Tuesday 31 August 2010

Rant 609 / French Tanks Have One Neutral Gear And Five Reverse

One study shows that Omega-3 may not be as beneficial to your health as previous studies had reported. Since I don't eat butter/margarine much, I'll stick with butter. Anyway I think a lot of people have forgotten the delight of eating a plain butter sandwich with lots of butter. When I say "lots", I mean when you've finished spreading it, the surface must be perfectly smooth.

/drool

It's the next best thing to eating butter. Now that is an expensive habit.













Suddenly, I realize life is about grinding! We're all in a gigantic MMO!!













I was so wrong about Heroes of Might and Magic Online! I have completely no idea where I got the idea from that this game only accepts IPs from the US! It's completely the other way round - only Asian IPs are allowed!!

So I downloaded and tried it. It's free to play with cash shop.

The game is really 2.5D, ie 2D with nice sprites. It's an online version of HoMM 5 but with much worse graphics and slightly different game mechanics.

For example, your skills are no longer as simple as just 3 levels. In HoMMO (other meaning is coincidental), all skills have 9 levels. You gain skill points as you level and you spend on to learn these skills. As the levels rise, so do the skill point costs.

You can choose to PvE or PvP depending on whether you feel like playing against the AI or a real player. From what I've seen, there are ranks for PvP, which works the same way as blings irl.

There are also daily quests to keep you occupied for a while daily but I've not gone any further than that.

Your town in the online game is much more expensive to upgrade. Resources aren't found lying everywhere since it's a single persistent world. Instead you have to complete quests for them and many of these quests involve fighting with AI. Oh, and there are random encounters.

Combat is similar except the special abilities of the units are absent, at least in the beginning for newbies.











Title of this rant is something I saw a conversation in UWO when we were discussing European history. Thought it was pretty funny. It's a reference to how France surrendered in two wars, WWII and Vietnam War.













So one thing led to another, and I returned to this article on Westboro Baptist Church. They are an independent group of Christians that got famous when they decided to visit the funerals of homosexuals and put up signs that say, "God hates fags," in bold and taunt the parents saying their sons are going to Hell.

So this is a strange problem: are these guys going to hell themselves?

This church is also saying that the Roman Catholics and Muslims worship Satan and that members of all other Christian groups that do not hate homosexuals are destined for Hell.

In other words, if you're not with them, you're fucked. Which coincidentally is what Islam is saying too.

This is getting complicated, man. Which one should I pick the day before I die?













Last surviving participant of the first World Cup ever
has just died. Another piece of history withers away. Soon there will be no one alive who has witnessed that event first-hand, then it becomes ancient history.














So the other day when I mentioned I preferred the slice of pizza to watching the movie, I also noticed the pizza appeared smaller than I remembered. Not only that, but the crust seems to be quite different.

So I checked the website again and holy crap! The pizzas from Pizzahut have shrunk again, but only for Family Favourites.

Now Family Favourites come in 12-inches instead of 13.

Though it wasn't mentioned in any of their flyers, their crusts for pan pizzas have also changed a little, being flatter than before. The taste remains the same however. Maybe they switched suppliers.













Digital girlfriends are now getting more real, at least in Japan. I guess that's a great idea for getting them out of the house and seeing actual girls.













So Uncharted Waters Online is getting more interesting, but still not interesting enough to keep me glued to the screen. I've just learnt that there are several skills that I can learn that will keep my crew's maintenance costs (food, water etc) down. All I need to do is complete some quests to gain some port permits to go to several towns.

Btw if anyone plans to join, tell me here by posting a comment. There are rewards for getting friends to join :P

Sunday 29 August 2010

Rant 608 / A Fire Tornado?!?! :O

No wonder Obama wanted to change the healthcare system in the US. Some American guy I met in Uncharted Waters Online said he had an MRI scan for 5000 USD. I thought it was a full body scan and asked him.

It was just for his head.

I had a MRI once at NUH for my knee. The bill for that was S$450.












It seems I was wrong. Dry water does exist!

Dry water is made of 95 percent water surrounded by modified silica (sand).

So I'm guessing it means we're talking about extremely porous grains of sand, kind of like activated charcoal, except the pores are filled with water vapour.













Tobacco water is made by boiling tobacco in water. It is an insecticide.













So how does nailing a person improve his/her work efficiency? This I will never figure out.

Barbaric people. This totally fits many of the reviews I've read about airports in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They're proof that just because someone is rich doesn't mean he/she is a better person.

Also, Singaporean maid abusers are weak!













A music video extracted from a children's show and turned into something entirely different.







Pokerface. With Christopher Walken and Cartman.





Pokerface. The other original version, by Cartman.





The funniest of the three videos that made the first Pokerface video above.















A frickin FIRE TORNADO!!




Just when I thought I've seen everything.












Ok, so far Uncharted Waters Online is a little boring like all MMOs. It's again the grinding. In other MMOs the grind is about clicking the same skills in a loop like a bot. In UWO it's travelling in your preferred trade route over and over again to make money. Of course it's not that simple because prices fluctuate according to demand and your investment in the towns, but generally speaking it's just a loop of trading, travelling and resupplying.

The problem is that pirating just isn't profitable enough for players at this point. Either they can't attack players (PvP) in areas that aren't classified as "open sea" or our "Escape" skill makes merchants go just too fast for them. I don't know which, and maybe both are true.

It's not exciting anymore since I don't even have to watch my ship in long distance voyages because my new galliot is too fast for all the AI pirates near Italy, France and southern Spain. In the future when Open Beta begins there will probably be more players and therefore more fun.

Things will probably be more interesting when I make enough to get a better ship that can handle the pirates near Istanbul so that I can explore the Middle East and eventually circumnavigate Africa and check out Asia. The Americas and Australia are in the game too but they're too far for the little ships that newbies can afford. They will be reachable once we can pay for a galleas or galleon.



Anyway this game is not totally historically accurate. For example we see Nostradamus (1503-1566), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Shakespeare (1564-1616) in the game even though they lived in different times that overlap only by a little. In addition, slaves don't exist in the game even though slave-trading was an important factor that contributed to the Golden Age of the Dutch (a playable nationality) between 17th and 18th century.

It is going to be great for players who can reach the Orient first because if the game is historically accurate enough, silk from China is going to make them filthy rich.













This kind of supports what I said before about the Chinese Mainlanders trying to play with the Singaporean real estate markets. They're already here and trying to control the prices while certain restrictions set by the government (instead of laws which was my guess) are thwarting their efforts.

Well, this is just a conclusion derived from hearsay from a very rich uncle and some news articles. This article mentions nothing about guys from the PRC.

But this article mentions a few measures that clearly are part of an attempt to reduce demand. Interesting.












From what I've heard from Americans, they find Macau to be the Asian clone of Las Vegas. They're practically identical, according to them. Like I've said before, now is a good time to visit Macau because with the inflow of cash from the rest of China cut off, I don't think the casinos will continue to grow. On the other hand, if they advertise themselves as hard as Singapore does around the world, who knows?













I think this following sentence just described most of my life.

That’s because among my peers, I still see many students’ lives and dreams being dictated by examinations and the need to be successful – not to be “great” in their respective field of passion — but merely as an avenue to secure that cushy high-paying job later on in life. And because that I sometimes feel that is still the be-all and end-all of Singapore education, I feel we don’t do enough to nurture our children’s dreams.

But I have no dream! What could my parents nurture??



Being ”great” doesn’t necessarily mean being famous but rather that a person is motivated and nurtured by his passion instead of a fat monthly pay cheque, or the kind of car you drive, or the kind of home you live in.

The ultimate employee works for passion only and does not need to be paid.




Most might say the sad reality of Singapore education is to enable one to secure a stable job that will allow one to pay a never-ending cycle of bills, but does that really nurture our dream, our soul? Is that what we really dreamed of as a child — to merely “settle”?

No, dude. Sometimes we need to go to Malaysia, too, to pretend to be rich.


And he sees what I see.

Instead, in Singapore, I still feel that the sole aim of education is to graduate from university by 23 or 24 and become a lawyer, banker or doctor.
I lost the game. Had to insert extra tokens and restart this stage.



