Friday 30 October 2009

Rant 456 / WWE, For Kids!

Borderlands multiplayer mode allows 4 players but doesn't restrict all 4 players from using the same characters. I just went through a game with 3 Hunters and it was pretty interesting. Apparently, they don't just snipe - a few of them actually ran ahead and used their swords while some used shotguns.

Unlike other games, Borderlands require the players to forward 4 ports in order to host online games. Quite troublesome but didn't cause further problems for me. Another complaint from me is that the chat messages appear on the right instead of the lower left corner of the screen which is the standard for 99% of the games I play.

Interestingly, it has no copyright protection at the moment. Players using original or pirated copies can all play online using GameSpy, a legit online gaming service.

If you're planning to host, you need to forward several ports beforehand so that other players can join your games. The ports are 7777(UDP and TCP), 29800(TCP), 28910(TCP), 27900(UDP). Your router's port forward menu should look something like this:














So WWE is "toning down" its violence to attract more children. Are they going to give us G-rated wrestling action? I know they said they've been keeping it PG, but that may not be enough. Why not have a WWE Kids, where there is no violence but is still wrestling.

Come to think about it, that would be rather hard to accomplish. Yes, it would be hard to distinguish from gay porn. 2 half-naked men in a ring, no violence. =/

Next thing we're going to see will be the porn industry trying to nurture a new generation of audience with the same method. It will be porn, but without the private parts shown and with the erotic moans muffled. The actors will be so discrete and everything will be so covered-up that you won't be able to tell that it's porn unless they say so.

Porn, for kids!

Reminds me of this video.

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Rant 455 / Ain't No Rest For The Wicked

The Blackadder series is just amazing. No other series can make me literally LOL in every episode. Usually shows like Family Guy would just make me chuckle and smile, but Blackadder can be described as "one in a million". It's just that good.












If you buy coffee from this store, you get free fortune-reading services if you hand them your empty cup with the grounds at the bottom. I think euthanasia clinics can use such incentives too. I can almost see this on an advertisement: "Sign up to be euthanised at one of our clinics and get your fortunes told by certified soothsayers. Accuracy guaranteed or your money back!"












Right now the US economy is only just beginning to recover. Maybe it's a good time to buy their stuff. I mean, it can't possibly drop any more, right?

And RMB too, because they can't keep forcing its value down forever, right? Then again, it might just drop in the future.












I am untrustworthy. I always say yes under pressure, but whether I keep the promise is arbitrary. A math tutor in JC managed to discern this habit of mine and told me to change that, but I never did. It was an issue about homework, because like in most of my secondary school days, I rarely did my math tutorials in JC. Any warning they gave me were ignored that way, including his advise to change my habit of saying yes without meaning it.

I still haven't changed.












The second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is very much better than what I expected. In the first Chronicles, the bitter person is tortured by the beauty of the Land, convinced that it was a dream but so tantalizingly real. It pained him because he thought if he accepted the Land to be real, he would be insane. But it was so much better than living in the real world, where he was a leper and everyone hated him. In the Land, he was a hero and was magically cured of his leprosy. He wielded magic powers and everyone loved him no matter what he did to push them away. How could anyone not want to live in that situation? Hence the torture.

In the second Chronicles, he returned to a very different place. All that was good had turned bad, and the Sun seemed to be the greatest evil of all. It appeared all the beauty of the Land was gone, the people had forgotten their magical lores and the castle where the Lords resided had become the heart of evil.

In addition, a doctor from his world was brought to the Land along with him, which added to the mystery.

Only read half the book, but it's a real page-turner. Haven't had such a good reading experience since the first time I read A Song of Ice and Fire. I stopped only when I noticed that I was so tired I was having difficulty understanding what I was reading.












A 15-year-old girl was gangraped in front of about 20 people who watched and cheered. No one called the police.

The responsibility was diffused? They thought it was a joke? They thought someone had already called? They don't want to be caught snitching by the gang?

If the responsibility was diffused, it means some of them were thinking along the lines of "Who cares?"

If they thought it was a joke, then their jokes are obviously overboard, such that they can no longer tell practical jokes from actual crimes.

If a fire is raging in a building, everyone would call. A girl gets raped, no one calls. And they call Middle Eastern men in rural villages barbaric for not punishing rapists.

If they fear the gang that much, it reflects on the impotency of their law enforcement officers and how little confidence the masses have in them.

The bystanders were aware of the crime but did not report it to the police. Aren't they now accomplices and can be charged as such?

I know this is an extreme, but I also know this is not an isolated case. That this is even possible shows how moral people are. Furthermore, it shows how far people can go just to be "normal". If "normal" means raping a baby everyday, most would do it.

Ask yourself how many things you've been doing that you don't like but make you appear normal. Or rather, what have you done that does not conform with the norm?

No matter what you think you would do in such a situation, the above questions can be a good gauge (in my opinion) of how you would respond. You see, you won't have time to think, so the "you" who makes the decision will be your subconscious, your real self.

For example, if you're drinking at a bar and suddenly two guys start shouting at each other. Then one of them takes out a glass bottle and smashes it into the other's head repeatedly before running out of the bar.

Do you think you're going to be in the right state of mind to weigh the pros and cons of calling for help or stopping the fight? Do you think you'd want to mess with a guy who has that jagged piece of glass in his hand? Most likely, you're just going to stare and only think of "WTF?"

Better still, you may pull out your handphone and start recording. =/












Played a bit of Borderlands, a new game that's similar to Fallout 3 but seems more suited for consoles than the PC. It's a first-person shooter (FPS) set in a wasteland not very different from the Capital Wasteland.

Borderlands is not as serious as Fallout 3 and tries to be much cooler-looking. There is a multiplayer mode similar to L4D in which you join small games of 4 players using 4 different characters: Roland "the Soldier", Mordecai "the Hunter", Lilith "the Siren" and Brick.

So far I've only tried the Soldier, named Roland (default name, but editable). His special ability is the turret he can deploy for a minute or so. This turret comes with a small shield so that it acts as temporary fortification. This character can also heal by shooting allies and is proficient in medium range weapons like rifles and shotguns.

Unlike Fallout 3, this game can feel boring in solo mode. I think the problem lies in the lack of music and radio because Three Dogs and his songs were very entertaining by themselves. Now after playing Borderlands with its slow ambience music, I think listening to GNR is half the fun of playing Fallout 3.

Need to play online.

Compared to Fallout 3, Borderlands is more focused on the FPS side and less on RPG, while Fallout 3 is very much focused on its RPG side and its storyline. Also, side quests in Fallout 3 are usually more developed, eg with a background story. Those in Borderlands can sometimes have no relation to anything - they just tell you to do something and then you get rewarded for that.





And the song...

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Rant 454 / I Feel Like Eating Curry After Typing This Rant But It's Now 10PM.

Even though I set my aircon to 26 degrees and the fan speed at 2 out of 5 bars, my thermometer is reading 23 degrees. I guess it really doesn't matter what temperature I set because it feels no different even when it's set to 17 degrees.










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Spoiler Alert!
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Rama II ended with the doctor, the engineer and the communications officer flying in Rama towards deep space. Garden of Rama picked up from here and got even more interesting. So far this third book is the best of the three that I've finished reading.

Again, half the book was quite different from the other half. The first half described their journey to the Node, a space station where they were told the purpose of their trip - that the aliens were collecting data of all creatures that were capable of space travel. Then they were instructed to return to Earth to bring back 2000 more humans for further observations and tests.

This half was all about new aliens and stuff. At one point the doctor was even allowed to communicate with an aquatic eel-like alien whose civilization had been spacefaring for thousands of years.

The next half of the book was more about how the humans behaved during the journey. Pretty ugly, not very interesting except for the part where it was found that the flying aliens from Rama II was actually in a symbiotic relationship with two other species. They were almost wiped out by a war started by the mob boss (he took control of the colony by killing the original leader) who needed to distract the people from their other problems, but a few eggs were saved and taken elsewhere.

All these time, another species of aliens they called the "octospiders" were watching the carnage. Regular reports were also sent from the ship back to "the collective intelligence" behind the Node.







