Rant 313 / Harlots!

So now I've learnt something about playing as a paper hero (aka Intel-based) in DotA. Quite accidentally actually, because I really didn't care whether I was going to die in that round.

What happened was I got ganked. A group of 2-3 enemy heroes appeared suddenly from the forest next to me and started to ass-rape my Necrolyte. It was in the early morning at 6am, so I was a little too tired to be concerned about whether I was going to die. So I spammed my spells on the weakest of my attackers.

Next thing I knew, I killed that guy and severely injured the rest before dying. This was quite abnormal because usually, I'd just try to run AND die. I always die, but the difference was I manage to kill someone and gain some money/exp before that this time. So I noticed that if I don't run when I'm ganked, I may accomplish more than just simply dying.








Afro Samurai is pure gilded crap. Looks interesting, supposed to be cool with all the fast swordfights, but lacks that creativity that the Japanese have. It's mostly just hack and slash, with some weapons thrown in that could have been more than what they were.

The sidekick of Afro was incredibly irritating. His endless rants were supposed to be comedy, but turned out to be annoying noise. His earlier attitude when he first arrived also contradicted his apparent views on Afro's quest later on.

The few sex scenes were completely unnecessary and didn't even involve any of the main cast. There was no nudity throughout the film nor did those scene look artistic. What's the point?!?!

Afro Samurai was fast, but not invulnerable. That's well and good, but couldn't they have given him some tricks, the way Kenshin had? And the kid was totally useless as a plot element. The flashes of his memories did not make me feel sad when his "father" died and therefore, he was redundant. They could have shown some scenes before the fight in which they spent time together, or maybe the guy could have had some flashbacks of what it was like bringing the boy up he was drinking with Afro.

I couldn't stand it anymore when they reached the desert and the noise from the sidekick began again. So I skipped everything and checked the end to confirm my suspicion that Afro was going to fight his father and win. The villains were all killed and the end.

There, I've also spoilt the movie for you without warning. Believe me, if you haven't watched it, you didn't miss anything. I'd rather watch reruns of English-dubbed Samurai X than this film.








So I tested that in another round. Medusa was my buddy in my lane, while Axe and Pudge were being suppressed by our ranged attacks. Suddenly Pudge hooked me from behind the frontlines and succeeded. Turned on Devour and Rot while Axe joined in to the gangbang. I managed to use my healing spell once (didn't have my lvl 6 spell yet) and focused my attack on Axe.

I was killed by Pudge in seconds. A split second later, my final flying crystal attack hit Axe and he died too.

RAWR!

Medusa, who was focusing on Pudge, went on to finish him off.

So my theory was right. As a Necrolyte, there is no point in running most situations, so I might as well just attack before I get killed.







Now that I no longer want a room in the campus hostels, I found myself lucky that my mindset in this has changed. Why? I just checked my ECA Records and saw that I have only 5 points for being in the Main Committee of the NTU Toastmasters Club. Throwing in another 2-3 points for the distance between my home and the campus, it is almost useless to even apply for a hall.

So now I'm in the club only out of interest. I'm not even going to apply for a room anymore.








After reading a little about Auschwitz, I understand better the controversy behind medical studies. Some things are just so hard to understand without hurting the subjects!!

One thing I'm still very curious about is whether the works of Dr Josef Mengele had any impact on modern medical science. He did a lot of atrocious stuff, like sewing twins together to created conjoined twins and injecting stuff into the eyes of his subjects to see if it changes the eye colour.

However, despite the disgust he inspires in me, I wonder if his horrifying deeds result in anything useful at all.

No mention of that was found in Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is known to be a poor source of good information. Plus I'm not surprised if any benefits are being ignored and hidden because he was never arrested and sent to trials for his crimes. His body was exhumed and tested for its identity long after he died, so he really didn't reap what he sowed.

But the main thing I'm interested in is whether his experiments helped anyone. Another case in Auschwitz involved experiments on the effects of freezing and to find ways to stop them. This was particularly important back then because as we all know now, the Germans were defeated in the USSR by the winter.

The results of this research created almost everything we now understand about the effects of extreme cold. Despite the cruelty the prisoners endured, at least these people died for something. I wonder if the subjects of Dr Mengele died for anything.








No idea what's up with my internet connection. It's been so slow lately that even my DotA games have been affected. 196kbps Upload is incredibly slow compared to my usual 2000+kbps. Download is also slower than my usual 3000+kbps rate.

My half-full hard disk may be a factor, but I don't believe it can deteriorate my connection speed this much.

Rant 312 / Think Outside The Box? Shit, I Can't Even Handle The Stuff INSIDE The Box!

Just realized that the Necrolyte does not necessarily have to start with the Ring of Basilius. Though the mana regen and armour aura seem nice, I feel like it's more effective to start with 2 Robes and 6 Tangos. It seems that adding Intel makes me more effective, especially when it increases my damage.

With the extra damage and mana, I can get the last hits more often, increasing my $$. Then throw in some Null Talismans and I have some great stats. I'm going to stick with 2 Null Talismans from now on.







Completed Unit 1 of Rosetta Stone's French Level 1. Unit 2 feels much harder now. Somehow it took over 50 tries to get "un sandwich" pronounced right. It seems more like a hardware/software problem because I can easily get it right when I use the special tutoring function thing that allows me to compare what I say with a recording of the words spoken more slowly.







Apparently, activated charcoal reduces alcohol absorption. So I believe it means that taking one of those charcoal pills prescribed for me as diarrhoea medicine some time ago will make me less vulnerable to the effects of alcohol.

From Wikipedia's Activated Carbon article,

5 to 15 milligrams of charcoal per kilogram of body weight taken at the same time as 170 ml of pure ethanol (which equals about 10 servings of an alcoholic beverage, or 17 shots), over the course of one hour, has very apparent effects at reducing potential blood alcohol content.

For source, check the article itself. I'll be keeping a pill in my bag everytime I go out from now on. One pill probably weighs a gram or so, which is rougly what my body needs for that 170ml of pure alcohol. An average guy weighing 60kg would need 300-900mg, or 0.3-0.9g of activated charcoal. And since it "has very apparent effects" I think it means it definitely works.

Rant 311 / Affinity For Bullshit

Holy Freaking Cow! Just days after typing Child Safety and You, Onion News produced a video discussing whether video games are adequately preparing our children for future apocalypse! Great minds think alike.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

In other news,

Spam Crackdown Threatens Koy4Goff's Penis Enlarger, Free iPod Industry









I've been trying out the Skeleton King in DotA for two rounds. Apparently it is supposed to be an easy hero to use, good for noobs. So for the games I played in I used the skill and item order as shown in this guide.

The strategy is to gank as much as I can while my 2-second stuns are still effective. Then buy tanking and mana items till I'm a good tank.

Unfortunately, in the first round the Demon Witch kept sucking my mana while in the other the Nerubian Assassin manaburned me as often as he could. So I couldn't stun nor revive myself. In short I sucked.