And the majority of the comments below the article are whines. Most of them just can't face reality or maybe they just don't like it. For example, when it comes to retrenchment, obviously employers are going to fire the older ones first. They have higher salaries and they're closer to retirement. It sucks but c'mon, someone has to suffer. Just suck it up and deal with it. Easier said than done? That's only because you weren't prepared, and that's your fault.

In case you get annoyed and start think wishing that I'll be retrenched in the future, I'm already prepared in my own way.

The other one is about hiring foreigners. Is there so much to discuss? The main problem here is that they all misunderstand the situation, that's all.











I was surprised when I received an SMS today that wished me a happy birthday. Apparently I'm not hermit-like enough.

Saturday 28 August 2010

Rant 607 / The Internet Has The World's Largest Whinery.

All those news of Singaporeans getting into trouble over online comments they've posted makes me suspect some Government employees are probably reading this blog too. Or maybe they just use Ctrl-F and a list of keywords.

But in case someone is actually getting paid to read all that crap on the Internet,



Hello Mr/Ms/Mrs/Mdm Blog-Police!














A thousand years from now, if we're still not using a single universal language, the Chinese will probably convert to pinyin. It would be kind of like Bahasa Melayu using the Rumi script.













So much shit for the pinoys
.

It remained unclear on Friday who fired the bullets that killed the hostages in the final moments of the siege.

National police spokesman Senior Superintendent Agrimero Cruz said Thursday preliminary tests indicated all died after being shot by Mendoza.

But he conceded that more tests needed to be done and Verzosa did not comment on the issue on Friday.


Yea I'm eagerly waiting for what they have to say when the tests are done. Not the preliminary tests but the rest of them.


A fifth senior policeman in the Philippines was suspended on Friday amid further revelations of bungling in the chaotic end to a hostage stand-off that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead.

The siege was broadcast live on television and viewers around the world saw Yabut joining the SWAT personnel without wearing a helmet, bullet-proof vest or any other protective gear.


I'm not sure why they're suspending him. Was he helping them plan the attack or did he try to join in the assault himself? If it's the former, suspending him was right because he really shouldn't have done that. If it's the latter, what's the logic behind his suspension??
















In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

I feel for these students. I really do.













China is banning foods for safety reasons? WOW! The irony!

Thursday 26 August 2010

Rant 606 / Ships

I'd say both sides are overreacting. I agree partly with this Ghazali that the Committee is disappointing. Too many incidents that can be caused by overly stingy practices. Still, exaggeration and talking shit are the norm on the net.

Anyway I found the final line pretty humourous.

“Police should get a grip and let loose. We are a democracy.”

Yep we're a democracy which has never voted for a single president since independence. In some places they call this something else. As for me, I think our system is closer to constitutional monarchy. Of course, I don't know all the systems out there, so this may be far from the truth.












So psychopaths are really people who cannot feel emotions but pretend that they do. And that is what Dexter is.













Just finished watching Diamonds are Forever. Been spending every night before this watching Bond movies in chronological order except for those evenings when I have class.

Thunderball showed me why very few movies ever have underwater battles between divers. Unique idea? True. Problem is that it's as intense as watching two modern astronauts racing in a full marathon on the Moon. I'm not even exaggerating here.

Diamonds are Forever also showed that directors suck at making car chases back in the 70s. The chase sequence in this movie was... Well, I'm going to put it this way: I found the slice of Meat Galore pizza in my hand more exciting than the kind-of-speeding cars in the scene.













Wow 2 mouthfuls of tuna and half a glass of milk every 48 hours!





3 more months to dig them out. THREE MONTHS OF LIVING WITHOUT SUNLIGHT!

Holy shit! By the time they get out they will have to wear sunglasses constantly for a while. If not for the milk, they would also get Vit D deficiency too. But 3 months living in a hole. Wow. Wonder what the hygiene and sanitation levels are like down there.

The miners are in remarkable health, and have stripped off their shirts to cope with the heat.

Forgot about that. Well, since they've been down there for weeks, there's definitely enough air.













Been watching the video responses by the Old Spice guy on the Old Spice channel. Started out watching the advertisements but later went on to the responses he made to random questions.

His comments were pretty funny and his ads were fascinating. I just don't know how they come up with those ideas.



It is impossible to take your eyes off the ad once it begins.







I've been watching these while sailing in Uncharted Waters Online. Very nice game atm but it's only Closed Beta. There will be a cash shop later, most likely after Open Beta, which will change the game. So I can't say for sure if it will still be good then.

This game is all about sailing. You can play as an explorer, trader or pirate, ie explore, make money or rob traders. I've been playing as a trader and making money is quite easy actually. Pirates aren't a problem because as a trader, I have this skill "Escape" which gives me higher speed in exchange for higher vulnerability to damage.

I don't think there is much emphasis on combat, though it is there on both sea and land. I'll probably see it someday outside of tutorial combats when I have a bigger ship. Atm I really want a Galleas. That big ship looks really nice with all the oars.













2nd guy to be in trouble over blogs. What's with the pressure on bloggers?













Was reading my Managing Your Personal Finances textbook just now and found the part on wills and estates. When I got to the Intestate Succession Act, which in simpler terms is the law that states how your money will be split up after you die, I was reminded the time (my mum claimed) my aunt, aka my father's sister's daughter, asked our family's lawyer whom we hired to settle all the stuff that needed to be settled when my father died whether my father's side of the family have any right to his estate and assets.

I think I've talked about this law before, but I'll just see if I have it memorised...

First, if you have a surviving spouse and children, your properties will be split evenly among all of them, after taxes.

Second, if you have a surviving spouse, no kids but have parents, your stuff will be split among them equally.

Third.. shit, I can't remember.

*checks book*

I got it all wrong. :\

Here's the correct version:

Case 1: Surviving spouse and kids - half to spouse, half to children (split equally among children). If no living spouse, all to children.

Case 2: Surviving parents and spouse, no children - half to parents and half to spouse.

Case 3: Surviving parents and children, no spouse - all to children.

Case 4: No spouse, parents and children - all to siblings. If no siblings, all to grandparents. If those are gone too, it will be split among the uncles and aunts (c'mon everyone have those). If you don't have those either, the government gets everything. Friends don't count lol!


A will supersedes all the above, but it takes money and effort to make one.


Our lawyer wasn't impressed by the enquiry, especially since my father's body wasn't even cold yet, figuratively speaking, but he didn't have to lie to help us. The law was already on our side. But he did tell my mum about it and recommended changing the ownership of my father's company before they (my aunt and her now-divorced husband) did.

That they could do since my aunt had been helping my father when he got really sick before he died, and their next course of action was obvious to the lawyer if they found out what he had neglected to mention. He could have told them about it if he had wanted to help them.

Anyway they're still here in Singapore now. Probably thought winter wear was easy in tropical Singapore with little competition around. She later used up his entire life savings in the business and didn't make much out of it, which may have been one reason that led to their divorce.

Both of them still have separate businesses here. The guy is into summer wear though, which is much more competitive and requires faster transport because things get outdated and unsellable really quick. Outdated winter wear can still be sold if you slash the price enough.

Strangely enough, my aunt is still trying to fight with my mum's business by talking to the buyers, like telling them how some of our goods are produced at very cheap prices in China. I wonder what she has against us to have to resort to such low tricks. It would be interesting to know her side of the story. Never liked seeing real life events from only one angle.

They know she's lying about the prices because even they themselves have tried to go to China with my mum's designs to find cheaper prices and do away with the middleman. And failed, of course. The Chinese are really good at lying, a skill people tend to master when they live in poverty. My mum can detect their bullshit often enough only because she's been working with the textile industry for so long she can tell a fabric's material(s) and estimate the composition percentages by touch.

Ordinary customers can't do that but they know when they're trying on something that feels good, and the sales reflect that.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Rant 605 / Blue Holes

This month's National Geographic talks about blue holes. These are strange environments in which there is a hole filled with seawater and covered by fresh water. There is no mixing between the two types of water, so the seawater is practically oxygen-free. This creates a unique habitat for very unique lifeforms.