It is in Rama Revealed that another moral issue is shown. In the octospider society, there are 2 sides - chaos and order. Octospiders who have agreed to take a certain drug to stop sexual maturity live in the peaceful part, where there are strict laws and his/her role in the society is carefully planned out. These octospiders are healthier, safer and have a very long life expectancy.

Those who prefer to have more freedom would have to choose to mature sexually at a certain age and they would live in a separate part of the society where their life expectancy will be very short, but have a more intense life.

In this, it seems they believe that sexuality is the root of all desire. It can appear so at times for us humans too, since many of our problems come from this inborn instinct to find the best possible mating partner.



===================

End of spoiler.

===================




But I don't see how sexuality is the cause of all our problems. If we are completely uninterested in sex, would we stop being greedy, selfish and etc? No, being greedy is necessary to promote competition among humans, thus forcing us to evolve into fitter people. "Survival of the fittest" always applies in life, whether "the fittest" is referring to one or many.

What I think is that the root of all problems is desire. Quite Buddhist, this view. But going further, I think that the mother of all desire is the desire for satisfaction. Or is it happiness? Aristotle claimed that desire for happiness is the mother of all desires, and he's a smart guy. But even Einstein made major mistakes, so he can be wrong about this.

Would you do something that makes you happy, yet unsatisfied?

Would you do something that satisfies you but not make you happy?

How can a person be happy and not satisfied, or vice versa?

An example can be this: if you were expecting to score an A+ but got an A- instead, you may be happy without being satisfied. Maybe this isn't such a good example, since you can also be satisfied without being happy.

I had at first thought of using revenge to illustrate the second case, but seeing someone I dislike fail in what they do can sometimes be one of the greater joys of life.

Hmm...











So it seems curry kills cancer cells. I can already see future cancer treatment including curry baths as part of the procedure. Imagine, soaking in a jacuzzi of therapeutic sterilized chicken curry, with an assortment of chicken wings, drumsticks and potatoes around your butt as you sit in the tub with a plate of Mutton Bryani resting on the side.

Joy.

Just don't fart. You don't want to eat curry that tastes even remotely like shit.

Double entendres are funny.

Thursday 22 October 2009

Rant 453 / Omegabyte

I want a computer that I can wear comfortably, like one of the earpiece-thing called a Personal Assistant in the game Culpa Innata. It's voice-activated and uses a projector to display output.

This really isn't impossible, but it requires more miniaturization than we have today. The computer doesn't need to be in the tiny device, only a modem, a microphone and a projector. Hell, it might as well be a handphone. The real computer will be somewhere else, maybe at home. The device would really be just the input/output device that maintains a direct connection with the master computer all the time in addition to the Internet connection.

I think this is quite similar to what they call cloud computing.

One problem would be the radiation issue. The current mobile modem from Starhub has a warning printed in small fonts in the users' manual that says the user should stay outside a radius of 2cm from it. Maybe the device could be coated with lead on one side of it.












Disciples III! I have practically forgotten about it until now. It's going to be released in Fall 2009, which should be soon.

The Disciples games have always lost to HoMM in terms of complexity and one major shortcoming of this game is that players have to upgrade their units by using them in battle. In the first two games, its battle system is very simple, but units are only available in the lowest rank. As players use them to win battles, they gain experience points and upgrade themselves.

I hated that. It makes it impossible to have secondary armies later in the game because there usually aren't any weak monsters in the map left to kill.

The best thing about the games is that their units look much cooler than those in HoMM. They may look drab at lower levels, but the high levels units reward the player with both their battle capabilities and looks.

Their music is great too, better than those in HoMM, but are usually darker in tone. Most of them sound evil and/or supernatural.













The 3rd battle music is my favourite among the DII soundtracks.

There isn't an impressive trailer for Disciples III, even their E3 trailer is somewhat dull. All the above are from Disciples II.












So it seems by the time I feel so hot that I have to turn open my windows and doors, it's at 31-32 degrees Celsius already. I just took this old pencil-holder someone bought and left next to the TV and placed it next to me out of curiosity, and it has this thermometer on one side of it.

My room is hot.

According to this thermometer, it takes about 5 hours to bring the room temperature from 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, with my desktop switched on for the later 3. This temperature then gradually rises to 31-32 until I open up the windows and doors, then stabilize at 31 for the rest of the day.

This is why I have a fan at full blast almost all the time at about 30cm away from myself, which annoys me sometimes when I handle paper.










They say that admitting your weaknesses is the first step to improving yourself. They say facing the self that you don't like to see is the most difficult stage of the process.

Well, I say they were wrong. I've been saying that I'm lazy for years and I'm still lazy. I'm so lazy, I wake up from my afternoon nap (weekends) so that I'll be punctual for bedtime.

Nah I'm exaggerating slightly here. I wake up for dinner, not bedtime.

Sometimes I am tempted to go on sleeping when I wake up in the evening, but I don't want to end up like before, when I woke up at 12am feeling refreshed then get sleepy in the late morning or early afternoon. I prefer to do that in the holidays instead, when I have the freedom to sleep and wake up at any time I want.












After all the talk about democracy and capitalism, the US is leaning more and more towards communism. If the government has the power to adjust the salary of top executives of a corporation, it is getting close to what is usually defined as nationalised. It is quite possible that someday, this would be cited as why capitalism doesn't work, while there is no real example that proves that communism isn't possible.

It's like how the salaries in China is capped at certain amounts by the government.












Why do you visit blogs? Why do you want to know about things that aren't exactly out of the ordinary? Why would learning what someone ate for lunch yesterday interest you?

Why are you reading this?












There are now videos of people unpacking stuff they received from Lockerz. If this is really a scam, it is amazingly elaborate. I'm more inclined to believe it's real but they have very limited stock for everything.

Lots of members are also unhappy that they didn't get anything from the website because either they were too slow or they were busy during those times. Now some are asking Lockerz to change the system to such that they can all order something, but the stuff will go to the first orders until they're out, then the rest of the orders become backlog.

I can see how they're going to accumulate such a huge backlog that within a month or two people will be ordering stuff they won't see till a work year later. So this suggestion was ignored.












This month's issue of National Geographic was about redwoods. These trees are able to grow to prodigious sizes. In one photo, the climbers seemed like ants compared to the tree they were climbing.

They are so big, their branches can support a whole ecosystem on their own. Because of their width, they accumulate dead leaves and stuff which become dirt and new plants can grow in them. Then insects inhabit these dirt and even tiny aquatic bugs can survive in the pools of water that collect on these branches. Water creatures in the sky!

And did I mention their branches are large enough for new trees to grow on?












About the Tower of Babel, so the Jewish God got pissed by humanity working together to build a tower so high it touched the heavens. But don't we have quite a few of those now? Many skyscrapers are tall enough to go beyond the lower clouds, and they serve a worse purpose than the Tower of Babel - they are built to make a name for only certain groups of people.

If that isn't enough, we also have rockets, a space station and even plans to send men to the Moon. If the Jews are right and their God is real, he must be having a stroke for the past few decades.












Reinstalled and finished Culpa Innata. I had completed about half the game a long time ago on my laptop, so it took only an hour or so to bring myself back to where I stopped. This time my computer can handle Alt-Tabs without crashing, so I used Firefox to search for hints whenever I got stuck.

This game has a lot of loose ends. The plot is like a Y-shape, and the entire game only covers the two upper strokes without tying both together. So it's like having two separate plots bound only by the fact that the protagonist is involved in them. The next game is about to be released and what information was revealed in past interviews state that all the dots will connect in this sequel.

This is a point-and-click sci-fi adventure game that revolves around the the only playable character, Phoenix Wallis, who is a Peace and Security Officer, ie policewoman in our world. The fictional world is set in the future in which the world's governments have been reformed into 2 groups - the World Union which consists of all of today's developed nations and much of Africa, and the Rogue States. The rest of the world are either WU-controlled or labelled Unexploitable for some reason.