This is crazy. The SK is, in fact, very easy to use because he has only 1 skill that needs clicking - the stun. So I need only to keep 1 finger on the T key on my keyboard. Yet I sucked! I need to play more using SK.






Here's one of the best games every made and uploaded to Newgrounds. I'm serious, it's good. The voice actors were excellent and the animation was pretty good, almost reaching the standards of some commercially available games I've seen, eg The Experiment. It helps that it's small, so the high level of details doesn't require an obscene amount of effort and disk memory.

Basically you are in a tour in an underground cavern with your girlfriend and in one part of the tour the lights are supposed to be turned off to show everyone what it is like to be in complete darkness. However, something goes wrong and the technician does not respond.

No, there are no zombies.

Gameplay is simple. You just walk around with your torchlight and find clues to what is happening. This game has a creepy atmosphere (darkness and etc) so if you're a real pussy, don't bother.








This is one of the tracks from Code Geass R2 OST. As the song for Rolo's death, it is naturally somewhat sad. Speaking of Rolo, I've always had conflicting feelings for this character. He must be one of the grayest person of all.

He may have killed the last innocent member of the main cast, Zero's gf, but he was doing it for love for his "brother". It seems like he was widely hated for this deed, but I felt it was not wholly his fault.

I'll admit that Shirley was the last person (Okay second last; Euphemia was the last.) I expected to be killed, but I figured that was necessary for the whole series - every single person in the show must fall in the gray area. After Euphemia died I kinda got that idea. The writers were extremely merciless in killing the most innocent and pure character in the most horrible way. When she died, I was like "OMFGWTF?? Aren't good people supposed to stay alive and live happily ever after as heroes??!"

And when Shirley died, she was made out to be the character who had to endure the most despite that she did not ask for it. Everyone loved her so much her death was totally unexpected to many but not surprising to me.

On the other hand, Rolo killed her to protect his "brother", Zero. I can't totally fault him for that. If anything, he was almost as much a victim as Shirley. I feel the blame should go to Zero himself, for trying to bend a deadly weapon to his will using false brotherly love. That he would even toy with Rolo's heart makes him more evil than Rolo himself because he was merely numb to violence and did not feel happy when he murders. (Zero felt satisfaction, at least, for how he made Rolo his tool.)

When Rolo died, I thought he really didn't deserve to die so tragically. When he became such a loyal servant of Zero, what he had done before didn't seem to matter anymore. Dead is dead, and further punishment would serve no purpose. If he didn't kill for the wrong person anymore, what matters if "justice" was served or not? Hence when he was killed, it felt as if yet another innocent was wrongly murdered again.

Anyway, if you're looking an anime that can make your cold heart melt, watch Code Geass. Season One was freaking cool but some scenes are so touching I felt tears in my eyes that I never thought would exist. The death of Euphemia was the most tear-jerking event I've ever encountered in any form of media. Even beats the shock of Ned's death in A Song of Ice and Fire and the heartwrenching parts of Eureka Seven. None of the Naruto/Bleach episodes is even near these experiences.






Special match between Jaedong and Bisu, the champions of Season 1 and 2 of the Averatec-Intel Classic respectively, on the 1st of March. Professional Starcraft. I'll definitely watch this match.



Never knew this before, but UC Berkeley has a basic course on Starcraft. Kinda like a UE for NTU. What the heck? They get to play games to improve their GPA!

Rant 310 / Long Post About Lots Of Things

So I'm using Rosetta Stone now to learn French. Very interesting, and it's only after trying it out that I understood why it's so widely-recommended. Note that if you want to use it you will need a mic. I use a headset and naturally it comes with an in-built mic.

After completing the very first Core Lesson of the very first chapter of the very first level, I actually find it fun. Maybe it's because I've already taken French level 1 in school, but some of the words used in there were never taught in school - Rosetta Stone use a different syllabus after all.

Anyway, I just wanted to learn some French without affecting my GPA and do it at my own pace. The Core lessons in this software that I have seen so far are the longest and they only take about half an hour. Pretty easy.

In this first Core lesson, I practice pronouncing simple words like "Ils nagent", "une filles boivent", "l'homme mange" and etc. They have a voice recognition software that seems to compare what I say to the recording they have (made by a native speaker) and tells me when I'm wrong.

Surprisingly, though the letter "r" is pronounced from the back of the throat like a gargle in the French language (instead of the rolling of the tongue used in English), the software accepts the English pronunciation of "r". My French teacher also told us to stick with the English "r". The closest I can get it is to sound like the English "h", so the English "r" is definitely closer. Maybe the French have fleshy throats or something.

Also in the first lesson are simple exercises in which the software plays a recording of a line like "Une fille court" (sometimes without subtitles) and gives me 4 different pictures. I'm supposed to click on the matching one.

The final exercise was the hardest. Hard is a relative term though. They gave me a picture and expected me to say the right words for describing it.

In the end, it was quite easy, though I seem to be unable to pronounce "garcon" and "fille" perfectly. I've tried like 50 over times and they only recognize my "garcon" about 5 times. My pronunciation of "fille" was never perfect throughout but always close (and hence acceptable). I'm not sure what is wrong. Maybe my mic suck.

These two screenshots are in the second lesson, which is on Pronunciation. In the upper screenshot, I'd pronounced "nage" perfectly as indicated by the green dot. In the second screenshot, I'm tested on the pronunciation of "ecrit" syllable by syllable.







I have to say that the Space Game on Newgrounds is actually pretty good. It's a strategy game in which you have to mine for minerals while warding off pirate attacks. It is simple: build miners and turrets while maintaining a sufficient supply of electricity to all these machines from your solar station(s).

Basically there are 2 resources - energy and minerals. Minerals work the same way as money while energy must be generated and supplied constantly. There are a few types of turrets and several types of enemy ships. Each turret is suited for different ships.

There are rapid-fire turrets, slow-firing turrets and missile turrets. Ships can come in swarms, kamikaze or have heavy shields. All machines can be upgraded to suit your needs.







Those DotA tournaments on GarenaTV are actually quite interesting. With some good commentary, they would be pretty epic, but right now what they have will do.

The first difference between competition and casual is that in the former, the game begins differently. Each team is given a short period of time to pick 5 heroes that would be banned from the game. Each team would pick one alternately till 10 are chosen. Next each team would choose their heroes, 1 by 1, alternating between the two teams till either time is up or both are done.

If you join late, the game would still start from the beginning but is in fast forward till you reach the current situation. If you're unfortunate enough, it would also stop halfway to buffer game data. I've been through a few unpleasant experiences whereby I had to close it because it never stopped buffering. I probably got disconnected due to a bad connection (European connections are always bad).






Okay, so I'm getting bored of L4D because none of my friends, other than 1, plays it on Garena. It's more fun to play with pubs than AI, but only to a degree. I really need to play on legit servers so that there are more new maps available.