The biggest question I had when I read this was about the lack of diffusion. Didn't our physics teachers teach us that when two liquids are in contact, they diffuse with each other? So why does the fresh water remain fresh on top of the seawater?

I don't exactly understand it but I have no desire to look through all the equations about molecular diffusion. The answer is that the density difference between the two liquids is preventing any diffusion from taking place.













I wonder what the Saudi media is saying about her. Her country didn't support her participation and she won a bronze while no other Saudis got into the top 3 in her event.













I'm definitely interested in what happened in this. 8 tourists dead? What were they trying to do? Learn from Putin?!

It is going to be even more interesting if their pathologists find bullet holes in their bodies that don't match the calibre used by the crazy guy.

The Filipino President "defended the actions of the police at the scene, saying the gunman had not shown any sign of wanting to kill the hostages." That probably referred to the time before they tried to storm the bus.

But according to Wikipedia:

Mendoza was thought to have fired warning shots as he saw his brother and son being hauled away by the police. Mendoza claimed on live radio that he had killed two hostages. After Mendoza witnessed the arrest of his brother via the TV and radio on board the bus which was covered live by the media, he became distressed and ordered the police via radio to release his brother, or else he would start executing hostages. The first shots were fired inside the bus at about 7:25 pm, and police mounted an assault on the bus at around 7:45 pm.



Huh. So claiming that you have killed someone is not a sign that you want to kill anyone. I think the logic here is that you have already killed someone so you no longer want to kill anymore. Is that it?

8 tourists died. It's not fair to blame Filipinos in general but it would be stupid not to think the Filipino police were incompetent.













Finally understood more about the jokes in the Austin Powers movies. Seriously, you must watch all the old Bond movies to better appreciate the Austin Powers films.

For example, Dr Evil is a parody of the boss of the SPECTRE organization, the main antagonist in the Bond films of Sean Connery's era. Allota Fagina, who appeared in the International Man of Mystery, is a rephrase of Pussy Galore, the Bond girl in Goldfinger. Speaking of Goldfinger, yes that's why there's Goldmember, except Auric Goldfinger didn't actually have a finger made of gold.













Does this win the prize for "Biggest Traffic Jam in the World"? Some of the drivers have been there for 5 days. How do they have enough petrol/electricity to last that long? They must have switched off the engines and switching them back on to move an inch every few hours. 1km per day is pretty insane IMO.

This article has some of the more interesting pictures taken in the jam. They sleep, play and clean themselves on the road! It's kind of like camping, but without the trees and grass.

And among the Wiki sources I've read, this article must be the most ridiculous piece of journalistic work I've ever seen. Lots of offensive accusations backed by no evidence but those in articles in the same website, some of them written by the very author who wrote this one. Even if they're true, it doesn't matter!

Good thing it's called a Global News Blog. The word "Blog" changed the standards I should use to judge it.

Rant 604 / UWO

LOL! Some dude thinks just because he blogs about food a lot he can demand free meals from restaurants! I blog a lot on games, movies, books, food, and general shit about life, so I should get myself some free games, movie tickets, novels, meals and extra tax relief?












Uncharted Waters Online is coming out on the 25th... in Closed Beta phase. Still, anyone can join, so I've applied and downloaded.

Even today, I still play Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons and I usually stick with the Ali dude because trading is fun.

From what I've seen about UWO, it focuses quite a bit on exploration, treasure-hunting and trading, just like what I like about New Horizons. I'll know more soon.





Meanwhile, NS2 is still in the boring Alpha phase where most things are still incomplete. The wait continues...

Sunday 22 August 2010

Rant 603 / New Horizons on DOS Box

I just realized the flat thing on the side of my electric shaver is for trimming sideburns. Saw it being used on something I've watched recently, can't remember what.

Nifty.













No more problems on my computer today except when I first turned on my computer. After a while everything went back to normal for the rest of the day.

Also figured out the problem may have to do with the DNS or LSP / Winsock / TCP/IP corruption.. DNS because of the initial symptom of only being able to access URLs that are IP addresses; the other is possible because a few times after I reset the router and modem I couldn't access anything at all but could play games.

But most importantly, I still don't know if it's the modem, router or my computer that's at fault.













It's coming! But I don't really like Saori Hara. The most outstanding quality about her is her somewhat exotic face with a kind of Indian-like look. It's true she's relatively hot compared to real people but in porn, you need more than just "hot". More specifically, she's rather lacking in size on her upper body. They should have found someone with a better figure like Sora Aoi, but they were probably too cheap for that. If it had featured her, it would have been destined to be a blockbuster at least in Japan.

Sora Aoi in 3D, will it ever happen? Then again, she doesn't really do porn these days and her performances in the newer videos are just not as good as it used to be.

Also, I don't think anyone can watch such 3D films at home. IMAX doesn't do the red/cyan glasses kind of 3D and instead uses the shutter glasses and polarized glasses. You can't make any of these easily at home.

Shutter glasses need to synchronize their refresh rates with the TV, so you need quite a bit of expertise in electronics to build one.

Polarized glasses, on the other hand, are simpler. You just need something to polarize light, ie a sheet of polarizing plastic. Problem is that I have no idea how to acquire such a material in Singapore without ordering online. Polarizing filters for cameras won't work because they're circularly polarized while IMAX uses linearly polarized glasses. Also, I don't think anyone will pirate such high-tech 3D films in 3D format at the moment other than the old-fashioned red/cyan ones.

Friday 20 August 2010

Rant 602 / Fungi

Just now when I was on my way to school, I saw this mother walking on the pavement with her 2 children and her maid. One was a baby being carried by the maid; the other was a little boy about 5-6 years old walking with her.

I'll cut to the point. He pissed into the drain. Next to a red light. While all the cars were stopped there waiting. I was watching. The driver was watching. Everyone in the cars and buses on the left lane were probably watching.

His maid turned around and watched while his mother was more focused on not facing the road.

I didn't know there are still parents out there who let their kids pee in the public. Now that incident where I countered faeces in the shower cubicles back in NTU makes sense!

I'm offended but mostly I'm just sad. This just reminds me of why too many parents these days just aren't meant to have children. They can't even handle teaching their kids basic proper behaviour like holding it in while outside a bathroom. I seriously hope they don't have pets and will never get one.




























Been having this very annoying problem tonight. Since about 8pm (it's 12.20pm atm) I've been unable to access the Internet via my browser even though the Network and Sharing Center says I'm connected to the web and so does my Network Magic.

The problem keeps changing all the time.

At first, I could access some websites but not most. Google was ok and so was this Spybot Search and Destroy forum which had an IP address for its URL.

I couldn't find anything on that Spybot forum and all other search results on Google were useless since I can't access them.

So I restarted the router and modem. Useless. It made even the computer outside unable to access the Internet.

Eventually I had to take my dinner so my mum got fed up and went to read. Meanwhile I stopped my search and switched off the router and modem.

At about 10pm I turned them back on again. As expected, it took like half an hour for the modem to warm up and connect to the net. When it did, it was back to the first case where I could not access the net via browser but the computer outside was fine.

All my search results (using my laptop and mobile modem) pointed at malware affecting my browsers, so I downloaded this Malwarebyte which found nothing useful except mistaking certain cracked files in my games as trojans. At the same time, I did a normal scan using NOD32 and found an actual infected file in my Supreme Commander folder that had remained after I uninstalled it. I had thought the folder only contained my save files but apparently there was a trojan too.

The whole folder was deleted.

The situation did not change. So I did a quick restart of the router and modem again.

Everything was okay! I could use the Internet... but only for about 15mins. Then I couldn't enter any websites, not even Google and the other site. Curiously, everything else said my connection was fine. I could even play my games on Steam!

So I got pretty sure it was my browsers' problem. Frustrated, I spent another hour watching one more episode of House. When I got back, everything went back to normal and I'm typing this now.

What on earth is going on?

Doing an in-depth scan using my NOD32 now. It's updated btw.