The game is all about Phoenix's investigation into a murder case, in which a WU citizen was murdered in Odessa, Russia, now a Rogue State. As the clues are revealed, another set of curious clues can be found that lead to something quite unrelated. While Phoenix works in official capacity to find out who killed Mr Bogdanov, the player can look out for clues as to why a certain NGO working for world peace seems to be secretly inciting chaos in its kiosks through which citizens donate money to them.

Spoiler Alert!

After finding out that a Russian Mafia family was responsible for the murder, the game ends with the representative of the Gambino family being arrested and Phoenix is sent to Russia to find the hitman. The other plot reveals a possible truth of the society, that she may have found the true masters working behind the scenes.

Though the story is a little unsatisfying (especially the secondary plot since the player is not told what their purpose is and what their role is in the world) and the game started a little slowly, it ended with too many loose ends for players to ignore the next game.












What's up with Starhub tonight? I've been getting really bad pings inconsistently. Definitely not my wireless connection since I've been pinging my router.












Something is wrong with either my tiny thermometer or my air-conditioner. This morning just before I turned it off the thermometer read 20 degrees Celsius. First time I read it so quickly because usually I just assume the room temperature to be what I set in my aircon.













OMG! There's actually an academic institution dedicated to the study of sex. It's "not accredited" though, which probably means its degrees aren't recognized in most places. Then again, how cool it must be get a degree for fuck's sake.

Coursework, depending on the degree, can include hands-on training. ^.^









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Spoiler Alert!

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Rama II is the sequel to the sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama. Just like some reviews said, it is written in a more personal way. The first book was totally about describing how Earth had changed by the year the book was set in, how there were colonies on several planets and moons, and how the cosmonauts (no idea why they used this Russian term instead of the modern American "astronaut") explored the alien spaceship Rama.

Rama II was... disjointed. The first half of the book seemed to focus on a conspiracy to make certain members heroes. An ambitious journalist wanted the greatest story in history written by herself and worked to control the entire project to get the most sensational news.

Then the book focused on one of her victims, the doctor on board who suspected that she had poisoned the commander in charge. The doctor, trapped in a pit in this second Rama, then found sentient lifeforms that weren't organic robots. Though unable to communicate, they seemed to understand her situation and gave her food.

Eventually another member of the ship's crew went against his orders and went out to search for her, only to find themselves unable to return to the human's ship. This is where the interesting part begins.

They found a computer of sorts and because he was a robotics specialist (I think), he was somehow able to decode the alien computer language within days. It turned out one of the things the computer could do was communicate with some sort of factory on board which could create anything, as long as they could inform it about the chemical structure.

With their elementary understanding of the computer and the doctor's expertise, they were able to create disgusting but nutritious food to survive. Eventually they were able to enlist the aid of the aliens (not likely to be the Ramans) and flew back to their own ship.

Nowhere in this part of the book, ever since the two found each other, was the conspiracy ever expanded upon again. It's like it didn't matter even though it didn't seem completed. By the time they returned, everyone had gone and the ship was rendered useless. After that, only three people were on board Rama and the rest of the crew were never mentioned again.

It's like these were written separately. They might as well just cut the first half and paste the second half into the third book. The third book seemed more interesting since it was all about them surviving on Rama, which was flying away from Earth and into deep space. This probably means they will never return home again. Haven't finished it, but it seemed to have more potential than Rama II.


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End of spoiler.

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================

Spoiler Alert Again!

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Also finished the Watchmen comic. It ended slightly different from the movie in that the thing that killed half of New York was not some sort of explosion, but a psychic giant monster that sent huge wave of psychic energy filled with horror when it died after being teleported into New York. According to Ozymandias, all living things die upon being teleported by machines he had developed even though he was trying to recreate this particular power of Dr Manhattan. Also, they explode if they teleport into space that is already occupied.

This was probably removed to reduce the work for the artists and it seemed pointless to create such a huge monster that wouldn't appear for more than a few seconds in the film. The explosion was simpler and the story ended the same way, with Manhattan leaving Earth forever.

It is also until I read the comic that I understood what Manhattan was experiencing. In the movie, his interaction with time was not depicted clearly. It seemed he was able to foresee the future, but that isn't what he was doing.

Dr Manhattan exists in all points in time in his existence simultaneously. He was in five minutes ago, now and five minutes in the future at the same time. He acted like a normal person only because that was what was supposed to happen. He knew what was going to happen not because he saw it, but because he was already living it.

A normal person, given this circumstances, may only be able to mind one part of the time. He may only be able to control himself at a certain point of time, like a person with 1000 computers playing different games simultaneously can only use one computer at a time. But that is how Dr Manhattan was god-like - he could use all the computers at the same time, if time meant anything to him. If time is a continuous slideshow, he was looking at all the slides at once.

The comic was clearer in this way. The movie was misleading.



====================

End of spoiler again.

====================














If you're worried your great-grandchildren are going to run out of names for huge numbers of bytes of computer memory, fear not - we are very well-prepared.


A computer with an Omegabyte of RAM and hard disk space. Ah, dreams.

Monday 19 October 2009

Rant 452 / Eggs


Devilled eggs, a dish anyone can make. Just boil eggs, cut into halves, squeeze yolks into a zip-lock bag, mash yolks with mayo and mustard, cut hole in bag, squeeze contents back into egg whites.

In this photo, I added 1 heaped tablespoon of mayo and 1 teaspoon of mustard and a few drops of Tabasco sauce with 3 yolks. Can't taste the Tabasco, mustard flavour rather mild, need more of both next time, and less mayo.

For the inexperienced, here's how to make hard-boiled eggs:

Add eggs into pot, fill pot with water till they're covered, heat to boil, turn off heat and leave for 15mins. Guaranteed hard-boiled without bursting, which happens if you add eggs directly into boiling water.

The only difficult part was peeling the egg without breaking the egg white because you need to keep the semi-spherical hole unbroken to be able to fill it with the processed yolk, and the white near the yolk is usually much thinner than the rest.

Also, recommended additions include pepper flakes and chopped onions. I was too lazy to chop onions.











I wonder what will happen after I'm gone. Will I be remembered? Or will I be just like one of the innumerable nameless farmers in the Ming Dynasty - gone and forgotten?

I don't expect to have any children, though it still wouldn't do any good if all I want is to have someone to remember me. Just look at, say, the innumerable nameless farmers in the Ming Dynasty... again. I bet all of them have huge families with 9-20 children per set of parents, yet they are now among the billions of bits we have only a common noun for - dust.

Logically speaking, I will be forgotten unless I accomplish something great. Even then, I still run the risk of having memories of me blurred into unbelievable tales. Take Xuanzang for example. He risked his life for years and travelled by foot to India to bring genuine Buddhist scriptures back to China, but now most people remember him as the guy who fought demons with the Monkey God.

An even closer example can be your own family. Some of us may still know the names of our grandparents, but definitely not our great-grandparents! How many years ago were they born?

One of my great-grandfathers was a minor official in the Qing government who escaped to the countryside when news spread of a major revolution happening. The Qing Dynasty ended in 1912. From this it can be deduced that he was born somewhere around the 1880s, with an error of plus/minus a decade. That would be a mere 130 years ago - less than 1.5 centuries. Therefore I can conclude to some degree of certainty that I will be almost completely forgotten within 150 years of my birth.

That's only 120+ years away.

Or if we're counting from death, he died when the Japanese lost the war. Drunk Japanese soldiers used him as a punching bag when they learnt of their Emperor's decision to surrender. That must have been pretty sad, you know, like, just when they thought they had survived. The Japanese surrendered in 1945, 64 years ago.

The thing about human nature is that everyone wants to be remembered after the end. That's why we strive to create a legacy for ourselves, something that will stand after we're gone. Hence the scientists who name stuff after themselves, which makes remembering theories and equations annoyingly confusing.

Perhaps this blog will be my legacy. After all, this is just about the only thing I can do that can possibly last centuries that a great career or a dozen children won't achieve. That is, unless I build a giant commercial empire or my fertility breaks the current world record of 888 kids to a single father. I dread the thought of having to have sex with an average of 1.2 women every night for 60 years. Monetary costs and physical exertion are just two of the many reasons why this is not a good thing.

