Rant 654 / The Idiot With The Glasses

Yes! I managed to kill the Vulpes guy in Nipton after he dared me to do it. No idea why this guy is special now. I remember him being mentioned by the last Legion boss of the game at the dam but I'm not sure why.

It was actually easier than I thought. All I did was stand behind him, start VATS and blew his head away with my 9mm SMG. The VATS part did away with 80% of his HP (I repaired the MG to 75% before the fight MUAHAHAHA) and killed him right after VATS ended.

The rest I just kited while spamming Sarsaparilla and Stimpaks. Didn't need any companions (sent ED-E away to prevent it from getting killed) or boosting items. What I needed was ammo. After killing everything all I had left was my 10mm pistol. Used up over 130 9mm rounds and 15 ECP from my Laser RCW.

Quite easy IMO.

But it made Legion Assassins come after me. Met two soon after Nipton while waiting for ED-E to return to Primm to recruit it again. Also kited these guys. I like how they are only good at melee and they would attack me in the open. Too easy to kite. The thing about melee is that you have to pause a little before swinging your weapon. I could get out of the weapon's range in that split second if I wear light armour just by holding S.

It's kind of retarded actually. Theoretically speaking, I can kill an entire Legion army if I have enough space and bullet. Except for the higher-ranking soldiers, eg Praetorians. Those are fast.





I've completely forgotten about these screenshots I took at HELIOS One, which is called the "Nevada Solar One" IRL. Just noticed them just now when I opened the game folder to fix some meshes. The following were taken during a conversation with the scientist put in charge of the solar power plant by the NCR, named "Fantastic".


The following are for the 2nd question the cursor is pointing at.




For the third question, his answer was:





Finally,


I think it's obvious how successful they are in restarting the power plant.













Was reading abut Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during one meal and was impressed by his career. I thought LKY was pretty amazing in what he has done for Singapore, but Atatürk would have outshined him if Turkey and Singapore were geographically closer and if Atatürk hadn't died in 1938.

I kind of skipped his military career, which I supposed must have been just as impressive given that he was described as "an extremely capable military officer" right in the beginning of the Wiki article.

Unlike Singapore, Turkey had to fight for its independence. Worse is that it was a 3-front war, with Turkey fighting the French, Greeks and Armenians. Atatürk was the one who made a new Parliament out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and told it to build a new army for this.

But of course nothing is perfect. The country achieved independence but was unable to regain the oil-rich ex-Ottoman lands from the British. Atatürk didn't really give up on them but it seemed the right opportunity just didn't arise during his lifetime.

After that, in addition to fighting the threat of Communism from the USSR, his northern neighbour, he also managed to prevent Fascism from Italy from taking hold in his country.

Singapore only had to worry about Communism from China.

Then he modernized his country's education system and and promoted the idea of compulsory education for girls, which in a traditionally Muslim country must have taken some effort.

I'm not sure about this issue in Singapore in the past. It probably wasn't a big deal since girls schools were opened a long time ago, like RGS.

The next big thing was that Atatürk forced a change in dress code for all Turkish people. They were all used to wearing the fez since the Ottoman days, but he made it compulsory for all civil servants to wear Western-style hats. Those were just the first group of people and the first part of the dress code to be changed.

I'm not sure if this was just about modernisation. It feels more like Westernisation to me. But I guess during that era both terms were synonymous.

After that was more moves to support women's suffrage and removing the influence of the Muslim clergy in state matters. I think he was pretty successful in separating religion from the state, especially if one compares this with Turkey's neighbours like Iran.

His most incredible achievement in my opinion was in introducing a brand new set of Turkish alphabets to replace the Arabic script.

Apparently Arabic is extremely hard to learn and with this new alphabets, literacy rates soared from a measly 10% to 70% in 2 years.

2 years! He made 60% of his countrymen able to read and write in 2 frickin years!

These alphabets, despite being so easy to learn, weren't the products of years of research like Esperanto. When he asked a group of language experts how long it would take to create these alphabets at first, he was told it would take 3 years.

Somehow it took less than a year.