Now I'm just having this intermittent access. I have completely no idea what is wrong.

1.53am - Nope, scan gave me nothing but Internet is fine for now. Saved a few webpages to look at when things go wrong again later.













Today's (ok, technically it was yesterday) Straits Times contains an article that discussed a problem I had mentioned before - food supply problems. Like I said, we're getting low on food and there isn't yet another Green Revolution like the one we had some decades ago.

Growing food in the city is an idea that is being tested in several countries already. Benefits include not having to transport food quickly to maintain freshness. You still have to import the soil from outside but soil, seeds and manure don't need fast (read air) transportation like meat and fruits.

I can probably grow mushrooms at home but mushroom kits aren't cheap in Singapore even though it's just a log or wood shavings and some processed manure. Mainly it's because there is no supplier of such kits here and we can only order it from overseas. Prices are about S$25 for a small box of 250g containing mostly sterilized shit and they're about as large as those polystyrene boxes the Chinese mixed veg stalls use for takeaways. I can easily buy kilograms of oyster mushroom at the cost of one of those kits.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Rant 601 / GOOOOOOOLD!

Never got around to mentioning it but this new music featured on the right is L'estasi dell'Oro, which literally means The Ecstasy of Gold, by Ennio Morricone. This is actually a remix which does not really portray the feeling the title says. If you listen to the original, you will understand what I mean.



The remix is more exciting and done in the modern style of having the climax right from the start. It's a nicer piece of music to listen to but the meaning is absent. No building up or anything. Sometimes anticipation can have effects other than just making someone anxious.













People think that the new dating campaign won't work because of the high cost of starting a new family. Isn't the same problem plaguing all developed countries except the US?

I agree that this is probably the biggest long-term problem all First World countries must encounter but it doesn't mean it need not be solved. At this rate, we're going to see a cycle of wealth and poverty everywhere.

1) Poor country gets rich.
2) Citizens stop having enough children.
3) Too many elderly, not enough working people.
4) Economy overburdened by cost of keeping old people alive, not supported enough by younger generations
5) Rich country goes poor, back to square one.
6) Return to step 1.

I admit it's going to take some serious ingenuity to overcome this. Taking in foreigners is only a temporary solution - you can only absorb so many non-natives at a time before your native population gets diluted enough that they are culturally overwhelmed by the foreigners. At that point, this country might as well be an extension of whichever country the majority of foreigners hailed from.

Already we're beginning to have problems with people from the PRC. Other than that issue a few years back about massage parlours, I've also heard stories of cab drivers having problems with them. Locals mainly give them problems with change (try paying with a $50 bill in the morning lol) or eating in the vehicle, but there's this driver who told me some PRC chick tried to blackmail him (is it what it's called?) by threatening to fake a report to the police about him molesting her if he didn't let her out of the cab without paying.

I think we're getting close to the limit. In another 50 years at this rate we're going to be another state in the PRC. I'm not sure if that's great for Singaporeans but it's going to be a pity letting a such a nice country be ruined. But in the long term, I guess it's eventually going to happen. If not China, then another country.

Anyway that cab driver just went ahead and let her filed her report. They went to court and she was charged for filing a false report.













Been a little busy for the last few days. Now I really see why Vic always seemed busy. It's not just his work; those English assignments do take some time and a lot of concentration. And they also have deadlines and if we hand in late, marks are automatically deducted by the computer. Good thing we can hand in online though.

Fortunately printing is kept a the minimum in UniSIM. All the notes have been compiled and published as textbooks so that only a single module that I'm taking requires printing a sheet or two for each class. So we have about 2 textbooks per module, excluding recommended books. I think I'm going to buy the recommended book for the one Chinese module I'm about to take in the second half of the semester.

It's interesting how these classes are scheduled. You apply for classes for the entire semester but each module only takes up half the semester. So all my English language modules are in the current half while my one and only Chinese module is in the second half. Can't wait till I reach the first two weeks of the next half because I'll be going to school only once a week!

Plenty of time to read through the Chinese textbooks. Already I'm reading the first few pages of the Chinese textbooks (上册和下册). Going really slowly though because I kind of suck at reading Chinese. Still, I understand what it's saying, so it's cool.

Sunday 15 August 2010

Rant 600 / Six Hundred Already?

Something happened today that I really do not understand.

http://senorhybrido.blogspot.com/2010/02/rant-493-human-larvae.html#comments

Anonymous said...

Amiable dispatch and this fill someone in on helped me alot in my college assignement. Thank you seeking your information.




All I can understand is that that pointless rant helped someone in his/her college assignment. Was he/she writing on Gibberlings or getai?

It doesn't look like a spammer either because it did not advertise or even mentioned any links and was anonymous. Instead, it looked like someone translated what he/she wanted to say through Babelfish.

My response to this comment can only be...

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?























Has it been so long already? Six hundred rants?

I know, I know. It's more than six hundred but wow, I think I've changed a lot since my first rant.

When I re-read the old rants I felt they were more varied in terms of style and word usage. I can explain that by the fact that even today, I'm still searching for my style.

Noticed I keep using the same conjunctions a lot nowadays and I almost always skip the "I" when it's at the beginning of a sentence, as in the case of this very line. I thought it was too troublesome since it's so obviously implied when you read the sentences as a whole.

My language was also more formal back in the beginning. Obviously I had something different in mind but now I really don't care. This is my memory of myself and what I see. In things like this, I don't trust my organic memory. Too tinted with feelings. Through this blog, my future self will be able to see clearly what I have been. Closer to the objective truth than by remembering.













This morning while waiting for my room to be cleaned, I watched this documentary about salt.

Prosciutto, which usually refers to the Parma ham I usually buy (but in Italian it just means "ham"), is really pronounced as "pr-uh-shoot-oh". I've always thought it was pronounced as "pro-skew-toh". I was never corrected at Cold Storage where I buy it because I call it "Parma ham", which is also correct.

Didn't know that salt can be mined with 2 methods (at least) - dry and wet.

In the wet method, they pump hot water into the salt deposit and then pipe it back up to be filtered and dried. Certain additives are also added to make sure it doesn't absorb moisture from the atmosphere and clump together.

The dry method is the same as coal mining - dynamite the deposit, dig out the pieces. Takes 20 tons of salt to make a US dollar (probably net profit, but it was not mentioned), according to the narrator, so salt is cheap.

Compare this with the Roman era, when salt was precious because there weren't these heavy machinery. Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt, which is saying something about its value. Remember that the idea of a government issuing a currency that does not have an intrinsic value was never used in ancient times until the Song dynasty in the 12th century.













I was finally getting annoyed by the slow horses in the Blood and Steel mod for Mount&Blade: Warband, so I got some other single-player mods to try.

Turns out most of them are not as good as I expected. In fact, B&S was pretty much perfect for me if not for the slow horses. I just like the large number of troops, for example.

So I'm getting bored. Making changes to the game for the mods is causing too many complexities for me. Download this, download that, change these lines in that file, add those files to this folder, etc etc. Interesting at first but after too many disappointments, I'm somewhat fed up.













Bought some chicken breasts last week but never got around to cooking them. Never got the motivation to go to Cold Storage to shop for sage and parma ham. They're in the freezer, so it's okay. Still, when will I ever use them?

I'm so unpredictable.













Here's an idea for couples - skip the diamond ring.

Moissanite looks just like a diamond; the difference is undetectable with the naked eye. In fact, moissanite is actually more brilliant. If, for whatever reason, you're stuck on the diamond ring idea, synthetic or "cultured" diamonds are the real deal. They're made in a machine that replicates the environmental forces that make diamonds. They're real diamonds, only with less flaws. A synthetic 2-carat pink diamond costs just a few thousand dollars, and a 1-carat moissanite ring is under $1000.
Hmm...













An assembly line to assemble iPhones, from the top management to the bottom workers, takes 50,000 people.













Now trying out 1257AD, a mod for Mount&Blade: Warband. Judging from the number of comments on its thread at Taleworlds.com, it's probably the most popular single-player mod available.