Maybe my bro's descendants would read this and know what it was like to live during the transition period at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Wonder what they would think of it. And if they read this particular rant, maybe they would understand better the effects of WWII, not to mention how "great" a cook I am.

I'm curious about what it will be like to live at the end of the 21st century compared to the end of the 20th. Will the clothes be even skimpier than those of today? I can hardly imagine how that can be achieved, other than by walking around in your birthday suits. Maybe nipple stickers will be the normal top. "Wow! Look at those glossy nipple stickers! Going clubbing later?"

Just like there is a huge difference between photos of the past and the videos of today, how will people remember each other in the near future? My bet is on 3D videos, possibly played in a holographic form. Cameras will be categorised in Gigapixels or even Terapixels. How close am I going to be to the truth? I can't be too far from it. Look at it this way: when your parents were young, they wouldn't have believed that an object the size of roughly three fingers that is able to record thousands of songs can exist, not at affordable prices anyway.

I wish my ancestors wrote diaries. Even one would be a huge treasure trove of first-hand accounts about seemingly mundane stuff of those times. I wonder what my grandfathers thought about my grandmothers before and after they met. I mean, they were having arranged marriages in those days, so all they could have known about each other was from the matchmakers and maybe a photo or two.

It is entirely possible that when they first saw each other they had thought, "Oh shit! I got scammed! That pic must have been photoshopped!" Other than the Photoshop bit, it might really have happened, but now I'll never know. Only my maternal grandmother is still alive today, and I haven't spoken to/met her in years. Maternal grandfather died of pneumonia before I was born. Paternal grandfather, leukemia when I was young (pri school age, I believe). Paternal grandmother, some years ago, years after my father's passing, unknown causes, don't know, don't care.

If I had a diary belonging to one of my ancestors, I'd probably translate and record the interesting bits in my computer. First-hand information is always the best, just because it came directly from a person who had personally experienced what was described. At the very least, it beats any sort of record written in third person.

There are so many interesting stories about the pre-war and post-war days. I've only heard a few, so I'm sure there must be many more. In one (very short) story, there was this porridge shop near where my maternal grandfather used to live. For some reason, this shop never stopped selling pork porridge even during the war (WWII). Another strange thing was how starving orphans who slept at the door (very likely because of the aroma) sometimes seemed to disappear overnight.

My grandfather frequented this shop for their pork porridge, probably because it was one of the few that still offered it in those times. He never thought it tasted unusual. This may be nothing but a rumour, or he may have been eating long pork instead of real pork all along. Who knows?

This story wouldn't have been interesting if not for the fact that my granddad used to visit it often.

I guess I'm a sentimental person.













How will the videos on Youtube end? They cannot possibly store all the videos forever, can they? Will my blog someday have patches of bad links because the videos were taken down? What about my pics? Will Google hold my pics for centuries? My blog too? Or will I have to resort to spamming Ctrl-S for an entire day to archive this?












Right now, "RIP Kanye West" is the top trending topic on Twitter. I found out about it on 4chan where they were spamming threads telling everyone to log on to Twitter and say that phrase. 4chan is making itself more infamous. I bet moot must be happy about the rising ad revenue.














Reading the Watchmen comic. The fans were right, the movie was very very similar to the comic. Even the more memorable phrases were quoted word for word from the original book. There are some differences but only minor ones, nothing that makes the plot any different.

The comic may be less dramatic due to its format (moving pictures are always superior to stills), but it is much more detailed, even containing excerpts from fictional books like the memoirs of the first Night Owl.












My router is acting up again. Now it's giving everyone bad signals (3-4 bars out of 5 usually, 2 for most of today) for some reason. I get really bad pings and even time out from my connections. I just hope it's not dying, though I can't think of a more likely reason for the symptoms.











The US economy is pretty bad. China isn't very happy about it. Why? Because as the USD is dropping, their consumers have increasing difficulty in buying Chinese products. Indeed, the RMB has risen against the USD so much that China is effectively pegging it to roughly 6.8RMB to a dollar by maintaining its value near that number, ie forcing it to stay low. According to the IMF, the actual rate should have been 3.798RMB per USD in 2008. That means the Chinese basically halved the value of their own currency.

On the other hand, certain experts are mentioning the possibility of an economic bubble forming right now in China.

Who's going to be the winner?

Sunday 18 October 2009

Rant 451 / USD Drops. HKD drops. SGD isn't dropping. Time To Visit HK Again!

Horror point-and-click games. Here's a trilogy that's pretty scary, if you turn off your lights, raise the volume, switch to full screen mode and play alone at night.

Exmortis

Exmortis 2

Exmortis 3

This series relies on somewhat bloody body parts, lots of blood and a very dark atmosphere to create fear in the player. The actual scary stuff isn't actually scary, most likely due to the poor Flash effects used. Well, at least for the first game. Personally I find the ambient sounds and darkness to be the most effective tool employed by the series creator.

Creepy, shocking. Probably the two words best for describing the first two games.

Unfortunately, the third is a demo, gotta pay for the rest of the game. =(













I wish they would make a MMO version of Fallout 3 soon. With the world being so large in the Fallout universe, the possibilities would be almost limitless. Even with 3 games and 4 expansions in this series, they've only covered less than 10 states of the US.

Right now they're still screwing around with lawsuits instead of working together to make a game before the public forgets about it. All this legal bs began only because the original creators of the game series went ahead to make the game without enough sponsorships, despite agreeing with Bethesda that they would do so, according to the contract in which they also sold most of their rights to the Fallout series to Bethesda.

I'll have to admit that making a MMO version of Fallout 3 would be incredibly ambitious, to say the least. But anything less (ie reverting to the old 2D style) would only cause disappointment among most of the fanbase, who began to love the Fallout world only because of Fallout 3.












I failed again with my jerky. I might have added too much salt and after the beef dried, salt crystals had formed on the surface. Crunchy jerky. =(

Next time, soy sauce instead of salt. And black pepper again. Hard to go wrong with red meat and black pepper.












I was surprised to see I have a single follower on Twitter. I only opened an account because I needed one to get a certain free gift on Runes of Magic. For that particular giveaway event, they were offering a set of special equipment (limited stocks too), one of which could only be received by followers of RoM on Twitter.

I wasn't even sure of my Twitter password. Kinda forgot since I've only logged on once. Good thing I was right after a few guesses.












One thing I've learnt about cooking, after some experimentation, is that just following the recipes' instructions to the word isn't going to make a perfect dish. The thing about cooking is that though cooking can be a science, cooking dishes that actually taste good is an art.

Hence, it is not necessary to do exactly as the recipes say, as long as you know what you're doing.

Experience is very important. The ability to slice meat thinly takes some skill with the knife that only comes with a long time of using this tool. Knowing what to use to marinate your food to create the preferred tastes is another example.

Anyway, I found some interesting simple recipes I can't use.

1 Chuck Roast
1 Large Onion
1/2 Bag of Potatoes
1 Bag of Baby Carrots
1 Can of Beef Broth
1 Can Mushrooms (or Golden mushrooms)

* Cut the carrots in half (or smaller, however you want them) and cut the potatoes in a chunks. Then dice the onion coarsely,
* Make a bed of carrots, potatoes, and onion in baking dish. Season with salt and pepper (other seasonings optional).
* Lay chuck roast on top and season as well.
* Pour mushrooms over roast, followed by 1/2 can to 1 can of beef broth (depending on personal preferences).
* Wrap with aluminum foil and bake for 3 hours at 300 degrees.



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MexiChicken

You will need:
couple pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken (I always use thighs as they are cheap and extremely difficult to dry out)
1/2 to 1 cup jarred, reconnaitred-from-mexican-place, or homemade salsa
taco seasoning (this recipe assumes with salt; if salt-free, apply salt as well)
black pepper
olive oil
Equipment: one ceramic or pyrex baking dish, large enough to hold chicken in a single layer, knife, cutting board

Preheat oven to 400deg F.

