ZOMG SWINE FLU! New and Improved, now with extra lethality!
The Mexican fatality rate of this new strain is 7%, meaning if you get it there is a 7% chance of dying, especially if you're Mexican. If you're Asian like me you're totally fine and you can visit Mexican pig farms without fear.
Influenza has always been one of the more likely reason for a possible case of human extinction. The virus mutates so quickly, it's amazing our body can keep up thus far. Already there have been close calls in our history but we've managed to control them after a while.
This time, it's even more amazing! It's like a viral Captain Planet - when the powers of 4 different strains of the influenzavirus combine, we get this brand new H1N1 virus. It's a combo of a strain of human flu, 2 strains of pig flu and an avian flu.
Though it hasn't spread to Asia, it has proven to be able to transmit between humans. The WHO has raised the pandemic alert level to 4, which means it is capable of spreading among humans. Level 5 and 6 means IT IS F*CKING EVERYWHERE!.
In case you still don't know the symptoms, they are:
-fever
-lethargy
-lack of appetite
-runny nose and sore throat (the usual)
-coughing
-diarrhoea
-nausea
-vomitting
Unfortunately this virus does not reanimate the dead, hence stockpiling food and guns in your basement will not help. Neither do your headshot practices.
This virus also seems to be more lethal among young healthy adults, instead of the children and the elderly.
Now is a good time to convert to Islam, people! Damn, the Prophet was right when he said the pigs are dirty!
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Monday 27 April 2009
Rant 346 / Nostalgia
Moar music.
Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Haven theme. Finally the humans get a decent piece to represent them, after the poor treatment they got from HoMM 1 to HoMM 4. This is probably the second best music in the game too.
I'm not too sure if I'd posted this before, but the best music in HoMM V is probably the Sylvan theme.
HoMM 2 also had some pretty good music. The Sorceress theme, in particular, and the original MIDI Necromancer theme. I can't find the Necromancer's MIDI music, so here's the Sorceress theme.
And let's not forget HoMM III, the best of the series in terms of improvements from its predecessors.
I'd not say that this is the best of HoMM III, but it certainly is the one that fits its town the most.
Inferno theme
Even if you haven't played the game, you should be able to feel the powerful evil it conveys.
However, HoMM III really didn't have any music that I'd say is really good. Personally I find that this is the best of the game. :D
I find the music of HoMM V to be superior to those of III. Even the theme of Academy sounds good.
Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Haven theme. Finally the humans get a decent piece to represent them, after the poor treatment they got from HoMM 1 to HoMM 4. This is probably the second best music in the game too.
I'm not too sure if I'd posted this before, but the best music in HoMM V is probably the Sylvan theme.
HoMM 2 also had some pretty good music. The Sorceress theme, in particular, and the original MIDI Necromancer theme. I can't find the Necromancer's MIDI music, so here's the Sorceress theme.
And let's not forget HoMM III, the best of the series in terms of improvements from its predecessors.
I'd not say that this is the best of HoMM III, but it certainly is the one that fits its town the most.
Inferno theme
Even if you haven't played the game, you should be able to feel the powerful evil it conveys.
However, HoMM III really didn't have any music that I'd say is really good. Personally I find that this is the best of the game. :D
I find the music of HoMM V to be superior to those of III. Even the theme of Academy sounds good.
Friday 24 April 2009
Rant 345 / 死性不改
The title was how my Maths lecturer described me when he caught me sleeping in his lecture in my final year in JC. This is related to the rest of this post.
Today I came clean with my mum. Well, it wasn't exactly I going out and coming clean but more like she confronted me. Now that I have told her, I see no reason to keep quiet over it.
I have given up on this semester and expecting to take an extra year to complete my course.
I have not been sitting for my exams and I am not planning to do so for this semester.
I am expecting my GPA to hit 1.5 after this and I am going to take at least 2 semesters to drag it back up to 2.0 which is the minimum to stay.
Copypasta from the NTU website:
Students with poor standing will be subjected to the following performance review:
a) Academic Warning – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for any given semester.
b) Academic Probation – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for the following semester.
c) Academic Termination – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for the 3rd consecutive semester, or at the end of the final semester of study. A letter of termination will be issued.
I am expecting to push the limits of the rules because it is close to impossible to drag a GPA of 1.5 to 2.0 within a single semester. Honours will be out of the question, and has been for a long time.
Rough calculations tell me that it will take an average of B's in these 2 semesters to save my ass.
Meanwhile, I've been drowning myself with Runes of Magic. A free MMORPG.
It's just like WoW except everyone can play 2 classes. Players can only play one class each time and have the other as their "secondary". They can switch between these two in towns and they have to level them separately. Basically everyone is a 2-in-1 character. Each player can use all his primary class's skills and some of those from his secondary. So a Knight/Priest can take lots of damage AND heal himself.
It is also free to play, but you can pay to pwn. F2p and p2p at the same time. Mounts and other good stuff must be bought with diamonds, which can be bought with real cash. I am currently trading for diamonds but the price of diamonds vs gold is inflating like mad. It was 4k gold per diamond last week and 10k at the moment.
A permanent mount costs 199 diamondsat least. At last week's rate, that is 0.8 million gold. At today's rate, that is 2 million gold. I have only 8 diamonds and 500k so far.
With real cash, 10USD buys 200 diamonds. So a mount costs about 15 SGD and I currently own 60 Singapore cents worth of diamonds. However I'm still hoping against hope and trying to buy diamonds at 4k apiece in the Auction house (auctioning gold to buy diamonds).
Right now I'm only a level 30/28 Rogue/Priest (max is 50) on Artemis. Pretty slow, given that I could have easily made 5 levels a day before level 30. I just didn't do so because grinding is boring.
It's only fun when I run dungeons with groups. I just went though one of the worst runs ever in Forsaken Abbey, where I was the main healer and I ran out of mana and mana potions when the final boss was at its final 10%.
Epic.
Good thing there was another guy who was having a Priest as a secondary class. His Urgent Heal spam saved us all.
That was the first time I was a Priest in a group. Usually I play as a Rogue because it's easy. I can never get the aggro and everybody loves me for my Treasure Hunter skill. This skill increases the loot I and my party get and at the moment I have raised it to 12.5%.
That is an eighth more than normal. Happy happy joy joy. In fact Rogues have been so severely nerfed before I joined that no one expects me to do any good damage. I'm only needed to tag along and make them rich. Or at least get enough to pay their repair bills. Tanks need a lot of repairs after every run.
My secondary Priest serves as a backup healer in groups and as my personal healer when I solo. When I made this guy I had the "grind nonstop" concept in mind. A Rogue in any game is always low in HP. Combining a Priest with a Rogue logically gives you a Rogue that can fight forever.
This is not exactly the case now. I can't deny that the Priest skills have saved my ass countless times but I don't really need them normally. And I don't grind much.
The Priest is also difficult to level because it only has 1 good damage spell. Though the Rogue side helps by increasing the casting time by 4.4%, it is incredibly boring to spam only 2 buttons (1 for heal) for hours.
Rogue is fun when doing "errand-boy" quests that requires me to retrieve stuff. Rogues get the Hide skill which makes me invisible to any monster below my level. A monster of my level will need to almost touch me to see me. Anything lower will have to practically walk right into me (or vice versa) to detect me. Monsters of higher levels can see me, the higher the longer the distance it can see me from.
Once I was competing with this Warrior to complete the same quest, for which I have to dig up gnoll shit from their camp. I reached the place when he was fighting the gnoll to clear the vicinity so that he could dig. Actually I watched him dig for a second before a gnoll attacked him. I snuck right up to him, dug it right next to him while he was fighting and went on to the next mound of shit.
Halfway through my digging at the second mound, he reached me just in time to fight the gnoll next to it and see the mound disappear. He had to know I was there because I walked through him, but he couldn't do anything to stop me. I had a big smile on my face as I made 15 consecutive mounds disappear right under his nose while he was catching up. I killed not a single gnoll for that quest.
Doing stuff without killing a thing was challenging because it made me stay alert in every direction. I couldn't touch any of the monsters, I had to be aware of the levels of every monster in the area and I had to watch out for patrols. Yes some monsters have patrols which may walk slowly around the camp or just run in random directions. But it wasn't hard either because I killed 3 gnoll leaders (for quests) by sneaking pass all their guards.
That is what makes Rogues fun. Of course, not all quests are like this. At least half the quests requires me to kill a certain number of a certain type of monsters. I try to make it interesting by sneaking behind them and using an ability designed for that. "Sneak Attack" can only be used behind the monster and stuns it for 3 seconds. I can always just run to it hacking and slashing, but that would beat the purpose of being a Rogue. Then again, I do that when the monsters are too weak.
In parties, I can't sneak because the Knights would want to hit the monsters first to get their attention. Rogues are boring here. All I do is deal some token damage as the Mages kill everything while the Knights attract all the monsters to them. Priests, on the other hand, have an exciting job in groups. Healing is a difficult task because things often happen suddenly. Most of the time, only the main tank requires healing and this lulls the healers into complacency. Then all of a sudden a Mage may do so much damage that a boss wants to kill him instead of the Knight. A Priest has to be prepared to heal in such a situation.
OMG I just realized I can use my Phirius Tokens, tokens I get for completing repeatable daily quests, to buy stuff! I've been hoarding over a 1000 of them! Going to get some furniture for my house soon...
By the way the Starcraft games from GOMTV were pretty good. There was one day when all 4 matches involved players from the STX clan. The matches that day were epic and everyone from STX won.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/492477
Sonny 2. One of the best flash RPGs I've ever played. It's so good, they should port it to mobile phones and sell it. Simple system, great music, nice story and frequent humour. I first played on Easy and it took an hour because I was multitasking. I haven't completed my second run, which is on Heroic.
On Easy, battles are totally turn-based. Stats don't really matter much and pumping nothing but Strength and/or Instinct will win you the game.
On Heroic, Speed and Vitality actually matters. Battles are also much more difficult because you are given a short period of time to choose your action each turn. There is also an extra zone to go to.
In the first Sonny game, the protagonist is a zombie who found himself on a ship.
In this game, he has escaped from the ship and is searching for answers.
On my first run, I tried playing as the Psychological class. Many of the abilities are double-edged swords. For example, the one of the first two abilities I got damages the target's health but heals his Focus (aka mana). This skill is pretty handy because I can hit myself with it when I'm out of Focus.
A few of the abilities were rather useless though. One stuns the target but also heals it. Another heals me completely but reduces any further healing I get by 95% and reduces my HP by 10% every turn. These seem like very desperate moves and I didn't invest any of my precious skill points into them.
Now I'm playing on the sponsor's website as the Hydraulic class, which is only available there. It does have very strong skills and there are some good healing abilities too.
Armor Games always seems to get the best flash games.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are witren, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Today I came clean with my mum. Well, it wasn't exactly I going out and coming clean but more like she confronted me. Now that I have told her, I see no reason to keep quiet over it.
I have given up on this semester and expecting to take an extra year to complete my course.
I have not been sitting for my exams and I am not planning to do so for this semester.
I am expecting my GPA to hit 1.5 after this and I am going to take at least 2 semesters to drag it back up to 2.0 which is the minimum to stay.
Copypasta from the NTU website:
Students with poor standing will be subjected to the following performance review:
a) Academic Warning – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for any given semester.
b) Academic Probation – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for the following semester.
c) Academic Termination – if the CGPA falls below 2.00 for the 3rd consecutive semester, or at the end of the final semester of study. A letter of termination will be issued.
I am expecting to push the limits of the rules because it is close to impossible to drag a GPA of 1.5 to 2.0 within a single semester. Honours will be out of the question, and has been for a long time.
Rough calculations tell me that it will take an average of B's in these 2 semesters to save my ass.
Meanwhile, I've been drowning myself with Runes of Magic. A free MMORPG.
It's just like WoW except everyone can play 2 classes. Players can only play one class each time and have the other as their "secondary". They can switch between these two in towns and they have to level them separately. Basically everyone is a 2-in-1 character. Each player can use all his primary class's skills and some of those from his secondary. So a Knight/Priest can take lots of damage AND heal himself.
It is also free to play, but you can pay to pwn. F2p and p2p at the same time. Mounts and other good stuff must be bought with diamonds, which can be bought with real cash. I am currently trading for diamonds but the price of diamonds vs gold is inflating like mad. It was 4k gold per diamond last week and 10k at the moment.
A permanent mount costs 199 diamondsat least. At last week's rate, that is 0.8 million gold. At today's rate, that is 2 million gold. I have only 8 diamonds and 500k so far.
With real cash, 10USD buys 200 diamonds. So a mount costs about 15 SGD and I currently own 60 Singapore cents worth of diamonds. However I'm still hoping against hope and trying to buy diamonds at 4k apiece in the Auction house (auctioning gold to buy diamonds).
Right now I'm only a level 30/28 Rogue/Priest (max is 50) on Artemis. Pretty slow, given that I could have easily made 5 levels a day before level 30. I just didn't do so because grinding is boring.
It's only fun when I run dungeons with groups. I just went though one of the worst runs ever in Forsaken Abbey, where I was the main healer and I ran out of mana and mana potions when the final boss was at its final 10%.
Epic.
Good thing there was another guy who was having a Priest as a secondary class. His Urgent Heal spam saved us all.
That was the first time I was a Priest in a group. Usually I play as a Rogue because it's easy. I can never get the aggro and everybody loves me for my Treasure Hunter skill. This skill increases the loot I and my party get and at the moment I have raised it to 12.5%.
That is an eighth more than normal. Happy happy joy joy. In fact Rogues have been so severely nerfed before I joined that no one expects me to do any good damage. I'm only needed to tag along and make them rich. Or at least get enough to pay their repair bills. Tanks need a lot of repairs after every run.
My secondary Priest serves as a backup healer in groups and as my personal healer when I solo. When I made this guy I had the "grind nonstop" concept in mind. A Rogue in any game is always low in HP. Combining a Priest with a Rogue logically gives you a Rogue that can fight forever.
This is not exactly the case now. I can't deny that the Priest skills have saved my ass countless times but I don't really need them normally. And I don't grind much.
The Priest is also difficult to level because it only has 1 good damage spell. Though the Rogue side helps by increasing the casting time by 4.4%, it is incredibly boring to spam only 2 buttons (1 for heal) for hours.
Rogue is fun when doing "errand-boy" quests that requires me to retrieve stuff. Rogues get the Hide skill which makes me invisible to any monster below my level. A monster of my level will need to almost touch me to see me. Anything lower will have to practically walk right into me (or vice versa) to detect me. Monsters of higher levels can see me, the higher the longer the distance it can see me from.
Once I was competing with this Warrior to complete the same quest, for which I have to dig up gnoll shit from their camp. I reached the place when he was fighting the gnoll to clear the vicinity so that he could dig. Actually I watched him dig for a second before a gnoll attacked him. I snuck right up to him, dug it right next to him while he was fighting and went on to the next mound of shit.
Halfway through my digging at the second mound, he reached me just in time to fight the gnoll next to it and see the mound disappear. He had to know I was there because I walked through him, but he couldn't do anything to stop me. I had a big smile on my face as I made 15 consecutive mounds disappear right under his nose while he was catching up. I killed not a single gnoll for that quest.
Doing stuff without killing a thing was challenging because it made me stay alert in every direction. I couldn't touch any of the monsters, I had to be aware of the levels of every monster in the area and I had to watch out for patrols. Yes some monsters have patrols which may walk slowly around the camp or just run in random directions. But it wasn't hard either because I killed 3 gnoll leaders (for quests) by sneaking pass all their guards.
That is what makes Rogues fun. Of course, not all quests are like this. At least half the quests requires me to kill a certain number of a certain type of monsters. I try to make it interesting by sneaking behind them and using an ability designed for that. "Sneak Attack" can only be used behind the monster and stuns it for 3 seconds. I can always just run to it hacking and slashing, but that would beat the purpose of being a Rogue. Then again, I do that when the monsters are too weak.
In parties, I can't sneak because the Knights would want to hit the monsters first to get their attention. Rogues are boring here. All I do is deal some token damage as the Mages kill everything while the Knights attract all the monsters to them. Priests, on the other hand, have an exciting job in groups. Healing is a difficult task because things often happen suddenly. Most of the time, only the main tank requires healing and this lulls the healers into complacency. Then all of a sudden a Mage may do so much damage that a boss wants to kill him instead of the Knight. A Priest has to be prepared to heal in such a situation.
OMG I just realized I can use my Phirius Tokens, tokens I get for completing repeatable daily quests, to buy stuff! I've been hoarding over a 1000 of them! Going to get some furniture for my house soon...
By the way the Starcraft games from GOMTV were pretty good. There was one day when all 4 matches involved players from the STX clan. The matches that day were epic and everyone from STX won.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/492477
Sonny 2. One of the best flash RPGs I've ever played. It's so good, they should port it to mobile phones and sell it. Simple system, great music, nice story and frequent humour. I first played on Easy and it took an hour because I was multitasking. I haven't completed my second run, which is on Heroic.
On Easy, battles are totally turn-based. Stats don't really matter much and pumping nothing but Strength and/or Instinct will win you the game.
On Heroic, Speed and Vitality actually matters. Battles are also much more difficult because you are given a short period of time to choose your action each turn. There is also an extra zone to go to.
In the first Sonny game, the protagonist is a zombie who found himself on a ship.
In this game, he has escaped from the ship and is searching for answers.
On my first run, I tried playing as the Psychological class. Many of the abilities are double-edged swords. For example, the one of the first two abilities I got damages the target's health but heals his Focus (aka mana). This skill is pretty handy because I can hit myself with it when I'm out of Focus.
A few of the abilities were rather useless though. One stuns the target but also heals it. Another heals me completely but reduces any further healing I get by 95% and reduces my HP by 10% every turn. These seem like very desperate moves and I didn't invest any of my precious skill points into them.
Now I'm playing on the sponsor's website as the Hydraulic class, which is only available there. It does have very strong skills and there are some good healing abilities too.
Armor Games always seems to get the best flash games.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are witren, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Thursday 23 April 2009
Rant 344 / Deviation
How could I have forgotten these?
They say the most defining piece of music in FFIX was "You Are Not Alone". I disagree. This should be it.
A Place To Call Home
And for FFX, I totally agree it is this...
At Zanarkand
FFVII has never been my favourite, even though it was the game that introduced me to the series. Its main theme also didn't feel like the actual main theme to me.
Personally, it has always been just the travelling music because this plays when I'm travelling in the FFVII world. Instead, the next piece is the one that defines FF7, at least for me.
Fighting (Battle Theme)
Posting links to videos that I don't want to embed in my blog. Hold on to your seats and brace for epic...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sy3hLO6l94&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm1nT2xBRs&feature=channel
Really brightens up the day. This guy's got talent.
My face when I saw the videos.
They say the most defining piece of music in FFIX was "You Are Not Alone". I disagree. This should be it.
A Place To Call Home
And for FFX, I totally agree it is this...
At Zanarkand
FFVII has never been my favourite, even though it was the game that introduced me to the series. Its main theme also didn't feel like the actual main theme to me.
Personally, it has always been just the travelling music because this plays when I'm travelling in the FFVII world. Instead, the next piece is the one that defines FF7, at least for me.
Fighting (Battle Theme)
Posting links to videos that I don't want to embed in my blog. Hold on to your seats and brace for epic...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sy3hLO6l94&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm1nT2xBRs&feature=channel
Really brightens up the day. This guy's got talent.
My face when I saw the videos.
Monday 20 April 2009
Rant 343 / Addictive Additive
Someone noticed how users of 4chan manipulated the TIME's 100 most influential people vote into a joke. The first letters of the top 21 were made to spell "MARBLECAKE, ALSO THE GAME". Marblecake is an IRC channel while "the game" is a meme. Basically the rules of "the game" are:
1) each time you even think of "the game", you lose the game.
2) you are always playing the game.
3) you cannot win the game.
The meme involves making readers think of the game without expecting it. This is one way they did it. Another way is to ask readers to try out the tongue twister, "thug aim".
I really didn't expect it to spell that out. They were only spamming the autovoters in 4chan to vote moot up. The rest were probably done by some other people with botnets or proxies.
Piratebay lost the trial. It is pointless in the big picture, the best I can say about it is that it's a moral victory for the IFPI and RIAA. On the other hand, this trial can set a precedent for future trials of this nature.
It's not like the Piratebay is really the best, since it's full of bullshit torrents filled with viruses anyway. It is the most prominent though, since it used to be affiliated with a Swedish political party.
Those guys should give up on suing these websites. After all these troubles, all they got was $4.5million and a year of jail for each of the Piratebay guys (they were hoping for $17.5m originally). And it may not even happen because under Swedish law this verdict isn't lawful till they're done with the appeals.
Even if they are jailed, more websites will just appear out of nowhere. Or new methods of filesharing, like Rapidshare. Like the Piratebay guys said, there will be an epic win in the end, even if it's not for them specifically.
Holy cow! Michael Crawford is the Phantom of the Opera! Even though the title song was written for Sarah Brightman's voice, I thought he was the one who made it as good as it was.
The "live" version
The DVD version (Phantom of the Opera begins at 1:55)
He sounded better in the 1988 version, but the dvd has the full version of the song. The movie version of this musical was crap compared to these.
Also, check out the real version of the opera from FF6 (aka FF3 in the US). This is the full version of Aria Di Mezzo Carattere. If you're not familiar with FF6, there was a scene where one of the character were involved in an opera. The player was supposed to memorise the script and during the opera, he'd need to pick the correct lines at certain points.
Due to the technologically challenged SNES system, this was played in MIDI format in the game. It was ok for most parts, except the voice of of the Celes which was substituted by a weird MIDI tone. It was the best that MIDI could do, but it was bad. Now that they have made the real version, the true epicness of Nobuo Uematsu is revealed.
Part A
Part B
This is the original version dubbed with the artificial voice software known as Vocaloid.
The original version, in English...
The ending cinematic of FF6, also playing the same tune.
Finally, the intro movie of the PS version FF6, which I played.
If FF6 can be remade with today's technology, it would be an epic game. In fact, if not for its late release being at about the same time as the introduction of the Playstation to the market, it would have been a big hit. Right now, too many people know its story, so a complete remake of this game would not be profitable. Too bad. I'll just have to stick with the SNES or PS emulator.
Here's a hilarious quote:
" The creator of the qwerty keyboard must have had a fetish. I don't think it's a coincidence that you can type 'stewardess' with one hand."
*hint* the other hand *hint*
Having met so many Singaporeans who act like they're white, here's a refreshing look on life. This is a white person who sounds like he/she is dying to be Asian, and Mongolian at that.
The US is about to set up a cybersecurity military command, probably because they were shocked by recent reports of how thoroughly their networks are penetrated by unidentified organized foreign hackers.
Given how freely hackers today are able to delve into the mysteries of the internet, this is certainly not surprising. With the world becoming so dependent on the internet, it has turned into a place that needs order, at least in the eyes of some.
Of course, it is best to leave the net as the anarchy that it is, but some people just want to link classified intranets with the internet, and then want complete security. Moronic assholes..
1) each time you even think of "the game", you lose the game.
2) you are always playing the game.
3) you cannot win the game.
The meme involves making readers think of the game without expecting it. This is one way they did it. Another way is to ask readers to try out the tongue twister, "thug aim".
I really didn't expect it to spell that out. They were only spamming the autovoters in 4chan to vote moot up. The rest were probably done by some other people with botnets or proxies.
Piratebay lost the trial. It is pointless in the big picture, the best I can say about it is that it's a moral victory for the IFPI and RIAA. On the other hand, this trial can set a precedent for future trials of this nature.
It's not like the Piratebay is really the best, since it's full of bullshit torrents filled with viruses anyway. It is the most prominent though, since it used to be affiliated with a Swedish political party.
Those guys should give up on suing these websites. After all these troubles, all they got was $4.5million and a year of jail for each of the Piratebay guys (they were hoping for $17.5m originally). And it may not even happen because under Swedish law this verdict isn't lawful till they're done with the appeals.
Even if they are jailed, more websites will just appear out of nowhere. Or new methods of filesharing, like Rapidshare. Like the Piratebay guys said, there will be an epic win in the end, even if it's not for them specifically.
Holy cow! Michael Crawford is the Phantom of the Opera! Even though the title song was written for Sarah Brightman's voice, I thought he was the one who made it as good as it was.
The "live" version
The DVD version (Phantom of the Opera begins at 1:55)
He sounded better in the 1988 version, but the dvd has the full version of the song. The movie version of this musical was crap compared to these.
Also, check out the real version of the opera from FF6 (aka FF3 in the US). This is the full version of Aria Di Mezzo Carattere. If you're not familiar with FF6, there was a scene where one of the character were involved in an opera. The player was supposed to memorise the script and during the opera, he'd need to pick the correct lines at certain points.
Due to the technologically challenged SNES system, this was played in MIDI format in the game. It was ok for most parts, except the voice of of the Celes which was substituted by a weird MIDI tone. It was the best that MIDI could do, but it was bad. Now that they have made the real version, the true epicness of Nobuo Uematsu is revealed.
Part A
Part B
This is the original version dubbed with the artificial voice software known as Vocaloid.
The original version, in English...
The ending cinematic of FF6, also playing the same tune.
Finally, the intro movie of the PS version FF6, which I played.
If FF6 can be remade with today's technology, it would be an epic game. In fact, if not for its late release being at about the same time as the introduction of the Playstation to the market, it would have been a big hit. Right now, too many people know its story, so a complete remake of this game would not be profitable. Too bad. I'll just have to stick with the SNES or PS emulator.
Here's a hilarious quote:
" The creator of the qwerty keyboard must have had a fetish. I don't think it's a coincidence that you can type 'stewardess' with one hand."
*hint* the other hand *hint*
Having met so many Singaporeans who act like they're white, here's a refreshing look on life. This is a white person who sounds like he/she is dying to be Asian, and Mongolian at that.The US is about to set up a cybersecurity military command, probably because they were shocked by recent reports of how thoroughly their networks are penetrated by unidentified organized foreign hackers.
Given how freely hackers today are able to delve into the mysteries of the internet, this is certainly not surprising. With the world becoming so dependent on the internet, it has turned into a place that needs order, at least in the eyes of some.
Of course, it is best to leave the net as the anarchy that it is, but some people just want to link classified intranets with the internet, and then want complete security. Moronic assholes..
Monday 13 April 2009
Rant 342 / What Should I Do Now?
The world's oldest condom... is reusable.
I have come to a point where I realize that something is terribly amiss with my academic performance. It is a week before my first paper for my finals and I know I will be failing at least half the papers in this semester, if I'm lucky.
This is not the sort of situation where an observer can say that I'm wrong and it can't happen. In all honesty, I have truly dug a hole so deep it will take nothing short of a miracle to allow me to pass all my exams. If I pass everything, I swear I will convert to one religion or another. No kidding.
I'm not sure if you actually do understand to think you're going to fail and to know it are two entirely different feelings. When you think you're going to fail a paper, at least you know which topics you suck at. If you know you're going to fail, it means you don't even know which topics are difficult. Or worse, you cannot even recall all the topics that are included in the course.
I believe there are a few possible reasons for this:
1) I am incredibly lazy.
2) I have no interest in Engineering.
3) My talents lie elsewhere.
It can be any, some or all of the above. I don't know anymore. All I know is that the path I tread on is going to lead to the birth of another uni dropout. Or if I miraculously improve my academic performance next semester, I will still require an extra year to graduate.
I have made myself a situation where it is logically beneficial for me to find an alternate route. I am not getting any younger nor healthier and my small inheritance isn't going to last forever. Due to certain health problems I foresee in myself in the near future, I believe a government job would be most suitable (good medical benefits and etc). And since all I want is a steady job with a decent salary, it just enforces this idea.
Military service might be possible, especially on the service (non-combat) side, of course.
Nursing is another alternative. But my past visits to hospitals and what I saw then have made me respect nurses greatly and hate the job itself. For example, guess how bedridden patients pass motion. For those who don't know, there is something known as the bedpan. It is a giant metal pan with the toilet seat into which the patients shit. The nurses have to clean the patient after he/she is done, then remove the pan of wastes.
Teaching is actually my first choice among the three. Personally I find this to be the most meaningful. Makes it more than just a source of income. In fact I was just looking at the MOE website about my possible career choices in this trade.
By the way, it should be obvious I have given up on revisions. I am so fucked and I have paid my tuition fees for nothing. I have done nothing for this semester.
So I was searching the website for what I can do with my A-level cert and apparently the starting salary is at $1480, teaching at the primary school level. I can also either pick a 2-year course for a teaching diploma or a 4-year course for a teaching degree. The degree will, I presume, most likely put me in GEO-1 category and the starting salary is $2600 if I have only a degree without honours.
This is another crossroad that confuses me. Which should I pick? If I pick the degree path, will I repeat what I'm doing right now? Yet with a starting pay of $1480, will it be enough in the long term? Given that I'm not big on the idea of marriage and certainly not keen on owning a car, I still need large sums of money for medical costs in the future. As I may have said before, it is much cheaper to die than go to a hospital in Singapore.
I am swimming in a sea of doubts here. Drowning, almost.
I would have repeated that rant about switching to a degree in multilingual studies, but looking at the way my friend who graduated in English Literature was searching for a job, I think I will probably still end up being a teacher even with that degree.
And here another doubt arises. This desire to change my major, does it have to do with the fact that I have given up on my studies, just like I did last semester? Do I really want it or do I just want an escape from where I am here? The "anything-but-this" mentality?
But this time, my choice is more practical than the last.
Do I also need counselling?
I don't know anymore! All I know is the it is most probable that I won't be improving my grades very soon. And I need to answer the following question asap:
What should I do now?
I need to clear my head. I am definitely not seeing the big picture clearly. All my doubts are clouding my eyes.
Maybe I should consider only my next move. One step at a time.
My finals. What can I do?
If I really am going for the career change, there is no reason for me to go for the exams anymore.
Even if I go, I will just fail them all.
It is too late to ask myself, "What have I done?"
One step at a time.
If I go, I go in the hope that I will improve next semester. I doubt that.
Hence, logic says I should skip my finals, with a Medical Cert or without.
Is my logic flawed?
Is this absolutely insane?
I have never heard of anyone mentioning anyone doing such a thing before, but my logic advises this.
Have I truly gone mad?
But... what would be the point of attending if my mind goes blank when I look at my tutorials?
This is life, isn't it?
Shit happens, deal with it. Seriously, life always has some surprises that you will never expect. This is what I never expected. To end up in this pit is something I wouldn't even have dreamt off in a thousand years. To anyone reading this, I hope you've learnt something here. You just cannot avoid it if life wants to throw you some SURPRISE BUTT SEX. So be ready for anything.
How to deal with this? How to deal with this?
Path 1: I go for all my papers. I predict I will fail all. My GPA drops faster than my erection at the sight of a 2-week-old naked bloated drowned human corpse. I get academic probation.
Path 1a: Then I get discouraged further because of this. Eventually I dropout and goes back to square one. I turn around and try for the teaching diploma.
Path 1b: For some unimaginable reason I improve my grades by magically understanding all my stuff. I go on to graduate like my peers, except I take 5 years instead of 4.
Path 2: I don't go for my papers. I make myself sick to escape from one or two papers. My GPA still drops like a paratrooper with a malfunctioning parachute. I still get academic probation. Repeat 1a and 1b.
Path 3: I just quit it now and apply for a Bachelor's of Science (Education) or the Diploma.
Path 3a: History repeats itself and I fail my modules even in this course. The rest is too depressing to imagine.
Path 3b: Success! I get the degree/diploma and go on to teach your kids what "Daddy wants to play" really means. (Watch SporeOut 3 in my last update to understand this)
Path 3c: During the time before the new term starts at NIE, applicants are sent to teach in schools. Through this stint I find out that I'm not cut out to be a teacher. Back to square one.
I have listed some of the likely routes that I see before me. The problem now is deciding which are more possible than the rest. Which brings me back to one of my first questions.
What is causing this to happen? Am I lazy? Do I have sub-par intelligence? Or am I completely uninterested in Mechanical Engineering? All of the above?
I believe I have to answer this within the week. My next step depends on the answer.
Shit happens, deal with it. Easier said than done.
I have come to a point where I realize that something is terribly amiss with my academic performance. It is a week before my first paper for my finals and I know I will be failing at least half the papers in this semester, if I'm lucky.
This is not the sort of situation where an observer can say that I'm wrong and it can't happen. In all honesty, I have truly dug a hole so deep it will take nothing short of a miracle to allow me to pass all my exams. If I pass everything, I swear I will convert to one religion or another. No kidding.
I'm not sure if you actually do understand to think you're going to fail and to know it are two entirely different feelings. When you think you're going to fail a paper, at least you know which topics you suck at. If you know you're going to fail, it means you don't even know which topics are difficult. Or worse, you cannot even recall all the topics that are included in the course.
I believe there are a few possible reasons for this:
1) I am incredibly lazy.
2) I have no interest in Engineering.
3) My talents lie elsewhere.
It can be any, some or all of the above. I don't know anymore. All I know is that the path I tread on is going to lead to the birth of another uni dropout. Or if I miraculously improve my academic performance next semester, I will still require an extra year to graduate.
I have made myself a situation where it is logically beneficial for me to find an alternate route. I am not getting any younger nor healthier and my small inheritance isn't going to last forever. Due to certain health problems I foresee in myself in the near future, I believe a government job would be most suitable (good medical benefits and etc). And since all I want is a steady job with a decent salary, it just enforces this idea.
Military service might be possible, especially on the service (non-combat) side, of course.
Nursing is another alternative. But my past visits to hospitals and what I saw then have made me respect nurses greatly and hate the job itself. For example, guess how bedridden patients pass motion. For those who don't know, there is something known as the bedpan. It is a giant metal pan with the toilet seat into which the patients shit. The nurses have to clean the patient after he/she is done, then remove the pan of wastes.
Teaching is actually my first choice among the three. Personally I find this to be the most meaningful. Makes it more than just a source of income. In fact I was just looking at the MOE website about my possible career choices in this trade.
By the way, it should be obvious I have given up on revisions. I am so fucked and I have paid my tuition fees for nothing. I have done nothing for this semester.
So I was searching the website for what I can do with my A-level cert and apparently the starting salary is at $1480, teaching at the primary school level. I can also either pick a 2-year course for a teaching diploma or a 4-year course for a teaching degree. The degree will, I presume, most likely put me in GEO-1 category and the starting salary is $2600 if I have only a degree without honours.
This is another crossroad that confuses me. Which should I pick? If I pick the degree path, will I repeat what I'm doing right now? Yet with a starting pay of $1480, will it be enough in the long term? Given that I'm not big on the idea of marriage and certainly not keen on owning a car, I still need large sums of money for medical costs in the future. As I may have said before, it is much cheaper to die than go to a hospital in Singapore.
I am swimming in a sea of doubts here. Drowning, almost.
I would have repeated that rant about switching to a degree in multilingual studies, but looking at the way my friend who graduated in English Literature was searching for a job, I think I will probably still end up being a teacher even with that degree.
And here another doubt arises. This desire to change my major, does it have to do with the fact that I have given up on my studies, just like I did last semester? Do I really want it or do I just want an escape from where I am here? The "anything-but-this" mentality?
But this time, my choice is more practical than the last.
Do I also need counselling?
I don't know anymore! All I know is the it is most probable that I won't be improving my grades very soon. And I need to answer the following question asap:
What should I do now?
I need to clear my head. I am definitely not seeing the big picture clearly. All my doubts are clouding my eyes.
Maybe I should consider only my next move. One step at a time.
My finals. What can I do?
If I really am going for the career change, there is no reason for me to go for the exams anymore.
Even if I go, I will just fail them all.
It is too late to ask myself, "What have I done?"
One step at a time.
If I go, I go in the hope that I will improve next semester. I doubt that.
Hence, logic says I should skip my finals, with a Medical Cert or without.
Is my logic flawed?
Is this absolutely insane?
I have never heard of anyone mentioning anyone doing such a thing before, but my logic advises this.
Have I truly gone mad?
But... what would be the point of attending if my mind goes blank when I look at my tutorials?
This is life, isn't it?
Shit happens, deal with it. Seriously, life always has some surprises that you will never expect. This is what I never expected. To end up in this pit is something I wouldn't even have dreamt off in a thousand years. To anyone reading this, I hope you've learnt something here. You just cannot avoid it if life wants to throw you some SURPRISE BUTT SEX. So be ready for anything.
How to deal with this? How to deal with this?
Path 1: I go for all my papers. I predict I will fail all. My GPA drops faster than my erection at the sight of a 2-week-old naked bloated drowned human corpse. I get academic probation.
Path 1a: Then I get discouraged further because of this. Eventually I dropout and goes back to square one. I turn around and try for the teaching diploma.
Path 1b: For some unimaginable reason I improve my grades by magically understanding all my stuff. I go on to graduate like my peers, except I take 5 years instead of 4.
Path 2: I don't go for my papers. I make myself sick to escape from one or two papers. My GPA still drops like a paratrooper with a malfunctioning parachute. I still get academic probation. Repeat 1a and 1b.
Path 3: I just quit it now and apply for a Bachelor's of Science (Education) or the Diploma.
Path 3a: History repeats itself and I fail my modules even in this course. The rest is too depressing to imagine.
Path 3b: Success! I get the degree/diploma and go on to teach your kids what "Daddy wants to play" really means. (Watch SporeOut 3 in my last update to understand this)
Path 3c: During the time before the new term starts at NIE, applicants are sent to teach in schools. Through this stint I find out that I'm not cut out to be a teacher. Back to square one.
I have listed some of the likely routes that I see before me. The problem now is deciding which are more possible than the rest. Which brings me back to one of my first questions.
What is causing this to happen? Am I lazy? Do I have sub-par intelligence? Or am I completely uninterested in Mechanical Engineering? All of the above?
I believe I have to answer this within the week. My next step depends on the answer.
Shit happens, deal with it. Easier said than done.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Rant 341 / Some Of The Things I Watched During Mealtimes To Stretch My Limited Supply Of CSI Episodes
A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed.
The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to.
This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.
At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, “Did you look through the keyhole?” The man told her that he had and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”
"Daddy, I had a bad dream."
You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows. Your clock glows red in the darkness—it's 3:23. "Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?"
"No, Daddy."
The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully. You can barely make out your daughter's pale form in the darkness of your room. "Why not sweetie?"
"Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy's skin sat up."
For a moment, you feel paralyzed; you can't take your eyes off of your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.
You wake up to a strange scratching at your window. You sit up, and look blankly at your wall, which is in perfect order. You lean slightly to one side and tilt your head to hear the sound better. You realize it's just the tree's leaves scratching your window; after all it's a windy night.
You lay back down, and after about five minutes a tapping noise awakens you once more. You repeat what you just did, you lean over and tilt your head; it's definitely a tapping. For a minute you become paranoid, but you realize that after all it is winter, so a majority of the foliage has died and fallen off; it's just a bare branch hitting your window.
You're just about to lay back down, when you hear a hissing. Of course, it's just the wind blowing through the dead leaves, and the "hissing" is just the leaves rustling among one another.
You laugh to yourself, and lay back down.
But then, you jump straight out of bed in a cold sweat.
You don't have a tree outside your window.
A few years ago, there was a hunter named Dustin. He was travelling through some dense forests in northern Washington. It was getting late, so Dustin decided to find a place to stay. After just a few minutes of searching, he found a large cabin. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it was unlocked. Thinking that he'd meet the owner tomorrow, he settled into a bed.
While he was laying in bed, he couldn't sleep because of the numerous portraits around the room. They were all incredibly detailed and almost all had scathing expressions. Some looked contorted in rage, while others had looks of utmost malice. Dustin eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
The next morning, he was awoken by bright sunlight. He went to examine the portraits a little more closely. Seeing them in the glistening sunlight, he realized that these were not portraits, but windows.
Don’t dismiss this outright as the work of some raving lunatic. There’s some sense to this story, if you’ll just hear me out…
Look, we all wonder if time travel is possible, right? Well, let me tell you something… it is. I’m from the future, actually. I know you probably don’t believe that, but seriously, I’m from the future. It’s a really great thing; getting to see the past, watching events unfold… stuff like that. We know more now than we ever would.
Behind all the fun, though, there’s a more serious aspect. We aren’t supposed to go in our own lifetime, and we are NEVER allowed to contact our past selves. Let me tell you, I’m breaking that rule right now. Yes, kid, you’re talking to yourself. Your future self. I’m going to be executed for this, but you know what? I accept that. I’m preventing something by talking to you that is WORSE than death. I can’t tell you outright what to do, because the filters would catch it. This is the closest I can get, trust me. I can, however, send a little message.
You should probably read the first word of every paragraph, now.
There was a girl who had an illness and was bed-ridden for the majority of her life. She was recently diagnosed to die within the next couple of months so her parents decided to spend as much time with her as they could before her time came. They decided that the best thing was to go camping at a local site for a little bit since the daughter was stuck in the hospital for so long.
On their way there, the girl was quiet as usual and laid in the back while the parents talked amongst themselves. When they finally reached their destination, they pitched the tent, unpacked everything and started a campfire. The mother was constantly filming the area and her daughter while the father went out for more firewood. It was getting dark when he came back, but he suddenly heard the mother scream so he rushed over to discover that his daughter was standing on her feet and was doing a wild, erratic ‘dance’ before she suddenly dropped dead.
After all the funeral processions and grieving subsided, the parents wanted to see the video the mother recorded on that very night. They put the tape in the player and began to watch. At first it just showed the mother looking at the scenery and random animals that passed by in the distance, but as the time frame skipped, it jumped to when she was inside the tent with the daughter as she stood up and began to jerk around.. But there was something wrong. It first was in the corner of their eyes but as they replayed the scene, their horror became more and more real.
The entire time the daughter was ‘dancing’, there was a ghastly white hand latched onto the top of her head.
So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is "wut r u doing wit my daughter?" U tell ur girl n she say "my dad is ded". THEN WHO WAS PHONE?
Original
Techno Remix
This Is Sparta Remix
This Is Sparta Slow Remix
This Is Sparta Original Remix
300 Parody of Mexicans crossing US border illegally
James Blunt Parody by Kevin Sage
Evolution of Dance (the Youtube video with the most views I've ever seen - over 117M)
A movie made from a game called "Deus Ex". It's still hilarious even if you don't understand the story.
"Old men are the future."
Al Gore in Fallout - Prologue
SporeOut3 (Part 1) - a machinima hybrid of Spore and Fallout 3. Contains sexual references and vulgar language. F*ckin funny too.
SporeOut (Part 2)
"You little shit! Come back here with my sweet meat!"
A pair of conjoined twins in the US has turned 19. They're the sort of twins who share one body but 2 heads, each head controlling their (almost exactly) halves of their body. I did not know there are conjoined twins who remain healthy even after reaching adulthood.
At first I was also curious about how similar their body is compared to a normal body. Apparently they have quite a few more organs than the average person, or fewer depending on how you look at it. 3 kidneys shared between 2 person, but 3 kidneys in a single body - is that too few or too many?
And obviously, there are lots of questions involving marriage and sex for them. Lots of kinky ideas too.
Being fat automatically releases you from performing certain social courtesies. For example, fat guys should not open the door for their dates, because they will only block the doors and force the girls to squeeze between their bodies and the opposite side of the frame. Good for the guys, but not so for the ladies.
McRoll'd
The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to.
This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.
At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, “Did you look through the keyhole?” The man told her that he had and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”
"Daddy, I had a bad dream."
You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows. Your clock glows red in the darkness—it's 3:23. "Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?"
"No, Daddy."
The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully. You can barely make out your daughter's pale form in the darkness of your room. "Why not sweetie?"
"Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy's skin sat up."
For a moment, you feel paralyzed; you can't take your eyes off of your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.
You wake up to a strange scratching at your window. You sit up, and look blankly at your wall, which is in perfect order. You lean slightly to one side and tilt your head to hear the sound better. You realize it's just the tree's leaves scratching your window; after all it's a windy night.
You lay back down, and after about five minutes a tapping noise awakens you once more. You repeat what you just did, you lean over and tilt your head; it's definitely a tapping. For a minute you become paranoid, but you realize that after all it is winter, so a majority of the foliage has died and fallen off; it's just a bare branch hitting your window.
You're just about to lay back down, when you hear a hissing. Of course, it's just the wind blowing through the dead leaves, and the "hissing" is just the leaves rustling among one another.
You laugh to yourself, and lay back down.
But then, you jump straight out of bed in a cold sweat.
You don't have a tree outside your window.
A few years ago, there was a hunter named Dustin. He was travelling through some dense forests in northern Washington. It was getting late, so Dustin decided to find a place to stay. After just a few minutes of searching, he found a large cabin. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it was unlocked. Thinking that he'd meet the owner tomorrow, he settled into a bed.
While he was laying in bed, he couldn't sleep because of the numerous portraits around the room. They were all incredibly detailed and almost all had scathing expressions. Some looked contorted in rage, while others had looks of utmost malice. Dustin eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
The next morning, he was awoken by bright sunlight. He went to examine the portraits a little more closely. Seeing them in the glistening sunlight, he realized that these were not portraits, but windows.
Don’t dismiss this outright as the work of some raving lunatic. There’s some sense to this story, if you’ll just hear me out…
Look, we all wonder if time travel is possible, right? Well, let me tell you something… it is. I’m from the future, actually. I know you probably don’t believe that, but seriously, I’m from the future. It’s a really great thing; getting to see the past, watching events unfold… stuff like that. We know more now than we ever would.
Behind all the fun, though, there’s a more serious aspect. We aren’t supposed to go in our own lifetime, and we are NEVER allowed to contact our past selves. Let me tell you, I’m breaking that rule right now. Yes, kid, you’re talking to yourself. Your future self. I’m going to be executed for this, but you know what? I accept that. I’m preventing something by talking to you that is WORSE than death. I can’t tell you outright what to do, because the filters would catch it. This is the closest I can get, trust me. I can, however, send a little message.
You should probably read the first word of every paragraph, now.
There was a girl who had an illness and was bed-ridden for the majority of her life. She was recently diagnosed to die within the next couple of months so her parents decided to spend as much time with her as they could before her time came. They decided that the best thing was to go camping at a local site for a little bit since the daughter was stuck in the hospital for so long.
On their way there, the girl was quiet as usual and laid in the back while the parents talked amongst themselves. When they finally reached their destination, they pitched the tent, unpacked everything and started a campfire. The mother was constantly filming the area and her daughter while the father went out for more firewood. It was getting dark when he came back, but he suddenly heard the mother scream so he rushed over to discover that his daughter was standing on her feet and was doing a wild, erratic ‘dance’ before she suddenly dropped dead.
After all the funeral processions and grieving subsided, the parents wanted to see the video the mother recorded on that very night. They put the tape in the player and began to watch. At first it just showed the mother looking at the scenery and random animals that passed by in the distance, but as the time frame skipped, it jumped to when she was inside the tent with the daughter as she stood up and began to jerk around.. But there was something wrong. It first was in the corner of their eyes but as they replayed the scene, their horror became more and more real.
The entire time the daughter was ‘dancing’, there was a ghastly white hand latched onto the top of her head.
So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is "wut r u doing wit my daughter?" U tell ur girl n she say "my dad is ded". THEN WHO WAS PHONE?
Original
Techno Remix
This Is Sparta Remix
This Is Sparta Slow Remix
This Is Sparta Original Remix
300 Parody of Mexicans crossing US border illegally
James Blunt Parody by Kevin Sage
Evolution of Dance (the Youtube video with the most views I've ever seen - over 117M)
A movie made from a game called "Deus Ex". It's still hilarious even if you don't understand the story.
"Old men are the future."
Al Gore in Fallout - Prologue
SporeOut3 (Part 1) - a machinima hybrid of Spore and Fallout 3. Contains sexual references and vulgar language. F*ckin funny too.
SporeOut (Part 2)
"You little shit! Come back here with my sweet meat!"
A pair of conjoined twins in the US has turned 19. They're the sort of twins who share one body but 2 heads, each head controlling their (almost exactly) halves of their body. I did not know there are conjoined twins who remain healthy even after reaching adulthood.
At first I was also curious about how similar their body is compared to a normal body. Apparently they have quite a few more organs than the average person, or fewer depending on how you look at it. 3 kidneys shared between 2 person, but 3 kidneys in a single body - is that too few or too many?
And obviously, there are lots of questions involving marriage and sex for them. Lots of kinky ideas too.
Being fat automatically releases you from performing certain social courtesies. For example, fat guys should not open the door for their dates, because they will only block the doors and force the girls to squeeze between their bodies and the opposite side of the frame. Good for the guys, but not so for the ladies.
McRoll'd
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Rant 340 / I'm Not Normally A Praying Man, But If You're Somewhere Up There, Please Save Me, Superman!
It is usually easy to guess the prices of food in Singapore. Just last night I found this box of sandwiches from some bakery (I think) hiding in my fridge and proceeded to consume it as supper. It was damn good. Six small sandwiches (1/2 X 4cm X 6cm), all neatly cut triangles without crusts and arranged in a row that fit nicely in a clear plastic rectangular box. One was missing, no doubt used as a sample by my bro, but the remaining flavours of the 5 were:
1 egg with mayo
2 tuna with mayo
1 crab, probably also with mayo
1 potato salad, which I believe to be just potato cubes with mayo
This morning I just threw a number which I considered overpriced but barely possible, certainly a number I personally wouldn't pay for.
Five dollars.
My mum confirmed it. On average, each sandwich was a whopping eighty-three cents. It was worth it, considering the quality, but not something we would buy on a regular basis.
I'm finding it easy to guess the prices of local food. The trick is to get "a number which I consider overpriced but barely possible".
Placing all 20 songs from the Fallout 3 OST here. A few were banned from Youtube due to copyright violations/Youtube Nazi-bot, so the next best versions were taken (eg Crazy He Calls me, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall). May remove them when I finally get tired of them. Until then, enjoy the long loading time. :P
1 egg with mayo
2 tuna with mayo
1 crab, probably also with mayo
1 potato salad, which I believe to be just potato cubes with mayo
This morning I just threw a number which I considered overpriced but barely possible, certainly a number I personally wouldn't pay for.
Five dollars.
My mum confirmed it. On average, each sandwich was a whopping eighty-three cents. It was worth it, considering the quality, but not something we would buy on a regular basis.
I'm finding it easy to guess the prices of local food. The trick is to get "a number which I consider overpriced but barely possible".
Placing all 20 songs from the Fallout 3 OST here. A few were banned from Youtube due to copyright violations/Youtube Nazi-bot, so the next best versions were taken (eg Crazy He Calls me, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall). May remove them when I finally get tired of them. Until then, enjoy the long loading time. :P
Saturday 4 April 2009
Rant 339 / Expect A Break
Left: Dark chocolate with softer dark chocolate inside. Mmmm...Right: Crushed macadamia nuts mixed with white chocolate and poured into a cup made of dark chocolate. May be the best of the box.
NOD32 seems to be the best antivirus program I've used so far. Monitors almost everything except my email, but only because I'm not using an email program like Microsoft Outlook. It even automatically scans my downloads, and does it so fast it doesn't pop anything up.
It also receives update automatically and daily, something that makes me trust it more. Doesn't slow my computer down when it updates. It does slow it down when I scan files, but most files take mere seconds to be completely scanned. It's so fast, scans finish before it even finish estimating the scan time. The only exceptions are when I scan huge files in the gigabyte scale.
Cancer is the number ONE killer in Singapore. 27.7% of all deaths in Singapore in 2007. Hence, if you're a Singaporean you've got more than 25% probability of dying a painful death.
Suicide is the number ONE killer among Singapore youths. In 2007, 2.2% of all Singaporean deaths were by suicide. Chances are you're going to cause a janitor somewhere sleepless nights just because "you can't take it anymore". I mean, how is a decent civilized guy supposed to fall asleep after mopping your brains off the floor?
Singapore also has the highest execution rate in the world, probably due to the strict drug trafficking laws. But that's only 13.57 executions per million population.
Actually I was wondering how Singapore handles bodies that do not have family or friends to settle their funeral. Do they get cremated and dumped into some mass grave or something? Or do they just throw them into the Straits of Johor (FUCK YEA LOVE MALAYSIA!)?
Was searching for some answers when I found those stats. Anyway in 2007, heart diseases that involve not having enough blood going to the heart muscles was the second killer with a kill rate of 19.8%. Second runner-up was pneumonia at 13.9%.
Therefore over half of all Singaporeans are going to die of these 3 diseases, none of which will give a peaceful death. Well, a heart attack would be the best among the 3 since it's fast.
So, if you've always thought that you're going to grow old and die in your sleep with a smile on your face, think again. You should be happy just to die quickly. Cancer, for one, will not give you a quick death. Instead, it's going to be relatively slow and quite painful (which is why they give terminal cancer patients morphine, and lots of it because they won't live long enough to suffer the consequences of morphine addiction). In fact in some parts of the world, if the patients are planning to die at home under the care of family members, nurses would give them more than enough morphine. The unspoken advice is that they can overdose themselves if a quicker end is desired.
Therefore I recommend suicide when you think you're going to die anyway. There are many ways to die painlessly and neatly. Stop f*cking jumping off buildings - it's not nice to the public and you're not giving your family a good dead face to remember you by if you land head-first. Hanging is horrible too. Suffocation is always horrible and it's pretty obvious once you know how a body looks like after hanging without breaking the neck.
Talking about breaking necks, the Singaporean execution is actually quite humane. Most of the time the criminals just snap their spines and die in an instant, though some have thick necks and survive the initial fall. Well, too bad for them.
One of the most popular ways to die painlessly is by breathing stove gas or carbon monoxide produced by burning charcoal. This is almost perfect - easily accessible and cheap, except that if you want to stop before you fall unconscious, you're still going to suffer permanent brain damage. This is an important point for the ladies because studies have shown that women tend to commit suicide by slitting their wrists, which gives them time to rethink their decision.
Anyway I may have mentioned this before, but I'll say again that I believe in breathing helium. Helium tanks can be bought legally, I think. Just don't stick the hose right into your mouth because it's PRESSURISED gas. Use a plastic bag. It'll be exactly the same as breathing carbon monoxide but completely reversible if the gas supply stops for some reason. You'll just wake up with a squeaky voice.
Alright, back to my original question. Does anyone know how Singapore handles bodies that have no family and not a single friend?
One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
I think it is time people stop finding ways to stop global warming, and start planning on how to adapt to the changing Earth. Scrambling towards Bukit Timah is one solution, but I was thinking of something more... long-term. Like getting the f*ck out of flood-prone areas in countries that experience regular floods, and actually having an emergency pack at home. And obviously, everyone should start to learn to swim.
In France, the custom of kissing the cheeks as a form of greeting is called a "bise".
Immortality may be possible after all! Scientists have found a species of jellyfish that can revert back to its juvenile state after having sex and may be able to do so indefinitely. Problem now is that for some unstated reason these creatures aren't dying enough, so we're heading towards a jellyfish epidemic in the future.
With its ability to reverse its aging process, this makes the whole situation many times worse than the other jellyfish invasion that are already happening in polluted seas. Because certain other species of jellyfish seem to be able to survive in dirty waters where other sea creatures can't, fishermen in some parts of the South China Sea and etc are finding their nets filled with large numbers of jellyfish instead of fish.
Just mortal jellyfish can be such an annoyance, so you can imagine what undying jellyfish can do.
Of course, much research is being focused on its immortality. It's a swimming fountain of youth!
So did the Kwangmyongsong-2 enter orbit? Both Russia and, understandably, North Korea said yes. South Korea and the US said no. Reuters made no mention of it, probably because it can't be confirmed from these confusing reports.