He had consulted them in the spring of 1928. He publicly announced the alphabets in November the same year. All newspapers and textbooks were forced to convert within two months. The first newspaper to use it began to publish in December.

If his success in regards to the alphabets weren't incredible, I don't know what is.

His foreign policies weren't as interesting. Mostly he tried to keep a low profile and talked his way out of everything. Then again, nobody really wanted to fight before WWII began, and by the time that started he was already dead.

In 1938, he died at the young age of 57. Building a country must have been no easy work.

Too bad his successors sucked and almost ruined his work. I still remember someone joking about the Turkish lira when I was young. In fact it was so bad they had to replace it with a new lira which was simply the old lira minus 6 zeroes. They had to cut 6 zeroes to make the 1.29 lira worth a single USD in 2005. In 2004, one USD could buy 1.35 million lira. This year it has grown to 1.39 lira per US dollar.

Apparently after Atatürk they just couldn't find another strong leader, something he failed at and LKY probably succeeded at. I mean, so far so good, right? Hopefully we won't have to go through the sort of trouble that Turkey experienced after his death. Military coups are never a good sign.













Yesterday on my way to Bedok Camp the cab driver gave me this Buddhist booklet entitled "How to Overcome Your Difficulties" by Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammandanda.

I flipped through it a bit, read the quoted words supposedly spoken by Buddha and I was quite surprised to see that a few of them were old stuff I figured out years ago but rephrased.

And I didn't even need to meditate for 6 years under a tree like he did!

On page 2, the quote was:

"From craving springs grief,
from craving springs fear.
For him who is wholly free from craving,
there is no grief, much less fear."

Which I interpret as "desire will give you unhappiness". Didn't I say that everything has a price? That if you want something, you will have to pay for it? (Pay != work.)

The book's interpretation was that "all forms of attachment will end in sorrow." It's true, but I do not agree that this is the full meaning of what the quote is saying. Sometimes, it can begin in sorrow too, and sometimes you have to pay halfway through.

Unfortunately an average guy cannot be completely free from attachments. It is human nature to want certain things, like breathing, eating and companionship. These, too, have prices of their own, some of which may be hidden till the moment of payment.

But apparently certain Buddhist monks are able to avoid even these basic desires. For example, in a documentary I watched on Discovery yesterday, it was mentioned that some American scientists did experiment on Buddhist monks by soaking them in ice water. When they came back after a few hours, the water was steaming. Steaming, which I presume to mean much higher than the normal body temperature range.

If they can control their body temperature and environmental influences like that, it is not too far-fetched to say they can probably control their hunger and thirst.













So there's this discussion on why the younger Singaporeans are no longer feeling like they belong here. This is probably the beginning of how the culture of Singapore becomes overwhelmed by foreign influences, when being Singaporean isn't being Singaporean anymore.

Strange that I've never felt it in the first place. Then again, I wasn't born here.

Still, this is a good place to be in if one can afford it.

Me, I'm actually unsure about this in the long term. Translators don't make much here in Singapore.

And with the retirement age rising, it just means people are going to reap their CPF rewards later in life as policies change in the future to adapt to this change.

Yes sure we're going to get more. That's a good thing really. People in the US are now worrying that their version of the CPF isn't going to provide them with enough money when they retire. We probably won't have to worry about that. Hopefully.

Problem is, how many of us are going to live long enough to need the extra benefits?

Life expectancy isn't enough for me. Just because the life expectancy is 70 here doesn't mean I will be immortal and invulnerable till 70 years after my birth. It's probably better to know how many percent of Singaporeans live beyond 70, 80 or even 100. Nobody ever tells us those numbers.

As for the feeling of alienation at home, it's probably inevitable anyway. It's not like we have a choice. I can't expect Singaporeans to seriously produce 5000 Annabel Chongs spontaneously. Other than making us exceptional as a people, that would have helped with the local birth rates too. Too bad they can't do it.

And who's going to build your homes?

...