On Garena, it is always the same 4 campaigns over and over again, albeit at different difficulties. But it gets boring because I know what to look for all the time now, and the auto-shotgun is like the "I-WIN" button for me. I simply cannot die when I have this weapon unless some f*g shoots me on Expert mode.

I think after playing so much L4D, I'm probably going to have the same problems as many other players - when we hear a car alarm, we go "Oh shit! Hordes incoming!".

Anyway, I'm going to have to buy an original copy of L4D right after exams. Probably like the time I bought Half Life 2 - immediately after the last paper I went straight to Jurong Point and bought a copy right there and then. But that would depend if I still like the game this much after so long.

The only problem with L4D, and it gets more serious every day it's not solved, is that Valve isn't producing any new campaigns. It is as if they were depending on the player base to make new maps when they made the game. Design 4 campaigns long enough for the players to use the map-making tools to create new maps.

Sure there are new maps out there for download but on Garena they are almost non-existent. I'm hoping more legit servers have new maps available and the players would choose them. It gets boring after a while with just 20 maps.








Here's an interesting piece of news: the Church of Scientology blames Pearl Harbour and 9/11 on psychiatry. I don't know why they're going all out to discredit this pseudo-science with false information; it just makes them look even less believable than the very thing that they seem to hate so much.

And their nonsense about Anonymous is just that - pure nonsense. Anons are just all talk and no action, people who try to act like internet tough guys but actually mostly just typical teenage basement dwellers. Some are actually smarter, especially the undergrads, but these only make up a tiny sliver in the huge pie chart of Anonymous.







I wonder how much electricity I consume for turning on the aircon for a night. I don't turn it really high at night when I sleep, just 25 degrees at 2/5 fan speed, but I do turn it on for very long. About 12-15 hours long.

Usually I don't use it, especially in Nov-Jan when it is very windy here, but in what is summer in Singapore, it is a necessity. The only saving grace is that it cool down my room for the rest of the next day if I keep my doors and windows closed and it is cloudy/rainy that day. And yes it would be cooler inside than out.

Still, I have no idea how much I'm spending on this alone.

I do know that I'm spending about a hundred bucks just on computer electricity, because on the month I was gone, staying in the campus hostel for over 5 weeks, my home utility bills dropped about that amount. Water can't take up that much since I only shower (baths take way too much time). Gas costs me only a minute amount because I don't cook with my stove frequently. It is mainly electricity and I turn on my laptop 24/7.

Well sometimes I do switch it to Energy Saver mode, especially if I have little to download. But if I'm in need of several huge files ASAP, or if I need to scan my computer for virus or errors or even defragment, I leave it on at full power every night.

Which means it is always a good idea for me to maintain my room's temperature as low as possible. Which means keeping my windows and doors closed to retain the cold air even when I'm not around is not useless.

All electronic devices should be kept as cold as possible without the use of lab/dangerous equipment. I remember the first time I visited a huge server room some years ago, and it had several huge air conditioners constantly maintaining the room's temperature at (I'm guessing) 17-21 degrees. It feels even colder than it should because there is a constant cold breeze instead of just stagnant air. However, the servers indeed require such heavy-duty machines because when I stand near to any of the servers, I could feel warm air blowing at me.

Anyway, I find it pretty hard to keep my laptop cold because, I swear, the keyboard's heat actually stings my fingers that handle the WASD keys when I play L4D unless I keep my fan blowing at it at full speed.

Yesterday I was playing L4D on the Commentary mode, in which the game designers talked about how they created the game and how it evolved to what it is now. Basically it is the same as playing the No Mercy campaign except that there are regularly-placed points where each designer's commentary can be played.

And halfway through the game started get choppy, jumpy, whatever you call it. It was especially obvious because the commentary I was listening to kept pausing together with the game. Then I realized my left hand was feeling uncomfortably hot.

The computer was overheating...

So I turned my fan towards it and switched it to the max. It never gave me any problems for the rest of the night.






I wonder if people would go to an university for its free electricity. I haven't visited any library outside in a long time so I don't know if they provide as many electrical sockets as NTU's. And they don't check anyone's identity when they enter, so anyone can use them.

I imagine that any nerd who wants to play on his laptops all day using free electricity can just enter the campus and plug in. Of course the network would be somewhat congested, but solo gaming would be fine.

Or people can just bring their batteries here to charge. If I can just get a rechargable battery with an enormous capacity large enough to make it worth my trip to the campus, I'd go to school everyday even after graduation. Or I'll just cycle.

Don't forget, I spend about a hundred dollars on electricity per month, so if this works, it'd save me quite a bit of money. Now I just need that huge battery...








When one argues online, it is always beneficial to use proper English. Perfect grammar, flawless spelling and better still, proper usage of idioms and proverbs will make one sound incredibly smart - and therefore, right.

For all online debaters, I recommend following this advise because it just makes your arguments sound more convincing, so much so that you would sound believable even if you do not state your sources. For all they know, you might have pulled those numbers out of your ass, but your impeccable command of English would stop that train of thought right before they remember that.

This advise is also especially important for internet trolls. When you are going to type something inflammatory like, " If everyone was smart, the whole world would be atheist," type the words out without errors or shortforms. You will sound educated and intellectual, increasing the impact of your words with the shock that a smart person would say such a thing.

It would also prevent the troll from sounding exactly like a typical online troll. The best troll is one whom no one notices until the end when there is a flame war and someone traces the origin back to that person.







As a straight guy in my twenties, I'd say that the best thing about taking photos incessantly during outings is that in about every one out of every 1000 photos I'd catch a shot of a girl where I'm not supposed to see. Not that they're anything to fap to, but they'd turn any guy on.

No they're never deliberately taken. In fact, I let everyone check my photos whenever they ask for my camera. The thing is, sometimes there are things too small to be visible in the tiny screen of my digital camera but magnified to the size of my monitor, everything is visible.

I'm not sorry. It is not like I'm recording amateur porn or something. One must note that such occurences are incredibly rare (girls in SG don't seem to like skirts or loose shirts) and girls who are actually beautiful are even harder to find. Catching a glimpse of the bra of a fugly chick is not exactly something I'd want to do at all.

I'm not sick nor perverted; I just like to have girls in my photos whenever I can, and if you're wearing a skirt without keeping in mind the necessary precautions, accidents are bound to happen. Even if I didn't take the photo, I could still see whatever you're supposed to keep hidden. Since these photos are never uploaded to anyone or anywhere (if I really have to upload them to FB I edit them beforehand), then there is little difference between the two.

Still, there have been once or twice when I go "FUCK YEAH!!!"

Yep, I'm not sorry.

Rant 309 / Child Safety And You (V1.1)

Recent surveys have shown that Singaporean kids rank 54 for Outdoor Survival Skills and Weapons Training. That they are so unprepared for the future they may face in case of a global disaster is highly alarming.