Trim chicken of excess fat and skin, leaving the skin on top intact (advanced users may want to score the skin here, too). Rub taco seasoning, pepper, and oil all over chicken and under skin. Grease dish lightly with a few drops of oil, then add salsa, spreading thinly along the bottom. Place chicken skin-side-up on salsa and get it in the oven.

Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, turn heat to 350, and then bake another 20-30 min until chicken is cooked through.

Eat with quinoa or some rice, and some vegetables or a salad. This recipe makes juicy, wonderful chicken because the moisture of the salsa steams the meat and prevents drying while the high heat renders the skin on top and making it nice and crispy.

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Crock-Pot Pulled Pork
1 large cut of pork. Shoulder or butt roasts are best, get one that will fit in your crock pot.
1/2-1 cup dry spice rub. Zillions of recipes, heat levels, etc. Scale amount to size of roast.
1 to 2 bottles of barbecue sauce. I like Cattleman's.
Flavoring Options (note that you can completely ignore these and make with just meat; also, make sure these play well with what you've got going on in the spice rub).
-Tex-Mex: lime juice, tequila, can of jalapenos, sliced garlic.
-Adobo: can of chilis in adobo sauce, sliced, a half cup of strong brewed coffee.
-Southern BBQ: couple shots of bourbon or whiskey, mustard...
Sky is the limit, but don't add vegetables or fresh herbs here, as they will get absolutely mushified in the cooking process.

Directions:
Cut away some fat on the roast; you'll want to leave a little, but most of these cheap cuts have a lot of nasty fat on them. Rub meat with your spice rub, and sear in a pan or under the broiler on all sides. It will smell rank; rendering pork fat is not nice.

Drop in crock pot and add sauces and liquids and whatever else. Cook on low setting for 6-8 hours. Depending on your meat, you may need to go in with salad tongs or something and pull off fat, but I've only rarely had to do this. Add fresh seasonings near the end (cilantro, more lime juice, more liquor, whatever).

Pull out roast, allow to cool slightly, shred with a fork or your fingers. You can add cooking goo (skimmed of fat) to the meat if desired to add flavor and moisture. Eat on storebought or homemade buns with a nice heap of vegetables and salad on the side. You can store the pulled pork in a tupperware or some such in the fridge for a couple days, or you can freeze it. Just scoop out a bit and nuke it as you need it.

You can also braise this in a covered pot in an oven at low heat (300 tops) for a couple hours, if you lack a crockpot. Same method, just put in pot instead.


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Mutton Shank

The key is slow cooking. Crockpot is your friend. Use mutton from an older animal, like 3-6 years.

Marinade for 10 minutes in Worchestershire sauce. Brown the meat in pan thoroughly, deglaze with red wine or wine vinegar, put everything in pot.

Add onions, potatoes, garlic cloves, carrots, whole peppers and some corn.

For sauce, add pinch of thyme, ground pepper, oregano, pinch of cumin, salt in beef stock. Reduce a bit.

Serve with rice.



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This is a Boston Butt (pork shoulder). It is rubbed with a mixture of smoked Spanish paprika, salt, pepper, and green chile sugar (spicy sugar, buy in bulk at Whole Foods).

My alternate rub is 3 tbsp each of paprika, brown sugar, pepper, 2 tbsp salt, 1 tsp cayenne.



Roast at 400 for 30 mins, then reduce oven to 225.

Cook to an interior temp of 190.


Cooking will take 6 hours or so, depending on size of your shoulder. Pull by hand, mix with Carolina BBQ sauce (essentially brown sugar, cider vinegar, red pepper flakes, and ketchup), and eat with slaw.

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So this is how you use a large oven, other than for baking cakes and bread. Baking meat looks so easy. Too bad I don't have such an oven.

Also, this shows a large difference in tastes between the Chinese and Westerners. As you can see, all the meat in the recipes are obviously cooked to the point where we would consider it overcooked because the meat is soft and probably tasteless on its own without gravy/sauce. Kinda like the meat we find in our soup, but slightly better.












Just finished Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. In short it's about the exploration of an alien spacecraft that flew into our Solar System. Oh right, can't forget this...

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SPOILER ALERT! SKIP THIS IF YOU INTEND TO READ THIS BOOK IN THE FUTURE!

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I find this book to be quite interesting, but ended in a somewhat disappointing manner. The astronauts barely mapped the entire interior of the ship when they had to leave. Though they found lifeforms, they seem to be automated organic robots that form part of the crew of the ship.

Never was any of the Ramans, the name the humans gave for the aliens who built the ship they now call Rama, ever seen. It was a lot less than what I expected. At the very least, they could have found some information on what the Ramans were, other than an image of an unnamed lifeform found in an archive.

So after the entire book, the mystery of Rama was still a mystery. What was the ship's purpose? Why? How does the ship work? Where is its destination and origin? When did it start its journey and when will it end? It was like having a very long session of foreplay that never ended in an orgasm or even actual sex. All the readers can learn from this book is that the ship contains a giant habitat for oxygen-using humanoids. That's it.

There are still three other books that follow it but they were written by a duo formed by the original author and an engineer working with space technologies of the 70s. According to most reviews, they were written in a different style, giving me the impression that they were basically written by Gentry Lee instead of Arthur C. Clarke, but in the same universe.

Since the Ramans did everything in threes, which can be deduced from their architectural style, I'm mildly surprised there are four books in the series.






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End of spoiler.

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It seems lots of people are being too paranoid and too naive at the same time. If you've gotten any security software that I didn't recommend (and I only recommend NOD32) and no one else seems to be using it, it may be a scam. That is, unless you're good at this sort of thing.

So be careful out there in the dangerous internet. Contrary to popular belief, much of the internet is really a lawless place.

Friday 16 October 2009

Rant 450 / Foiled... AGAIN!

Alright, my books are here and my beef is sliced and marinating. Now waiting for 7pm for Lockerz. I'm surprised about the thickness of The Prince by Machiavelli. Its half a centimetre thick and costs about S$24. Damn, I expect some real quality from it.

First books I'm reading is the Rama series, which revolves around an empty alien spaceship spotted near Earth. As astronauts explore the gigantic spaceship, well, that's what the story is about. So I gather from the reviews I've read.

By the way these kiwi berries are delicious. They're mini-kiwi fruits that have recently appeared in a fruit store in my neighbourhood. Expensive though, S$10 for 3 boxes of 125g each.












Missed the 7pm Lockerz event because of other matters. Arrived almost 3 hours late. Now I've got to wait till 1am for the final announced restock. After that, there will still be more items but they haven't announced when they will put them up.












It's 1.27am and I've got nothing from Lockerz. I did everything right - log in at 12.50, go to the redeem page of the Black iPod Shuffle 4GB even though it was not restocked yet, closed all other programmes that may consume my bandwidth.

But I made a mistake I was not aware of - I should have used IE instead of Firefox. There is something wrong with Firefox and certain applications at Lockerz that causes some things to not appear. If I open the same page on IE, there was no problem.

I had thought it only happens with the PTZ-catching game for newcomers, but I was wrong because it also happens with the page where I think I'm supposed to enter my address. I got to that page TWICE, but got a blank page both times.By the time I used IE, it was 1.12am, 12 minutes past the start. Everything was still displayed as available, but when I tried to redeem all the iPod Shuffles of different colour, all the non-pink headphones and even the Wii (which was supposedly finished within a minute) in separate tabs, every single one was out of stock.

I COULD HAVE GOTTEN THAT IPOD!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! I was so close to getting it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since I'm most likely not going to get anything for the rest of the month, I'll have to go on accumulating PTZ and try again next month.

Yet another great example of how shit happens whether or not you expect it.

Thursday 15 October 2009

Rant 449 / Cranky

When they said that fats would cause decomposition in the jerky faster, I didn't think they meant within 24 hours. I'm not kidding! Tiny white patches appeared on the marbling of two of the pieces yesterday morning, even though they were made only in the evening on the day before. I thought a tiny bit of fat left in the beef would improve the taste, but it looks like I have to find the leanest cuts of beef with absolutely no marbling for my next batch.