This mod is about Europe in the year 1257, when the Germans were still the Holy Roman Empire and Poland was a major European power. I'm still at the beginning phase trying to make a fortune through trade, so I haven't seen much fighting yet.

Still, it looks quite good, other than the lag when travelling in the world map. I'm fine with this because I'm doing other things while I go between cities.













1 mod to give all women huge boobies.
1 mod to change most women's clothings into skimpy/low-cut/open clothes.
1 mod to give all women oiled skin.
3 mods, then, to give this 70-year-old grandma glossy H-cups that she shows off to everyone constantly.

Behold the horrors of modded Fallout 3!

(Disclaimer: Screenshot does not capture exactly what it looks like in the game. Bodies were supposed to be glossier. Also, look closely at your own risk.)













About the recent bus fare increase, is it really that bad? All the comments seem to say it's more expensive now, but it that true for most people?

Or is it just the resistance against change in people?

I don't know because I take buses only when I have class at SP, which is pretty rare.

There are two fare calculators for the curious. One is from the LTA and the other is from Transitlink.

Even if it's really a price hike for most people, at least it sounds more reasonable than the last hike in 2008.

Still, despite the normality of price hikes in Singapore I guess it's fine for people to be unhappy about it.












Speaking of money, I like this new definition of wealth they taught in the Managing Personal Finance course I'm attending. During the first class the lecturer explained the term "wealth" to be the amount of time you can remain in your present lifestyle without working.

If I'm not wrong about my spending habits, I must be filthy rich. Then again, I really should start recording every cent I'm spending to make sure I'm right.

So today I've spent...

$6 for brunch, plus max of $0.50 worth of tea leaves for the tea
$5 estimated for dinner, plus $0.60 Milo (2 sachets, Milo Fuze)
$5 worth of electricity, water and gas ($300 bill, assuming I contributed to half)

Whoa this is getting pretty complicated. I still haven't added the cost of bathroom necessities, school and clothes, which are more suitable for calculations of monthly expenses instead of daily.

Does the rest of BC do this too? I know I'll definitely make such a list when I start to have my own income. Doesn't hurt to plan a bit.













Optimism. Although I'm disappointed with the comments I still think there's hope for the YOG. No I'm not going to fork out money to support it.

I wonder why they're all whining so hard in every article about events in Singapore. Is Singapore really that bad? Are they all eating dirt and moonlighting by selling their backsides?

How long do you think the average Singaporean can maintain his/her present lifestyle without working?

If the government wants to squeeze every cent off you, there are simpler ways to do that, like raising income taxes.

Our income taxes are low compared to other developed countries like the US, in exchange for a lack of welfare. Our people are also not as overworked as HongKongers, the place we frequently compare ourselves with. Singapore also has an almost non-existent shadow economy, as implied by this article (and personal experience), unlike the Greek economy in which 25% of their GDP was derived from black markets before their recent crisis.

If you have enough money to last at least half a year without a job, assuming you'd spend sparingly in that situation and that you didn't acquire your savings illegally, I don't see how you even have the right to whine about how the Singapore government just wants your money.

Comparing what you have with what you could have if things had happened in another way is going to do nothing but make you hate everything. I know this is almost akin to what some people call "阿Q精神", but that's only if you truly believe that Singapore isn't progressing.

阿Q精神”简单的说就是一种是自慰精神或者是自贱精神,学者概括为:就是阿Q的自欺欺人、自轻、自贱、自嘲、自解、自甘屈辱,而又妄自尊大、自我陶醉等 种种表现。简言之,是在失败与屈辱面前,不敢正视现实,而使用虚假的胜利来在精神上实行自我安慰,自我麻醉,或者即刻忘却。

I'll do my best to translate this with the help of 2 dictionaries (1 & 2):

阿Q精神” (transliteration: Ah Q attitude/spirit) basically describes a kind of self-consoling or self-cheapening attitude, described academically as Ah Q's way of deceiving, belittling, cheapening, ridiculing, making excuses to and humiliating himself despite being a narcissist with an absurdly large ego. Simply put, it is the act of avoiding reality and imagining success in the face of failure and humiliation in order to console and numb oneself or to forget about it.



I think one example of this happened frequently during those days when I was still playing Natural Selection a lot. Whenever the alien team managed to wipe out the marine main base at the same time as the marines wiped all their hives (and the marines having at least a secondary base to operate from), the aliens would lose but they would console themselves by describing the destruction of the marine main as a "moral victory".

So yea, if you truly believe Singapore is going downhill, then my way of thinking is kind of similar because I compared different aspects of this country with those of different places.







I wonder if I can do half as well if I have to translate a similar passage from English to Chinese.

Saturday 14 August 2010

Rant 599 / Celeryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Oh shit India and Pakistan are dangerous places to get injured now! A bacteria that's resistant to strong antibiotics is now infecting people who were hurt enough to be hospitalized there. I'm not criticizing the hygiene of those hospitals but if any bacteria exists in significant amounts in the places that have above average hygiene standards, they have to be pretty tough.

"The epicentre of the presence of this bacteria seems to be India and Pakistan, but it appears through contact and travel, its spread is becoming wider," Glupczynski, a bacteriologist, said. British medical journal The Lancet reported this week that bacteria containing the NDM-1 gene had been found in 37 Britons who had received medical treatment in South Asia, while three cases have been reported in Australia.

Scary.













The first thing I thought of when I saw this was... him.













Give me CELEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!



Let's interface!



I remember this guy mainly for his role as Melchett in the Blackadder series.






I've been looking at your panties.















:O


You know, I have the feeling New Vegas was made because the original guys were unhappy about Fallout 3. I've read that the guys at Interplay had always seen the Fallout series as their "baby". Knowing the extreme differences between Fallout 3 and its 2 predecessors, I know they have to be upset a little.

For example, the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel were never the biggest factions in the previous Fallout games. Yet in Fallout 3, they were the only factions in action. The New California Republic, which was the largest organization in the Fallout universe, didn't even get a mention there.

Worse was how if you take a step back and look at the plot of FO3 in its entirety, you'd see that it was actually a tiny matter blown out of proportions. Seriously, a big fight over a water purifier? Back in the first FO we were fighting an army of Super Mutants trying to take over the world!

If pure water was that precious, obviously the NCR would have tried to get their hands on it. After all, they were trying to become the new government of what used to be the US. The Enclave can say whatever they want, but they have only some technologies (which were not even the most advanced in the FO universe) and a relatively small army. The Brotherhood are supposed to be just a bunch of armed scholars, not a military force.

Hence New Vegas, which stars NCR among other organizations.

On the other hand, I don't think Interplay can dramatize their events as skillfully as Bethesda. The blinding light when you got out of the Vault the first time in FO3, how can anything beat that?












Just watched the first two James Bond movies, which were in the Sean Connery era. Critics have always compared later James Bonds with him, but as someone who watched the later James Bond before seeing Sean Connery in his performances, I have to say he was bloody cool but kind of overrated.

You see, I feel that the original James Bond was the product of his times. Back then people in movies talk that way and have almost wooden facial expressions most of the time, which some people interpret as cool. Seriously, if some dude in the movie kept his face still throughout the entire movie, he'd be so cool the cinemas could save on air-conditioning.













Gah! The ST350 presses so hard on my ears, it's painful to take them off! It's also too small, so if I wear it normally such that the headband is pressing on my head, it's kind of uncomfortable. If I don't, it keeps slipping off my ears despite the pressure.

Good thing I have yet another spare headset. Also have a pair of spare earphones but I'm leaving that as a last resort and temporary solution.

This TDK ST150 is bigger and has softer earpads. But instead of the fake leather-like material that the ST350 used, the pads are made of a cloth material, so I worry it will absorb sweat and have all sorts of consequences I don't want to think about.

Now I know what to look out for when I buy headphones in the future.

1) Must be supra-aural.
2) Must have big headbands.
3) Earpads must not be made of absorbent materials.

But this ST150 has significantly poorer sound quality. It's much more muffled and now that I'm testing it with the Disciples 3 music on this blog, I can barely hear the male choir voices. Strong bass, complete absence of crispness of sound.












And I haven't even voted. Guess I don't have to.