The average kid in the Congo is able to strip an AK-47 in the dark. On the other hand, Singaporean males are only able to take apart a simple M16 in the day after the age of 19. Over 90% of the women can't even do so, and we're not even talking about jungle survival knowledge and etc.

The most obvious reason to worry about this is the inevitable floods due to global warming. As polar ice caps melt, the sea level is going to rise. Much of the island that is Singapore is very close to sea level, making it necessary for the locals to move to higher grounds when the floods begin.
Worse is that this is definitely not the only possibility for our future - there can be a myriad of possible causes for a worldwide apocalypse including an alien invasion,

a zombie infestation,

and even... Godzilla!

For this article, I have done extensive research over a period of 17520 hours on major disasters on a worldwide scale, by watching documentaries such as Mars Attacks, Diary of the Dead and War of the Worlds. In addition, over 2 months were spent on a well-known virtual simulator called "Left 4 Dead" which predicts the probable events during a zombie virus epidemic.

My research has shown that in the average global apocalypse, over 99% of all non-survivors are adults, mostly male Americans. But this does not mean that Asian adults will be left unscathed when disasters strike. In fact, in the 1954 documentary "Gojira", Japanese men were shown to be just as vulnerable to giant lizard feet as any American man.

Women, on the other hand, are somewhat more resistant to certain dangers. For example, in Left 4 Dead every single female patient in Mercy Hospital are immune to the virus, as deduced from the complete and conspicuous absence of female patient zombies. Therefore if virus-induced zombies are the cause of global mayhem, all women who are wearing hospital gowns will somehow survive the onslaught of the undead hordes. However, both genders are equally weak against other dangers, which form 99.99999% of all possibilities.

Therefore the extinction of human adults is more than likely to happen, leaving the children to survive on their own. So what kind of situation would our children be in when every human above 18 (16 in some countries, 21 in others) is dead?

In the virtual simulator, Fallout 3, kids are shown to be able survive by hiding in a deep underground cave, eating moss scraped from rocks and sending adults to their fates in the outside world, who often meet their ends in the most gruesome manner.

However, one must keep in mind that not all caves have moss, nor is all moss edible. Also, Fallout 3 lacks the capabilities to simulate zombie attacks, which would certainly have wiped out such underaged populations quickly.

This means that all minors should be fully equiped with survival skills as soon as they're able to walk so that they will be able to ward off attacks mounted by Martians, zombies and many others. It does not mean our children need only be great marksmen because certain creatures are immune to firearms. The Bear Cavalry would be a great weapon to master because there is little evidence that bears will be harmed when human civilization is utterly destroyed.



Weapons aside, our children must be familiar with the wild in the event that all HDB flats are destroyed. More specifically, they need to learn to compete with the monkeys on Bukit Timah Hill for food and recognize edible fruits and fungi. Monkey-hunting skills are an additional bonus.

To be able to do these, experts recommend that your children:
- be sent to live in a tropical jungle for a few weeks with nothing but a trench knife
- have their own kevlar vests
- get used to the feel of a gun by bringing a simple sawed-off shotgun to school
- train themselves on the various Grand Theft Auto simulator softwares to be familiar with the anarchic behaviour they will encounter during times of mass panic and imminent global destruction.







(Inspired by an Onion news, over 9000 hours spent on MSPaint, edited once on 24th Feb at 5am)

Rant 308 / 97% Of Singaporeans Don't Know What To Do In Hypothetical Situations

No idea what happened with the Cell Experience in the end because I had a few tests that morning. By the time I returned, it had ended. Damn I missed the "food fight with sexy girls" at 90,000 hits.




Recommending this game I found to be quite humourous. It's called the "Ultimate Crab Battle" and the title is perfect for the game. A simple game, all you need is to hold the "A" key and use the Up, Down, Left and Right key to control your ship as you fight with the evil Crab King. Yes that is all there is to this game, fighting this monster in an epic 1-on-1 duel.

Its music and the strange weapons the Crab King uses (giant gramaphone, electrified grill and etc) really makes this battle highly interesting.

Volatile India-Pakistan Standoff Enters 11,680th Day

Rant 307 / Okay, Hold On. Where Does It Hurt?

I've never actually tried hosting L4D till today, because today is the start of the 1-week recess break. And because ZY left me a message in Garena asking me to play L4D while I was still in school. So now I've confirmed that I can host L4D without all that port forwarding crap.


It wasn't too bad either, despite my Utorrent running in the background. No one complained of lag or anything throughout the whole Dead Air campaign. The only negativepoint I want to mention is the 2 guys with the same name "Revolution" who were noobs.

What's up with all the people using "Revolution" as their nick? Is it the default name in a copy ripped by a similarly-named hacker group? That's my best guess anyway.

Back to the story. They sucked. Lots of friendly fire, running into the open when the hordes come and stuff. Obviously they were the only ones dead when we got rescued. One got raped by a horde because he couldn't get into the room after the first tank died. The other got killed by the second tank. Oh well, it could have been worse, like the 4th round when the tank appeared in front of the ending Safe House. I was the first to almost reach the room and the first to be killed. As I went down I kept typing "RUN!!" and "GO IN!!" but the one person who was good at the game went down immediately after I died because he was right behind me. The other 2 "Revolution" noobs just stood around trying to kill it.

What was the point? Even if one ran passed it and shut the door behind him while the other noob died, it would still count as a win and we would have advanced to the next stage. But no, they are too pro for that. Everything must lie dead before they are willing to end this round. Retards.






So Israel is really testing the UN's tolerance. Now that they've undeniably broken some rule, I wonder how the UN will react. It is pretty obvious this is a blatant invasion of Palestinian lands. Will it prove once again the UN is just another League of Nations? Probably.







Here's another funny Weebl mix. Diarrhoea, made from some old Japanese video that was probably for teaching English. Since it's a loop I'm just going to post the link.







Doesn't she look...
... like her?
I thought the two look quite similar to each other, though one is a singer and the other is supposedly a porn actress, whose screenshot I found somewhere in some forum.

Rant 306 / Sleep VS Coffee

I just love The Onion. This is going to be my new mealtime entertainment website.







This is strange. When I reload this Compose page, the HTML codes for the above Onion news vids are missing, but they're still there when I check the Preview mode. Something's quite wrong with Blogspot.







Today is the first day I've tried to function normally in school despite some sleep deprivation. Slept from 8 to 11pm last night and didn't feel sleepy anymore till 4.30am. By then, it was a mere 4 hours before I have to leave for classes, which leaves less than 3.5 hours for actual rest (need to take into account the time needed to lie in bed and gather the willpower to get up, wash up, dress up and get some coffee/food).

So I decided to forget about sleeping and do something else, something I haven't done in months.

I exercised.

Actually I'm in such a bad shape I merely cycled on my stationary bike for half an hour at a constant heartbeat rate of 130/min (the timer/pulse scanner/magic device estimated I burnt 300 calories for the session). During this exercise session, I thought about what to do next. Should I mug for the 2 tests later in the morning till 8.45 before leaving for school or is there something else I could do?