The narrator of Fallout 3, the man who says the most memorable quote of the series in all 3 games, "War. War never changes." is the very same guy who plays Hellboy in the Hellboy movies.

I didn't notice that.












My NOD32 told me my Internet Explorer, which I rarely use, had been infiltrated by a trojan. This happened just 5 minutes before Windows Update informed me of an update that fixes certain security issues in IE. So I am updating it while letting the antivirus programme make an in-depth scan on my entire hard disk.

I'm worried.

Okay after update, it's fine. But I'll scan one more time, just in case. It's not disruptive, so I'm fine with it.








The latest estimate puts the time required for the Arctic ice caps to melt completely is 20 years. Within 2 decades, Russia and Northern Europe will have a new sea route to North America in summer. There are 2 major implications:

1) Earth will no longer have a white top when photographed from space.

2) The world's climate system is going to be FUBAR. The world's weather is closely related to currents in our waters. These currents are affected mainly by salinity and temperature. Formation of ice increases salinity and the ice regulates the temperature to what we are used to.

We will definitely adapt to it of course, but not before it costs our economy fortunes to do so.












I am having a difficult time deciding whether to spend my 250 PTZ on Lockerz. I was thinking of saving the PTZ, but I just remembered I can make more after this, especially if I receive a 4GB iPod shuffle which is going at S$118 at the online iPod store (Singapore branch). Just looking at it will give me more motivation to register email accounts during the holidays.

Maybe I should spend all I have.












Saturday is another birthday. It's difficult to decide what to cook. Let's face it, I'm not a good cook. I'll probably make some buttered toast, the sort that's barely browned. And continue to experiment with jerky just because it's easy.












It's 9.21am (9.21pm EDT) and I have not redeemed anything from Lockerz. The 4GB iPod Shuffle was not released, only the 1GB version. I considered getting the Flip Video Ultra HD camcorder, but a quick Googling told me that it recorded Youtube-quality videos.

I checked their FB page and they were saying that some items will not be posted in these 4 time slots, but probably in the unannounced postings later between now and the next restocking event in November.

The flash drives aren't there either, so there's nothing I can do now but wait till the next update at 7pm tonight (7am EDT, 16 Oct).

Anyway, this is the first time I've attended this event and I can tell you that some items like the iPods went out of stock FAST. I clicked on the redemption menu at 9.01am and after a minute of "waiting for Lockerz.com", I got in only to find all iPods gone. It feels as if they have only 1 of each colour in stock, but seeing that their FB page has over 35k fans, there must be like 80k or even 100k people all trying to log in to grab them.

It's basically like a DDOS attack, in which tons of packets of data requesting access are sent to the server simultaneously. Many probably opened several tabs of Lockerz like I did (one to change my address to my real one, another for redemption, another for reading their latest announcements), so it intensifies the traffic problem.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Rant 448 / Tetris!

Alright, I have decided. I will not redeem anything from Lockerz on Friday, but the rest of my family will redeem two flash drives, aka USB Ports.












Mind-control is here. Not the sort that controls your mind, but the other type that allows your mind to control stuff. Mattel's latest toy called Mindflex allows you to fake telekinesis by processing your brainwaves and moving the toy accordingly.

Another such toy is the Star Wars Force Trainer. It's simpler but comes with a big name.

Already, Toyota has created a working version of a thought-control wheelchair suitable for people who have lost control of their body from the neck down. A company called Emotiv has been selling since last year the SDK headset which translates your thoughts into computer input. Didn't I mention this before? Playing games with your mind? Well, this is much less than what I had in mind, but it's a start.

Handphones are going to be a thing of the past soon. Combine this thought-control input with a holographic interface and what do you get? I think very soon, instead of taking out a mobile phone we'll be thinking "On!" and a 3D hologram will appear on your glasses that displays a simple menu which includes stuff like emails, text messages and phone numbers (if they still call it that). Then a user would think of a number which would activate a certain option set to that number, and think "Up!" or "Down!" to scroll through the sub-menu.

All that would be in your spectacles, earrings or bracelet. Speaking of bracelet, maybe the menu could be projected on the forearm, especially for people who don't wear glasses.

Sci-fi is looking less sci-fi as time passes. My ideas are looking less outlandish at the same rate too. Someone should look into making a thought-controlled mobile phone. Maybe someone is already doing that right now!












http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/10/13/did-god-stop-cern-from-discovering-the-god-particle/

They say God is stopping the LHC. Fuck you! Why must it always be God? Why can't it be Allah, the Jade Emperor or Ra? For all we know, maybe it's Zeus who's stopping this machine!












An excellent Flash animation. I really like the part where he dodges all the Tetris blocks. Who says stick figures are crap? The video below is of extremely bad quality (out of sync and not smooth). For original quality, watch it on Newgrounds on this page. For the soundtrack, you can listen to it on Youtube or download it here.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Rant 447 / If You Force Sex Upon A Whore, Is It Rape Or Shoplifting?

The Nobel Prize has to be helping Obama just when he needs it. The war in the Middle East isn't doing so well, the economy of his country is still barely recovering (if at all) and he is trying to make a radical change to his country's very old and established healthcare system. With his popularity dipping continuously, the Prize came at a an excellent time.

This would make much sense if the reason behind the prize isn't about his present achievements, but his future ones. Somehow it just looks more like it was awarded for a political reason.












MJ's latest single is in fact not the latest. It was really recorded 18 years ago, probably a rejected song.

This is sad, very sad. MJ's reputation was not good to start with before he passed away, and those guys making money off him just won't let that slide end. They had to dig up some old crap and sell it as a new product. To make matters worse, this ugly fact just went public.

He's dead, let him rest in peace.












I am excited about the restocking of the Lockerz goodies. It will be happening on the 15th this month, restocking several times from 6pm that day to 1pm on the next, in EDT. EDT is 12 hours behind my timezone at GMT+8, so 6pm EDT on the 15th is 6am on the 16th for me.

That means I can begin to redeem at 6am on Friday.

I'm pretty convinced it isn't a scam, since their FB page has over 35,000 fans and there are many people on the web who claim to have received something. Also, SG is one of the countries they have confirmed that they can mail to. =D

Anyway, they have new stuff for the event this month in addition to what they offered last month.

Vespa 7,500
GCH Lockerz VIP Package 5,000
Flat Screen TV 3,000
MacBook Air, 13-inch, Aluminum 2,500
MacBook Pro 13" 1,500
MacBook 13-inch 1,000
Burton Snowboards 850
New iPod Touch 64GB 800
HP Mini 110-1025DX 800
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 inch Computer 750
New iPod Touch 32GB 700
PSP Go 675
Game Systems (Xbox 360 Elite) 675
Game Systems (PS3 Game System Slim 120GB) 625
iPod Touch 32GB 600
Cameras 500
Apple TV 500
Time Capsule 500
Marc Jacobs Handbags 500
“Surprise Cool Gift” 500
Write A "Daily" Question 500 500
Beatles Rockband LTD 450
Apple Active Pack 450
New ipod Nano 16GB 425
Ripsticks 375
Beatles Rockband Value 375
DSI Game System 375
T3 Bespoke Labs Hair Dryer 350
Smart Parts Guns 325 - 450
Sunglasses 335
iHome Docking Station 325
iPod Touch 8GB 325
Portable DVD 300
Farouk Chi Ceramic Flat Flat Irons 300
ipod Nano 8GB 300
Ruffian Scarves 300
iTunes Gift Card- Silhouette 250
X Box Microsoft Gift Cards 250
Wii Fitness with Board 250
Wii Fit 250
Wii - Sports Game Included 250
Razer eXactMat- Duo Precision Gaming Surface 150
Mobile Me 225
PSP Rock Band Bundle 200
Ratchet & Clank Bundle 200
Flip Video 200
iPod 4BG Shuffle 200
iPod Dock + Karaoke System 200
G Shock Watches 200
Amazon Gift Cards 125-500
SkullCandy Headphones 125-175
iPod 1 GB Shuffle 150
Hi-Lo Combination Converter/Transformer Kit 150
Orange Amps 125
Fredrick Fekkai Hair Products 85
Bare Minerals Make Up 85
House of Harlow Jewelry 85
Ruffian Books 85
Nail Polish Sets 75
Alex and Ani Jewelry 75
Gym Class Heroes Lockerz Tickets 75
Baggu Bags 50
Dylan's Candy Assorted Items 50
USB Ports 40
iPhone Skins 35
Lockerz Wall Paper 15

The number on the right is the number of points (PTZ) required. Didn't copy the games.