Friday 13 August 2010

Rant 598 / Chocolate!

So I heard our fresh rations during NS was better than what YOG volunteers are eating. Which catering service is that that can actually beat SFI in terms of inferiority?

“Our meal consists of rice that’s cold, vegetables and a meat usually chicken or fish. It’s nice and generally enough to fill us,” he said.

For dinner, volunteers are given free drinks such as a can of Coca-Cola, green tea or ice lemon tea. On top of that, they get a packet of wet wipes and dry tissue and once a week, they get ice cream.


Yep. BMT recruits eat better than YOG volunteers. Confirmed.













Here's a list of definitions of basic chocolate terms for us amateurs. Never knew semisweet chocolate refers to chocolate that has more than 70% cocoa (the state between baking chocolate and dark chocolate).

So what my mum bought some months ago was called "artisan chocolate". In Chinese it's called "手工巧克力". It may have been expensive, but it was definitely not a waste of money. Nothing Cadbury and Lindt sell can be compared with what I found in the box.

Thursday 12 August 2010

Rant 597 / Less Than $4


Natural Harvest, by Fotie Photenhauer.

Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cook book!



Yes it's a semen-themed cookbook. Believe it.












If you have the money and you like to gamble, now is probably a good time to go to Macau. Apparently the Chinese government had changed their laws to prevent citizens from overspending there, causing a major drop in revenue. According to my uncle, they're giving out VIP rooms to "anyone" (though the term is subjective) who gambles there. Doesn't even matter if you've only been spending all that money on slot machines; if they think you've spent enough, you get the room plus buffet for free.

This is because since last year, the Chinese are only allowed to visit Macau once every three months, especially those at managerial positions or higher, in both the private and public sectors. In fact for some, their passports are kept by the company/organization they work for instead of themselves.

But the Chinese aren't poor. They may have splurged in Macau before but another news article claims that they're richer than officially reported, something we all already know but never discuss. Among other things we should be aware of is that the Chinese play with the real estate markets a lot. You'll have to be pretty naive to think the current real estate prices in Shanghai are natural.

Quoting from the article of the last link:

"Between January and July, new homes in the city, excluding those for relocations, sold at an average 20,824 yuan per square meter, compared to 14,536 yuan in the same period last year."

20824 RMB = 4169 SGD

PER SQUARE METER

Randomly picked condo near Haw Par MRT, Viva Vista is sold at 500+k, has 334 sq ft (same as sq meter afaik in real estates)

500,000 / 334 = 1497 SGD per sq ft

Another random condo priced at 700+k, has minimum 388 sq ft, but I'll take 431 sq ft since there are more units of those

700000/431 = 1624 SGD per sq ft


At most they're going to hit 2000 SGD per sq ft, and they're new condos.

As you can see, there's a real estate bubble in China. What you may not see is that they're also trying to do the same thing in other countries.

They don't do it alone. First they spot the areas that are popular, then they get a group of friends, each of whom would fork out some money. Then they would buy up every single available apartment in that area, hence controlling the entire supply. Since the area is popular, the demand wouldn't die out. In fact, as prices rise it is easy to see how others would want to buy them as investments.

4000 Sing dollars per square feet is the result. And that's only for the average new homes, not the classier stuff built for the wealthy. I believe $4000/sq ft in Singapore only applies to the higher floors of the most expensive condos.

I'm pretty sure they're already trying to do the same in Singapore but that they have been hindered by the strict laws here, whatever they are.

As for China, there are signs that the bubble is about to burst. The prices aren't rising so fast anymore and sales have dropped. Hopefully their government has it under control, or the yuan may get affected.













What's with all the flights to Singapore being full these days? Seriously, first it was one of my aunts who couldn't come here because all the flights from HK were full on the days she could make it, now it was this uncle who said he had to search a bit for a ticket and that the plane he was in was packed.

Tourism in Singapore? Or people coming back this late after the long weekend?













Last night my bro asked me if I wanted to buy Nation Red. It's on sale on Steam for 7 USD per copy and has a special 4-pack for 15 USD. It's kind of like Alien Swarm, except it has zombies instead of aliens and is held in arenas instead of campaigns.

I like the part about zombies but arenas IMO don't have much replay value. If I were working and have my own income, I wouldn't mind spending a few dollars on it. But right now buying this game that I definitely won't be playing much isn't exactly a wise choice, just like SC2.

It's not like I'm desperate for new games at the moment anyway. Warband and its custom mods are keeping me occupied all the time. Currently playing Blood and Steel, but I'm considering a change.

Blood and Steel puts much less focus on equipment (although there are now female armours, allowing us to play as tranny warlords) and horses, and much more on soldiers. All horses are simplified into the types and there are no longer Champion Coursers, just Coursers. There are many more units though, like Valkyries and Cannoneers and Pistoleros/Pistoleras.

I want my Champion Coursers, but these new units look pretty cool too. Hmm...













*GASP* I never knew this was there all along!

1. Is accessing pornography on the Internet illegal?

The MDA does not monitor or track users' access to any sites on the Internet and does not interfere with what individuals access in the privacy of their homes. We are primarily concerned with the purveyors and distributors of pornography. Unless you engage in such activities, the mere act of visiting such sites is not an offence.

I was actually looking for the third question which was about TV license because in the near future I may stop having a TV at all.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Rant 596 / 1 SGD = 23 TWD

I got a slight shock today when the barber/hairstylist told me I was balding around my ears. Since when did balding begin there?? More importantly, I have too much hair to start balding! There have been occasions when my hair jammed the duller shavers used by the barbers, so balding has never been one of my worries.

My immediate conclusion was that my headphone was the problem. You see, I always use this huge headset that cup both my ears. I don't have speakers, so I wear them all the time when I'm on the computer, which is anywhere between 6-12 hours a day.

FYI for about a year I've been using the SteelSeries Siberia Full-Size Headphones (image in link is white, mine is all black) which my bro got for free from some sponsors for his gaming-related club in NUS (or so he claimed). In recent months, I've been using this more frequently during the day because school has prevented me from playing in the evening and sleeping late.

With it pressing hard on the hair around my ears and together with my perspiration, I think it's preventing hair from growing in those area and causing a minor rash. I can't see it though.

So now I've downgraded to a cheaper headset that doesn't really fit, a TDK ST350. It's smaller but I don't have much of a choice here. The SteelSeries headphones still works and I've returned it to my bro even though he rarely uses headphones.

This sucks. That headset has been the most durable one I've used so far and it's sound quality is pretty good, though I'm no audiophile and I'm unable to make any solid comments about it. The felt rings that cup the ears still aren't marked or anything even after almost a year of heavy use, except maybe the top. The wires that pull down the strap may have loosened a bit over the months but it's still working fine.












Met an uncle-in-law today. 姨长; this term doesn't change if the aunt he's married to is elder or younger to your mother. He was the one who brought me and the other guys around when we went to HK some years back.

Always thought he looked liked my father. Anyway he was my father's friend and it was my mum who introduced him to her sister.

Brought some news about other relatives, most of them bad. It's life after all.

He travels a lot due to his work. I think he works in the sales department of some international corporation that's mainly into manufacturing. According to him he was on his way to Malaysia because there was this factory that made some rubber thing that is either stuck on shirts or used to paint on them and doesn't wash off even in hot water at 80 degrees Celsius.

Stopped here for a night to see my mum for some reason. You know what? I'm curious about why he's always so nice to my family. None of the other uncle-in-laws do anything for us except him. I'm beginning to suspect he was a pretty good friend of my father's. Another uncle-in-law knew my father and even did business with him but I've never seen him other than that one night when I visited my relatives on my own during the trip to HK with the BC.

Never got the chance to ask him about my father before marriage though. The only thing I caught in his conversation with my mum about him was that my father was a very conservative man who acted like he was liberal-minded (in his day), which confirms what I have gathered from what my mum has said over the years.

Of course I'm curious. It only makes sense that a man changes after getting married, and my mum definitely doesn't know what he was like before she met him. This uncle does. I should probably find some way to talk to him, but I think it will probably happen only at my mum's funeral.

