here I am typing this with a mild stomachache which I hope won't get any worse.
Sudanese tribesmen attacked a convoy bringing food aids. I'm pretty sure I'm speaking not just for myself when I say, " I TOLD YOU SO!" So now the innocent are suffering. If they had stopped giving them free food, there would have been fewer innocents left alive to suffer now! But no, the WFP has to keep feeding them and help spawn more brainless brutes hellbent on making killing each other.
Great! So now, not only did the world lose at least 40 good people, but also the 735 tonnes of precious food that could have been put to better use in my mouth. What a waste! Given that any food that doesn't go into my digestive system should be considered as a waste, to dump it into the river is even worse! It's like using wine to rinse my dishes! Think of all the sweat and effort that went into growing and harvesting all the crops!
So I say this again: stop feeding them! This way, sooner or later the real warmongers among them are going to run out of minions to fight with.
FFS this is an oil-producing country we're looking at here! It's disgusting to see that they don't seem to understand how they can make use of what nature has provided them with!
With so much natural resources that many African countries have, if they would only learn to use all that wisely they can easily become part of the First World. Maybe they will, 100 years into the future, after China gets its second Golden Age. Maybe 150 years from now they will talk about an African nation the same way we speak of China today.
Eureka Seven has a new movie that was released in Japan back in April. At first I was excited. Then I saw a review an employee of Bandai who watched the sample DVD posted in a forum. After that, I lost interest completely.
The movie was basically an unrelated movie using the characters and names from the Eureka Seven series. Which sucks. Maybe I'll download it someday, but it's more likely that I'll just forget about it.
I don't know if it's just me, but why is it that the last two printers that my family bought didn't come with freaking power cords??? One was bought in Sim Lim Square, the other was bought at the PC Show 2009. Neither had a power cord. According to the manual that came with the printer from the PC Show, it was supposed to include a telephone cord too. Which is also missing.
It's bloody irritating because I feel too lazy to go to out just to buy a lousy wire. Maybe I'll buy it together with my computer...
My next computer better come with a power cord!
Just tried playing as commander in Empires. Usually I wouldn't do that but there weren't many players on at that time (around 25 only). Larger number of players = more action everywhere = very hard to manage everything. Smaller teams of 10-15 are much easier to manage because the flow of the game is much slower.
In the game before each round starts, the server is given 60-180 seconds to vote for a commander and prepare for the game (join squads, pick class, etc). Each player is allowed to "opt in" to the list of commander candidates during this period of time.
Whenever I consider trying to comm, I always make sure the list is filled with either newbies (ie names I really don't recognize) or nobody. Usually nobody. Then when I sit in the commander vehicle when the round begins, I always announce that I'm noob and ask if anyone wants to comm. Really, I don't mind if someone wants to take my seat. It's important that I learn to comm, true, but I also understand that some people may be having a bad day and need to win to lighten up their mood, and having an experienced comm really helps.
I've commed 5 times so far, all in small games. My record so far is 3:2, no stalemates. In 2 of the 3 wins, my team won because they were really helpful in telling me what to do, eg what needs to be researched and when and where to place certain structures.
In the other 1 round, my team won because a few guys in my team were just plain 1337. In that particular game there were one flag for each faction. Capturing and holding that flag for around 3mins would give victory to the campers.
When I joined, I really didn't feel like shooting and joined the Spectators to watch the game while listening to the other guys discussing the upcoming major patch for the game. After a few minutes one of the comms announced that the CV was bugged because he couldn't access the commander's interface (ie bird's eye view of the game). After a minute of repeating that, either no one tried to help or everyone was encountering the same problem.
Either way, I ended up deciding to try to help him. I spawned, got in (the comm readily gave up his seat when he saw me) and voila! I saw no problem and he told me to continue to be the comm because no one else could do it.
I really couldn't do anything because the team didn't do anything to gain resource nodes (previous commander didn't build resource nodes to gain $$). When I was in Specs, I'd seen that the other team already had the whole map except for this team's main base (where my flag was), so I expected a loss. We would try, but I did not expect triumph, just a good fight.
Half a minute after looking around, an enemy light tank invaded my base. I was totally helpless because I didn't have any resource aka $$. Fortunately some guy managed to sticky the tank and bought us some time.