I can probably scrape up about 250 PTZ by then, so the best thing I can get is... a Wii console. The Wii Fit is a game, while Wii Fitness with Board is the set of equipment you use with Wii Fit. Not sure if I want a Wii though.

I can also get an iPod 4GB Shuffle instead, which is just about as useless to me. Maybe I'll ask my bro and see if he wants anything.

...
...
...

I'll continue to accumulate the points. Too bad they don't offer interest rates for saving PTZ.












I think I've added too much Worcestershire sauce in the jerky marinate. Now the whole flat is filled with its smell while I'm baking it at about 60-70 degrees Celsius. Not that it's unpleasant, but the jerky's future isn't looking too bright.

I'm now considering marinating my next batch in just Tabasco and salt and some soy sauce. It's probably possible if I just use salt, but adding something else would help with the flavour. For now, I'll just wait for the current batch to finish drying in the oven.












Prudential is offering a rather interesting plan, a 5-year single premium as they call it. The name is PRUinvestor Guaranteed Plus, which is thus named because it guarantees a 100% capital return and a compound interest of 2.5% per annum after 5 years.

The minimum is a 5k SGD investment (premium) and, to simplify the interest rates for the less mathematically-inclined (not sure if I'm phrasing this right), for every S$10,000 I invest I get S$11,314 after 5 years.

Not too bad really. In fact it is really good, compared to the fixed deposits at Hong Leong Finance which are currently at 0.8% p.a. (for 3 years only, less time = lower %) for up for S$50,000.

I'm hooked. Got to sign up before the offer ends in 2 weeks' time.












The courier came to deliver my books from OpenTrolley a few hours ago, but my door was closed so I couldn't hear him screaming "POSTMAN!!!" at the gate. My doorbell is broken and my family has never fixed it so that we can ignore salesmen, fake monks and evangelists more conveniently and politely. Anyone who visits us whom we don't mind seeing are usually provided with our phone numbers.

Well, not that I answer my calls, since I leave my handphone in silent mode 24/7 and I can't sense the vibration most of the time, for one reason or another. You wouldn't believe how many missed calls I have in my phone's list, all of which I ignore. I know my action (or the lack of it, rather) is going to harm me someday, but for now I don't care. If it's actually urgent, they would call me repeatedly anyway.

The postman left the Delivery Advice (that's what it says at the top of the card) at my door saying he was here at 4pm. Unfortunately this means I have to rearrange a redelivery after one whole working day. At least this means I will get my books by Saturday, if I contact them tomorrow.











Another potential meme, called the Bachelor Frog. Basically you type above and below the frog's head what a bachelor does. This first pic, I can relate to.


This second pic, I can't relate to but it's too funny not to upload it here.













After 6 hours of drying in the oven, the jerky is finally ready. I was right, I added too much Worcestershire sauce. Partial success is the best I can call it. Next time, I'll just use salt and pepper.

The thinner strips are already brittle but the thicker ones are perfectly dried except for those small bits of fats that are still a little wet. =(

It's actually quite easy, except for the grill that I had to make out of aluminium foil and satay sticks so that I don't have to dirty the metal grill.

Monday 12 October 2009

Rant 446 / 2013


So is this considered landed property? Or would a person living in one consider himself a traveller, since he can just roll his home to wherever he wants?

For anyone living in a hostel/dorm/hall, this really isn't too far from what they're living in. I mean, all they have in their room is nothing but a desk and a bed anyway.

Living in one of these would be pretty exciting on April Fools' Day.

Too bad you can't stack these.












So the world is going to end in 2012 because the ancient Mayans couldn't count beyond the 4-digit number. Apparently Mayan brains just couldn't accept any number from 2013 and larger. "There is no number after 2012, hence all existence will end in the year 2012."

Nah, just kidding.












Brie. Bought a piece of it to try last Friday. I've probably tried it before when it was served in certain buffets I visited, but I never actually experienced it in the right way. I don't know about anyone else, but to me there is eating and there is eating. It's just like the way there are two ways to eat chocolate:

1) Bite, chew. Usually for M&M, Ferrero Rocher and Kit Kat.
2) Bite, leave on tongue, close eyes, gently rub it between your tongue and the top of your mouth, feel it melt. Usually for good chocolate that you like.

Seriously, if you have spent over $10 on a small box of chocolate and you used the first method on the entire box, I'd say you've wasted your money. Skipping all other parts of option 2 is fine, but spreading the melting chocolate all over your tongue is a necessity to fully appreciate chocolate. Eating it that way amplifies all the sensations that the chocolate offers. That is why I dislike chocolate that is very sweet, especially those as sweet as Kit Kat.

Personally I find that in order to really taste something, you also have to be alone in a quiet and comfortable environment. The "alone" part is optional, but it really helps.

Back to the cheese. Expensive stuff, cost me over S$10 and wasn't very big. It's a section of a wheel, as they call the uncut circular piece of cheese, about 7cm radius and at an estimated 30-40 degrees.

But it was worth the money. The cheese, without the rind, taste like something between butter and cheese, or a slightly stronger-tasting butter that doesn't liquefy. It feels like Kraft cheese on my finger when it was cold, but it kind of melts when warmed to room temperature. I learnt that the hard way when I placed the cheese on a paper plate next a ham sandwich.

I had cut out a small portion of the original piece and separated it into 4 pieces, 2 with the mouldy rind and 2 pure brie. The 2 triangles with the white mould, I placed them rind-side down, while the 2 clean pieces also on the plate. The latter were stuck on the plate when they melted and I had to gently scrape them up.

The mouldy parts taste much stronger, which really isn't saying anything since the pure brie was extremely mild. The mould also feels smooth like talcum powder, except it doesn't rub off the cheese.

In short, brie without the rind tastes like paradise, if you like butter and cheese. And next time, I'm going to put them straight into my mouth.

Even though brie is made with a few types of fungus in the Penicillum genus, it doesn't raise your resistance against illness because its not the same species they make Penicillin from.












Do you sit in front of your computer, with your study materials in front of you while you play/do other stuff? I do. I also call that "lying to myself". Fuck me, I'm screwed.

Saturday 10 October 2009

Rant 445 / To Be Ahead, You Have To Look Ahead

The Phantom of the Opera finally has a sequel, but judging by the current trend of quality of sequels these days, I'm not exactly bursting with excitement over this news.











So it's confirmed that they are going to sell the famous Hummer brand to an obscure Chinese company. I think this illustrates the situation of the world economy at present - that the US isn't doing well but the Chinese are.

I just wonder how Tengzhong can maintain and make use of this brand, which is known for its off-road terrain vehicles like the Hum-Vee aka Hummer, especially in the Chinese market where this US-military-related name is probably unheard of.

This is made even harder by the fact that Hummers aren't green at all, and now with this solar power fad going on, well, it's weird that they would want it.












This year's PSLE Maths paper is so hard!

"Jim bought some chocolates and gave half of it to Ken. Ken bought some sweets and gave half of it to Jim. Jim ate 12 sweets and Ken ate 18 chocolates. The ratio of Jim’s sweets to chocolates became 1:7 and the ratio of Ken’s sweets to chocolates became 1:4. How many sweets did Ken buy?"

I think you need partial differential equations and complex numbers to solve this. =P

Reading the news and their complaints made me realise I've lost touch with what used to be considered difficult before. I cannot see what is hard about it. Confusing, perhaps, but nothing difficult. Unless confusing is difficult.












Bought a little beef to make jerky. Looks easy enough, just marinate it in Worcestershire sauce for 24 hours, then bake it in an oven at the lowest setting for another half a day with the oven door slightly ajar and I get jerky.

