Rant 519 / Deltree *.*

So I noticed Facebook is becoming more and more invasive these days. Not in terms of our privacy but it's appearing everywhere now, kind of like a fun version of Big Brother. Well, not so fun really. Despite being an almost unknown thing a couple years ago, it now contains more information about its users than anyone would have guessed when it started.

It's now even connected to Youtube. What next? Google? Maybe it already does and I never noticed. Or will it merge with Twitter? Oh wait, it already has a system similar to that.

In any case, we're already setting up the stage for a future where not only should you have your IC, you also need a FB-like account to establish your identity. Unsure if that guy is who he is even though the passport has his photo? Open Facebook. Want to find out what someone likes before buying a gift? Check Facebook. You basically tell the world everything about you right there. No need to ask what he/she likes, what he/she does and how often they eat. Everything is already or going to be on Facebook (or it's successor, if any).
















Settlers 7 was released on 23rd of March with the same form of anti-piracy measure as Assassin's Creed 2. Because of this, it hasn't been cracked but no one cares. Sales suck and Ubisoft is gaining notoriety.


Assassin's Creed 2 sold 1.6million copies in its first week. As far as I can tell from my searches in Piratebay, it still isn't properly cracked by hackers. First released in mid-November on the PS3 and 360, this game has hit 8 million in total sales this month.



Mass Effect 2 sold 2 million copies in its first week. It was cracked within a week. As of this month, 2 months after release, it has sold 6.6 million copies.



Left 4 Dead 2 sold 2 million copies... in its first two weeks. It was cracked within a month (3 weeks if I remember correctly). By February this year, 2.5 months after release, it has sold 2.9 million copies.

Notice any patterns? The trend I don't see that most anti-piracy advocates would imply to exist is that less piracy = more sales. Logically the longer it takes to crack a game, the better the sales should be, if they're right. The latter 3 games, the biggest hits in recent months, have just proven them wrong. Piracy doesn't make publishers lose sales, the talents of the developers and the marketing department do.

Just because I can't play a game without paying doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to fork out the money. Depending on how good it is, I can just move on to the next game. This argument may not be valid for everyone, but it definitely applies to me.

Rant 518 / THEY'RE COLLIDING NOW!

I'm not trying to be sexist here, but have you noticed how most of the dominant cultures and societies in the world have always been patriarchal? I don't understand why, but the evidence is there in front of us. Nature is sexist, not me.













In case you're wondering if the world has been destroyed by the LHC, here's a website that shows the answer. I think it's constantly updated, so keep refreshing if you're scared (/sarcasm). At the moment they're about to smash the beams at 3.5TeV on each side (7TeV collision). If it succeeds, it will then continue to run at 3.5TeV for 2 years before stopping for upgrades and whatever.

Watch the progress at the LHC at this Twitter feed and this feed.




Also,



The LHC explained in rap.

I have to say they really spent a lot of money on publicity. The live video stream from CERN has been unbelievably smooth so far (watched for over 1 hour since first collision). This is coming from Europe, which usually gives me a worse ping than US servers. It's probably due to the fact that it's a satellite feed though.

If you didn't watch it you've just missed a major world event. Physics textbooks are about to be rewritten just because of today's breakthrough.

Rant 517 / In The Mood For Some Techno?

Holy crap! Check out the song lyrics displayed by combining the words on his hands.




Daft Punk. Who doesn't like them anyway?



I like how these have a pretty clear sound quality for amateur videos.



A capella techno?









The coordination is perfect. There was either some editing or he had the timing perfect. More likely the former.






I didn't know the Mortal Kombat had anything to do with Nintendo.






XD












A fanmade trailer for Planescape: Torment. Looks decent enough, given the little he had to work with.



Makes me want to reinstall the game and try it for the second time. It is a very good game, but because of the way the story works, the magic is gone once you've seen the ending. Still, it's worth playing for the details in the rest of the game. I still didn't get one of the characters or develop my relationship with some of the companions.

This game does have one of the best, if not the best, plots I've ever seen. In addition, it deals with many mature philosophical ideas that modern games don't touch on, eg the question the entire plot revolves around: what can change the nature of a man? Makes you think and maybe even reconsider your philosophical foundation a little throughout the game.




(Warning: very gloomy music!)

Deionarra is probably the most tragic character in the game, so her theme music actually suits her perfectly. In the game, one will eventually find out the truth about her and be given the choice to tell her either the cruel truth or the even more cruel lie. No matter what the player does, she starts sad and ends the same way.

Well actually everyone the protagonist meets has a tragic story. Come to think of it, the game is actually pretty gloomy on the whole. Not many spots of bright sunshine and joy anywhere to be found. Then again, a good story doesn't need to be all happy and stuff.

The only constant source of comedy is Morte who follows you right from the beginning. Pretty amazing fighter for a floating skull and really knows what the say all the time. Probably the best buddy one can ever have... not.



Ending with main theme of the game.

Rant 516 / Am I Screwed?

The mire the Catholic Church is in is deep! The anger isn't ending at all, probably because of all the dirt people keep digging up regardless of age. One of the orders even disowned its founder who's been dead since 2008. What the heck? Anyway the Vatican is telling all Catholics to keep praying. Maybe if they pray enough the paedophilia will vanish. That will show the unbelievers who ridicule prayers! XD












Journalists are trying to tell LKY and LHL to stop suing them. That's stupid. If they want to avoid getting sued they should try to do some actual unbiased reporting based on solid evidence. In other words, if they don't have any undeniable and ground-breaking news to reveal to the world, they should keep their mouths shut. Doing what they've been doing is just asking for trouble, especially when our leaders already have a reputation for winning defamation suits.

I don't think they have ever lost, or at least I'm not aware of any such instances.

Telling them to stop suing is rather pointless, especially when all their actions have been legally justified. It's kinda like crying after getting caned by the principal. Only children do that. Real men stare at him angrily and puncture his tires after school.













Speaking of caning, I was caned once in primary school. Not sure if I've ever mentioned this in this blog. It was a pointless mistake I made in either Primary One or Two. I was playing catching aka police-and-thief during recess when the "thief" ran out of the school gates. So the two of us chased him out. We merely ran out from one gate and back through another. I wasn't even sure it was a punishable offence.

Then when recess ended a "concerned mother" (for a lack of a better term and a more suitable expletive, I'll use this phrase to describe her) came to my form teacher (still remember it was Ms Teo, probably Eurasian but not sure) and whispered something to her. I still remember her face as she pointed at us with her fingers. It was as if she was telling her a terrible secret and we were suspects in a serious crime.

Unsurprisingly Ms Teo picked us out and brought us to our principal Mr Jaya (Mr Jayachandran, but everyone addresses him using the shortened version). After he spoke to us some English I couldn't comprehend (yea my English sucked that badly till somewhere in Primary 3), we were caned once each with the standard rattan (not completely sure if it's rattan, but it's kind of wooden and very flexible, the sort my own mother used on us at home for the same purpose).