Another half a minute after, I managed to save enough $$ for a Vehicle Factory. Seeing that my opponents are driving tanks, I thought that this may be the only way to give us a slim chance of victory. I didn't even bother to build the structure necessary for research, ie Radar, and just let my team build the weakest tank of my faction, the AFV, and jeeps.
Surprisingly enough, despite all the $$ the enemy is earning from all the nodes they control, they didn't sent 10 tanks like I expected them to. In fact, they only sent 2, which were miraculously repelled by my AFVs and grenadiers. All I did was watch and announce which of my structures need urgent repairs.
Soon, they managed to push out a little and helped me secure a resource node. I began to say the necessary "gj team" and stuff to give them some encouragement because I was seeing a real chance of winning there, maybe 10% or 20%. The other 80% of expected failure is there because if the enemy team is saving so much $$, they must be planning something big, like a heavy tank rush. Throughout most of the game, I was telling myself," Anytime now, the tanks are coming."
Anyway after I got the 2nd resource node (the first was provided when the game began), one guy told me to research Heavy Caliber Machine Gun (for tanks). Coincidentally I was already researching the tech which led to it. Actually I was planning to get the Reflective Armour after so that my AFVs would last longer, but if my team wanted it and I'm a noob comm, I thought I should listen to them.
Meanwhile, my team was beginning to buy failjeeps as I had expected. I was expecting a loss, so I didnt stop them. But one guy seemed to drive very well and didn't lose his jeep. In fact he was like a crazed drunk driver, killing people by the dozens with his wheels. Throughout the entire game he needed only 2 jeeps.
A couple minutes of hit-and-runs later, I spotted him driving straight into the enemy's main base. He and his partner alighted quickly and killed the surprised players guarding the flag.
Before I go on, I need to mention that each flag is protected by low defensive walls and thus are very easy to defend.
Those players must have been very surprised because both the guards were killed. Then my two guys stayed there, captured and held the flag. One of them was an Engineer, so he dropped an ammo box to allow them both to camp there indefinitely. Their great accuracy also helped a lot.
By this time, I didn't even bother to research anymore. I'd already given them the Machine Gun and Reflective Armour, which is a pretty good armour. Given the resources that I have, this is the best I can do. All the $$ I earn now is spent by my team on tanks, which have gotten more expensive due to the improvements I researched.
The enemies were pushing into my base with medium tanks that probably have very good armour and weapons. So the best way to win in that situation was to get that flag while my opponents tried to raze my base down. My base became a decoy.
After a minute however, my camping duo was killed, but my team's luck was excellent and two AFVs managed to sneak into the base and to the flag. There they killed the guy before he could capture the flag and took over the camping position.
From then on, I only glanced at my base a few more times, not caring if the enemies took over my base and flag. Both teams need to hold the flag for the same amount of time continuously in order to win, so if my guys could hold on to the enemy's flag, we would win even if the enemies took mine.
For some reason, none in the opposing team had thought of getting a medium tank to save their own flag. If they did, my team would have been screwed. But they didn't and only some of them tried to run to the flag to kill my guys. Obviously they were killed.
Eventually, I almost lost my base but won the game. Without doing much, really. It was all my team's work and skill.
I've also learnt a little from my losses. It was from the other players' rather unflattering comments that I learnt not to build a Vehicle Factory before I get a second refinery (structure I build on resource nodes to get $$). After the third, if possible. Only after the VF should I place a Radar.
As for techs, I still don't know much after Reflective Armour. Small games don't usually last long enough for nukes and heavy tanks. It's also hard to observe the sequence of researches by the commanders when I'm busy killing people.
So for now, I'm still a noob comm, but I'm definitely not atrocious. Even today there are still people who dare to opt in during large games and then sit in the CV and ask everyone ( in allchat, not teamchat!) which key to press to access the commander's interface.
No I already knew which key to press before I first tried to comm because I read a list of "Do's and Don'ts" in the Empires Wiki.
But then again, they're probably already too late because there are free music streaming sites that are legal and surviving on donations and ads. These sites are not available in Singapore though.
When I turn off Smart Image using the monitor's software, this is what I get - normal sharpness but with the words still there.