I felt like shit, thus I wasn't in the mood to suffer through bus/train rides. That leaves only the taxi, but the peak hour surcharge is in effect between 7 and 9.30am. I couldn't leave immediately either because the midnight surcharge ends only at 5.59am. If I was really going to take a cab, I have only a 1-hour window before the fare actually becomes obscene.

It was a hard decision, but I had no choice. I had to leave home at 6.30am so that I could alight from the cab before 7am. That was the latest I could push it. But doubt came. What if there was nowhere I could go? Should I bring my laptop or my gigantic Thermodynamics textbook?

But there was somewhere I could go before the LWN library opens - the old Canteen A which is probably open 24/7. And I decided to bring both my laptop and textbook; laptop for passing time between a brief lab session in the late afternoon and my morning classes, textbook for the open-book quiz. If only "open-book" means laptop with internet connection is fine too...

After about 25 minutes into the session (around 5.25am), I tested myself to see if I could still fall asleep under such conditions.

It turned out my eyes could close tight quite readily even when my heart was beating at 130/min. My mind was almost blank and I was in what I call my zombie state. In other words, it felt like it was possible for me to sleep on the bike.

Before I actually slowed down my legs, I pushed myself back to consciousness and cycled for another 5 minutes. I then went down and stood on my legs which actually felt slightly unsteady even though the workout was so light.

To cool down, I just stood in front of my balcony window and enjoyed the cool breeze. I assure you, nothing possible in the Singaporean climate can possibly beat the cold night wind. It's practically the only thing I like about the local weather.

Then I turned on the kettle to boil some water while I showered. For coffee, what else? Honestly, I can taste no difference between Nescafe freeze-dried coffee and Ipoh white coffee powder. They both taste delightfully delicious. Plus if I rarely drink coffee, then it always feels like the next best thing to multiple orgasms.

Anyway it's 1.43pm now and surprisingly I haven't lost my textbook even though I had to put it down many times. Now I'm going to sleep till just before my lab session begins.

Rant 305 / I Can't Upload Pics!

I'm having trouble uploading pictures onto the blog. For some reason the pictures don't appear on my blog after I'm done uploading. So I'm forced to produce boring wordy posts again. Oh well, at least the videos still work since they all just a bunch of HTML codes I copied and pasted.






Even though I've been living in Singapore for 19 years, I never knew that the locals eat Chilli Crab with bread until recently. I mean, they dip the bread into the gravy. And it's even mentioned in the Wiki article on Chilli Crabs. Just when I thought I'm no different from any Singaporeans...







As I checked on the Cell Experience yesterday, I saw that they'd sent in the goats before the 45,000th visitor's arrival. Maybe they couldn't keep the goats in the studio for too long, who knows? I thought it was actually pretty nice to see him have some real physical company. Those goats did look quite friendly, and he got to feed them some food.

I missed the part where he fights a bear because it happened when I was sleeping. By the time I check again after school, he was at the 70k mark and wearing a fake Sumo costume that was basically a huge plastic bag with nipples and sumo "underwear"-thing painted on it.

He didn't look hurt so it was probably a fake bear fight using a trained, tamed bear. They're cheating!

Anyway he's approaching the 90k mark now and going to have a food fight with sexy girls. I'm going to miss that because of classes. 17 hours to go and he'll be free. I'll bet my laptop if the website hits the 100k mark his arm-cutting stunt will be some sort of magic trick with which his arm would appear to be missing.








Finally ran out of episodes of Heroes, so I've resorted to watching CSI. Now beginning with the original CSI, sometimes known as CSI: Las Vegas, Season 4. Think I've watched many of the episodes in the first three season back when they were aired on AXN Asia.

If I finish Season 4-8 before the lastest season of House/Lost/Heroes/Scrubs has finished, then I'll go on to CSI: Miami and New York.








FDA Approves Depressant for the Annoyingly Cheerful




Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work



Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard



More at www.theonion.com

Rant 304 / 5000 Euros For An Arm?

I'm spending Valentine's Day with my girlfriend. Here's a nude photo of her.









Finally I had the opportunity to finish Death Toll. Turns out I've already played through the first 4 rounds before, but never been in the finale.

Death Toll is mostly in a suburb setting, going through a small town by a river to the harbour where 2 survivors were in a boat and willing to ferry people to safety. Think this is the only campaign where the rescuers aren't from the military.

Sadly all the rescuers in the first 3 campaigns, No Mercy and Blood Harvest and Death Toll, became infected and died. No idea what happens to the pilot in Dead Air.








Since my phone is having trouble sending out SMS, I've resorted to using the online SMS service. I didn't think of it till a few days ago when I remembered sometimes HX sends his SMS using the web and it always tells me when the web session has begun/ended.

So I googled and found it. I didn't know it was called Gee till now, and I'd thought that I needed to subscribe to this service before I can use it. Apparently, either I unknowingly have it or I don't need the subscription. Either way, it is the only method I can use to send SMS now.







Some kid in the UK became a father at age 12. He hasn't even hit puberty yet and he's already got a son. Holy cow! I didn't know little boys can have erections too. I don't remember whether I did before puberty.

The boy is young enough to be his son's brother. Holy crap, I think the baby's going to be raised as if he really is. This is logical because the boy is not even old enough to know what raising a child means.

I don't think he even loves her the way it's supposed to be. He probably just wanted her for sex, then accepted the baby because he doesn't know the price of fatherhood (and knows his parents will raise it for him).

Apparently, this isn't exactly a once-in-a-decade sort of thing. In fact, there have been other similar cases in other parts of Europe that didn't end up in the news.







The Cell Experience. The website's in French, but here's the idea:

This guy lives in the cell for 5 days, having only his handphone for company. The more visitors to the website, the worse stuff he gets.

Currently, he has 3 days and 15 hours left, and I see over 13k hits.

At 15000 hits, he will have to eat spoilt food.
At 20000 hits, they will put a goat in the cell.
At 30000 hits, he will fight with a bear.
At 40000 hits, he will have to wear a sumo custume for a day.
50000 hits, he will have to travel 10km on a bicycle.
60000 hits, a food fight with sexy girls. (Serious. A french guy confirmed it.)
100k hits, he cuts off an arm. (Also confirmed by the guy.)

At the end if he endures all 5 days, he gets paid 5000 Euros.

I'm not sure about the punishments for 40k and 50k hits but for the rest, I'm 90% sure.

This is madness. The 5000 Euros aren't enough to pay for the stuff he's going to go through, especially when the link has appeared on 4chan /b/, one of the most popular and sadistic internet forums out there. I won't be surprised if they deliberately push it to 100k using multiple proxies just "f0r t3h lulz".

Then again, he's also going to be famous. 100,000 hits are quite a lot.

Rant 303 / Which Stall?

Are you turned on? Because if you are, you've just become a pedophile.