But it was only after I bought about 300g of beef and returned home that I realized it takes 3 pounds (about 1.5kg) of beef to make 16-18 ounces (less than 500g) of jerky.

Oh well, I'm only trying it for the first time.

Also, going to try to bake bread soon. Eating that white crap they call bread kind of ruins the experience. Don't get me wrong, I like bread. It's just that the economy isn't doing well so my family now buys the First Choice brand. To put it simply, it's as tasteless as it is cheap. So bad, it must not be eaten by itself unless you're starving and lost your sense of taste. Hell, even plain flour has a stronger flavour. I'm sure I can make plain bread that taste better than their bread-like product.

That is, as long as my oven doesn't stop working like it did yesterday.

The oven stops heating when it reaches the pre-set temperature, but my oven didn't heat up again after it cooled down. I was trying to bake fish fillets, but it merely browned a few crumbs on the edges after 20 minutes. In the end I had to fry it. =(

I was reluctant to fry it not because it made my food oily, but because I hate washing stuff. With the oven, all I needed to do after baking was to remove the aluminium foil, but after frying I had to wash the pan, the chopsticks and the plate.

And the microwave oven (another option among the instructions on the back of the box) sucks balls when it comes to cooking this sort of food.

Also, before I forget, HEINZ TARTAR SAUCE IS FREAKIN BLAND!












The difference between the successful and not so successful is usually left unsaid. Here, I'm going to describe it. Let me illustrate it with a real example.

I was planning to make beef jerky, so I bought some sliced beef. It came in a small plastic container covered with foil wrap, place neatly in a horizontal manner like they do at steamboats. You know, the usual. I was going to remove the fats, and all recipes advice that I freeze it to make that process easier, so I placed it in the freezer when I got home.

There, I've described the problem. Like some of you I couldn't see it, at least not until I took it out to cut out the fats.

The slices were stuck together because they were frozen, hence I could not cut the fats from the beef. As a result I had to thaw the chunk of meaty ice before processing the meat.

This is the sort of problem that differentiates between the smart and the rest. If I were smart I would have seen it when I bought the beef. Same goes for successful people - they can see the problems before they get to the point where they would encounter them. They don't wait for trouble to come to them, making them appear to have an easier time.

Moral of the story - to be ahead, you have to look ahead.

I bet someone famous has already said this some time in the past.

Anyway I didn't follow any recipe exactly. I just poured quite a bit of Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce into the zip-lock bag, followed by a generous dose of Tabasco sauce and then the beef, about 10 slices of them at the usual size suitable for stir-fry. I expect the jerky to be very salty, a little sour and a little spicy.

Just hope my oven doesn't give up on me now, not when the economy is as bad as it is.












My jerky-to-be reminded my mum of a very different beef jerky made by an old friend. Apparently she cooked the beef in 卤汁 (lu3 zhi1), a type of Chinese gravy. I still don't know what it's called in English, though one dictionary translated 卤 as brine, which isn't anywhere close to what 卤汁 is.

Anyway, she cooked the beef in it before cutting it into slices about a centimetre thick. She then stirred the beef in a hot work to dry it. I can tell that's a very tough job since it must stick to the wok very quickly. After that the beef didn't require much baking since it was mostly dry by then. But before baking, she added Five-Spice powder to the beef, probably to make it less sticky. That must have added more flavour to the jerky too.

I guess that's another type of Chinese beef jerky.














This guy taught the world to make bombs from fertilizer. He's a f*cking terrorist. Also, he's my latest mealtime entertainment.

Friday 9 October 2009

Rant 444 / Obama Wins Nobel Prize After Only Nine Months As President?

It's Friday afternoon after class, so I went to Cold Storage for some ingredients with which to make a good late lunch.


Salami and cheese, slight toasted. Parma ham sandwich. A big mug of milk. You don't need to learn to cook to make a delicious meal such as this.










OBAMA GETS A FREAKIN NOBEL PRIZE?!? He hasn't really done anything yet! It's like giving a student a scholarship because he scored well in his first CA/test! What are they doing to the candidate selection process?? Obama's not even been President for a year!

While the decision won praise from statesmen like Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, both former Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved.

No shit! It's too hasty alright! It's like making a living person a saint! Way too early to judge, man!

Thursday 8 October 2009

Rant 443 / I Can't Feel My Butt












What I've noticed after watching a few movies that were regarded as very violent in the past, is that today's gory violence didn't start to appear till the 1990s. The Mad Max movie released in the 1980s merely showed body parts removed from the body, without the blood and brain bits exploding in all directions which seems to be the staple of all movies today except romantic comedies.

This confirms, in a way, my belief that civilization had never been actually civilized.

How did we begin? When humans were cavemen, we wore pieces of animal skins and killed each other all the time. Slavery was pretty much normal till the early 20th century. Even for the more civilized populations, there were forms of violence they enjoy and people really never did stop committing rape and adultery.

There were less? Who knows? What we do know is that there were less of such stories when we "became civilized", but this doesn't necessarily equate to fewer of such incidents. It's just like the way Singaporeans almost never mention the death penalty though Singapore does hang convicts.

Even now, we aren't as civilized we like to think we are. It is merely a facade that we put on so that we don't kill each other in the streets. We still like to see people die, whether it's in games or films. We want to see the gore, the pieces of unappetizing body parts flying all over the place. If not, then why are WWE and certain violent games so popular in places where people are considered liberal?

In many films and shows, we glorify law-breakers. Law enforcement officers appear to be more successful if they don't follow the rules. Teenagers playing violent and sometimes fatal pranks are just acting their age. No one looks at the children who gang-rape and violently abuse other children. They merely appear once in the papers and that's it. Discussion? None. Do people really care? Not much.

If we're actually civilized, our self-control should be better than that. Children who stick sharp objects into the bottoms (not referring exclusively to the anus) of other children should have been unthinkable, impossible, in a civilized society. Today, it's the occasional inspiration for another sensational news headline.

Fathers who rape their daughters for years, even decades, is yet another glaring example of how humans aren't civilized yet. Sick? No. Sick is 2girls1cup. Sick is 1guy1jar. This, IMO, is simply another facet human nature.

Using a recent revised version of Internet English I ask, "How do I civilized?"

¯\(°_o)/¯


Six thousand years obviously weren't enough for us to come up with a proper response.

Or more likely, I've misunderstood what it means to be civilized.












I kept repeating the same word till it's painful to read, but I'm too lazy to proofread and edit the above portion of this rant.












The Legend of the Seeker, as I expected, is crap. It gets more and more repelling as the episodes went on. The original Seeker was a much greater man than the one portrayed in the TV series, with a quest more daunting than a mere powerful man. They basically cheapened various elements in the Sword of Truth.












If you have a Hotmail account, it's time to change your password.

More than 10,000 usernames and passwords for Windows Live Hotmail accounts were leaked online late last week, according to a report by Neowin.net , which claimed that they were posted by an anonymous user on pastebin.com last Thursday. Neowin reported that it had seen part of the list. "Neowin has seen part of the list posted and can confirm the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe," said the site. "The list details over 10,000 accounts starting from A through to B, suggesting there could be additional lists." Accounts with domains of @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com were included in the list.

"Most appear to be based in Europe." It really isn't saying anything.












http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/513760

Made by the same guy who created the Ultimate Crab Battle, Miami Shark is another hilarious free Flash game in which players control a shark that wreaks havoc in Miami.

You can start small by eating people and ducks, or you can aim high and leap up to bite into aircrafts to pull them down. It was hilarious when I was pulling a B2 Stealth Bomber and it went into stealth mode. Despite this desperate measure it went down just like the Apache before it. This is no mere Great White, because you can even drag a NASA space shuttle into the water.


















If you feel nostalgic, you're old.



Admit it; you haven't seen these in years.

One last video of a series that I never really watch, but seemed popular.



If that was your childhood, the following comic cover image will ruin it.

Rule 34 of the others are omitted because they're uninteresting, and not because they cannot be found.



Yes, even Dexter. Yes, even Pinky and the Brain.

And yes, even Rosie O'Donnell. <--- adult content warning. Filtered and summarized content below: