Sunday 31 May 2009

Rant 362 / Sleep Demons


If I ever get divorced, I want to end it with something similar to this letter...




CSI Miami Season 6 ended with Horatio dying. Obviously he will be miraculously revived in the next season, just like Eric's "death" in the previous season. Unlike the original series, CSI: Miami without Horatio is like dehydrated water - the whole show is all about him!

Since it will be a while before Season 7 is out, I've move on to CSI: New York.

CSI:NY is a much gloomier version of the franchise. It has a more dramatic sort of feel, more serious. CSI: Miami's episodes were more like thrillers, Hollywood-style but with a budget. CSI:Las Vegas, the original, feels like a detective show the most.

The one thing that really stands out in CSI: NY is the setting. I haven't been to New York, so I really noticed how old the architecture is. CSI: Las Vegas is always set in the night to take advantage of the glamour and neon lights of the city, while CSI:Miami is always about the beautiful beaches (including the bikini-clad ladies) and the wealthy. CSI: NY, on the other hand, is much darker. No bright lights and no colour except the brown, grey and black.






Tried Eco Tycoon: Project Green. It's crap made up of environmental propaganda. Gameplay-wise, it's crap. Content-wise, it's crap. All it does is introduce to people green ideas and making them sound like some sort of panacea for all our problems.

As a simulation game, one major feature that it really lacks is depth. Space for building stuff is limited, so within 2 turns all the spaces would be filled. After that it's all about replacing the old with the new. Research is incredibly easy because money is easy to get. I played as Australasia, and all I did was go as radically green as the game allowed - impose every single possible green law while increasing taxes to fund them, building multiple recycling plants (to get rid of trash) and only 1 industrial plant (for money). Miraculously, a single industrial plant and tax revenues will be way more than enough for an entire continent to develop and grow. And the people love me almost to the point of worship (it had a gauge for Popularity).

During the World Summits, I would always make all world leaders promise to reduce their CO2 level by 20%. It was not a problem for me because I'd built so many organic farms and artificial trees that I didn't produce CO2 at all. And I still had excess money that I didn't know what to do with.

At first, I thought that I could play so long that Earth's atmosphere would be nothing but nitrogen and oxygen, so freakishly green that people would have to wear gas masks to reduce the amount of oxygen they breathe in. I'd really laugh if they would also teach the players that too much oxygen would make everything dangerously flammable. Imagine a world where people hide indoors on sunny days. LOL!

Anyway I was amazed by the radical view of the game and deleted it because it was less of a game and more of an educational programme.









Someone just made a Flash parody of the death of Exodus Tyson, the four-year-old daughter of Mike Tyson. This is exactly what made Newgrounds famous in the first place, the sadistic cruelty of meaningless violence! I really wonder why many members are flaming this movie, because Newgrounds is just being Newgrounds. They must be in the wrong website.

Friday 29 May 2009

Rant 361 / \ 163 tnaR

We want YOU in our basement!







Went to Cold Storage at Holland V to get some prosciutto ham and streaky bacon yesterday and noticed the Ben & Jerry ice creams were on "2 for $22.85" offer. Also got some salsa sauces and Pringles.

Coincidentally I just remembered to watch Naruto and when I checked my notes, I realized I had 11 episodes to watch (well 10 because the most recent episode isn't available for free on Crunchyroll). And 11 episodes of Bleach.




A picture speaks a thousand words. Here are two thousand words then.








I'm amazed. After two months away from Empires (the HL2 mod), I returned to find that there is now a... SIXTY-FOUR-PLAYER SERVER!! It was glorious! When the server is full, the action never stops. The chaotic mess of tanks, mortars and bullets covers the entire map, not just certain hotspots.

The graphical lag is worse when there are many players too, but I don't mind. Other players seem to mind though, plus (probably due to its geographical location) its ping is worse than the normal American servers I play in (400ms compared to the usual 200ms). So this server don't fill up very often.

One other server is always full, but is slightly smaller. At a max capacity of 42 players, it is still a fantastic experience.









North Korea was seen moving another ICBM from its main factory to a launch site. Some say Kim is doing this to consolidate his power within Pyongyang. Others guess he is trying to instigate hostile reactions from foreign countries to justify his huge expenditure (of his government's budget) in his military forces.

He needs some huge justification just to produce a nuke because North Korea's GDP only makes up 3% of the country's economy. Everything else is from things like free supplies from China.

The economy is bad enough as it is right now, but N. Korea just has to make things worse by creating instability in Asia. Fuckers.







Finally cooked something decent. My mum was ill so I decided to make dinner (bro wasn't around the whole day so lunch and breakfast was simple - bread with whatever). Nothing complicated, just used a packet of spaghetti, a jar of carbonara sauce and some frozen de-shelled prawns.

The frozen prawns were the main problem. I had to rinse them under the tap until they are mostly thawed. Didn't want to wait till they thaw naturally and didn't want to microwave the chunk of ice because it doesn't do it evenly.

After that it was just mixing the prawns in some starch, stir-frying them till they were barely cooked and pouring in the sauce. Simmered it while I waited for the spaghetti to cook. Then I threw in some shredded parma ham to improve the flavour of the sauce.

Really, it's nothing big; I had to use pre-made sauce. But the prawns were good. They were definitely not inferior to fresh prawns from the wet market and they have about the same prices. And the parma ham's flavour goes well with the carbonara sauce too.







I was once asked what alfredo and carbonara meant, and I was stumped. I'd always thought of them as just names of flavours but never really went any further than guessing.

So after a little Wikipedia search, I found that they really aren't anything complicated.

The white carbonara sauce is really just egg whites, cheese and some sort of fats, either lard or olive oil. The cheese can be anything and cream isn't part of the traditional recipe. Neither is bacon, but the jar of it I bought had bacon bits inside.

Alfredo is even simpler. The sauce is really just parmesan cheese and butter! Anything else added in there are mostly due to American influence. In fact, this is more of an American food than Italian.

Perhaps I should make my own Fettucine Alfredo...

Thursday 28 May 2009

Rant 360 / Glowing Monkeys!

"As circumstances show, provocations of war on the part of the U.S. and South Korea have well gone beyond the risky level. It's a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered," the North KCNA news agency reported a commentary in a state newspaper as saying.

North Korea is getting ready for war? As an arms exporter, its military should not be underestimated. The possibility of their claims of nuclear weapons tests actually being truthful should also be taken into consideration.

Now that the UN has agreed that North Korea needs to be slapped on the wrist with their infamous sanctions well-known to be a strong deterrent against bad behaviour by the naughty countries, tension is definitely building up.

China isn't happy, and would be even more upset if the government in Pyongyang collapses. Imagine the flood of people that would come rushing through the border as they try to escape the chaos behind them, only to create more wherever they go. The men in China would be glad though; a surge of desperate Korean female refugees into their country could only result in happiness.

South Korea wouldn't like the flood either, and I'll bet the North Korean refugees would prefer the Southern lands to the PRC. Or at least, that would be my preference if I were in their shoes. But theoretically speaking the eventual unification would be a joyous occasion, just like the fall of the Berlin Wall.








From a player of Morrowind:

"Sometimes, I like to create a Bosmer character identical in face and hairstyle to him. Then, in the dead of night, pick his lock and enter his house, completely naked. I murder him. I take his clothes, and dispose of his corpse. The rest of the game is spent not taking quests, but travelling around Seyda Neen, simply being him. I sleep in his bed. I eat his food. I walk in the same aimless pattern he did. And I talk to his best friend, Arille. Though we maintain an air of friendly chatter, I can see the uneasiness in his eyes. All the villagers. They know. They're watching me. I've passed 100+ game days doing this."

It's a joke, but it's got that feel of actually being true, the possibility. It's disturbing.








Europa Universalis 3 is mainly about war. Because I first tried it with Spain just when Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas, I had the misconception that the game could be won without fighting.

I was wrong. Only Spain can be played without fighting for more than half the game. Every single other country must be involved in wars to win. Even England is no exception because the other kingdoms next to it, like Scotland and etc, will dislike it because they feel threatened by England's size and power. When relations deteriorate, war happens. And England is supposed to annex everyone on those islands anyway.

France, the other major power during the time period that the game covers, also has to fight. It was not the France of today; the giant patch of land was more of a patchwork of France and its vassals and other small kingdoms like Brittany and etc back then. It has to attack someone and annex its vassals, by hook or by crook.