It wasn't exactly painful since I have suffered canings far worse than that at home, but that was still a big difference from getting a mere scolding from a big dark man.

Of course that wasn't the worst punishment I've ever received in school. In Primary Three I was almost expelled because of my lack of discipline during class. My English teacher, Mr Lingam, never showed any mercy. If we made small mistakes, he wrote complaints to the parents that require a signature from them. Big mistakes, it was either some weird punishment or a trip to the principal.

One example of a "weird punishment" that I can remember was to get the student to stand outside the classroom till the end of the lesson. Then he would tell him to walk to the opposite end of the corridor (15-20m away I think) and shout an apology to him. If we couldn't hear it clearly, he'd get him to repeat till everyone in the room can hear him properly.

That was the better option, compared to seeing Mr Jaya. That dude was fierce! Seriously I don't think I had ever seen him smile when he spoke to students except during special occasions.

I can still recall how Mr Lingam always mentioned that I was a foreign student every time he brought me to him. I never understood what the word "foreign" meant till much later. I did ask my parents but the best answer I got was that he meant I was a "forest" student, ie wild and undisciplined. It may sound funny, but remember none of them were English-educated and I never did get the written form of that word.

Anyway after one trip too many he finally decided to "sack" me. I didn't know what he was saying because c'mon, which 9-year-old (I think it's 9) has heard of this word used this way before?

I don't remember how I eventually understood the trouble I was in, but I did by the next class (Mr Heo's Mother Tongue lesson). Let's be frank. I was 9 and I didn't know what would happen if I couldn't study there. Even worse, what would happen at home?

The fear drove me nuts and I cried during the rest of the classes. I didn't even think to leave right away. If I'm not wrong it was because I thought if I stayed then maybe there was something I could do to stop it.

Of course there wasn't. So I went home after school, got my parents in a panic and then had tuition that night. Ms Lisa Ang, that was my then-tutor's name. She got married later but insisted me and my bro (both of us were being tutored by her) call her Ms Ang. Can't remember what her husband's surname was, even though we were close enough that my family and I went to her new home for dinner some time after her wedding.

After I grew up I realized the most amazing thing about her was her balls. Seriously, she had to have lots of it to ask for a $50 raise every year. According to her it was due to rises in transport costs but we knew it was because I was having consistently good results - 4th in class straight for 2 years in Pri1 and Pri 2, then EM1 (there were only about 10-15 of us in our year in our school) and top class in school from Pri 4 onwards, Best Progress Prize for one year and 5th in Standard Prize for another. My parents believed she was the reason I was getting straight A's (except for Higher Mother Tongue and maybe English), so they always complied. By Primary Five and Six she was raking in more money than any of my secondary school private tutors ever did per month even though some of them were supposed to be paid more because they were "professional" tutors.

Alright back to the original story. For that evening my studies were put on hold. There wasn't any reason to discuss my homework if I wasn't going to return to school for a while. So she tried to help by instructing me on how to write an apology letter. Well actually she narrated while I wrote the whole thing. In the end, there really wasn't anything I could do.

The next morning before I even got out of bed, my parents went to the principal's office, only to find that he was away for some reason and it was my vice-principal who spoke to them. That was a lucky break because Mr Tan was Chinese. My parents would have had a lot of trouble trying to communicate with Mr Jaya.

They handed him my apology letter and brought my past homework and test papers to remind him that I had a pretty good track record (like I mentioned, 4th place in my class every single semester for the previous two years, like some sort of almost-winning streak). In the discussion they somehow also mentioned we had received our Singapore citizenship a couple months before.

That changed the whole situation. My father did instruct me to inform my form teacher about that, but I didn't understand the significance and never did. However, it seemed students who were citizens got different treatments compared to foreigners. On that basis I was not expelled from school.

Before everything was wrapped up, my parents added that Mr Lingam had been calling me "HongKong boy". He gave nicknames for many students, but apparently Mr Tan and my parents found it too offensive (maybe even racist, but I'll never find out) and he actually spoke to him personally about it.

When I returned to school the next day Mr Lingam apologized to me for calling me that name. No other schoolmates ever tried to tease me with that nick, and for those few exceptions who did, I only had to remind once them what Mr Lingam did that day to stop them.

But I still didn't know what "foreign" meant till years after.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I do not thank Mr Lingam for anything. For one, he was my English teacher and my English still sucked so badly that I didn't know what being a "foreign student" meant. Also, my discipline never did improve much.

For example in secondary school I was copying all my Math homework every morning before the first class for years. I think it is a little strange that I did Further Maths in JC (pre-U) after that. Damn I'm smart. XD

Nah I was just decent enough at last-minute cram revisions.

In JC I was always either talking or sleeping in lectures. I never was and still isn't a good student. Being in EM1 in primary school meant nothing because I kept getting shitty almost-fail/actually-fail grades in Higher Mother Tongue, the only subject EM1 students studied that differentiated them from everyone else. Being the only one in class that Mr Lingam said to have done pretty well in the Screening exams meant nothing because I didn't get into GEP. Getting into NTU's Mechanical Engineering course meant nothing because my grades have been horrendous.

Come to think of it, my life's rather similar to Demandred from the Wheel of Time series, being one that's full of "almost". Many things almost happened to me and I almost achieved many things. Close but no banana.

Speaking of Wheel of Time, Obsidian Entertainment (the guys who made Neverwinter Nights 2) will be making a new WoT game together with Red Eagle Games. There is no release date announced but it's going to be on PC, PS3 and the 360.

As for the film possibility, there hasn't been any news ever since Universal announced plans to make a movie out of the first book. Probably like the Runelords movie, problems arose in pre-production and got suspended indefinitely. Unless they're trying to keep it quiet.




From my Pri5-6 form teacher, Mrs Wee, whom my ex-classmates and I had been visiting every Chinese New Year for the last few years, Mr Tan never got promoted to principal, which wasn't normal considering the past trend before him. Apparently the Ministry of Education changed some policies and decided he was not in the right age group to be promoted. Hence, he was destined to stay in that position till retirement even after Mr Jaya himself retired. What the MOE did was that they got some new guy out of nowhere to take over the position instead.

To make things worse, he had some sort of problem with a teacher in school about teaching methods that eventually led to his decision to have an early retirement. Pretty drastic, since he had about a decade to go before hitting retirement age. No idea what he's doing now to get by. I'm very sure it's incredibly hard to get a decent job at his age, even with his resume.

Mr Lingam retired years ago, nobody knows what happened after. I think he's probably enjoying life after retirement since his daughter had graduated from uni when I was still in primary school. I remember him telling us once how his daughter asked him to help her with her 9000-word thesis (not sure if I remember the word limit correctly). 9000-word essays sounded like an impossibility to primary school kids, but now it sounds like it can be done with some effort. I bet this tale alone has around 1-2k words. It's also just as likely that he's dead since he was pretty overweight.

Ms Teo was still spotted in this neighbourhood till my primary school was merged with another. She was a nice teacher but I have no idea what happened to her after. Mrs Wee didn't know much about her because upper primary school (Pri 4-6) teachers do not interact much with their colleagues teaching in lower primary (Pri 1-3) . The clearest memory I have of her was when she told me that butterflies ate nectar and bees honey. I still didn't understand the difference between the two till a long time after that, when I finally learnt that honey is partly digested bee vomit.













I never knew that NTU students are supposed to receive their University Transcripts. Are we supposed to get it after every semester? What the heck? I've never even heard of the term till recently. Am I screwed big time?

Rant 515 / CMOS Checksum Bad

Plain boiled/steamed chicken goes well with this dip called 姜葱溶 (not sure if I'm using the right rong2 character) and I can never find this anywhere in Singapore. It's basically a salty mix made with grated ginger, chopped spring onions, salt and oil. The closest thing to it that is available here is this sweet ginger dip that tastes like ginger puree mixed with sugar.

Why a sweet dip? It's probably the local tastes. The Singaporean Chinese seem to prefer sweet dipping sauce. Even the dark soy sauce is sweet.

So that's why I had to get my mum to show me how to make 姜葱溶 (jiang1 cong1 rong2). It's actually very easy. However, grating ginger is not easy for noobs like me. You have to watch your fingers or you may grate them too. When the grated (or mashed) ginger, chopped spring onion and salt (lots of it) are mixed, hot oil is poured in and stirred. That's it. All I didn't figure out beforehand was the hot oil. It seems it is rapidly cooled once it's mixed with the rest of the ingredients, so the dip is merely warm when it's done.

It's supposed to be oily and very salty, so it's hard to go wrong.













Last night I finally noticed that a few of my finger tips (the ones I use to press my keys and mouse buttons) were getting numb because my desk was vibrating too much. This was in turn due to my desktop's fans. So I switched it off, unplugged it and used my heavy-duty vacuum cleaner.

Opening the side was easy because the lazy tech who built my PC didn't bother to screw in the right side. I was expecting dust but I never thought I'd see chunks of that grey stuff even on the wires at the bottom. Thank goodness I was planning to use the vacuum. Accidentally dropped the board but the wires connecting the fan with the rest of the components didn't snap.

So after sucking all the clumps away, I was still unsatisfied with the thin layer of dust everywhere. I knew it was dangerous, but I still used a wet cloth (dried properly) to wipe the parts that I could reach. It took a lot of care but I managed not to let the cloth touch any of the circuit boards.

It was also then that I noticed the second biggest object in my computer was my Nvidia GTX 285 video card, the largest being my mobo. The graphics card is so big, it has 2 small fans at the bottom. Since I was wiping all the fans, those two were cleaned too. Took more effort since they were aimed downwards.

Also noticed the bottom of the tower casing was also ventilated (grills and filters). That means it's ventilated in every single direction!

Then things didn't go so well. If it had gone that well I wouldn't type so much about it. It's just cleaning my computer.

I put closed the casing and boot my computer. The fans whirled as normal, but then they slowed down, then started up again, and slowed down. This cycled repeatedly while the monitor said it was not receiving any signal and went to sleep mode. Holy shit! What have I done???!?

Dismissing the possibility of a water droplet short-circuiting a component, my first suspicion went to the wires that got pulled hard when I dropped the board. After turning it off again, I examined them carefully to see where they were plugged in, and pushed each plug in hard.

Rebooting the computer gave me some hope. It managed to show me the first screen displaying my hard drive and etc, but at the bottom was something I had never seen before: CMOS Checksum bad.

WHAT DID I DO?!?!?!

I was given 3 options:

-Go to BIOS setup
-Load default values and continue
- something I can't remember.

I went to BIOS but didn't know what to do, so I exited without saving. Things continue to boot but at the Windows loading bar, it crashed. Oh shit!

So I repeated the process of staring at the wires and pushing stuff but all I got was either the initial fan-cycling response or the CMOS Checksum Bad error.

After another 4-5 tries I gave up and used my laptop to google the error. Most of the results told me that it may be a hardware issue (oh shit!) or that the mobo battery had problems. The general advise was to change the battery.

Since I was pretty damn sure it was NOT my battery (my cloth definitely never touched it), I could only conclude it was a hardware fault. This meant a trip to Sim Lim Square on a Saturday morning.

Lugging my desktop (with only my power cable) to Fuwell, the shop I bought from, was tough. Not only was it heavy, I had to be careful not to hit anything hard. Since I had no cart-thing-contraption-whatever, I was carrying it in the box my mum's computer came in. The sticky tape handle allowed me to carry it in one hand, but was rolled up so much it was like holding a string.

Mechanics 101

Lots of force (gravitational in this case) / small surface area = painful amount of pressure

Coincidentally my bro's friend who built it for her picked the exact same casing as I did. Great minds think alike I guess (yes cliche yes).

At first I went to Bell since I saw people recommending it for their repair service (some repair shops there aren't trustworthy). The sale guy told me it would cost $30 and I'd have to wait till Monday to have it repaired due to the weekend. I was fine with that. Then he told me that because I didn't buy from them, they wouldn't be able to replace the parts if they were found to be faulty. The best they could do was check which part was faulty. Finally they told me it would be better if I took it to the shop I bought it from.

I didn't know Fuwell had repair services but they assured me they do. So I went to Fuwell, where I was told it was $30 for repair service and I was to bring it to their tech next door. By the time I finally got my computer there I probably looked like I had rinsed my hair without drying it.

The tech looked at me and I told him I needed to get my computer fixed. He then asked me what was wrong so I told him the error message. When he asked me if it could load Windows, I said no. Strangely, he said it was likely a Windows problem. Surprised, I told him when I googled the error most results told me it was usually a hardware issue.

I think he was offended by that. In my haste I had forgotten the rule that one should not even hint that an expert is wrong (not in his face anyway) until one has solid evidence, especially if one is asking him for help. (Words of wisdom from the sage known as S_H.) So he asked me who said that and I said I didn't know. He still wasn't appeased and proceeded to ask me if I believed them. I said I didn't know what to believe.

He then took out my computer, opened the side (and asked me why the side was not screwed in) and took a look. Satisfied, he plugged in his own power cable and monitors and stuff and booted it up. Even before the first screen was loaded he was already spamming the Del key to enter the BIOS (pro guys don't need to see the error with their own eyes to confirm).

In the BIOS menu he checked the first 3 options on the main menu, hit a few keys and Exit with saved settings. Voila! Windows loaded and everything returned to normal.

WHAT THE FRICKIN HECK???

THIRTY BUCKS AND THE TWENTY-DOLLAR CAB FARE, JUST FOR THAT?

I think he noticed the surprise in my face, because he asked me if I knew what was wrong. Of course I gave him a negative reply, so he told me my BIOS has screwed up probably due to some problem in the electricity and then got his assistant to show me how to set up my BIOS. I'll admit that the electrical problem may have been due to my cloth, but I'll never know.

Anyway the most important thing seems to be the boot sequence. If I was going to load from the disc instead of the hard drive, I had to change the Boot Device 1 to the CD drive. Otherwise, it should be my hard disk. As for the rest of the options, I should probably record them in case this happens again the future.



Those are the screens he showed me and told me to look at.



My desk still vibrates but not as bad. On the other hand my fingers are swollen from holding that tape for too long.

Rant 514 / Trololo

A teenager got stabbed in the head and survived. This guy needs to be studied because he is going to show which part of the brain isn't needed to live. Any conditions he develops will also be connected to the parts of the brain that was damaged.

CS is serious business in the PRC.













Sometimes I wonder if serious DotA players understand that some of us only play to socialise the way some visit bars. They only do it with friends and really doesn't matter to them if they win or lose. Sure, people chat when they're drinking while they don't during a game of DotA, but neither do friends during a game of badminton.

I understand how people get their blood boiling at the slightest sign of a potential loss because I've felt that way myself. It somehow gets to you after several games and you inevitably start to get serious for reasons I don't understand. The best antidote is to cool down and play something else, like Metro 2033.

Speaking of drinking, gin still tastes like something I wouldn't want to put in my mouth. I think the only ways to drink it is to mix a little with juice or with martinis, but I don't drink martinis. Why the heck do people drink it anyway? It does NOT taste good, not unless you're the sort who appreciate the subtle flavours of kerosene.

Same with other strong spirits like vodka. Vodka is like water that gets you drunk. I guess that's why people drink stuff like this - to get drunk. Now that's another reason why industrial alcohol isn't allowed to be sold to civilians for consumption. People would just buy a whole barrel or keg of cheap pure alcohol and sip a little to get drunk. Alcoholism would rise dramatically and a lot more people would die from alcohol poisoning.













I laughed a little reading this news. Apparently by measuring the plate and food size of the Last Supper paintings made over the millennium, they found that we have been eating 60+% more over the years.

I was wondering if they also noticed that the waist size of Jesus in those paintings also grew, or are people also having a higher metabolic rate after 2000 years?

Seriously, people are getting paid to stare at the same bloody paintings all day so that they can come up with this bull? 天理何在?

Are scholars in the future going to study all the nude photos on the Internet over the centuries and discover that Man's penis length will be growing by 66% in the next 1000 years due to increased food intake??













Been trying Aika. Currently using a Rifleman (though it's more apt to call it a Sniper). Then again, snipers use rifles too. Anyway this is what the gameplay is like:





And this is what playing as a Warrior is like:




Pretty nice game. In this MMO, each server is called a nation and each nation has several objects called Relics that provide beneficial effects (buffs) to all citizens, eg 5% movement speed, 10% more HP. These Relics can be taken by citizens of other nations and be used by their own, hence there are often inter-server battles which are collectively called the Relic Wars.

I randomly picked the most powerful server and found myself getting 9 constant buffs after becoming a citizen. Alright, it wasn't exactly random. I had taken a look at the post counts in each of the nations' forum section and picked the one with the second highest number. How would I have known that Feonir was the strongest despite having less active forum members?

There are about 3-4 Relics per nation and at the moment, the weakest nations among the 5 have about 1 buff only. Everyone is jealous of our might, so we get raided multiple times everyday and we have to defend ourselves all the time. So far I've already killed a 2 enemies (yes KS) and seen some of the battles. Pretty interesting.

Rant 513 / In The PRC, People Cook With Raw Sewage

1 in 10 meals in the PRC is cooked using oil tainted by raw sewage. Fake eggs, fake wines, melamine, now sewage oil. Woo! China is number one!

One more reason to stay the fuck out of that place. Those people are proving to have less conscience than the rest of the world.

"Although it looks clean and clear, it actually contains toxic substances, including 'aflatoxin', which can cause cancer."

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer has identified aflatoxin B1 has a confirmed carcinogen in humans."

G fucking g. You thought only the Americans worship money? The mainland Chinese would kill their own children for money, unless children in China don't eat normal food.














This month's National Geographic features an article on carnivorous plants. If you have a copy of this month's edition, flip to page 94. On that page is a photo of a pitcher plant shaped to what can only be described as "evil".

Evolution is supposed to choose only the useful traits of each organism. Therefore every living creature that exists have characteristics that exist for a purpose or used to. Now look at this purple pitcher plant and note the curved claw-like growths that point into the cup. What is the point of those things? Why so much investment of nutrients on these wicked-looking fangs when you can have the rounded edge that other pitcher plants use?

In fact, wouldn't they just increase the probability of stopping insects from entering if they get trapped in the gaps? Maybe botanists would understand how they help the plant, but as a layman I can't figure out the reason for their existence. Kind of puts a little doubt in my head that about evolution. Things like this are probably the reason why some people believe in Intelligent Design.













I have no idea what Google is trying to do. There has to be another side to this story than meets the eye because right now it looks like a kid sulking after being ignored. Doing something against what has been explicitly explained to be "a non-negotiable legal requirement" doesn't make sense, not when it's a big company like Google doing it.

Google is pulling out of China. Baidu takes over the PRC market for search engines. Nobody cares, business as usual. Is Google getting pissed off for being taken so lightly after all the limelight it's been getting everywhere else? Or is it something else altogether?













Not sure if I have posted this before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpHLEm9-0bg

Scatman John proved that a good song doesn't need lyrics. The other thing he proved was that you can make it as a successful singer even with a serious stutter. I think he was one of the last few successful singers with a positive message in his music.












Nintendo is going to release a 3D version of the Nintendo DS! No special glasses needed!

OMG!

"Nintendo would not say what kind of technology its new 3D handheld employs or how much it would cost."

"The Nintendo 3DS will go on sale in the company’s next fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2010, to March 31, 2011."

I wonder what it will be like.

Rant 512 / The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon

OMG this video almost choked me! From the video's description:

Family Feud (1993) follows the premise of the American TV show of the same name. Two families are pit against each other in a contest aimed at guessing the results of a public survey. The first family member to press a button and give a concise answer that happens to be on the survey, earns points. The last round allows both families to list several of the existing survey answers in a very short time period. Heisanevilgenius's family, The As, ignores all that and goes with elaborate and utter nonsense instead only to find the host accepting their answers as correct. The other family, The Halls, doesn't even get the chance to insert a word, proving the racial prejudice of the host. Watch the game and see for yourself. Note: some answers contain coarse language.

Now see for yourselves.













Pizza Hut now offers online orders that you can pay in cash. Now if you just add some proxies into the equation, you have the perfect tool for practical jokes.












The Pope forgives all those children who were molested by priests. Even though seducing priests is a sin, he forgives them for what they have done.

"As Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,'" the pope continued. "We must send a clear message to these hundreds—perhaps thousands—of children whose sinful ways have tempted so many of the church's servants into lustful violation of their holy vows of celibacy. The church forgives them for their transgressions and looks upon them not with intolerance, but compassion."

Not everyone agrees with him, but he's the Pope so no one is going to argue.











The above news report wasn't serious, just in case you thought it was. On the other hand, this following article is real.

So all the Pope did was apologize and planned to have an official investigation into the matter. Yep, after these many decades with so many witnesses and reports, all he gives the people is an investigation.

"But the pope failed to address widespread calls in Ireland for a radical restructuring of the church there, nor did he say that bishops implicated in the scandal should resign."

Reassigned maybe, but not sacking them. Yes yes yes we've all heard that these scandals are just a fraction of the total number of child molest cases out there. Unfortunately this is usually not mentioned together with the fact that these cases involves priests, not the average guy on the street.

These guys are supposed to be role models for Catholics, showing them what it means to be virtuous. It's the same with teachers who sexually abuse kids. Both are people who teach and lead others, and both are supposed to show their students what they should do. Teachers don't just get sacked immediately in such a scandal, their lives get ruined and they go to jail. For some reason, Catholic priests are treated differently.

Maybe it's because he believes they're screwed anyway since they're going straight to Hell for this (if they remain unrepentant). What is the point of punishing someone if he's going to be tortured for eternity anyway? That would just be a tiny tip of an iceberg and a giant waste of resources.

If you truly believe in the existence of Hell, then there is little reason to punish anyone. If they remain unrepentant till death, they're screwed forever. If they are willing to change, why would you punish someone who isn't going to do it again? Revenge? It's not like it's going to undo the damage he did unless it was a minor thing.














This glass has twice the necessary capacity. Optimization required.















A humorous idea made into a 10-min trailer. This is what you get if you take a good idea and drag it out till it's long past the point of making anyone laugh.

Rant 511 / Metro 2033 Is A True Interactive Movie

Metro 2033 felt shorter than I expected, but in fact took more hours than I realized. It stopped getting scary at the end but just as exciting. Killing monsters really isn't the focus of the game. All the violence merely served as bait to hold your attention in case you get bored of watching the cinematics and listening to the conversations.

The combat was fun, true, but it was always pretty easy. If I found that I keep dying, it always meant I was doing something wrong. Dying once or twice is normal because there is no detailed instructions to tell you what to do, but dying 4-5 times at the same place is a sign that you need to find another way to do things.

The game was very linear. There was no side-quest and no special NPCs to interact with except the hooker at the beginning. Never spoke to her but from what I've read in the various game forums (the main Metro forum is kind of small right now probably due to the small playerbase) it is not a good idea to accept her "offers".

After finishing the game, I felt that it was more like a movie than an actual game. 4A Games probably tried to emulate the Japanese style of RPGs but created something even closer to a film than any JRPGs.













My modem finally gave up. I had switched it off last night (trying to start the habit of turning both the modem and router off every night) and when my bro switched it back on this morning, it couldn't connect to the net. I patiently waited till 5pm before succumbing to my impatience and called Starhub for help.

After giving him all the relevant info and switching the ends of the ethernet wire between the TV point to my modem, he told me my modem wasn't (and still isn't, at the moment) connected to the network. So he's sending his report to "the engineers" within 24 hours and they will test to see if its the signal's problem or whatever within 1-2 days.

In other words, 48-72 hours of NO INTERNET. NO INTERNET! That's practically on the same level as pre-Geneva-Convention torture and watching 80s Singaporean TV drama!

Fortunately for me I'm aware of the possibility of making a computer serve as a router, ie access point and I am in possession of a mobile Starhub modem. A few minutes of Googling and voila! I have my computer as a router. Speed still sucks though, so I don't think I can play much.












Apparently my bro is getting laid and isn't making any effort to keep it a secret, so I don't see a reason to hide it from my blog.

I wonder if my friends in the BC take showers with their girlfriends. I know, it's wonderfully kinky and etc. Must be interesting, except I find my bro's girlfriend pretty close to what I'd consider fugly. Oh well, you don't find gamer girls often these days who would play L4D2.

At this point I'd also like to state that knowing a couple have sex on a regular basis is quite different from being aware that one is doing it right now not 10m away, just behind this wall in front of me. It's probably normal to feel a little bit horny in such a situation, I guess. Wait, I can solve this problem. No, not masturbate. I just need to imagine her face... alright I'm not horny anymore.

Hey man, it's not like I'm trying to insult her or anything. I've come across lots of couples whom I find hard to imagine to be sexually attracted to each other. I guess love plays a big part.

I'm sure some of the BC members do have some sort of sex with their girlfriends. Everyone's different, I know, so they probably give oral, handjobs or even go all the way. I can't know for sure, but making semi-educated guesses is easy.

I'll bet that Ivan's been aware of such activities between his cousin and her boyfriend for years. If he was honest when he told me that one time that he doesn't acquire pornographic materials from the net, I guess it does make some kind of sense if you see it this way. It's not about imagining the couple having sex, but simply the knowledge that someone is doing something is a little arousing. Unless it's your parents or grandparents, then it gets kind of gross to think about it.

As for him and XL, their intimacy suggests that sex is likely. On the other hand, I have no idea how prudish they are. Nah I'm just kidding, I merely don't know how prudish XL is. Ivan's conservative nature is well-known among his friends.

HX and CM, I'm completely unsure. I'm also ignorant of whether they share the same religion. It depends on which part of his (or their) beliefs they are willing to obey. Religion is funny that way. You can twist it any way you like and as long as someone agrees with you, you are still a devout believer of the faith (eg Catholic priests who swear they believe in God and sodomise little boys at the same time. "... oh my god! Oh yea, you like that Pete? Oh yea oh yea oh yea OH GAWD I'm coming!"). Anyway the best I can say is it's possible between them.

John and his girlfriend has definitely been practising for years, if not already trying to get a baby. There is little chance I'll believe it if they claim they've never laid eyes on the genitals of each other.

I don't know about you, but even if all of them have been having penetrative sex regularly for years, it wouldn't surprise me. Hell, to make me open my eyes wide you'll probably have to show me something to the degree of Vic doing a sheep.

DON'T DO IT, VIC! DON'T DO IT!

I'm fully aware that their sex lives are none of my business, but it's not like I'm asking them to tell me anything. If the above rant offends you in any way, you can suc... I mean inflate this Wolverine float.

Rant 510 / Dragon Age: Matrimony

Oh noes! The guys behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age thinks adding more romance content is a good idea!


While the suggestion that BioWare could accede to such requests to just add more sex via downloadable content was made tongue-in-cheek, Zeschuk said that the idea of adding more dating and love to the game after the fact is an idea he likes. He thinks of such possible content as, in his words, "a romance pack," something that has nothing to do with combat and everything to do with relationships. "You know, It's possible," he said. Mentioning a character from Dragon Age, he suggested there could be a "Take Leliana on a date pack."

What the hell are they thinking? First they change Mass Effect from a FPS/RPG to more of a FPS, now this? I can almost see what ME3 will become...

Game: Mass Effect 3
Release Date: June 2012
Genre: Dating Sim
















Even though art imitates life, it can never be as hilarious as the original.













That Apple used a harmful substance in the manufacture of its products isn't surprising. The fact that it's got to the front page of Reuters is.

All the workers interviewed said n-hexane — the chemical that made people sick — was used in making touch screens for Apple, particularly the iPhone and iTouch. Apple rejected repeated interview requests, refused to confirm whether its products were involved and directed questions to its 2010 Supplier Responsibility audit, which does not address chemical poisoning.

GG! They must be getting sloppy at covering up.

See how cheap human lives are these days? I wonder how much they save by using that chemical instead of something safer because that's exactly how much their workers' lives are worthed in the eyes of the upper management.













Metro 2033 is so scary! You never know whether stealth or bullets work best in each situation. Kind of makes me waste filters trying to figure out a way to sneak pass the monsters. Very scary if you play at night, never knowing if you're deep enough in the shadow that they don't see you. At one point I had to creep pass a mutant standing on a wrecked van in broad daylight. I still don't understand why it didn't see me. Maybe it had no eyes, I don't know. It was entirely black, so I couldn't really tell if it did.

The parts I like are the ones where I have companions, even if it's a child I'm carrying on my back. That kid caused my mouse to have inertia (takes slightly longer to start or stop moving), probably to simulate what it's like to carry a heavy load while wielding a gun. But I didn't mind. It was less scary.

This game is like being in a thriller and I don't like thrillers/horror movies. Those parts with the human enemies felt more like playing Metal Gear Solid. I don't play Metal Gear. Still it's the best game available at the moment.

Here's a video of a certain part in Chapter 2 (not much of a spoiler, no worries) where you have to help a few men hold the barricade for a few more minutes while the last of the residents of that station evacuate. I liked this part very much. It's not scary but very exciting.



Video is rather large at HD, but it's nice to watch.

The small cracks on the top right and bottom left-middle of the screen means the gas mask was slightly damaged. The guy who played it didn't remove his gas mask even though that part was safe to do so. It doesn't waste the filter since clean air doesn't wear it off, but when the mask gets hit too often it will eventually break. You will then have to find new ones that appear near human corpses from time to time. He's either very confident about not getting hit or very forgetful.

In addition to the cracks is the blurry view on the sides. That's condensation and it shows how worn the filter is. When it gets very blurry and you breathe heavily, you have to change the filter soon.

Yahoo! SEA takes a sneak peek at Universal Studios Singapore @ Yahoo! Video

On 05 March 2010, it was announced that the park will start opening on 8:28am 18 March, 2010. Maybe, just maybe, Genting Highlands is going to be forgotten by Singaporeans.

Don't see why anyone would dislike it. I mean, now we can stop saying that there's nothing do to in Singapore.

Rant 509 / The Horror!

My bro bought a new router again from the recent computer hardware expo (never bothered to learn the name). Pretty good so far. 2 days now and only 1 incident, despite me opening both utorrent and Folding@Home and playing online games simultaneously. That incident only involved a small problem with the connection between the router and the Internet. No idea why, but resetting it worked. I think maybe I should start making it a habit to switch off my router when I go to bed.

Then again, my modem sometimes takes up to an hour to connect to the net after rebooting. Risky.












They repeated the famous psychological experiment done in the 60s, this time using TV as theme. In the first experiment they asked the volunteers to apply electric shocks to an actor, a fact the volunteers were ignorant of, in increasing magnitudes. This time they did the same except they were told they were on a TV game show and it was the host who asked them to do it.

These proves that people are born sheeps; leaders are the deviants.

Ok seriously now you can see why people did the things they did in wars.

That thing people call "free will", it's overrated. I don't think most people understands what that is. I don't think they even want it, if they know what they're talking about.

At this point I'd like to question the issue of morality. When you do good, are you really doing it due to a higher authority? If you know absolutely you are the most powerful being in existence, would you still be good? This experiment simply shows that you cannot know for sure because it is not easy to tell if your own wishes are really someone else's.













Just tried Metro 2033 to the part where I've just left the Market. Pretty good game! The complete absence of any HP bar and whatever really helps to get me immersed in the post-apocalyptic Moscow Metro.

1) Background

You're Artyom (getting used to Russian names now), born in Moscow just before the surface was destroyed by nuclear bombs. Growing up in the Metro network, you've only heard tales and seen the pictures of the world before it happened. Only 40,000 survived the blasts in the entire underground system and the dangers of the above has kept them in the tunnels for about twenty years so far, with roughly 50 years more to go before the residual radiation drops to a safer level. Even so, there was no mention of how long the nuclear winter will end.

2) Quest

Some dude instructed you to go find someone somewhere if he didn't return from the recon mission to investigate the increase in attacks from the mutants and demons. Yes, there is no typo. Demons. I don't know how they came to be and even if I do know, I can't type it out without a giant SPOILER ALERT tag.

3) Gameplay (outside of combat)

Linear as can be. There is only one way - all other paths are blocked by NPCs. Maybe further down the road there will be some freedom, but for now I just follow the trail. Pristine 5.45 rounds made before the world ended (aka military grade), the standard currency, can be found in random spots along the way. Bullets made after are 1/3 as powerful but can't be used directly to buy goods. However since all ammunition (including shotgun shells) can be exchanged with military grade 5.45 rounds, you are practically firing money at monsters. Great incentive to shoot properly.

4) Combat

Shooting properly is only one issue. The other issue is health. You don't know how much HP you have because there is no HP. You can tell how close to death you are by listening to your breathing and how hard your screen is flashing red. By the gradual decrease in these two I'm assuming that you regenerate at a relatively inhuman rate.

Kind of ironic that this would be implemented when all other features are so realistic. I mean, when a real person sees his own blood splashed across his gas mask, he does not recover in less than a minute. What am I? The Russian Naruto?

Anyway it really got me worried (yes scared yes) when my screen was flashing red a little at one point since I had no idea what the limit was. I still don't.

Ammo count! You have to buy ammo for your submachine gun! Exchange rate is 1 military grade 5.45cal for 5 custom-made bullets of the same calibre. Maybe I suck and panic too much, but I ran out of ammo pretty quickly, forcing me to use my double-barrel shotgun. I have only a pistol and a knife in addition to those two. If I had run out of shells, let's just say the convenient size of my sidearm doesn't inspire much confidence. And the knife is for extreme desperation only.

Try hitting WASD during scenes that look like cinematic movies. I died 4 times before I finally figured out that I was supposed to run forward in a certain scene. Thank goodness the last checkpoint was very close.

No saving in this game. If you had made a mistake (eg didn't get enough ammo and only realized this halfway through a danger zone), you're screwed as far as I know. Good thing knives don't dull in the game...

Gas mask! So far I've not gone through anywhere that requires more than 15 minutes, which seems to be the limit of each filter. Changing of filter can be done manually or automatically when it stops working. Problem is, 10 bullets per filter. No dilly-dallying in the unbreathable air.

Atmosphere is great. Dead bodies everywhere, bats that you scare when you accidentally get close. Mutants are gross creatures with the body of a werewolf and face of a rat. Demons I'm not too sure. Didn't get a close look at one because I was busy getting immersed in the panic in that opening scene.

Rant 508 / BBQ Trolley

I spoke of FF in the last rant and I thought I should make something clear. In recent years I've started to dislike the general FF atmosphere. Square Enix seems to love to exaggerate teenagers in such a way you get people like Vaan (FFXII) who's like, what, 16-17? But lean and ripped like a commando in his mid-twenties.

Not to mention they usually have a girly face to boot.

Then in FFXIII you have Lightning as the protagonist. This time it's a female lead and she looks much more matured than the entire line of male leads from FFVII onwards.

How old does she look? Early to mid-twenties probably?

Think back. The main guy of FFVII was Cloud, some emo teenager. FFVIII was Squall, 17-year-old kid. FFIX was made in retro style with cutesy characters, so it's even worse. FFX was back to the young teenager, this time named Tidus. FFXI doesn't count since it's a mmo. FFX-2 was horrendous and doesn't count either. That game was like going to a Japanese female teen pop band concert, except even more "kawaii" (read gay).

What does this mean? All the male leads in the FF series since VII has been teenagers who somehow behave as if they were in their mid-late twenties. If you go back further, you can see the trend of the entire series. FFVI had a female lead Terra of age 18, FFV had Bartz who was 20-year-old and FFIV had Cecil who's also 20.

FF I to III had ageless protagonists. :P

The ages keep going lower. It was better in the era of 2D sprites since the ambience, the music and the appearances were not as "teeny".

FFVII presented us with a very emo (not to mention delusional) teenager, FFVIII had us watching an interactive love story not too different from Twilight without the vampirism, FFIX had nothing but a bunch of children, FFX had a whole story centred around an imaginary 阳光男孩 (as the Taiwanese put it, and "sunny boy" is probably a good translation of the term), FFXII was the worst with a teenager who had no special characteristic to differentiate him from anyone else.

The only reason we didn't see scars on Cloud's wrists was due to limits in video card technology back then.

I heard FFXIII has such characters too, except they aren't the main lead. Still, one can tell what sort of age group Square Enix has been aiming for and what they're doing with FFXIII. They said they were changing the focus and learned from Western RPGs (which explains why the Japanese hated the game when it was first released there). I expect this game to be less "teeny" than the previous games but I'm not planning to get the game. No PS3 here.

Right, that's it for my ridiculous FF rant.











So that's why people steal supermarket trolleys...













A jar of shrimp floss mysteriously appeared while I was searching my home's collection of dried/canned food. Also remembers the jar of mayonnaise in the fridge and the loaf of cheap bread from yesterday. Mmmmmm.....













Made baked rice some time ago. Since I had this chunk of Kraft cheddar cheese and 1.5 bags of mozzarella in my fridge and freezer respectively (I leave my mozzarella in the freezer because I don't use it often), it wasn't hard.

Just had to stir fry some chicken, ham, mushrooms and onions a bit, spread some chicken mushroom cream soup paste on the dish of rice before pouring the chicken mix over, then cover with cheese and bake till the cheese starts to brown.


Result was that. Cheddar was sliced too thickly, too much rice was added. Overall, pretty good.

The plate wasn't necessary. Just a rectangular aluminium-foil-container will do too. I'd shred the cheddar if I had a shredder, but I don't.













Just found this classic RPG called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura. Pretty good game so far, the character creation process was very interesting. Not only were there lots of pre-made characters that the player could choose, but there were lots of options to adjust. This is because the game's world is one where magic was in the process of being replaced by primitive 17th technology like the steam engine. Hence one can be a mage or an engineer (not both, not enough points for everything). Even in each of the two fields there are many categories to choose from, like in technology one can learn stuff in explosives, firearms and etc. In magic there are even more categories.

The slow music the game seems to favour sounds kind of sad though. The fact that all the pre-made characters that the player doesn't choose would die at the beginning makes it even sadder. I'd read each of their backgrounds while trying to decide which to use so it was like I knew everyone who died at the start. The only good thing about this is that you get lots of looting to do right from the get-go.

The game was released in the era of Fallout 1/2 and Planescape: Torment, so they all look pretty similar what with the 2D sprites and all. The combat is similar too, except you can choose to fight in turn-based combat or real-time. Personally I go turn-based when it's serious and real-time when I need to fast-forward the fighting because "real-time" feels more like "double time" in this game.

Fighting is a serious matter. I learnt the hard way that all characters need to have some sort of fighting ability to survive on Moderate difficulty (2nd out of 3 levels of difficulty). Right now I'm playing my third character because my first character kept dying and my second couldn't have more than one companion due to bad Charisma. Hopefully this charismatic bomber gnome is good enough for the entire game.

Update: It frickin is. All those golems that damages my weapons when I hit them and has insane damage resistance, my molotov cocktails worked really well on them. These bombs even push enemies back randomly and do AoE (area of effect) damage! Screw my guns! If my supply of fuel wasn't so limited, I'd use them all the time instead of only on tough enemies.











Deductive reasoning 101

In 2007 49% of Japanese men sit to pee, which is more than 3 times as many as there were in 1999. Therefore, one or more of the following is true:

1) Peeing with the penis is not as great a benefit as some men believe.
2) 49% of Japanese men have vaginas.
3) 51% of Japanese men do not urinate.
4) Japan is facing a massive nationwide urinal shortage.

Also, Japanese men pee with their pants on.











The Matrix Pill. "Before you can go down the rabbit hole, it needs to go down your mouth hole."















"I hate all these singing."













There was once when a friend described me as "sophisticated". How I laughed. I'm just a simple moron, the furthest thing from sophistication that a man can be. The thought of me being that has never even crossed my mind till that day. How is that even possible? The idea is completely preposterous!

The number of times I have made a fool of myself in front of many people in my entire life is proof that I'm no genius. As much as I try to forget, these memories resurface frequently to bring back the humiliation I felt. Hardly a day goes by that I don't randomly recall an embarrassing incident I had experienced in the past.

Sophisticated? I'm not even smart! It would be no big surprise if I take a Mensa test today and score 80.

So why the heck would anyone think I'm intelligent? Is it because I use proper grammar in both my speech and blog? Is it really that hard to type in proper English and speak it?

But that's exactly how things seem to be working these days! If someone speaks and write with perfect grammar and spelling, he's a frickin genius and the logic of his argument is infallible! That is why one of the rules of proper Internet trolling is to use perfect English! If you have bad spelling and/or grammar, people automatically see an immatured white kid or a semi-uneducated Asian/South-american. Type everything correctly, you immediately look like an well-read and matured person who knows what he's talking about.

It doesn't even link! More importantly, it shows the illogic of psychology.

Just look at my blog. Notice how few of my rants ever have any depth. Most of the time, I cut off just when I'm beginning to reach something more serious and less commonly known. What I do is that I just skim the topics and move on. And I'm not even going to mention originality.













Metro 2033 is out. Crack too, but there are many who claim that it doesn't work. We'll just have to wait and see if SKIDROW did it right.

Rant 507 / This Post Contains Ideas That May Be Unsuitable For Children

I don't see how this will succeed. My mouse and keyboard will lag, if I understand what they're saying correctly. What OnLive does is let you play the game remotely, if I'm correct. Your computer does not have the game, all it does it send input data from your mouse/keyboard, which will then be entered into the game on their servers. The image data from the game will then be sent to your computer like a Youtube video, except it's in real time and not pre-recorded.













I think you can call this a silent mic. The bunch of wires may be unappealing, but the device can be very useful for the military. Think tactics. Think hand signals. No more of that if this is integrated into helmets. Since you can't leave the wires hanging, nor can they be very tight in case they get pulled off by opening the jaws too much, one solution I see is to make it a mask for the lower half of the face, something like a gas mask without the goggles.

Actually it can be added to gas masks. On the other hand, those things are horribly uncomfortable. Anyway they can also add it to the face masks used by the SWAT and other similar armed forces. Future soldiers won't need to use their throats other than for breathing.

Seriously, soldiers who get used to talking like this will be very creepy. First you don't see them, now you don't hear them too. Even when they're fighting you can only hear their weapons, not their voices. Pretty scary.

However nothing is perfect. The biggest problem I can imagine is how the computer translates the signals. Remember those voice-recognition programmes that translates your voice into text? Do you know why people still need to hire secretaries and clerks to type their stuff for them? They are not reliable. It doesn't type out exactly what you say all the time. Frequently it will type out something close to what you said and add fullstops or commas when you pause to think about what you're going to say.

Same with this thing that translates your lower mouth's muscles' electric signals into words. What if you cough or sneeze?














Reality is a bitch. Admit it, this dude is hotter than your girlfriend. :3

Some people, they become gay by accident. If the images on the left weren't there, you'd be gay too.













http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

This is sooooooo true. I agree with the entire article.

If you think us gamers are stupid for playing all day for non-existent objects, think again. "If it takes time, effort and skill to obtain an item, that item has value, whether it's made of diamonds, binary code or beef jerky." It doesn't matter if you can touch it, doesn't matter if you can hold it. If someone is willing to put in time and effort to get it, it's worth something. Another example of this other than diamonds that he mentioned is stocks. Even money itself is an idea. Cash is just a physical manifestation of money which is getting outdated.

Even though the whole thing sounds so bad, I can't help but want to be addicted. I was wondering why I wanted it even while I was reading on what those guys at Microsoft had found out about human behaviour. The last part of this article explains it.

Real life just isn't as rewarding. Most people are employees and most employees would lack at least one of those elements of the three.

Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);

Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);

Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).

I know many of the people who read this are either working or have worked before. The absence of any of these 3 elements are the reason for why your work sucks. I guess being a teacher is a good job then, since you would always have the third and sometimes the second.

Owning your own business would also get you the first and the third. Only complexity is not guaranteed. Managing a business is complex only if you really want to make a lot of money because expansion or diversification is pretty tough compared to maintaining the status quo.

But in online games, all three are guaranteed. Where can you find such a combination in real life other than by being in the top management of companies?

Addiction justified. When I start working, I'll probably get myself a MMORPG subscription if I have the time for it. Not kidding, been thinking of this long before I encountered this article. Since I'm not planning for much in life, this isn't going to be an obstacle for anything.













The following are 30 images illustrating twisted fetishes and stupidity of humanity. Many appear to be troll posts, but some seem to be real. You be the judge.

These made me think how some people who describe themselves as "open-minded" are going find themselves contradicted when they see words like those below. Me, I've long given up hating people or society. Everything is becoming normal to me, I think. Hopefully someday I will realize I'm wrong and there are things about people that can still shock/surprise me.




































I'll end this list of images with what I consider to be legitimate and plain evil. I think I can see why HIV positive people are driven to do such things. Their situation is actually pretty sad. Please don't be one of those ignorant retards who think everyone who has AIDs have had casual sex or homosexual relationship. Some people, they get their HIV from the following means:

(POZ = positive = HIV+)




They are only human. If you hate these people, you hate humanity. It means you still do not accept people for who they are. Better to think of how they could have been pushed to such depths.

I kind of pity those priests who work in the confession boxes. Some of them must have heard things they really want to tell someone else but cannot. Imagine if people like that biker confess before they die. From Wikipedia:

According to the Code of Canon Law, 983 §1, "The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason." Priests may not reveal what they have learned during confession to anyone, even under the threat of their own death or that of others.

So they cannot tell anyone, not even if they get killed for it. Man, it must hurt. Now I really wonder if Catholic priests visit psychiatrists, and if psychiatrists themselves visit other psychiatrists. Pretty sure some lawyers do.

On the other hand, the state laws in some countries require priests to report any knowledge of an imminent act of violence or previous commission of such violence on another person. This means a priest in such a situation would be in a dilemma having to choose between state law and the Church's. Or rather, he'd have to choose between a chance of saving a life (maybe more) or protecting his commitment to his god's words. Which basically would mean he can't tell because "death... of others" is not a valid reason.













Holy crap! I've just struck gold! Found a video with the actual performance of Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in the Phantom of the Opera. She doesn't sing in this part though, so all she does is stare at the camera. This version's lyrics are also somewhat different from the original.




Too bad I cannot find the rest of the videos. Apparently only this song has a music video featuring them. There is also supposedly a video recording of the entire musical (videotape quality) but it's available only to Webber and the current casts of this musical. One segment can be found on Youtube but it's too crappy to deserve any space here.

Posting the next two for the heck of it. They're the last part of the musical.



The good part starts at about 1:30 and the really good part starts at about 4:37.






Needless to say (but I'll still type it), it's best if you have the entire musical in mp3 form and listen to all of them in sequence. MC has stopped playing this role long ago, so there's no chance of watching him perform. Can't blame him, by the time he quitted he had already sung the same set of songs for more than 1300 times in front of audiences alone (not counting practices and rehearsals).













I had some KFC Eat with Whipped Potatoes. >.>