I'm beginning to understand why pedophiles are pedophiles. I guess everything has its consequences, even the innocent desire to be beautiful.







Among all American game music, Portal's ending theme, Still Alive, may be the best of them all, albeit a little creepy if you know the story behind it. It's the first Youtube player on the left of my blog. The second player is for Aria of the Soul, one of the best pieces of game music I've ever encountered. Damn, the Japanese are good at this.







Merril Lynch awards a million dollars or more each to 696 employees as bonus, right when the company is announcing losses. All that amounts to about USD3.6bn.

JB robbers are getting bolder - now it's not safe even on a SBS bus at the checkpoint.

Some guy in Florida, called 911 to complain about Burger King's food even before he ordered... Sooner or later some guy will call 911 because his wife refuses to have sex with him. Can't wait to see that.

Rant 302 / Dudes, What's The Internet?

Was visiting Wikipedia in hopes of seeing something about epic wars/battles on the front page. Instead I found the featured article to be about the Toa Payoh ritual murders. I thought the three were pretty much insane when they began to kill children.

Ghazali suffered a similar fate when he was brought by Hoe to the flat on 6 February. He, however, proved resistant to the sedatives, taking a long time to fall asleep. Lim decided to tie up the boy as a precaution; however, the boy awoke and struggled. Panicking, the trio delivered karate chops to Ghazali's neck and stunned him. After drawing his blood, they proceeded to drown their victim. Ghazali struggled, vomiting and losing control of his bowels as he died. Blood kept streaming from his nose after his death. While Tan stayed behind to clean the flat, Lim and Hoe disposed the body. Lim noticed that a trail of blood led to their flat, so he and his accomplices cleaned as much as they could of these stains before sunrise.^[57] What they missed led the police to their flat and resulted in their arrest.

What this paragraph is saying is that this boy died horribly for no good reason.









The Battle of Baghdad was such a tragedy. Not because so many lives were lost, but because so many books were destroyed and a flourishing city that wasn't showing any sign of decay was sacked just because of the arrogance of the Caliph.

Books, in those times before the printing press was invented, were essentially treasures. Imagine how much effort it takes to copy a book with your old ink and brush. You have to copy each page with perfect handwriting, zero mistakes and no smudge, and maybe use some preservatives to prevent the material from rotting. If there are pictures ( I imagine there would be sketches sometimes), the difficulty multiplies.

I'd say that books (and any other data storage devices) are the essence of the lives of the past, the work of generations of intelligent thoughts distilled into words. To burn books, to wipe out all copies of books (which I imagine to be very easily accomplished by burning a library in those days) is not only a tremendous loss for the people, but is also the destruction of the lives that were spent in the making of the books. In short, the Mongols didn't just kill people, they also destroyed the essence of the lives of the ancestors of their victims.

Worse is that the old Baghdad was described as a "one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world". Destroying it proves that the Mongols were only concerned with warmongering, that they were true barbarians. If you are thinking that people back then were all like that I'd have to remind you that this happened merely 750 years ago only. A relatively short while ago in the history of mankind.

Now I see why Islam isn't as widespread as I'd thought when I read the other historical events like Mansa Musa's hajj to Mecca. It was events like this that eventually doomed it. I just don't see the link between this religion and its downfall, though I suspect that such a thing does exists.







It's also quite interesting to read about the series of leaders of the ancient world. The Battle of Baghdad led me to the article series on the Caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty. The first caliph, Abu al-`Abbās `Abdu'llāh as-Saffāh ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abdullah ibn Abbasibn Mutalib ibn Hashim, led the revolt against the previous Caliph and his family, the Umayyads, and founded the new dynasty. But he was named "the Slaughterer" not because he actually slaughtered millions of people but only because of his attitude towards the Umayyads - he was hell-bent of hunting down and killing every single last one of them.

It is surprising to note that he wasn't actually an uncivilized barbarian the way the Mongols were above, and his government actually included Jews, Christians and Persians. And by using the Chinese prisoners he captured in previous battles, he set up paper mills and thus improved access to education for his people.

He's not actually the bad guy his epithet seems to imply! Too bad he died of smallpox four years after he took over. Man, I think he'd have made a better name for himself if he was given more time.

By the way, I thought that all those "ibn" was a typo since I've no idea what "ibn" means. On the other hand, I know "bin" means "son of". A quick check in Wikipedia shows that they're the same. Not sure if they can be used interchangably though.






Paper has to be one of the greatest inventions of all times. Though its data storage density is low compared to modern CDs/DVDs and hard disks, it is the second most durable medium humans have ever used. I believe the most durable form is rock carvings/paintings. Books can last for centuries, while most electronic media don't last more than a decade. Paper often remain in perfect condition when stored in the same dry, dark place complete with wrapper (commonly seen in collectors' editions of comics and stamps), but I'm not sure if the same can be said of modern electronic media.

Better still is that books do not have the compatibility issues that electronic devices have, though both have the language barrier to deal with( data may be stored in a language that has become obsolete).

So if you are going to make a time capsule for the far future, use paper, words and pencil drawings or better still, rock paintings/carvings (make tablets like the way the Ten Commandments were given to Moses LOL!).








*********************************************************************************
********************** Spoiler Alert (for the Dune trilogy) ***************************
*********************************************************************************


Children of Dune, the third and last book of the first Dune trilogy, is really the best of them. How the not-children managed to outplan everyone else was nothing short of amazing, especially since they did not resort to prescience the way their father did.

It was actually very exciting to see how the plans were going well for the villains only to discover all that was really part of the twins' larger scheme to find "the Golden Path", as they call it.

The only thing I dislike was how the author used the deus ex machina so blatantly near the end. One moment Leto II was semi-conscious from the constant feeding on melange, the next moment he was pulling sandtrouts onto himself, which formed a "living skin" that gave him extraordinary strength and agility and over 4000 years of life. And let's not forget that it also becomes a superb living stillsuit.

The supposed catch was that he would no longer be human, nor would he even think like a human, though I see no signs of that in the end. So as far as I can tell, there's no catch. Well, maybe there's that part of him being sterile, but it probably also comes with the lack of sex drive. So if there's no desire for sex, then this isn't exactly a problem.

And with his 4000-year breeding programme that begins with his sister, why would he need his own children at all? He's going to be a living God for the rest of his life and the breeding programme is likely to produce genes superior to his! When he dies, he can then send his memories and persona like the rest of his ancestors to the final product of this plan, making him as much of an immortal as everyone else in his lineage.

But I'm still going to read the rest of the books. It's got promise.

*********************************************************************************
********************************* End of spoiler ***********************************
*********************************************************************************







I think I have this condition called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. It's not insomnia because I do find it easier to sleep in the day than at night, especially in the morning. Sleeping less or not sleeping throughout the previous day does not make me sleep earlier in the next.

I mentioned that I suspected this before, but now that I've observed myself for much longer without remembering what the symptoms are supposed to be, I'm quite sure of it. But for me, it's like my body thinks that there are more than 24 hours per day, so I tend to sleep later and later. I can maintain my sleeping hours for a couple days, but eventually the process would begin again.

Damn I hate to see the word "chronic" in those two articles. It has very bad connotations to it.

Uchiyama et al had earlier determined that sighted Non-24 patients' minimum core body temperature occurs much earlier in the sleep episode than the normal two hours before awakening. They suggest that the long interval between the temperature trough and awakening, makes illumination upon awakening virtually ineffective.^[10] (See Phase response curve, PRC.)

In their Clinical Review in 2007, Okawa and Uchiyama reported that people with Non-24 have a mean habitual sleep duration of nine to ten hours and that their circadian periods average 24.8 hours.
Without alarm clocks or any appointments during the next day, I normally sleep for nine hours a day. I also notice I sleep 1-2 hours later every night, also if uncontrolled.

Am I f*cked?








Wonder what it was like for the first humans, the original Africans, to live knowing for real that they are the only people on Earth. All the civilizations I've read about exist knowing that they have human neighbours out there, even if they're unreachable.

But these first humans, they know they are alone. They live in their primitive settlements, knowing they have no neighbours out there. They have only the rival tribes with whom they share the lands with, with whom they share the same ancestors with. Across the sea, there is no one. Across the mountains, there is no one. Only they exist.

Wonder what they think of that.






So now a US doctor is offering sex change treatments for kids as young as 7. I think it's good for those who are seriously damn sure that they're born with the wrong gender. However, if they change their minds later, I shudder to think about the consequences.

And it's kinda strange that the age of consent for sex is so much higher than the allowable age for sex change. So guys aren't allowed to f*ck around with underaged pussys, but doctors are totally okay. Girls are not to be trusted with sexual consent, ie they cannot decide if they can have sex or not, but hey it's totally fine for them to decide if they should have a vagina at all or not.








I didn't realize there was anything wrong with my blog till yesterday. Apparently there is a little mistake in the HTML for the Flash Player section. When I was changing the movies a year back I forgot to change one of the links. I've no idea how it works; I merely copied it from somewhere else and tweaked the links and player size.

However, for the second player, I only changed one of the two links among the codes. On Firefox it worked perfectly fine, but on IE the previous movie played. Worse is that I had removed it because it was on autoplay and repeat loop that I can't fix, so it became a nuisance for everyone who viewed this blog on IE.

In short, IE sucks. Switch to Firefox to avoid such bullshit elsewhere.

Rant 301 / War Doesn't Decide Who's Right, Only Who's Left.

The new Tor looks better than the last version I used. In fact, it feels as if it's tailored for Firefox. Of course, it's still as slow, but it sure gives me a sense of security, whether it's real or not.

Of course, it's still as slow as before, but hey, what more do you expect from a connection behind a few proxies?

The above is the map of the global network. Well, part of it anyway. Notice SG has only 5 users. Just like Malaysia (not shown here). Most Tor users are in Europe and the US East Coast.


My homepage is set to Google, which detects your IP and gives you the proper country's designated Google page. Using Tor gives me a page as random as the IP I get. Above is the Google for Slovenia.








It seems that there is a Rapidshare download manager that's written in Assembly Language, ie one of the most basic computer language at present. It's 14kb and like utorrent, doesn't need to be installed.

Very convenient and doesn't appear to contain any virus. Scanned it with both my antivirus programmes and nothing has happened to my comp so far.

I found it accidentally when I was checking if the RS dl manager offered on the rapidshare website was legit. Apparently it wasn't, but a comment on one of the websites I checked mentioned this manager and the URL and this led me to it.

Since all countries use shared IPs for connections, I often find my IP already used to download stuff from RS by some other Singaporeans. Tor is of no use in this case since apparently everyone in the world is downloading stuff from the website constantly.

This programme reminds me of the freerice.com bots I used in the past, which are just as small and simple.

However, when I tested it just now, it doesn't seem to work. The error is that it has problems dealing with the layout of the RS website when my IP is finally free to dl something, and it asks me to get the latest version of the software... as if there is a newer version...









Just played through the Dead Air campaign on Expert with pubs. The second and third rounds, I couldn't believe we made it through at all. Seriously, on Expert mode, there are no medkits outside the Safe Room, only pills. So at several points in the campaign the team were down by 2 members. Half of these times, the remaining two managed to survive wave of Infected hordes.

I can't be very good, since I'm the cautious sort - I don't shoot when the zombies are near a teammate, only run towards them and shove to prevent friendly fire. FF on Expert is PAINFUL! A noob player can easily be more dangerous than the zombies on this mode.

My Infected kill number was very low, 900+ while the rest are all over 1000, one even had 1400+. Meanwhile, I had only 1 FF incident compared to their 9-14 throughout the game. I leave the killing to them, better safe than sorry.

Once, the worst noob in the team even threw a molotov on himself and a teammate, downing them both. To make things worse, he was trying to throw it at the Tank that just appeared, so they both got raped. I didn't even notice because there was a wave on Infected running towards us, until I turned around to check on them. Neither did the third guy turn around to look, so he got burnt and downed when the fire spread to him. If ZY was there, I imagine he'd have quit the game right then and sulked for the rest of the night.

Anyway, when I saw the horrible situation, I freakin ran like hell. Unfortunately, due to my HP being below 50%, I couldn't run very fast. But I had a good headstart, so I turned back to shoot it a few times. When I turned, it stopped to throw a car at me. I dodged successfully (and miraculously) and saw that it just stood there. I thought it was dead, so I stopped too. A second later, it bent down and picked up a piece of concrete and threw it at me.

Dodge unsuccessful. I went down. Then it came over and punched me into the ground.

GG. Better luck next time.

The most difficult part had to be the last round, the finale of Dead Air. After 5 tries we still couldn't defeat the second Tank, which was the last obstacle before our rescue and salvation commenced. So we voted to reduce the difficulty to Advanced and finished it in one run with no deaths. Advanced is soooooooo easy compared to Expert. One guy even took a Sniper Rifle instead of the two best weapons (Auto-shotgun/Assault Rifle) when we lowered the difficulty.

Somehow I just like playing Dead Air most. Most commonly hosted campaigns are No Mercy, Blood Harvest and Dead Air. Death Toll is the least favoured by both players and Valve, its developer. To be honest, I've never completed Death Toll before. I thought I did until recently when I read the L4D wiki on the campaigns that I realize I've never seen the dock throughout my L4D experience. So the one time I thought I completed Death Toll, it was actually Blood Harvest.

No Mercy is the most popular campaign, but I hate the part just before the final Safe Room where there is no wall to prevent you from dropping 30 stories to the ground. The finale is fine, not that hard. Plus I hate seeing male corpse asses. Male asses hold no attraction to me, and dead gray ones are worse. Yet these appear often because the dead patients are all wearing the loose hospital gowns and I see them all the time when I'm searching for useful stuff. I swear, there is not a single female corpse in the whole hospital! It's probably to prevent the Sexually Explicit Content label on its ESRB rating. In the end, it is quite disturbing that I'm forced to glance at various partially revealed male butts throughout the round within the hospital.