Sad that my aunt got gullible enough to be a guarantor for a friend when he/she borrowed money from banks and loan sharks. It's so bad now that even this uncle, who's rich enough to buy a Mercedes Benz for his son as his first car, can barely handle the monthly payments for her. 19% interest for some of the loans. There is apparently no way to alleviate the problem now and even the cousin with the Economics degree and working at Wall Street could only say that she was stupid.

What I learnt from this is that I'll never be your guarantor, no matter who you are, unless I can easily afford to pay it for you. That should limit the amount to 10-20 dollars, Taiwanese.

I wonder how this story will be concluded. It's life. Anything is possible. She could probably escape to HK but I'm not sure if it will solve the problem permanently.

Why is everyone stupid enough to go broke for real? Just last year a friend of my mum's just declared bankrupt and she gave her her laptop out of sympathy. Not sure how the $1000 laptop will help. Maybe she can sell her services on webcam sites that feature milfs. I don't know. What I do know is that I will definitely avoid that site at all costs if I find out about it.

You guys reading this really need to learn about frugality. Shit happens to anyone at any age. According to the lecturer in my Managing Personal Finances course, young people today can expect to live up to 100 in the future due to rapid advances medical technologies. Adjust your savings accordingly, at the very least.

The average may still be 70 in Singapore but people don't automatically drop dead at that age. It's the average, calculated by adding both those who died young and those who died really late. You may turn out to be one of those who dies really late. What are you going to eat then if your money runs out?

Depend on your children?

Don't make me laugh. Today's kids have different values compared to us, just like we are different from our parents. Do you know there have been 2 old people living on the streets right here where I live recently? They used to stay somewhere near the market and I'm not exaggerating when I say they lived there. The old woman was so weak she had to pass motion and etc in public. It was some days later that the authorities took them away to give them somewhere to stay for free (I think).

I know that the old man had at least a son, but the son sold his home and disappeared with the money, hence his situation.

Shit happens to anyone. Healthy NSmen can die of heart problems during a routine jog. Non-smokers can die of lung cancer. Singapore can be strongly affected by natural disasters. The poor old woman sitting on the pavement selling tissue paper all day can own a brand new handphone with videocam function and stuff. There are few impossibilities in life. Natural blizzards and hailstorms in Singapore, and women with penile cancer. That's it. Everything else you think is undeniably true, I suggest you stop believing they're 100% solid. Maybe just 90%.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Rant 595 / Not Talking

You know, after all that flooding last month, why don't I see any report of people being electrocuted when the water came into contact with the power sockets? It can't be that all the power sockets in the basement floors were placed very high up, right? Some had to be located near the floor. So why didn't anyone get fried?













I used to imagine that automatic cars, which I've always regarded as an inevitable innovation in the present social environment, to require rails. It was probably because I didn't quite believe that automatic cars can properly steer themselves and would require a single rail to guide them.

I believe these cars in the videos use something similar to our optical mouse to track the distances it is moving to each side in order to correct it.

In 10 years we probably won't need a license to drive and all parking lots can be placed in rural areas to conserve space in the cities.

Saturday 7 August 2010

Rant 594 / Third DotA Ripoff

Valve, the company that made Half Life 2, CS and the online game store Steam is making now making DotA. Apparently, Icefrog was hired by Valve last year to lead a team to develop the Warcraft III custom map into a full-blown game.

Icefrog must be making some big money now that the 3rd DotA ripoff is being made, and this time with him being the boss.













Just watched Brazil. While all the reviews I've read about it have nothing but praises for this film, I don't like it. Maybe it's because I don't get it, or maybe I just dislike the mind-blowing stupidity of the protagonist.

At one point I was even tempted to stop the film because I couldn't stand that guy's behaviour anymore but I thought I'd give it another chance.

IMO the movie was annoying.














The poor Japanese players won't be getting their New Vegas till November. Unless November in Japan is October in the rest of the world, they're getting it about a week late.

Interesting ad though. The signs are supposed to be criticizing JRPGs like their linear storylines and the need for grinding, things that WRPGs has been avoiding these days.

And this is for consoles. WRPG on consoles. Sad. Can't mod, so it gets boring rather quickly. Meanwhile on the PC we will turn it into a sci-fi porn studio the way Fallout 3 was.

Wednesday 4 August 2010

Rant 593 / The Publish Post Button. So Bright. So Orange. So Forgettable.



1500 dead. 3 million affected. Big flood. Some Pakistanis obviously need to lose weight.

See how when 1 guy dies, it's a tragedy but when it's 1500 all those corpses just inexplicably turn into statistics?

My guess is that it's because we just can't imagine what 1500 floating bodies look like.















This sounds easy. I haven't searched for sage at Cold Storage at Holland V before but I think it should be there with the other herbs. Parma ham is definitely there, though it's a little expensive. 150g should cost me about $20, can't remember exactly since I haven't bought it in a long time.














Even parrots love Star Wars.













Singapore's crime rate drops below the already negligible rate, but youth crime rose by a measly 1%. Blame parents. When I look at my bro and think of him being a father in 6-7 years' time, I kind of understand why parents suck at raising children these days.

I'm always thinking: What? Him? A father? What? He still doesn't even lift a finger to help with any household chore and he's going to be a dad? And his girlfriend, all she does is hide in his room with her laptop like me. No offence but if things go on like that the world's better off if one of them gets sterilized.

This raises a point that's been on my mind for a number of years - that adults aren't really as matured as I had expected when I was younger. It feels like very few parents were actually ready to become parents when they did. The picture I'm seeing is that we're having kids raising their own kids!

Maybe I've just been overestimating adulthood or maybe our generation grew up in a much softer environment. I wouldn't know. It's just like I am confused about whether my own mother is getting old or that she's never been as wise, matured and intelligent as I thought. I simply can't tell.

Don't compare yourselves with me. I'm not planning to have children ever. I don't even believe in marriage. My dad's gone and my mum's not destined for longevity, so I have no pressure whatsoever to present anyone with grandkids. You know, silver lining and look on the bright side and blah blah blah. Therefore I can do as I will without fear of consequences on my wife and children.

You guys can't, if you're going to be married and have offspring. You have an obligation learn to act like responsible adults. If you still rely on your parents to clean up the dishes after meals when you're in your mid-twenties, you are not ready to be a parent.

Sometimes I think there are people out there who believe that just because he can ejaculate and she's having periods and they have a steady income, they can both be parents and raise their own children. That's the impression I get from seeing what I've seen. Whatever happened to the need to understand what the word "responsibilities" mean?

Remember that it just takes one bad child to make you a bad parent. You can have 10 kids and 9 of them win Nobel Prizes but if that last one gets caught smuggling drugs into Singapore you've still failed at parenthood.













Local banking services last month got disrupted for a few hours. MAS sends warning to all the banks to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"MAS will not hesitate to take appropriate supervisory action against any financial institution which fails to meet the standards," it said.

MAS reminds me of LKY for some reason.













PCK movie, coming 12 Aug.















Here's something interesting. If you have cancer, don't drink Coke. Apparently cancer cells love fructose and a lot of American processed food and beverages contain High Fructose Corn Syrup, aka HFCS. It's well-known that Coke and Pepsi contain lots of that.

Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate.

So if you're at risk of cancer or already have it, avoid fructose as much as possible. Use google for more information on what food contains it.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

I see hope now. This move makes sense.

Monday 2 August 2010

Rant 592 / Prayers Travel In A Straight Line


This has a point. Muslims should take all three dimensions into consideration when calculating the angle at which Mecca is. Prayers travel in a straight line, you know. Or else, why the need to face Mecca at all?

However since the Universe is a donut shape, they are really facing their backs during prayer. Then again, you're always facing your back no matter where you're looking, so what's the point of this paragraph anyway?













I used to think that the oppression of American natives is over but in Brazil it's still happening.

To construct a dam somewhere in the country, the energy company blew up an ancestral burial ground of one of the tribes. In response, several tribes including the one whom the ground belonged to took the workers hostage to demand a stop to the construction.