On the other hand, the most worrying problem is the rocket itself. One South Korea newspaper reports that it was able to fly long enough to almost reach Guam, which is controlled by the US, making it usable as more than just a satellite-launching tool.
Seriously, Kim's crazy. But his mad boldness is what makes everyone in Asia watch him instead of Burma, the next shittiest country in Asia.
Wednesday 1 April 2009
Rant 338 / Living Gray
I just realized how incredibly hard it is to troll 4chan. There was this one thread in which the Original Poster (OP) posted an image which describes how one can apply for a 4chan Gold account. Instructions include typing their credit card numbers in the Name section and PIN in the Subject section.
Obviously it's a fake because 4chan has always been free. Troll, and unoriginal at that since it's already been done over 9000 times before.
Subsequently people began posting images that appear to be locked and only owners of gold accounts could view them.
More trolls, maybe the same guy even.
Then came people who commented on these "images", saying the gore and child porn were really horrible.
Even more trolls.
Then we had people who followed the instructions to apply for gold accounts, but I'm 99% sure that they were using fake numbers. Coz I was one of them.
Trolls trolling trolls.
Then after a long time, some exclaimed that they were using their mother's credit card, that they haven't got their gold accounts yet and if their mothers found out they would die.
Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
A few of these last trolls were successful, because some of the previous trolls said these people got trolled. In fact, these people who laughed at the supposed "victims" were the ones who were trolled. Unless I was the one who got trolled. That would make them trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
This is what trolling has evolved into. Trolling in 4chan is like throwing shit into an ocean of fecal matter.
So my bro's playing Runes of Magic. Basically it's just free WoW with a dual class system.
Buck Angel is the most famous transexual American pornstar today. He is a FtM transexual, looks exactly like a man but has a vagina. Accidentally saw his nude photo once and was curious about how a person can look exactly like a big muscular white man, except with a smoothly shaved pussy. At first I thought it was yet another photoshopped pic, but it wasn't. It was real!
So if he has sex with a man (vaginal sex, not anal), does it count as gay porn? Seriously, this sort of thing is precisely why the world is so unnecessarily complex. Kinda like incest with step-siblings, except more gay.
Would you look down on amorality? Would you say that being amoral is the same as being evil?
The concept of good and bad doesn't apply to amorality. It's like saying an wrench is good or bad - it simply doesn't apply on this concept. It is just like saying the same for nihilism.
To be amoral is to have no moral compass. An amoral person doesn't see things as moral nor immoral. However much I wish to be such a person, some part of me has been bred with a moral compass passed down from my parents and environment.
Morality is really very simple most of the time. When you give something to someone that he/she wants, whether it's tangible or not, you're being moral. When you take that something from someone without consent, you're being immoral.
This "something" can be anything, from money to privacy to any form of help.
However, things are never as black and white as this in reality. When you give money only to the poor, you're ignoring the people who have incurable rare diseases (Google tree man, for example. Seriously I don't know how he can live with his condition). You're also ignoring the children with cancer. You're also ignoring the victims of some major disaster somewhere else in the world.
Giving food and monetory aid to the war-torn zones of Africa may seem moral, but from another perspective you're being immoral by worsening the problem.
If enough of those people die, the warmongers will not have enough children to recruit from, forcing them to either be defeated or make peace. Is this moral? Or is this immoral?
As children, we did not know what is beneficial and what isn't. A piece of candy is always good, but in truth, too much candy leads you to a demon named Diabetes and his side-kick, Tooth Decay. Which is why adults introduced to us a moral compass that we can follow blindly.
That is, until we grow older and recognize the fact that morality is, for half the times, quite useless. Obsolete, I dare say.
What is really important then, in such a gray environment, is whether you prefer one evil to the other.
Would you continue to use as much energy as you can, in order to prosper and hence invest even more money on research on solutions to our environmental problems?
Or would you just stop using fossil fuels right now to try to halt global warming?
Which is moral?
Would you donate to every beggar you meet?
Or would you not donate at all so that people would do all they can to avoid being a beggar?
Which is moral?
Would you discourage abortions to save a baby?
Or would you encourage abortions to save the life of the mother?
Which is moral?
It would be foolish to define everything as moral or immoral. Our world doesn't work that way. Amorality means you would do as you see fit.
Using more energy to prosper so that you can have more resources to spend on enviromental research is what we are doing. Is that moral? Humanity is still increasing the amount of fossil fuel we use, more and more of our resources are spent to find solutions. It is practical. This is amorality.
Would you donate to every beggar you see? I have never donated to any beggar before, but I donate to the poor via clicks and etc. Our beggars in Singapore can find other means to survive, those children in the slums of Myanmar can't. Practicality is amoral.
Are you pro-choice or pro-life? I'd say it depends on the situation. Rape victims should be allowed to abort. But most cases aren't as clear as this. When you say that it depends on the situations, that is being amoral. You're not saying whether abortion is good or evil; you're saying abortion can be good or evil depending on the situation. Sometimes killing the baby is worth it, sometimes it isn't.
That, I believe, is one major symptom of amorality. Death of an innocent human isn't always negative. The fact that you would even support the idea of abortion, you're being immoral by most standards. But amorality dictates that death can only be useful or pointless, beneficial or harmful. If you see abortion as a tool that can prevent lives from being ruined and even save lives, with the price being the loss of a human life, I don't see how that fits into any direction on the standard moral compass.
The NIF is complete. Fusion power may be our energy source in the future. It is perfect - burn hydrogren with oxygen for energy and pure water. It doesn't get any better than this!
When you blog, you're typing things that you're allowing everyone to see. It is pointless to type something that any Internet user can see if you don't want certain people to see it. If you really do want to keep something away from someone, go buy a f*cking diary from any bookstore. It's not that expensive.
Commenting encourages blogging. It means that someone is reading the blog. The more replies, the more encouragement. The whole point of blogging is to type something for other people to read. If I want to type stuff that I intend to read alone, I'd buy a f*cking diary from any bookstore. It's not that expensive.
GomTV removed its 3-day delay for standard quality videos and live streams on the 31st of March. I bet it was because of the 100% negative reactions in all the comments they received. Now we are allowed to pay $50 for a high quality video stream and the option to download these videos into our own computers. For $2 I can try it for a few games.
Not that I'm interested in paying but that sounds way more reasonable than what they had offered at first. If I was working and I felt too rich I may just spend it this way.
I wish I remembered to do something special for April Fool's Day, but I totally forgot about it till 7pm that night. What a waste! There are so many things I could have done, like type a rant in Chinese and changing all my stuff into Chinese. Oh well...
It seems that the human heart is capable of regeneration. It used to be believed that when heart muscles die, the new stem cells merely form useless scar tissues. No new heart muscle growth once we reach a certain age early into our lives. But now scientists have found that in young adults, our hearts can regenerate at 1% per year, slowing down gradually to 0.5% per year by the age of 75. This means our hearts do regrow, but at a painfully slow rate.
Which also means you're using almost exactly the same heart throughout your life. Now they just need to find a way to hasten the process.
Good news for FB and Youtube addicts. An Australian study has shown that visiting these sites while at work makes you concentrate better when you actually do work. However, moderation is the key. This study only focused on people who spend less than 20% of their work time on these sites.
Just recently I may have mentioned that electrical energy storage device technology needs to be dramatically improved for many reasons. For example, the stored energy can reduce the workload of combined cycle power plants during peak hours, hence be more green (I think). Today it is impossible to store enough energy at this scale cost-effectively.
Now scientists have created a virus that is able to build a battery more efficient than our best commerical batteries. This virus was genetically modified to complete 2 tasks. First, grow an iron phosphate shell. Second, attach to a carbon nanotube for an electrode. If the virus is allowed to replicated, we're literally growing a living battery.
However, for civil usage, the product needs to be close to 100% safe. Safety is the all-important factor for technologies that the public can buy. Would this virus do anything if it's accidentally leaked and enters a living organism? Can it cause any impact on our environment if released into it?
More research will need to be done to confirm its safety issues before it should be sold.
Though this virus battery won't solve the first problem I mentioned, it is still a great step ahead for nanotechnologies and many other fields.
So I was wrong and Blizzard did do something for April Fools' Day. I might have visited the site too early, at 3pm +8GMT on that day.
Why are people so obsessed with the truth? We can do with lies what we can do with the truth! Look at all those Wall Street big wigs making money out of nothing. Sure, the economy did eventually collapsed, but someone still made a killing out of it, right?
It is foolish to run after the objective truth when all you will ever get is the subjective one. The moment it enters your mind, everything is tainted by your past experiences and your personal beliefs. Why can't we all just live in peace with the charades and fakery that surrounds us? I mean, we're all part of the huge lie that is the world, if a lie it is.
It's all subjective, ya? It may be that the very basic foundations that you build your life on may not be as you thought it was. It may be that communism works better than democracy, because present examples are bad ones due to UN sanctions. There is no proof that a communist country cannot function properly, therefore, is democracy really all that perfect for us?
It's all subjective, no? How do you even know that your parents are really your parents? You can only believe, and do nothing else. In the Truman Show, would Truman be able to find out that he was living a fictional life if not for the clues that really wouldn't have been there if it was real? Or in the Matrix, if not for the machines' inability to prevent the hackers from entering, would Neo have found his life to be just an illusion?