The other smaller lands are only food unless their foreign relations are managed wisely. For example, I tried playing Austria from 1399. It had no access to sea ports since it didn't border any sea. I was also surrounded by smaller lands like Genoa and Venice, which were food. Well, maybe not since they were also filthy rich, wealthy enough to hire many mercenary armies. But if I had good alliances with other, more powerful states like Bulgaria, I could perhaps annex one or two states from them. Eventually I would bankrupt the merchant republics.

Anyway, I'm beginning to understand that I am not supposed to have perfect stability and reputation all the time. I'm meant to fight and conquer the weaker states to grow, and not just colonise new lands.

The trick to it, I guess. Just like in the Civilization series, the trick was to expand as fast as I can, taking every bit of empty land at the start of the game until I border other kingdoms in every direction.









Reinstalled Oblivion, but despite its similarity to Fallout 3, I felt some sort of... repulsion when I replayed the game. I don't understand why, since I enjoyed Fallout 3 very much. So far I've completed Fallout 3 thrice and Oblivion once, and that one time was before I first tried Fallout 3.

Maybe it has to do with everyone in Oblivion being fugly. At least in Fallout 3 there were some hot babes that actually resembled sexy female humans (eg in Dukov's Place where 2 women live as Dukov's whores in exchange for the safety he provides, and they wore some lacy nightgowns all the time).

Or it may be my dislike for the dark, dank dungeons. Oblivion contains many such areas like sewers, caves and the demonic Planes. "Dungeons" in Fallout 3 consist of semi-destroyed buildings, futuristic underground vaults and damaged subway tunnels, all filled with fully operational electric lights.

Though the atmosphere is similar in the dungeons in both games, Fallout 3 has a much happier feel when I turn on the radio. It just feels better to kill monsters to the crazy antics of Three Dog and his collection of 40s music.

The settings in the two games also give me a different impression. In Oblivion it's set in a fantastic world that is almost completely different from reality. Fallout 3 is set in a world identical to ours except it changed in the 1940s, when the US fought against China in WWIII which culminated in a 2-hour-long global nuclear strike that killed almost all life. Everything I see in this game I can relate to, and everything I find familiar sets me thinking of how it could have survived the nuclear blasts.

For example, I find it quite incredible that 200 years after that fateful day, people are still eating the preserved food from before the war. I mean, yeah theoretically speaking it may be possible for canned food to stay edible for centuries, if not by using today's food technologies, but c'mon how did so much food survive the explosions, earthquakes and nuclear fallout? Those cans must be at least double-layered, with one layer being pure lead and the other made of titanium!

Rivet City was another interesting sight. It was a city made from a beached aircraft carrier. Today, carriers are really mobile towns on water, so it really isn't that far a stretch for people to settle in one permanently. I'm only disappointed that the rusty aircrafts on the runway didn't work. It would have been even more interesting to see how the settlers would use them and where they would get the necessary fuel from.









A feral girl was found by Russian police. She's kinda like Tarzan, except she was raised by cats and dogs in a flat. The flat had no water, heat or sewage system, so it is difficult to imagine how she lived in there for so long. She doesn't speak Human and barks at people. She may meow and purr but it isn't in the report. I am curious how the parents could have done this. This isn't as bad as Fritzl, but the only real difference in this case was the lack of sexual assault.








Glowing monkeys!
Enough said.

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Rant 359 / GM Bankruptcy Nears

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?rn=222561&cl=13623490&ch=222562

From FOX News, a report that will make all IT technicians, programmers and gamers happy. According to a survey, computer geeks make the best sex partners.








Catherine the Great, one of the greatest rulers and politicians the world has ever seen. A great woman, but not a good woman (just like Saladin was a great man, but not a good man). The Russians were lucky that they got two great rulers within 3 generations, Catherine II having succeeded her mother-in-law, Catherine I, who in turned succeeded her husband Peter the Great.

Catherine brought Russia forward, modernising it and further expanding it to areas where Peter could not in his lifetime.

However, she was not a sympathetic towards the peasants. In fact, she almost totally ignored the common man during her rule. She probably would have hated the idea of a Communist Russia to the core.

She was also a slut, though it didn't impede her ability to rule. Generous as she was to her lovers even after the affairs had ended, she did not ruin the government by placing too many incompetent men in high places. It helped that she liked intelligent men, and if Voltaire had visited Russia she most likely would have bedded him too, then gave him an important position somewhere.

She was one serious MILF and it wasn't because she was dropdead gorgeous. Fucking her was like getting a Ph.D today - once you get it you're settled for life.

She's accused of having known about her husband's murder beforehand and let it happen, if not actually having a hand in it. No evidence of that, but it seemed very likely because Peter III was an incompetent tsar. A shrewd woman like her would have done something like that; exiling him might let her opponents to use him later to undermine her position.









I like the Xzibit meme...
This is the future of society, where children give birth to more children, and start working after menopause. The lack of self-control is making us come full circle. Boys who've just discovered the joys of an erection, and girls who have just realized that their vagina is more than just the place where pee comes out, becoming parents and have their situations supported by the public.

Self-control is civilization. People really need to remember that.

And those boys seriously need to get their eyes checked. Oh wait, British girls are normally that ugly. My bad.

This trend can shape our evolution. Children who have their reproductive organs mature earlier are having sex at a younger age, giving birth to children who are similar in this manner. This can be offset by the fact that children often cannot afford to bring up their own children and this can reduce the probability of teenage pregnancies. However, with the support of their parents and other people there would be no problem for children who have their own children.

C'mon, they need abortions. All underaged girls should be required by law to have abortions when they are pregnant. In many developed countries today, the welfare system is so good people who do not work can still afford to raise children. Hence there is little need to stop underaged pregnancies. Note that I use the word need, not desire. There is plenty of desire, but not enough need.

Either require abortion or start teaching children about sex and contraceptives at the age of ten!

Or we can look at it from another, more liberal way.

If they can afford to raise a child, then why not let them? Society is evolving, we cannot deny that. If it is okay for teenagers to start they own family, then it is okay. The unfit dies out, that is the way of nature. If teenage pregnancy doesn't stop and becomes common instead, then it is not an unhealthy thing, is it?










I've been working on a project with a group to make a mechanical product. No it's schoolwork, not done out of interest. We've been working on this window wiper with a flexible handle and after looking at a prototype of it, only one thing comes to mind but I cannot say it to them.

IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!!!!

At first when we were thinking of stuff to make, this guy suggested making this. When we question him on how soft the handle would be, he assured us that it would be hard enough to clean windows with. We trusted him because he spoke confidently.

Because we were forced to confirm our product within a week, we bought the materials after we submitted the product name and an introduction to it.

It was only then that we saw that we had trusted the wrong guy. He probably had never cleaned a window before. Now we have a flexible handle that bends not only when we bend it into an L-shape, but also when we push it against the glass.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU...










Just reached the round in Caesar 4 in which I had to rebuild Carthage. The fire really annoyed me. Once in a while, a lot of fires would suddenly start in the city. It would be so much that even spamming a hundred Prefects' Office (firestations cum police post) doesn't help. I had about 20 of them around my "residential zone" and it still managed to burn down most of my homes.

The thing about homes in Caesar 4 is that they upgrade themselves several times when certain conditions are met. This expands the homes but takes time. Land is not cheap in a successful city, so making them upgrade is a must.

At one time, a major fire burnt down 90% of my fully upgraded peasant homes, effectively removing about 2000-2500 manual labourers and about 200-300 skilled workers from my city. I did try to stop my city from suffering from a major workforce shortage by rebuilding them and hope that my prefects would do their job, but after watching 3 new homes burnt down before the people could move in, I gave up and just let it burn.

I could just build more homes elsewhere, but nowhere in the map was safe. My factories and warehouses were also being burnt at the other end of the map but they are less important because they don't take time to start working effectively.

And I had about 10 Prefects' Office all around the factories too! It simply doesn't help enough.

It's really painful to watch my city burn up helplessly, but I'm glad I can build while in Pause mode. The second the fires stopped, I paused the game and rebuilt everything. I recovered, but that was because I was lucky only 1 of my 3 granaries was burnt down. No labourers means no food, and for a few months I was living on food I had stored in case Rome asked for food in exchange for better reputation.

While my city burnt, I wondered if the Romans really did raze the city to the ground. According to this game it seemed more likely Carthage burnt itself down and the Romans just happened to come across it...








Kim Jong-Il seems to be looking for a fight. Why aren't they invading the country??? North Korea is a Communist country, it's under a dictatorship and best of all, they want everyone to know they have nukes! Even the infamous Iraq fulfilled merely one of the above.

Conquering it would most likely be a piece of cake. The whole place is about 100 years behind the rest of the world; I'd be surprised if their bullets can penetrate kevlar.

Sunday 24 May 2009

Rant 358 / All Your Base Are Belong To DPRK

North Korea claims successful nuclear bomb test in an underground facility. US Geological Survey confirmed seismic activity that may have been caused by it. The Russian defense ministry says it's a 20 kiloton warhead. South Korea is hitting the "PANIC!!!" button; the US is threatening and threatening and threatening but not actually doing anything; Japan is following the example of South Korea; all the while China remains silent.

What is the Chinese government thinking? What are they holding back?

And whatever the heck are the North Koreans planning? Are they serious about the test or was it just lots of TNT? Why are they trying to attract attention to their nuclear programme?

No one really understands Kim Jung-il, so it's hard to guess what they're up to.

Who's interested in a trip to North Korea? They have guided tours for tourists! North Korean tourism is... exotic, to say the least.













Another game. Europa Universalis III, with its 2 expansions: Napoleon's Ambition and In Nomine (In the name (0f) in Latin).

The original game is about the world between the day after Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell on 30 May 1453 until the 1st of January 1793, which really isn't a particularly important date. The final date is merely some years into the Revolution after the storming of the Bastille.

The first expansion, as the name hints, lengthens the game by including the years during which Napoleon reigned. In this game, one of the years I can start at is the day the Revolution began, when the idea of Nationalism swept across Europe. The game will end, no matter when the player started at, by the 1st of January 1822. Again, not an important date; Napoleon died in 1821.

In Nomine lengthens it some more by making it start 50 years earlier. In this expansion, we are allowed to play from the 14th of October 1399 till the 3rd of February 1821. 14th Oct 1399 was the day after Henry VI of England was coronated. This guy's life was made into a play by Shakespeare. I don't know what happened on 3/2/1821, but Napoleon's fatal health condition began showing in that month.

The interesting thing about the earlier start in In Nomine is that players get to see the final death of the Byzantine Empire. In 1399, the Empire was still barely in existence in the form of Byzantine Thrace (where Constantinople was, now renamed to Istanbul) and Morea.

The purple bit of land surrounded by the Ottoman Empire and the Black Sea was Thrace, while the purple mass SW of it was Morea ( In 1399 Morea controlled only about 3/4 of that landmass). Obviously it was hopeless for the Greeks, and 54 years later, New Rome became Istanbul. Morea was taken by the Ottomans 7 years after that.

There was a time when I thought the Byzantine Empire was the Holy Roman Empire. But the Byzantine Empire was really a different empire.

Meanwhile during this period nothing really happened in Asia except in Northern India where the Timurid Empire grew really big.



Anyway I tried playing In Nomine just now. I tried my hands on Morocco because I wanted to see Africans (well they're mostly Arabs today, but it's in the African continent so technically they're still Africans) ruling the world. Sadly, all the African Sultanates and Sheikhdoms and etc were technologically challenged and were obviously meant to be food for the Europeans. Except the Mamluks.

My Morocco thrived in the initial peace, having royal marriages (royal relatives marrying with their royal relatives) with all my Muslim neighbours, ie Algiers, Tunisia and Granada. Tripoli rejected my proposal, for unknown reasons.

But within several years, the alliance of Portugal, Castille and Aragon declared war on me. I didn't have any allies, so no one was obliged to help me. I was gang-raped, so I quit.








After reading about the next few crusades after the fourth, I realized there really isn't anything of note that happened, except for the Sixth Crusade when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II led his armies without the consent of the Church.

It was the first time someone attempted a large-scale crusade to Jerusalem without the blessings of the papacy. It was also the first time a Crusade was led by someone who was excommunicated (due to politcal reasons). It was also the first Crusade to succeed in taking Jerusalem, albeit to a degree.

Fred was trying gain power while reducing that of the Papacy. They didn't like that at all, and when he failed to lead his armies to join the failed Fifth Crusade 7 years before, the Pope took that as an excuse to excommunicate the emperor. He couldn't go for the trip because there was an epidemic in his empire, causing stability problems that required his immediate attention.

The emperor went anyway despite the shit the Church gave him, and actually reached Jerusalem. However due to certain unfortunate events (as usual) his armies were significantly shrunken by then. He didn't just leave though. No it wasn't anti-climatic at all.

He used a show of force, marching his armies down the coast trying to scare the Egyptians who controlled the Holy Land. Meanwhile, the Sultan of Egypt was busy fighting rebels in Syria, so he gave Fred Jerusalem plus a few other bits of land. The contract also included a ten-year truce.

So for ten years, the Christians controlled Jerusalem. Success! But after that the Muslims just charged in and took everything back.

It wasn't that bad though. At least he took it back at all. That was the best results ever achieved by all the Crusades aiming at Jerusalem. No one else ever did better than that. This also demonstrated that the Crusades did not need the blessings of the Church to succeed. In fact the statistics at that point of time show that if the Church wasn't involved, crusades to Jerusalem would have 100% probability of success, while crusades started by the popes are always doomed to failure.

Of course, statistics aren't everything. Four years after the Muslims took back the Holy Land, Louis IX of France probably saw this logic and thought he would give it a try.

The king failed, got captured by the Egyptians together with much of his forces and was ransomed for a shitload of money (roughly the annual revenue of his entire kingdom at that time).

Then he tried again by starting the Eigth Crusade but died after landing in Africa from a really bad stomachache. Charles I of Naples, King of Sicily and brother of Louis IX, had just arrived, so he took over and subsequently resumed the century-old Christian tradition of failing at such Crusades.

But before he lost, he managed to ally himself with Edward I of England, though Prince Ed arrived too late to help. Charles lost, gave up and went home. Ed, on the other hand, didn't want to go home without doing anything, so he started the Ninth Crusade and... seriously do I really have to repeat the same thing eight times? Before he could attack Jerusalem his father the King of England died, so he said," Gtg need crown," and left.

Hence it took NINE tries for the medieval Christians to finally get what their god was trying to tell them (which probably must have been something along the lines of "Go away! I'm telling you, you guys don't want to be here, especially in 700 years' time!). Nine attempts spread over 200 years with only one that resulted in some sort of success. Many of the rest actually involved fighting with fellow Christians and some helped to split the Church. And btw, Louis XI was later sainted (Saint Louis) despite the Crusades.

At least they tried...

:P

Saturday 23 May 2009

Rant 357 / Do Mosquitoes Shit?

Holy crap! I suck! Okay I'll not bother describing my performance for the 3 stations (I'm medically exempted from the chin-up station). This shall be only be about my 2.4km run.

Sorry, I should say walk. As in 2.4km walk.

Before the run, I was wondering if I could even complete one single lap (400m). It turns out I'm only capable of jogging a distance of 300m before I have to switch back to first gear. That is basically my pre-BMT standard.

I haven't run since I sprained my knee some months back. I didn't even use my stationary bike at home. The only running I've done in the recent months were the few times I ran after a bus, and I seldom even do that when I'm alone.

So I jogged 300m, walked the rest of the first lap, jogged again for half a lap and walked the rest of the 1.8km.

Meanwhile my bro, who had booked the exact same time and venue for his IPPT attempt as me, barely failed the run while getting 5 points for all the other stations. Well, 4 points at the shuttle run because he slipped accidentally. A potential gold winner, he is planning to train harder and re-attempt the third time in 2 weeks. He scored 5 points for everything but the run in the first attempt, so I'm hoping he'll get a gold. I mean, what's the point of trying so hard for everything if you aren't going to be the best?

Anyway, I was right when I left the rest of my Saturday free for rest. I'm typing this an hour after my IPPT, and my legs are aching all over. This is a typical symptom of NOT EXERCISING SINCE FOREVER. In fact I haven't exercised for so long, I can't even spell "exercise" without the help of dictionary.com. Fuck! I spelt it as "excersice" before I looked at it again and thought the word was a little too long to be right.









Do I sound too enthusiastic when I talk about my failures?









Today on Reuters...

Yep, that's the most interesting item on Reuter's today. Really, that business about Obama screwing up the Guantanamo issue may be the headlines but I don't care. Grinning muscular women with perfectly masculine pecs and abs are more fascinating.









Caesar 4 is getting easy. Or maybe I'm just getting the hang of it. I still screw up the economy the same way, but now I focus on foreign trade more in order to get more income. It really helps if there are cities that demand what I have in abundance.







I've completed Broken Steel. Using the Tesla Cannon now instead of the Shishkebab even though I have only 15 points in Heavy Weapons. I like its great sniper-rifle-like accuracy and its ammo which is easy to find. It's also got great damage, and each shot either cripples the limb it hits or just kills the enemy directly. Plus even if I miss it's got a small splash damage effect. Downside is that if the enemy is too close I get damaged too, and the long reload time means I become vulnerable for over a second after each shot.








It has been discovered that it is not advisable to for Irish boys to be Catholic. "Those abused were, amongst other things, stripped, beaten and raped by nuns, subjected to naked beatings in public, forced into oral sex and even subjected to beatings after failed rape attempts by brothers."

Damn, even the nuns are involved. Being raped by nuns may sound kinky at first, but "rape" here can also mean that they stuck objects up the boys' assholes. And I'm not talking about merely fingers.

"Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, sexual abuse was not systemic in girls’ schools."

Apparently, Catholicism makes both men and women more interested in little boys. Especially if you're Irish. I wonder why they can't just visit certain developing countries regularly to satisfy these urges, like other people do. Or fap to hentai. That's a win-win!

Or maybe, they believe that everything would be fine if they just confess in the box. If God forgives them, who cares if the judicial system doesn't? :P

I applaud the fact that paedophilia is supported by the system, albeit unofficially. Even if the Ryan Report cannot be used as evidence in lawsuits, it still serves as a screaming alert for everyone. I had no idea it went that far.


Thursday 21 May 2009

Rant 356 / Tomorrow Is A Good Day To Die

This is the 356th rant! If I had been diligently ranting every single day this archive of rants would have been exactly a year old. Instead, this webpage is already 3 years old, so I've been ranting at an average rate of once every 3 days for the last 3 years. Since there are so many threes in this paragraph I'll just list three things about myself that you don't already know even if you've read through everything recorded here so far.

1) I'm typing this only because I got a little tired of slashing monsters in Fallout 3. It's getting too easy and I'm considering not using my Shishkebab anymore just to make it harder.

2) I'm fully aware that the first paragraph of this rant makes no sense, especially the part about typing these just because there are multiple "3"'s in the paragraph.

3) I haven't had a bath in years, ever since the last bathtub broke. I slipped in the soapy water and something cracked when I fell. I turned around and saw my head had hit the side of the tub, causing multiple fractures in the tub structure. Nah, just kidding. The damned tub was made of hollow plastic and it eventually cracked and water filled the empty parts.








After hitting lv22 in Fallout 3 and boosting my Melee skill to 89 in the process, things have been getting almost too easy. It also helps that by investing in the Canterbury travelling salesmen to the max they can repair my equipment to about 90%. The better the condition of my stuff, the more effective they are. So my weapon deals better damage and my Hellfire armour set is like a wall of titanium.

Well, I did say "almost". I found out just how godlike I was when I tried to complete the main quest. In one part where I'm supposed to use the Presidential Metro beneath the White House, I was beset by Ghoul Reavers. These are the new Ghouls of the expansion, and they are TOUGH!

One hit from them takes about an eighth of my HP, even with 90% repaired Hellfire armour. They also throw radioactive projectiles at me.

Before I entered the tunnels where the Metro security Sentinel robots were fighting the Ghoul invasion, I thought I was able to cut through the robots like a hot knife through butter.

As I watched a Ghoul Reaver anally rape one of the robots, I realized these things are probably the only monsters in the game that could do more damage than I can. Hell, even the Deathclaw-infested Old Olney was like a walk through the park for me.

When I charged in with my flaming sword ablazed, two Reavers attacked me. Sure, 2 other Sentinels and my dear Fawkes were spamming their special Gatling Lasers at them, but it's like only my weapon could do any damage, about 1 bar per hit unless I crit (which I get a lot).

But because I wasn't used to the mad damage they do and there was a considerable amount of lag (too many things happening for my laptop to handle), I died before I could hit Tab to spam Stimpaks. Of course I know there's a shortcut key (I think), but I'm too used to healing myself slowly in the Pip-boy console. Doing it is like pausing the game and taking a mental break while healing.

I died twice in the tunnels during the onslaughts of Reavers and Glowing Ones (used to be the strongest Ghoul).

Later I read in the Fallout wiki that there are also Super Mutant Overlords in Broken Steel, but my level is probably not high enough to get any to spawn. I'm guessing they are even tougher than the Reavers. If so, I doubt I can hit lv30 without finding a better weapon.

Maybe I really should find the Experimental MIRV again, the crazy mini-Nuke launcher that shoots 8 projectiles per shot. I'll probably use console cheats to give myself infinite ammo if I do. Using it indoors would be so cool... if I don't die, that is.









Woohoo! I finally realized how I can stop failing in my finances in Caesar 4. I have to restrain myself constantly to do so because everytime I see a complaint (not enough jobs, too many jobs, not enough food) I build more and more and more. Too many houses full of people? More factories and farms. Too many jobs unfilled? More houses! It's a deadly spiral to bankruptcy.

But I did it. I stopped myself and let a few people go jobless. Too bad, man. Life's tough. Better luck next time.







Tomorrow I go to my doom. I haven't done anything physically demanding for the past... year(s?), so I'm not sure if I will be able to even complete the 2.4km run. Yes I am that out of shape.

Rant 355 / Mass Effect 2 Coming Soon In Less Than A Year

Broken Steel! This time I played through the original Fallout 3 storyline, unaware that I had to activate the Broken Steel files through the Fallout 3 Launcher. So I had to see the whole ending the 3rd time...

Then I activated it and replayed. Good thing it autosaves everytime I enter a new zone, so the last save was right when I entered the Purifier Control Room. This time, I sent Fawkes (my trusty old friend) in. No more of that "This is where your destiny culminates. I shall not rob you of this chance" bullshit. In the original storyline, this freakin dude knows he's immune to radiation and yet he refuses to enter the lethally irradiated chamber (lethal for normal people) for the player. Makes absolutely no sense!

When he entered the chamber, I felt that this was the perfect conclusion to this part of the story. Fawkes was the best guy to enter because of his special trait. Anyone else would die in that room, except myself (only because the expansion requires me to be alive).

But the ending movie made me sound like a coward, describing Fawkes as "the true hero". They're wrong! I'm just making the most practical choice!






Replaying Caesar 4. I can't seem to get past the first level of the Republic campaign. I need to know the basics better; I just keep screwing up my finances. Maybe I shouldn't have just jumped right into the main campaign and skipped the tutorial.








Also replaying a bit of Yoot Tower (Sim Tower 2), and I can't save it because I'm using Vista. And I have to play it at 256 colours, so when I open it everything but Yoot Tower is displayed in weird colours.

The worst thing is only that I can't save it, which means I can't use my usual save-and-reload-when-I-make-a-mistake strategy, which I do for every game whenever possible.

Oh well, it is still good for passing time, so I'll keep it for the future.








My Toastmasters Club is short of Exco members. Only the President's and one of the VP's posts are filled. No one ran for any other posts. Kinda weird this year, that no one wants to be in the main committee. Even I, but I have pretty solid reasons and also no need for CCA points.

The funny thing was the VP (Education) was expecting me to fill her post. That is the last post I'd want for myself because it involves the most amount of work. I'd pick the Treasurer or VPM if I'd wanted to run for Exco again.








Another 2 expansions for Fallout 3 were announced. Both are going to have nothing to do with the main story. One is going to be (again) another part of the US, while the other will be taking place on board an alien spaceship.

I'm only going to be interested in the expansion, Mothership Zeta, just because of the aliens.

Also coming in the near future (2010, but expect delays due to need for patches) is a new Fallout game, Fallout: New Vegas. The name says where it will be. After watching all the complete seasons of CSI, I'm interested in how they depict the post-nuclear-war Las Vegas.

It will be a new story but using the same style as Fallout 3. Woohoo!

Fallout MMORPG, on the other hand, is being developed by Interplay, the guys who made Fallout 1 and 2. Bethesda is now pissed off because they say Interplay doesn't have the rights to make that.

And no, none of these are Fallout 4. =(










After reading about the First and Second Crusade, it feels like I was reading some sort of drama story. The first 3 Crusades are apparently closely link, with each Crusade leading to consequences that led to the following Crusade. However, the 2 I've read so far were also tales of epic fail.

The Second Crusade, this time, failed because not only did they abandon their original goal, Edessa, but they also failed to achieve their new objective - WITHOUT A FIGHT!

In the First Crusade's aftermath, several Crusader states were formed. The first to rise was Edessa, but it was also the first to fall. It was its fall that led to the then Pope, Eugene III, to preach for a new Crusade as retaliation against the Muslims.

But when the armies came, they ignored Edessa and went for Damascus instead. At first they were at a good position to seige the city - hard to attack the city due to stronger defenses, but had a good supply of food and water (there were orchards). Then for some reason, they decided to move to another position that had weaker fortifications but also harder to obtain supplies.

It was then that the famous hero, Nuradin, arrived. When that happened, they were no longer able to move back (probably something to do with the better leader and his reinforcements). So they left. Or as a Singaporean would say, they kerblakan puseng and balek kampong.


SO FREAKIN ANTI-CLIMATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And because of the actions of these people, Jerusalem eventually fell into the hands of Saladin (which was later made into the movie, Kingdom of Heaven), whom I've mentioned before. He united Syria and Egypt and went on to attack all the other Crusader states, conquering everything but the capitals. This would lead to... the Third Crusade.

Stay tuned for more historical epic fails.

Or epic wins, if you're Muslim.








The pre-E3 Mass Effect 2 trailer is out. I need a new computer! It's going to be released by March 2010, and there are significant improvements to the graphics. This is the only game that I'm excited about right now because Fallout 3 and Broken Steel have been released. All the other games I'm playing merely serves to fill the time between Broken Steel and ME2.



Watching the video and scanning through all those wallpapers at www.masseffect.com makes me want to play Mass Effect again. If symptom persists I will play it after Broken Steel.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Rant 354 / A Day

Okay, Hinterland isn't as good as I thought it was. Don't get me wrong, it was very good at first. Problem is, the game lacks depth. After 2 games I felt like I've found everything that was in the game. What replay value? Pfft...

Games like this are the very reason why piracy isn't as bad as the RIAA says it is. I mean, some game developers do deserve to get no money for what they made. You can't just throw any piece of crap into the market and expect profits.

Piracy doesn't kill creativity; it kills the untalented and the uncreative.

The concept was great. The execution has a lot of room for improvement. A golf course's worth of it. What could have been a Diablo/Caesar hybrid turned out to be something that I wouldn't pay more than 10 bucks for. Sure, Tilted Mills is an indie company, a David among the Goliaths that are Blizzard and etc. But that tale is famous precisely because David's chance of winning was so slim! And here is Tilted Mills proving this point with this game.

And now they have released an expanded version (aka original plus expansion) but opinions of it are so poor that even software pirates aren't wasting their time to rip it. When there isn't a pirated version of a software, something has to be terribly wrong with it.

Better luck next time, Tilted Mills.








Warrior Epic is fail. I was surprised when I got invited into its closed beta phase, and I was surprised again when they announced its release on the 19th of May. After a few hours spent on it, I can say for sure it sucks and isn't ready for release.

I had to download it four times. First three times, it gave me a "Corrupted Installer" error. Fourth time, my NOD32 quarantined an important file within the installer under suspicion of being a variant of the Genetik trojan.

I closed my NOD32 and installed. After installation, the .exe couldn't be found. I opened NOD32 and un-quarantined it.

When I ran it, the .exe file vanished again. I opened up NOD32 only to find that file quarantined again. I un-quarantined it and ran it. Took some time to patch. Then when it ran, again the .exe file vanished.

So I opened NOD32, un-quarantined it and ran again. This time it's fine, but the game sucks.

It's not the usual MMORPG in which you run around in one huge world like WoW, Lineage 2 or RoM. Instead, you join a lobby in which people host games that you can join or you can create your own game. Each game is an obstacle course filled with breakable stuff containing loot and mobs, and each course are designed for a different set of levels.

...

I deleted it after an hour of playing, then went to their forum and gave them a piece of my mind about the download and installation process.







People often speak of the writing technique known as "deus ex machina" like it's something only bad writers use. Like it never happens in reality.

The fact is, read enough historical articles in Wikipedia and you see it happening all the time. I just found a great example of a deus ex machina in the story of Saladin, one of the greatest Muslims the world has ever known.

Nur ad-Din had aimed to unite the Euphrates, the Muslim lands in the Middle East, with Egypt to create one continuous stretch of land to fight against the Crusaders.


This modern map can be used as an approximation of what it was like then. Jerusalem was still Christian territory (a Crusader state), a tiny error in a huge swath of Muslim lands. Saladin was only the vizier (something like a Prime Minister) of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, while Nur ad-Din controlled Syria.

When Nur ad-Din persuaded Saladin to attack Jerusalem with him, he agreed. Saladin would attack from the south, while Nur as-Din from the north. But before Saladin attacked, he realized that if the plan succeeded, there would be nothing to stop Nur ad-Din from going further and annexing Egypt.

Planning to use the Crusader state as buffer between him and Nur ad-Din's ambition, he left the game saying, "gtg politcal plots."

It was then that Nur ad-Din realized that Saladin was not to going to be his minion willingly.

Later the Caliph, for some reason, just died and the Caliphate of Egypt was dissolved. Saladin, whom historians suspected to have a hand in the conveniently timed death, rose to become the Sultan of Egypt.

Eventually it came to the time for a final showdown. Nur ad-Din summoned his armies from Mosul (northern Iraq today), Diyarbakir (SE Turkey today) and Al-Jazira (NW Iraq and NE Syria), and Saladin summoned all his troops from outside of Cairo.

It was obvious to everyone that Nur ad-Din was planning to invade Egypt to fulfill his goal of an united Muslim front once and for all, and Saladin had already prepared Yemen as his escape route.

Suddenly, Nur ad-Din died from an illness. A fever due to complications from a peritonsillar abscess, basically a complication from tonsillitis and involves pus in the tonsil.

And the man who was about to become a nobody like the last boy he served went on to become a hero.

Who said there is no deus ex machina in real life??






An interesting excerpt from the article on the First Crusade:
"According to Ming and Qing dynasty stone monuments, a Jewish community has existed in China since the Han Dynasty, but a majority of scholars cite the early Song Dynasty (roughly a century before the First Crusade).[100] A legend common among the modern-day descendants of the Kaifeng Jews states they reached China after fleeing Bodrum from the invading crusaders. A section of the legend reads, “The Jews became merchants and traders in the region [of the Near East], but new troubles came in the 1090s. Life became difficult and dangerous. The first bad news was heralded by a word they had never heard before: 'Crusade,' the so-called Holy War ... Jews were warned; "Convert to Christianity or die!"[101]"










The Cyanide and Happiness comics are actually pretty good, especially because they don't even need to use vulgar language (which is also the official language of certain regions of the world). Now they even produce Flash shorts, going beyond the realm of still pictures.








Thinking of the components to get for my next desktop, but I'm quite outdated in terms of knowledge of desktops. I wasn't even aware of the existence of 1 TB hard drives!

I'm seriously considering using the formulae provided at hardwarezone.com for a $20XX computer. Or a $2XXX one. In fact, this sounds good to me:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 & Gigabyte EP45-UD3R ~ $645
Corsair XMS2 DHX PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL4 4GB (2X2GB) ~ $99
Palit GTX285 ~ $559
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB ~ $175
Samsung SATA 22X DVD Rewriter ~ $31
Corsair HX620W PSU ~ $174
Cooler Master CM690 ~ $129

Total ~ $20XX


Then throw in a 24" LCD monitor and a wired keyboard to complete the set. According to many members of that forum, a graphics card like that would be wasted on any monitor smaller than a 22".

Total of the whole desktop set would be around $2500. And yea, screw the soundcard. The integrated card should be able to support 7.1 surround sound and I'm not an audiophile.








Now that I've confirmed that it's not RoM that is dying but the zone I'm leveling in is dead, I've been looking for other games. Now trying Ether Saga Online, a "cute" MMORPG loosely based on the seriously overused "Journey to the West". Again it's a free game that has a cash shop in which players can buy stuff using real money.

I'm hoping that players don't need to spend money to enjoy playing the high-level characters in this game, though this is from the same company as Perfect World...









The Street Fighter Collab is finally out on Newgrounds. After making us wait for such an ungodly amount of time, they've finally released it.

As the name says, it is a collab, ie a collection of many short Flash movies by many artists, using the topic of Street Fighter. Hence anyone who has ever tried any SF game would be some interest in it.

Many of the artists involved are amateurs, so it explains that bad drawings in most of them. The jokes are mostly crude stuff, and there is a movie during the ending credits that contains gay sex. If you can handle a little homo crap, then go ahead and watch it.

I find 2 parts actually funny: the part by Chakra X and the other by zombiepimp. I really like the way Chakra X change the way I see Zangief doing the Spinning Piledriver. Watch it and you'll understand what I'm saying. The other part is about Zangief (again) showing Ryu his pick-up line in bar, which ALWAYS works. LOL!

Even though Stamper was the guy who started this whole thing and took half a year to put all the parts together, his part was definitely not the best. True that he's got the best drawing in the whole collab, but his humour is... different. All his part did was it got me aroused, then a little disgusted. The 2 things about it that were remotely funny were Guile's pubic hair (which was a tinier version of Guile's hair) and how it ended.

Friday 15 May 2009

Rant 353 / Anti-Dust Mite

Hinterlands is a new kind of game that mixes RPG with the Caesar type of simulation.

You begin by choosing the class you want to play as - Archer, Footman, Architect, Yeoman and etc...

Their stats include more than just Str, Dex and Int. When picking the class you want to play with, you also have to keep in mind their money-making skills and fame gain rate.

When you're done choosing, you start out as a level 1 character in your town (you're a noble, I guess). Visitors will arrive and you can build a home for them to hire them. Farmers, Trappers and Fletchers are only some of the basic types of people you will work with.

You can also go to the outlying wilderness to "patrol". When on patrol, what you're really doing is slaughter monsters a la Diablo style. So far I've seen Dark Elves, Goblins and Ogres fell by my weapons, but I'm sure there are many more kinds of monsters out there.

Your peasants can also help you hunt monsters, up to a max of 3 people. You can change their equipment just like you can change yours, except some items benefit them more than they help you. For example, some items not only have a higher chance of dealing Critical damage, but also increase the speed of your Craftsmen in making armours and weapons.

While you're busy turning your herders into armoured warriors, you also have to deal with your King's nonsense and marauders. For my first game, the King demand access for Souls in the first 5 mins of the game. Even now, I still don't know where to get that! My best guess is that Souls are produced by Crypts, which are in the farther regions of the wilderness. The penalty was high - 40 Fame; I only had 46 Fame at that point of time!

The other random event is raiders trying to destroy my little village. There would be a message that informs you of their imminent arrival, but they do not appear in your land immediately. I didn't know that until my second game, when I discovered that they are displayed in the Region map and I saw them come from a base quite some distance away.

About the resources, there are 3, Gold, Food and Fame. Gold is necessary for the usual stuff like upgrading a structure, researching new weapons and armours, and most importantly, building homes for your new slaves. Some occupations require more expensive homes than the others. A Craftsman needs more equipment and luxury than your run-of-the-mill Farmer.

Food is the basis of life here. Each person, including you, eats 1 Food per day. Herders, Farmers and Ranchers are the basic food producers in the game.

Fame is needed to attract better talents. Obviously Bill Gates is going to have an easier time finding the best people to work for him compared to... say, the guy living next door, unless you live next to Bill Gates. Each type of occupation has a minimum Fame requirement before you can hire these experts. A Farmer doesn't require more than 20 Fame for him to willingly work for you, but don't expect the same indiscriminate behaviour from a professionally trained Guard.

In this game, you can't just concentrate on playing SimCity though. In the uncharted territory out there are Wild Game, Springs, Iron Mines and many other resources that you will need to upgrade your peasants. For example, a Trapper can become a Hunter, but only if you have access to Wild Game. A Workshop can be turned into a Smithy only if you have a steady supply of Iron. To gain such access you will need to kill the monsters around them, hence your action RPG game.




I actually finished one game in 2 days. I played as a Seneschal on the 2nd (out of 4) difficulty. The Seneschal has the worst combat abilities but can make more money.

It started out quite badly. I couldn't fight well, so I didn't get much loot. No loot = no money. I couldn't sell my extra stuff because I didn't have a Merchant. I didn't have a Merchant because I couldn't afford the 100+ gold required to build his freakin palace. So the game went very slowly as I ran out, kill a monster or two and losing most of my HP in the process, run back to town to recuperate ( I don't have the ability to heal when outside of town), then rinse and repeat.

Things went much better once I enslaved a Merchant. I sold him all my extra junk and that really helped. My 2 Craftsmen also produced a lot of crap that I wouldn't touch, and that slightly increased my income regularly. The Merchant himself also produces gold. Once more money entered the treasury, I hired the other money-maker, the fortune teller.

The game isn't perfect. This is most true in the case of the Dragoneer. A Herder can be upgraded into a Dragoneer (ie dragon keeper) if you find a dragon egg among your loot. Apparently the Dragon and the Dragoneer become buddies once it hatches, and it gains level every few days. I found a dragon egg in the early game, and hired a Herder my level (lv2) to take care of it. I forgot about it until I noticed it again when I was lv10. The Dragon was already lv50!

But the Dragoneer was lv2!!!

I couldn't sack the Dragoneer because no visitors ever come as a Dragoneer; I have to build a Ranch and then upgrade it. Hence I couldn't replace him with a higher level guy with a better defense.

So I thought that it would be fun to have a lv50 Dragon around to kill the lv12 monsters out there. At first it was great. The Dragon was godlike and I thought I could just clear the whole land and finish the game in one trip. The Dragoneer, though, didn't agree. He died by the fifth monster. Worst of all is... you guessed it - the Dragon dies with the Dragoneer.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!

My other Dragon tended by another herder (lv9) was only at lv27, so I didn't feel like taking it out. It just wouldn't be as cool. They really need to give me the option to replace the Dragoneer because by the time the Dragon is of a suitable level the Dragoneer's would be too low.

The game also has a few bugs. One is that sometimes items disappear when I equip my peasants with new equipment. The old stuff would just vanish. Not that it's a big matter but it may turn into one.

Another bug is that the option to fire someone doesn't always appear.

Though this game has an expansion already released, I cannot find it online. So I shall stick with this and Broken Steel.








While downloading the client of Warrior Epic, I read about the Fourth Crusade on Wikipedia. The original goal of this crusade was to take Jerusalem from the Muslims, but few of the crusaders ever reached the Holy Land. Innocent III had made it his goal as Pope, but the plans were foiled by the situation in Europe at that time.

I expected epic battles and seiges in this story. Instead, the Fourth Crusade turned out to be a disgusting tale of greed and Byzantine politics.

Step 1: Go to Venice, take the ships built just for the occasion and leave straight for Cairo.

Step 2: From Cairo, move to Jerusalem, seige and take back the Holy Land.

This was the initial plan for the whole conquest, but it was never followed. It was screwed up right from the start. I'm not referring to the whole Step 1; "start" here means "go to Venice".

Only a third of the agreed 33500 troops met at Venice. Meanwhile the merchant state had sacrificed a large part of its population and economy (operating those ships take up to 20-30k of its 60k population, and building enough ships to carry 33500 men requires some serious bit of capital), and had been promised 85k silver marks. The Crusaders there could only produce 51k only if they scrape up everything bit of of money they have.

So a new agreement was made: conquer Zara for Venice, which had overthrown their economic dominance some time back, and the Crusaders get a discount.

Now Zara was a Christian city, and its rebellion mentioned above was aided by the Hungarian King, Emeric, who was involved with the Crusade. To top it off, there was the very serious order from the Pope not to attack Christian states.

So the Crusaders laid seige and conquered the city. Catholics in Zara hung banners with crosses on them to declare their religion in vain. In the process, many Crusaders who opposed to this attack deserted and returned home. The Pope was furious. Mr Emeric was fuming. The Venetians LOLed. The Crusaders avoided bankruptcy.

Even though the Pope threatened discommunication, his Legate decided it was necessary. In the end nothing was done.

He should have done what he said he would do, because of the next part of the story.

The son of a recently deposed Byzantine emperor (apparently deposed Roman emperors were common in those days), Alexius IV, promised the Crusaders 200k silver marks, 100k men, 500 knights and placing the Greek Orthodox Church under the Roman Catholic Church if he got his father's throne back.

So they seiged and destroyed two nearby cities, then attacked Constantinople itself. Alexius III, who was defending the city, escaped with a lot of gold and stuff. When Alexius IV was raised to the throne together with his dad, Isaac II, he saw that he wouldn't be able to keep his promise to the Crusaders.

His solution was to melt valuable Roman artifacts for the gold and silver. Even so, he was only able to raise half the promised amount. This action made the city hate him, and the resulting lack of cash pissed off the Crusaders. Eventually he was strangled by one of his courtiers who went on to become Emperor Alexius V (Why was the name so popular anyway? Imagine having 3 consecutive US presidents named Obama. Shit would be so cash!). The father soon died in the aftermath.

This made the Crusaders even angrier. Now that the guy who promised them all those things were dead, what the fuck were they supposed to do? They demanded that the new emperor keep the promises made by his predecessor, which was obviously refused.

The first seige wasn't a huge success, but they continued with its sequel, Seige 2, to recoup their losses.

On the 8th of April 1204, they attacked the Greek city again. It was kinda like the time when I was a little boy and made my brother really angry. Before he could hit me I ran into the bedroom and locked the door. He then proceeded to take out his badminton racket and smashed the door. To no avail, of course, proven by the absence of scars on my bones.

Anyway, that was roughly what happened. Details include the Greeks destroying the seige engines and the wind preventing their ships from attacking the city.

The clergymen had to convince the Crusaders that God wasn't punishing them, but He was only testing their determination (Fuck! How could anyone stand this cliche crap? Wait, maybe it wasn't cliche back then. But it's still crap!). The Pope told them to stop, but this was suppressed by the rest of the Church. For all his noble intent, he was the 13th century version of EFG (Epic Fail Guy, internet meme) in this story.

In their next wave of attack, they finally got some good winds and made it into the city. While conquering the city, they managed to burn a large part of it down. After that, they did some serious pillaging and then destroyed the city. The famous Library of Constantinople was hence gone. Despite all the threats the Pope made, even the churches and stuff were stolen or destroyed. By Crusaders, no less!

In this victory, it was said that they made over 900k silver marks. The Venetians received 150k, the Crusaders 50k, another 100k divided up by the same two groups and 500k secretly held by the Crusader knights.

The lands of the empire (since they've conquered the capital of the Byzantine Empire) were also divided up by the parties involved.

After that, they lived happily ever after.

Jerusalem? Still under Muslim control. LOL no one cares.

Rant 352 / Noobs! Google All Links Before You Click On Them!

An organized group of hackers successfully pulled off a major phishing attack on millions of Facebook users yesterday (Thursday). In this operation, hackers used already compromised FB accounts (and there are many, which I have already mentioned some time back) to send emails to their friends that tell them to go to certain websites. These fake websites look just like the FB home page, and gullible users typed in their emails and passwords, unwittingly giving the hackers full access to their accounts.

The FB security team believes that these accounts will be used in the future to advertise the latest state-of-the-art penis enlargement technologies.

So don't panic if your girlfriend sends you messages about fusion-powered penis pumps. It's not you, it's her. Her hacked account, that is.

You can't blame them for being gullible in this case. Seriously, good phishing websites look as legit as real websites, except for the URLs. Hackers today are just that good.

So if you have clicked on any links recently in Facebook, you may want to change the passwords of both your FB and related email accounts. Unless you want to be some kind of virtual pharmaceutical products billboard.







Now that I've hit lv37 for both my classes in Runes of Magic, I find that I've almost run out of quests to do, excluding the daily repeatable quests (up to 10 per day). I'm already doing only the daily quest with the best experience reward, which is to kill some spiders in a far corner of the zone, but it's only giving me about 16k exp total daily, and I need around 43k to hit lv38 for each class. I estimate that if I survive on dailies alone I will need 3 days of dailies to raise each class a level. I've already completed 1 set; 5 sets more to go.

There are some other quests, but there is only one that can be done solo. Finding a group is actually somewhat hard because of the time I play. The best time to find groups is actually in the early morning in my timezone, or late afternoon on the side of the globe. Which is quite hard since I wake up only at 7 earliest, and I prefer to do monotonous quests like the dailies when I'm merely semi-conscious.

Though I don't have any new skills to look forward to in my next level for both classes (no new skill for lv38 Priest, Combo Throw for Rogue which is useless), I get to go to the next zone for the lv40s. Of course, it would be hard. I've scouted a part of the area and most of the monsters near the entrance from Ystra (there is another entrance from Sascillia) are between lv39-41. I take a long time to kill mobs 3 lvls above me (over 10s), but I won't die.

The problem is really not about the mobs, but that the area is devoid of human activity. I don't see any human players around except in the town, the Obsidian Stronghold. I need a new game because I'm reaching levels that few other players are at, and it's getting boring.

So that's why there is BROKEN STEEL!!!!

Released on the 5th of May, the 3rd expansion of Fallout 3 is the first real expansion of the game; the rest are just unrelated side-stories.

The max level of the original game was 20, and in the latest expansion it has been raised to 30. Plus you aren't dead even if you chose to sacrifice your life in the original!

So I installed Fallout 3 just now and Broken Steel after.

And I started the game.

And my saved games were missing.

So now I've got to play the game all over again. Not that it's hard - it's always fun to bash people's head in. Like that Mr Burke who asked me to blow up Megaton. I took his device and killed him immediately after I ended the conversation. No exp rewards from any quests, but there's more than enough experience to be earned in this game anyway.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Rant 351 / Is The LHC Really The World's Biggest White Elephant?

So I've been putting off my IPPT (physical fitness test) for so long it's too late for me to book IPT now. So I'm left with 2 choices:

a) fail IPPT

b) go to DB

Fux!

Of course it's A I'm choosing. This means I will be going for Remedial Training. Then IPT for my next window. One of my friends is going for IPT, and he actually went for a session last night. We took MRT together from school yesterday, and he reminded me about it.

Apparently even though the schedule for IPT is like shit (7-10pm for weekdays and 4.30-7.30pm for Saturdays), no one watches you when you're training, ie you can do things very slowly. It sounds good. Sounds like destiny. For the rest of my life till I get out of here or I hit my ROD (retirement from conscription).

Yeah I'm not planning to pass any IPPT at all.

There aren't many places where I can have IPT though. Only the FCC at Bedok and Khatib is available. The friend I mentioned lives at Yishun, so Khatib's not too bad for him.

So the best I can do is take the test next weekend (projects during the weekdays T.T) then satisfy the RT requirements during the holidays. Then apply for IPT during my next long holiday.








KFC cancels their free chicken promotion after being featured in Oprah's show. This was originally organized to celebrate Obama's victory in the elections.

In the racist culture of 4chan, fried chicken and watermelons are always associated with black people. This kinda proves them right...








Intel got fined US$1.45bn by the EU Commission for illegally removing competition. That's like 3 times more than what they fined Microsoft. The number may be big, but it's not big compared to the profits they had just reported.

It's so funny! Just last night the front page news on Reuters was Intel reporting a relatively good revenue of US$7.1bn for the first quarter of 2009. While everyone else is seeing dropping profits, they get no drop (nor rise). The other article was on their performance for this quarter, which was headline," Intel CEO says orders better than expected so far".

Then BOOM! The EU Commission drops the bomb on them. The 1.06-billion-Euro fine is not merely a slap, but almost a kick in the butt.

My face when I saw the numbers.






The UK government is getting a huge PR problem. Not only are various members of the Parliament revealed to be misusing public money, but so are members of the Shadow Cabinet, the very people who are supposed to watch the MPs. It's not that they did anything horrendously serious, but that there are just so many of them spending taxpayers' money on things that they could have easily paid for out of their own wallets.

In fact I thought this recent disclosure made the government seem pretty clean. Especially after reading about Intel's fines. I mean, they paid a certain company to use only their chips in the computers they sell (among other things). Imagine how much money that would require.

The media are the ones making a big fuss out of a very small problem. Of course, if left alone problems can get bigger someday, but right now it really isn't as bad as it sounds.








4chan /b/ and /r9k/ are back up! Seems that some people have been spreading trojans that make computers DDOS these 2 boards. Users of /b/ were DDOSing /b/...

Epic fail.

Monday 11 May 2009

Rant 350 / Bongo Bongo Bongo

The Dawn of War campaign was fun. It was more like a real-time tactical game than strategy, since the gameplay in the story mode does not include resources and building units. Throughout the campaign, it was just 1-4 squads of rather unique soldiers on my side and hordes of enemies on the other.

The Skirmish mode is quite different from that though. It is basically RTS with building structures removed, so all a player needs to do is find resources and buy units and upgrades. No more of that waiting for the Barracks to be finished and then spamming the hotkey for the units. Now I just go straight to spamming the hotkey.

I'm sure in competitive games it would be all about microing and very little macro. All there is to the macro part is going for the right nodes at the right time and picking the right upgrades. Most of the fighting would be about sending which squad to the front and which cover to hide behind.

The campaign was fun. It had a nice story and gameplay was simple. There was nothing to it but microing my 4 squads around, especially Cyrus's squad which I put all my grenades on due to his best mobility.

There are 6 squads to choose from, including your Squad Commander whom you can upgrade as you want. The rest have special characteristics that influences your choice of how to spend their upgrade points when they level up.

Personally I leveled my Commander according to my choice of squads, which are the first 4 that I got. The Tactical Squad led by Tarkus I turned into a good range attacker with decent melee power and very good stamina. This I used as the vanguard in all my battles because they have the Taunt ability that attracts all enemies to them. They were meant to take the worst beatings after all.

The Devastator Squad led by Avitus were the heavy weapons people. I placed not a single point in their melee so that they had very good range damage and hp. These guys I place always in the middle of the group because with their long range they were obviously meant to support everyone else.

The Scouts led by Cyrus was my sniper/utilities squad. Maxed his range attack and gave him good hp so that he is always covering others from afar when nothing else needs to be done. Anything that needs to be thrown quickly I gave to them. All except the anti-infantry grenade because that is needed as soon as I see a garrisoned building and I always have Cyrus cover my rear. That grenade I gave to the Tactical Marines because they're always in front.

My Force Commander was turned into a melee specialist because I ignored the other melee squad. Since he also gets the most armour from the Commander-only items, I don't see why I should waste it by letting him be a ranged attacker. After all, there are always enemies who can leap across obstacles and into the middle of my formation. Someone needs to kill them at close range.

The general strategy was the let all my squads take cover and use my Commander to lure the enemies into range. Or let him get all the attention of the enemies together with my Tactical Marines, my Devastators following behind and finding somewhere to deploy and my Scouts coming in last to throw a grenade or snipe from a cover or just charge in and snipe an enemy artillery/sniper.

The Assault Marines was kind of hard to use because they always attract the most attention. With their Jump ability, they can leap over anything and land right in the middle of the enemies, stunning them.

Having them in my 4 squads would radically change my tactics. First, they would require the best armour since they are designed to jump into the midst of the enemies all the time. That would mean my Commander would have to change into a supporter or a ranged attacker.

Second, I would most likely have them take the place of the Scouts. My general strategy would be brute force. Send the Assault Marines into the enemies, then my Tactical Squad to charge in, my Commander behind the Tactical Marines and finally the Devastators behind them all and deploying at the cover somewhere nearby. All my misssions would probably be completed very quickly, but it would also be more stressful.

The sixth is not a squad by a Terminator unit, which is a mechanical walker unit. I didn't use it because despite having 2 healing abilities on my Commander, none of them heals robots. To have it in my combination would require an extra slot filled with the Rites of Repair item, which doesn't help anyone but this unit.

Of course this thing has to be good, but I got it too late. Everyone was lv15 when I first received it and it started at lv13. 2 levels make a big difference. But its damage was very good for its level. I'm sure if I had it earlier I would do anything to keep it in the team.




On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm very sure the design of the Lictor on the Tyranid faction was inspired by Cthulhu. An octopus-like (or cuttlefish-like in this case) head is always Cthulhu-inspired.



The story of the Space Marines kept reminding me of the Empire in the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Asimov's Empire was a futuristic galaxy-wide empire that revolved around an Emperor. This Emperor is a human monarch, unlike he's counterpart in Warhammer who is as good as dead, kept alive by machines but treated as God.

In the time of the Foundation, the Empire was collapsing. The dying Empire is incredibly similar to the Imperium of Man! Both were unable to replace their higher technologies, describing the required knowledge as "forgotten" or "lost". They were both clinging on the last bits of such technologies such as space warships and buildings (nuclear plant in the Empire, automated foundries and many others in the Imperium).

Both of them were also in a similar situation - they were both declining.




Speaking of the Foundation universe, I thought something really didn't make sense there. The Foundation were capable of small-scale machines, like personal bullet-proof shields and walnut-sized nuclear reactors, while the Empire could only planetary defensive shields and planet-scale plants because the Foundation had little resources while the Empire had the resources of the whole galaxy. Or so it was explained anyway.

And that doesn't make sense. My common sense disapproves of this flawed reasoning.

When you have only small amounts of resources to use, you would build big to improve efficiency. One huge powerplant for the whole planet would be better than multiple small power plants everywhere. For one, less building materials would be required.

And small machines because of lack of resources! It's like saying because oil is becoming more expensive (due to demand), everyone should drive their own cars and boycott public transport.

There is, however, one part that kind of make sense. The Foundation used mainly small space fighters while the Empire had a fleet of huge warships. I don't see how the size of the ships is related to the resources.

As I see it, what they should consist of depends on how they are meant to be used. The huge warships would be excellent seige machines to scare warlords into surrendering and quell the ocassional rebellion. They can also be used to conquer new planets by providing support to soldiers and other ships, and attacking enemy warships.

The smaller fighters of the Foundation would be more suitable for small scale battles. Since the Foundation does not conquer other planets by force, there is no need for seiges. I imagine these smaller ships would be good for fighting off pirates and other sorts of criminals.

Though little detail was given as to what the Empire was like in its final centuries, playing Dawn of War 2 gave me a better picture of it.





Though there are 12 commanders to choose from in a Skirmish in DoW2, I imagine this extra work was offset by the lack of buildings.

I think this is what strategy really means. The same strategy is required. In the "normal" style you build according which units you want. This simplifies things, but also prevents each side from gathering intel on each other. In Starcraft, players often try to look at their opponents' bases to see which buildings are up in order to guess which units are being sent against them. This allows them to adopt a new strategy by recruiting the units most suitable to counter their enemies.

In DoW2 you can't tell what you're up against till you see the actual army, which would be too late for you to change anything.








The series, Freeman's Mind, on Machinima.com is actually very good. At least for anyone who has tried Half Life 1 before. It's basically about what Gordon Freeman was thinking about as he went through the events of Half Life.

The machinima is really a recording of a seemingly perfect run through Half Life, with a narrator and with the screen turning and moving according to what he was thinking about.

The first episode began rather slowly but it gets better by episode 3. And I got hooked ever since. Even though each episode is about 10 mins long, I feel that they're still too short. But I understand it's made by one person, so it's not easy to produce.










After a slow period of progress (2 days of half level peer day), things have gotten a more interesting in Runes of Magic. Now that I'm at level 36 for both classes, I can finally go to the Necropolis of Mirrors and not get raped at every single boss fight.

I'm not sure if it's because Ystra is a rather quiet zone or if many players are leaving the game due to the diamond issue, but I haven't seen many people looking for groups to go to NoM recently.

This makes things a little disappointing, though it does help that I'm at a somewhat high level now. At my level I can easily solo anything in the first newbie zone, Howling Mountains, and most things in Silverspring. So when I get tired of completing quests I go to the those two areas and offer my help for any player who wants a shortcut. Of course, they don't get any experience from the mob kills, but they do get the reward exp when I kill the boss mobs for them.

And I raid dungeons for the newbies, when there are enough players to make the trip worth the effort, ie full party. Sometimes they try to help by buffing me or hitting the mobs, but as a Rogue I can one-hit-kill most mobs in those dungeons. The buffs are also pointless, but it's another way of saying thanks I guess.

There is one dungeon, though, that I cannot help with very well. In the instance in a place called Moongorge, there is nothing but this boss that summons many tiny weak mobs, 3 at a time in fact. My Rogue doesn't have any ability that kills multiple monsters, so I can't kill them all fast enough. Having an excellent Dex score and a Dodge rate buff, they can't kill me.

The newbies are the one who have trouble getting past them. So generally I tell them to stand at the sides and try to not to catch any attention. Meanwhile I go straight to the boss and kill it in a couple of seconds. So far, only 1 person has died. The moron walked right into the midst of the mobs and got gang-raped. I think he was trying to hit 1, but aggroed those around it too. Luckily for him he died after I downed the boss, so that he completed the quest.

Once there was this player who kept following me around, for reasons I don't really know. I didn't even help him with anything! He just asked me to invite him to my group after I helped some newbies kill a boss. When I asked him if he had any boss quests that requires my help, he didn't.

All he wanted was to follow me around, so I let him. And I completely ignored his presence after that. He left after about an hour. Fortunately for me I don't have a fixed schedule, so I never saw him since then. All I can say about this behaviour is that it was stupid. I'm just a guy trying to help the new players where I can. And liven things up a bit in those newbie zones, by talking crap and stuff. After all, an MMORPG is really just an RPG combined with IRC.







I'm planning to buy a desktop instead of a laptop for my next computer. If all I need this computer for is gaming, I'll get a better set for a better price if I pick a desktop. My bro went to Sim Lim Square today, so I asked him to keep the flyers for me. Apparently, no one is giving out flyers for computers there. Weird.








NTUTMC AGM is approaching. Coming Wed in fact. And I haven't prepared my Powerpoint. Seriously, I don't feel like doing it. I'm not even planning to renew my membership after this year anyway. I didn't even try hard to find a replacement for my job and merely sent some messages on Facebook to ask around. I have no idea what to do for the Powerpoint too. All I know is I'm supposed to talk about my role as the SAA in the club.






4chan /r9k/ and /b/ has been down for the past couple of days, hit really hard in an ongoing DDOS attack by some people yet to be offically identified. Sad.