Apparently the destruction of their ancestral graves was really the last straw. Before that, they were already suffering because their river has become so polluted they couldn't catch any fish in the past two years.

They can't say that the company didn't know because I'm very sure the tribal people would have tried desperately to stop the workers from taking over the burial site. I know I would if my ancestors were buried there since time immemorial.

And if my grandfather's body was blown up with dynamite like that, I would definitely be pissed off enough to take people hostage, even though I never knew both my grandfathers.

Pretty fucked up, yea? Just because they live in shacks in the jungle doesn't make them subhuman, but obviously a lot of people in Brazil don't see things this way.












People who sleep 9 hours or more, or 5 hours or less a day have higher chances of developing certain heart conditions
. I sleep nine hours a day. Oh crap.

Sleeping fewer than five hours a day, including naps, more than doubles the risk of being diagnosed with angina, coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke, the study conducted by researchers at West Virginia University's (WVU) faculty of medicine and published in the journal "Sleep" says. Study participants who said they slept nine hours or longer a day were one-and-a-half times more likely than seven-hour sleepers to develop cardiovascular disease, the study found.

So we should sleep between 6-8 hours a day. Then again, I'm jumping to conclusion if I say that sleeping too much or too little is the cause of these illnesses. It's just as likely that these people are already at getting close to have heart diseases so their body is resting more to repair the damages more desperately.

Who knows? All the study says is that they're related, not that either is the cause of the other.
But they pointed out that sleep duration affects endocrine and metabolic functions, and sleep deprivation can lead to impaired glucose tolerance, reduced insulin sensitivity and elevated blood pressure, all of which increase the risk of hardening the arteries.

See? I was getting too worked up over something I merely assumed. Bleh. This report meant nothing to us laymen. The researchers need to do some more work before drawing the correct conclusions for us because obviously this study doesn't say anything.













Starcraft 2 is selling for S$109 for the normal edition, though a few shops are selling them at about S$90.

Just finished the campaign on Normal difficulty and I have to say that this is by far the best RTS campaign I've ever played. Every single round is unique, unlike other RTS whose campaigns are mostly about building bases and wiping out the enemies.

For example, a few missions in SC2 are about collecting resources. One makes you race against an enemy AI to collect crystals but you also have to spend these crystals to build your army to defend yourself or attack the enemy bases to slow down its collection speed.

The other has you collecting minerals on a map that is regularly flooded by lava but has many isles that aren't flooded. The problem is that all the crystals are on the low grounds, so you have to watch both your SCVs and your troops either while they defend your SCVs from enemy attacks or while explore the map for more resource-laden areas.

The news reports by the Dominion (the Terran government, also the enemy) and the conversations with all the NPCs you gradually collect on your ship just adds that something to the experience. Together with a few choices you have to make, like how you have to choose to either cripple the Zergs' land attacks or their air units in the final mission, just makes it feel like an RPG a little.

FYI I betrayed the NPCs I had on my ship whenever I was given a choice. Most of the time the choices are both right, so it's more of a question of practicality than morality. In the previously mentioned choice, I rejected the idea to reduce their land attack capabilities which was suggested by a NPC on my ship. It was not to spite him but that I frickin hate air attacks for their longer ranges that, if I wasn't watching, can keep attacking my defences forever. Zerg land units are 99% melee attackers and the race's air defences are horrible with the exception of the Spore Colony, so as a big-time Battlecruiser fan I'm completely cool with the other option.

Seriously, they can easily make a movie out of this franchise if they want to in the future.

For anyone who hasn't played SC2, it's really what a sequel should be - the same game but with an extreme makeover. Many of the units and structures in SC2 are the same as SC1 like Wraiths, Goliaths, Zerglings and Engineering Bays (a useful structure in competitive Starcraft because it's cheap and it flies, hence players sometimes position it to cover turrets or units to make it look like they have no defences in that area).

All the units have their looks redone and new units are thrown in to make things more complicated. The old units sound very similar to their counterparts in SC1, like the artificial voice of the Goliath.

Again, I wouldn't say that this game's worth a hundred bucks. 50 would be a more reasonable price when they're earning commissions for selling custom maps made by players.













So yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a taxi driver. Mainly it was him telling me how this "auntie" has been trying to ask him to go swimming with her. He's a middle-aged man so that I guess it's normal. Apparently they knew each other during the classes for their taxi licences.

Anyway the funny thing was how she bought swimming trunks for him... using her son's size to estimate. It was not too tight that he couldn't wear it, but tight enough that he found it uncomfortably sexy. In the end he had to change back to his clothes and buy another that's more conservative.

According to him, it was a hint from her.

I can't decide whether it was just his narcissism or if she was really trying to seduce him. I know there are quite a number of middle-aged Singaporeans who cheat on their spouses or try to get new partners after a divorce or two. Even my mum was hit on some years back by a freshly divorced guy working at the building where her office was. But guys having wishful thinking are common too.

Singapore's much less conservative than I thought. Apparently having an active sex life is pretty important for local people and ranks higher than the obligation to not cheat on their spouses.

Of course, these middle-aged people have no need to maintain their marriages for their children since they're all grown up. That's one excuse I hear sometimes. If their kids no longer need them to be together to bring them up properly, why stay in an unhappy/unsatisfactory relationship? Hence in this situation, cheating isn't wrong.

Will the guys in the BC do it too? We'll find out in 25-30 years. All guys love their wives like crazy in their 20s and 30s. After that, I'm getting the impression that it changes. I wouldn't know because my father's been dead for over decade and my mother still worships him.

Anyway if anyone in the BC has an extramarital relationship in the future, I won't reveal it here. But what are the chances? Only 1 in 10 couples in Singapore get divorces per year. What are the chances?












Oh no! Internet causes depression!

Nah, it's all just theories.

They can't get their minds off the Internet, they feel agitated if they don't get back on after a short period of being away... They don't want to see friends, don't want to join family gatherings, don't want to spend time with parents or siblings.

I don't seem to have a problem with the first two the last time I checked while in Malaysia. As for the rest, it's pretty true for me only because I hate to sweat, and I sweat profusely when I step out of my home. Anyone who knows me knows that. In fact I keep 2 spare clean handkerchiefs in my bag whenever I go out.

But I can also kind of understand why they "don't want to see friends, don't want to join family gatherings, don't want to spend time with parents or siblings." If you spend as much time online as I do, you get used to the different style of communication used online. It's different. For one, you have plenty of time to think and research before replying to anything when chatting online. Another difference out of the many I can think of is that you can lie very easily online.

Real life conversations require instant reactions. I don't like to respond instantly. I make tons of mistakes whenever I do that and sometimes become incoherent when I'm tired.

If you spend most of your time typing instead of talking with your mouth, eventually you'll find speaking to feel slightly unnatural. Sucks that you can't hit Backspace while in speech mode.

The study involved 1,041 teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years in China's southern Guangzhou city who were free of depression at the start of the investigation.

Nine months later, 84 of them were assessed as suffering from depression and those who were on the Internet excessively were one-and-a-half times more vulnerable than moderate users.


Another possibility is that people whose characters and mental states are more prone to depression tend to use the internet more often.


Several other studies showed a link between the two without clearly pointing which was the cause and which one the result.


That would add a little weight to my suggestion above. The experiment for this would be easy. Find a thousand depressed people and give them free broadband internet access plus an introduction to websites that may catch their interests.

Or tell them to go to 4chan. Lots of depressed people there, especially at /adv/, so they can easily fit in.

Normal people like me avoid that board. All they do is persuade each other to commit suicide, regardless of the askers' problems.












The loading screen music of Starcraft 2 reminds me of Planescape: Torment. I think it's the instrument used and not the music itself but I have no idea what was used to play the piece.













http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg&feature=fvw

Can't embed. Guide to internet trollbait comments for dummies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs&NR=1

Again, can't embed. If you're familiar with Minesweeper and its rules, this should be funny to you.

"The clock's gonna keep ticking till it reaches 999!"
"What happens then?"
"Nothing. You just suck."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzgEi_u9-88&list=SL

Like before, can't embed.