Blood Harvest is full of trees and stuff, very dark and creepy. All those trees also form obstacles that block my sight but not stopping the zombies from running to me. This forces me to guess often where the zombies are by judging from their screams. Also, the Smokers can grab me without being visible. It's highly annoying when tracing the tongue doesn't work because you can't see it and there's a dark piece of log blocking your feet.

Death Toll... I can't remember much of it. No one ever hosts it these days.

Dead Air is relatively bright and is mostly held in an urban setting like No Mercy. Obstacles are always solid and the finale is the shortest of the 4. However, this finale is the only one without a good camp spot (ie enclosed space with one entrance to funnel the hordes). The only room available has a rather wide door that takes at least 2 persons to cover. This makes things very hard if the team isn't alert, especially when the Smokers appear.







Why is it that the Chinese housekeepers are so hot compared to the Indonesian and Filipino ones? Until recently, all the part-time housekeepers who come for weekly visits have been of the latter two nationalities. All of them are either mothers or young women who wear loose T-shirts and baggy berms which they change into before starting to clean my home.

The Chinese ones though, come in tight tops and denim shorts and do their jobs in this attire. And they're all in their twenties (probably my age or slightly older). It's fortunate that they've never gotten their tops wet, or it'd be bloody disturbing. Or distracting, rather.

No, I don't know them. I barely talk to them at all. Usually it's my mum who gives them the instructions; I just tell them when to clean my room and give any specific instructions I have in mind, like not tidying my bed and desk because I'm going to mess them up soon anyway.

The other difference is that they do a better job than the Indonesians and Filipinos. One of them was so good, she actually cleans our fridge of everything that's expired, every month. My mum rarely removes any leftovers from it, but she puts in something every night. I remove them whenever I see them, but I don't open the fridge to check everyday.

And she even cleaned up all those parts of the house that were untouched for years, those corners and piles of stuff that are never used. She was the one who cleaned up the master bedroom that was left unused since my father's passing, which made it clean and tidy enough to make me want to move in.

Honestly they'd make great wives, in the traditional sense. Good looking, great cleaners, just don't know if they can cook. On the other hand, there is this sense of distrust for everyone from the PRC bred in me from young that I can't get rid of. I keep my wallet in a safe place whenever I let them clean my room and my handphone in my pocket. In addition, my laptop's monitor is always turned off and all programmes close/minimized before I leave my room in their hands.

I wonder what they do as their full-time jobs. The Indonesians and Filipinos are maids who moonlight on their Sundays, but these Chinese cleaners work on weekdays only. Obviously they aren't the average maids from any households. If they work for any families or households with males living in them, they'd have the sense to dress badly like the Filipinos so that they wouldn't attract unwanted attention.

I guess they probably don't work in any jobs related to housekeeping outside, and how they clean my home is probably assumed from what they'd normally do at home.







Heavy snow in Britain, severe drought in China, floods and fires in Australia. Now we just need some hurricanes to complete the whole range of effects of global warming on the global climate. And maybe some hailstorms and tsunamis.






Zimbabwe is so screwed. I wonder if the people really can't do shit about their country's situation. The UN's estimate of the Zimbabwean unemployment rate is 94% at the moment. This means only 6% of the entire nation have honest, steady jobs. The rest eat mud and shit bricks. I don't understand how they survive at all.







The third book of the first Dune trilogy may be the best book of the three. How strange! All other series I've read so far degenerate in quality after an extraordinary first. Some would manage to bring the standard and originality back up after a while, but never back to the level of the original bestseller that the series began with.

Anyway, I haven't finished the book yet and I think I may have to order the rest soon.








Now I understand why most gamers look down on children. Just played No Mercy (L4D) on Expert with a 14 and a 12-year-old. Yes, on Expert. In summary, they suck balls big time. I don't know if they had just started playing this game, but their aim is atrocious and their tactical knowledge is non-existent.

First of all, they are literally more dangerous than the zombies themselves. They managed to shoot at me even when I'm crouching right in front of them. What the heck were they doing? Trying to shoot their feet but missed??! They also do not hesitate to throw molotovs on zombies even if there is a teammate among them (being gangbanged by them). Calculated, albeit involuntary, sacrifice for the greater good?!??

Second, they don't keep themselves fully equipped. On Expert mode, you take everything you can find. Always equip yourselves with a bomb (any bomb will do), pills and medkits whenever you can. They, on the other hand, can just run pass pills and bombs like they don't need them.

Third, they don't know what to do with zombie hordes. When you hear the music cue for a wave of them, get to the nearest corner you can find to cover your backs. But no, they're too pro for that. They are willing to stand on high ground like on top of generators and trucks alone when the Infected come running to us. 360 degrees of unprotected surface is the worst thing that can happen to you in these situations. Even a wall covers 90 degrees of your circle (back). Throw in a teammate next to you and all you need is cover your 180 degrees (front + left/right).

Fourth, when the Tanks come on Expert, throw a molotov on him (and don't miss), and run like hell!. Shoot them only when you're safely far away because it helps kill it faster, but maintaining distance is always the top priority. Eight thousand health points is no joke and I cannot stress this point enough. One hit from a Tank will down you whether you're at 100% or not. They don't seem to know that. In one round, when a Tank arrived, the only guy with a molotov just shot him. When two other members died, he was still firing at it. I ran to the Safe Room and kept spamming things like "molo!" and "burn it!" but it was all in vain. Shooting was pointless because we were all using Tier 1 weapons. My last resort when he died was to try to exploit the door like the way I saw some other pro guy did it, by crouching behind the door and camp. But the Tank just smashed the door and smashed me after. Wonder what I did wrong. Maybe I was too near the door?







OMG!! It is actually possible to play L4D in 3D!! All you need is some nVidia video card and a pair of 3D glasses.


Anyway, here's the link to the speedrun thread. Some people have already posted their vids on the second page. For players as noob as I am, prepare to be mindf*cked.







So this is Chernobyl (actually Pripyat). You know what it reminds me of?

If you've clicked on the link to read about Pripyat, you can see how tenaciously Mother Nature strives to survive. Don't be misled by the various doomsayers that Earth will die because of us. Only we will die if anything happens. If a nuke can't kill it, nothing short of a collapse of Time and Space can. Chernobyl is a great example of what the world would look like if humans disappear.

Anyway, I've never thought about how radiation causes cancer till I read the Mars trilogy. It's just all luck, I guess. All those particles that make up the dangerous radiation usually passes through our body because atoms have relatively enormous amounts of space in them (between the electrons and nuclei). The higher the radiation level, the more particles flying about in the area. All it takes to cause cancer is one lucky particle striking the right parts of your DNA's molecular structure in your cells, causing them to mutate.