It's all subjective, right? The truth is the truth merely because you believe it is the truth. Belief is the power that holds all existence together, because without it nothing exists. Believing makes reality real. Unless you believe in things that the majority don't, in which case you'll be labelled as "superstitious", "paranoid" or even "schizophrenic".
But then again, aren't these all subjective? Perhaps we should all just believe that every other human being is a peace-loving pacifist. Isn't the lack of this why the public would support wars in the first place?
Where am I going with this anyway?
Obviously it's a fake because 4chan has always been free. Troll, and unoriginal at that since it's already been done over 9000 times before.
Subsequently people began posting images that appear to be locked and only owners of gold accounts could view them.
More trolls, maybe the same guy even.
Then came people who commented on these "images", saying the gore and child porn were really horrible.
Even more trolls.
Then we had people who followed the instructions to apply for gold accounts, but I'm 99% sure that they were using fake numbers. Coz I was one of them.
Trolls trolling trolls.
Then after a long time, some exclaimed that they were using their mother's credit card, that they haven't got their gold accounts yet and if their mothers found out they would die.
Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
A few of these last trolls were successful, because some of the previous trolls said these people got trolled. In fact, these people who laughed at the supposed "victims" were the ones who were trolled. Unless I was the one who got trolled. That would make them trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
This is what trolling has evolved into. Trolling in 4chan is like throwing shit into an ocean of fecal matter.
So my bro's playing Runes of Magic. Basically it's just free WoW with a dual class system.
Buck Angel is the most famous transexual American pornstar today. He is a FtM transexual, looks exactly like a man but has a vagina. Accidentally saw his nude photo once and was curious about how a person can look exactly like a big muscular white man, except with a smoothly shaved pussy. At first I thought it was yet another photoshopped pic, but it wasn't. It was real!
So if he has sex with a man (vaginal sex, not anal), does it count as gay porn? Seriously, this sort of thing is precisely why the world is so unnecessarily complex. Kinda like incest with step-siblings, except more gay.
Would you look down on amorality? Would you say that being amoral is the same as being evil?
The concept of good and bad doesn't apply to amorality. It's like saying an wrench is good or bad - it simply doesn't apply on this concept. It is just like saying the same for nihilism.
To be amoral is to have no moral compass. An amoral person doesn't see things as moral nor immoral. However much I wish to be such a person, some part of me has been bred with a moral compass passed down from my parents and environment.
Morality is really very simple most of the time. When you give something to someone that he/she wants, whether it's tangible or not, you're being moral. When you take that something from someone without consent, you're being immoral.
This "something" can be anything, from money to privacy to any form of help.
However, things are never as black and white as this in reality. When you give money only to the poor, you're ignoring the people who have incurable rare diseases (Google tree man, for example. Seriously I don't know how he can live with his condition). You're also ignoring the children with cancer. You're also ignoring the victims of some major disaster somewhere else in the world.
Giving food and monetory aid to the war-torn zones of Africa may seem moral, but from another perspective you're being immoral by worsening the problem.
If enough of those people die, the warmongers will not have enough children to recruit from, forcing them to either be defeated or make peace. Is this moral? Or is this immoral?
As children, we did not know what is beneficial and what isn't. A piece of candy is always good, but in truth, too much candy leads you to a demon named Diabetes and his side-kick, Tooth Decay. Which is why adults introduced to us a moral compass that we can follow blindly.
That is, until we grow older and recognize the fact that morality is, for half the times, quite useless. Obsolete, I dare say.
What is really important then, in such a gray environment, is whether you prefer one evil to the other.
Would you continue to use as much energy as you can, in order to prosper and hence invest even more money on research on solutions to our environmental problems?
Or would you just stop using fossil fuels right now to try to halt global warming?
Which is moral?
Would you donate to every beggar you meet?
Or would you not donate at all so that people would do all they can to avoid being a beggar?
Which is moral?
Would you discourage abortions to save a baby?
Or would you encourage abortions to save the life of the mother?
Which is moral?
It would be foolish to define everything as moral or immoral. Our world doesn't work that way. Amorality means you would do as you see fit.
Using more energy to prosper so that you can have more resources to spend on enviromental research is what we are doing. Is that moral? Humanity is still increasing the amount of fossil fuel we use, more and more of our resources are spent to find solutions. It is practical. This is amorality.
Would you donate to every beggar you see? I have never donated to any beggar before, but I donate to the poor via clicks and etc. Our beggars in Singapore can find other means to survive, those children in the slums of Myanmar can't. Practicality is amoral.
Are you pro-choice or pro-life? I'd say it depends on the situation. Rape victims should be allowed to abort. But most cases aren't as clear as this. When you say that it depends on the situations, that is being amoral. You're not saying whether abortion is good or evil; you're saying abortion can be good or evil depending on the situation. Sometimes killing the baby is worth it, sometimes it isn't.
That, I believe, is one major symptom of amorality. Death of an innocent human isn't always negative. The fact that you would even support the idea of abortion, you're being immoral by most standards. But amorality dictates that death can only be useful or pointless, beneficial or harmful. If you see abortion as a tool that can prevent lives from being ruined and even save lives, with the price being the loss of a human life, I don't see how that fits into any direction on the standard moral compass.
The NIF is complete. Fusion power may be our energy source in the future. It is perfect - burn hydrogren with oxygen for energy and pure water. It doesn't get any better than this!
When you blog, you're typing things that you're allowing everyone to see. It is pointless to type something that any Internet user can see if you don't want certain people to see it. If you really do want to keep something away from someone, go buy a f*cking diary from any bookstore. It's not that expensive.
Commenting encourages blogging. It means that someone is reading the blog. The more replies, the more encouragement. The whole point of blogging is to type something for other people to read. If I want to type stuff that I intend to read alone, I'd buy a f*cking diary from any bookstore. It's not that expensive.
GomTV removed its 3-day delay for standard quality videos and live streams on the 31st of March. I bet it was because of the 100% negative reactions in all the comments they received. Now we are allowed to pay $50 for a high quality video stream and the option to download these videos into our own computers. For $2 I can try it for a few games.
Not that I'm interested in paying but that sounds way more reasonable than what they had offered at first. If I was working and I felt too rich I may just spend it this way.
I wish I remembered to do something special for April Fool's Day, but I totally forgot about it till 7pm that night. What a waste! There are so many things I could have done, like type a rant in Chinese and changing all my stuff into Chinese. Oh well...
It seems that the human heart is capable of regeneration. It used to be believed that when heart muscles die, the new stem cells merely form useless scar tissues. No new heart muscle growth once we reach a certain age early into our lives. But now scientists have found that in young adults, our hearts can regenerate at 1% per year, slowing down gradually to 0.5% per year by the age of 75. This means our hearts do regrow, but at a painfully slow rate.
Which also means you're using almost exactly the same heart throughout your life. Now they just need to find a way to hasten the process.
Good news for FB and Youtube addicts. An Australian study has shown that visiting these sites while at work makes you concentrate better when you actually do work. However, moderation is the key. This study only focused on people who spend less than 20% of their work time on these sites.
Just recently I may have mentioned that electrical energy storage device technology needs to be dramatically improved for many reasons. For example, the stored energy can reduce the workload of combined cycle power plants during peak hours, hence be more green (I think). Today it is impossible to store enough energy at this scale cost-effectively.
Now scientists have created a virus that is able to build a battery more efficient than our best commerical batteries. This virus was genetically modified to complete 2 tasks. First, grow an iron phosphate shell. Second, attach to a carbon nanotube for an electrode. If the virus is allowed to replicated, we're literally growing a living battery.
However, for civil usage, the product needs to be close to 100% safe. Safety is the all-important factor for technologies that the public can buy. Would this virus do anything if it's accidentally leaked and enters a living organism? Can it cause any impact on our environment if released into it?
More research will need to be done to confirm its safety issues before it should be sold.
Though this virus battery won't solve the first problem I mentioned, it is still a great step ahead for nanotechnologies and many other fields.
So I was wrong and Blizzard did do something for April Fools' Day. I might have visited the site too early, at 3pm +8GMT on that day.
Why are people so obsessed with the truth? We can do with lies what we can do with the truth! Look at all those Wall Street big wigs making money out of nothing. Sure, the economy did eventually collapsed, but someone still made a killing out of it, right?
It is foolish to run after the objective truth when all you will ever get is the subjective one. The moment it enters your mind, everything is tainted by your past experiences and your personal beliefs. Why can't we all just live in peace with the charades and fakery that surrounds us? I mean, we're all part of the huge lie that is the world, if a lie it is.
It's all subjective, ya? It may be that the very basic foundations that you build your life on may not be as you thought it was. It may be that communism works better than democracy, because present examples are bad ones due to UN sanctions. There is no proof that a communist country cannot function properly, therefore, is democracy really all that perfect for us?
It's all subjective, no? How do you even know that your parents are really your parents? You can only believe, and do nothing else. In the Truman Show, would Truman be able to find out that he was living a fictional life if not for the clues that really wouldn't have been there if it was real? Or in the Matrix, if not for the machines' inability to prevent the hackers from entering, would Neo have found his life to be just an illusion?
It's all subjective, right? The truth is the truth merely because you believe it is the truth. Belief is the power that holds all existence together, because without it nothing exists. Believing makes reality real. Unless you believe in things that the majority don't, in which case you'll be labelled as "superstitious", "paranoid" or even "schizophrenic".
But then again, aren't these all subjective? Perhaps we should all just believe that every other human being is a peace-loving pacifist. Isn't the lack of this why the public would support wars in the first place?
Where am I going with this anyway?
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