Why not the Bangladeshis? We've been hiring them for, like, decades to do the shitty jobs. Why do we have to keep importing foreign talent from mainly one country? I'm also pretty sure lots of Malaysians and Indonesians who aren't already here would love to work here if given the opportunity. The government's been setting quotas for all sorts of population-related things, like the way they spread people of each race in HDB flats so the minorities don't clump together.

Why not do the same for our beloved foreign talents too?

But if things go on like that, national pride will erode. Like those sports medals that are won by Singaporeans with Chinese single-word (given) names. Are Singaporeans really proud of those?

So, we've got our homes built. Except our homes are beginning to stop feeling like our homes.

How long before we practically become just an extension of the PRC?

How long before a new SAR is born?

But it's going to be great! All Singaporeans, as citizens of the PRC, will get greater access to the humongous market of the mainland. Who's going to build your homes then? The Tibetans and North Koreans, of course! They're probably even cheaper!












I didn't know North Korea exports ginseng. Apparently it does and it's pretty good. But recently prices have been driven up by traders China.

Rant 653 / Over Five Thousand!

Many, if not all, of the places in Fallout: New Vegas are based on the real Nevada.

The above is Goodsprings, which is Good Springs in real life and is the starting point of the game.

Above is the real Primm, complete with the Buffalo Bill casino and its roller coaster. In the game the Casino is called Bison Steve's instead, probably due to copyright. The other casino in the real Primm is Whiskey Pete's, which is named after a bootlegger of the same name. In the game that place changed into the Vicky and Vance Casino, also named after a criminal couple of those names.

Not sure about Novac though.

I'm aware that I should have known these, but I thought it was just the Strip and Hoover Dam that was copied from real life. It wouldn't be incredibly strange if the towns shifted and changed so much they became unrecognisable after 200 years. The nuclear war would have caused all sorts of large scale economic and social changes, hence small towns would have grown and died in different places as time passed. That's how ghost towns are created! Not because of nuclear wars, just economic and social changes.













So after a while of not looking at my blog's Stats, today I decided to take a peek at the numbers, expecting traffic to die a little due to my recent absence.

Well, it hadn't.

Something else did catch my attention though.

Something that actually worries me.

Someone was searching for Rant 588 specifically multiple times in the last few days. How did I know that? I used 2 Ouija boards, 4 decks of Tarot cards and 8 Moon Blocks. Results should be reliable, but it was hard work.

Those Ouija boards kept dancing under the planchette I was holding and the crappy Customer Support on the phone didn't help either. The made-in-China Moon Blocks weren't as effective as I was led to believe - they kept landing on their edges.

Shit sucks, seriously. Next time I should just hire a bomoh. Btw do they charge hourly rates or something?

Anyway I had discreetly un-published it some time before I went MIA when I noticed that traffic to that particular rant had been rising recently for unknown reason. That post was 98% about my NS days and should have been pretty boring. Plus I'm very sure I was told that I could say anything I want after 3 years.

So why the sudden rise in traffic in a post that's already 2 months old?

Certain logical guesses made me remove that post indefinitely. No harm not posting it anyway.

But now I'm getting more searches for that specific rant than most of the other rants. And they likely aren't referrals from other sites.

Now that is a real reason to feel suspicious about. Why would anyone need to return to it repeatedly? Yet there's absolutely no frivolous reason I can think of for spreading it.

Maybe I should remove it from this blog altogether and store it elsewhere.

Or am I just being paranoid? It's possible someone merely found what I talked about familiar.














No wonder I've always felt that Singaporean actors always sound like they're reading!

原來新加岥的口語和書面語很相似﹐所以話說起來和讀劇本的分別不大。比如說 "骯臟" 是口語﹐但我們講華語時也會說到這個詞。其實口語只用"臟"就夠了﹐例如"這東西很臟。"

Or maybe they just suck. I don't know.

Linked page also discusses many other differences between Singaporean Mandarin and Chinese Mandarin. Bet most Singaporeans who speak Chinese all the time don't even know some of the ways they phrase their words originated from the Yuan and Song dynasties and are no longer in use today in the PRC.

Also﹐

华语的基数词“万”，英文里用''ten thousand''。新加坡人受英语的影响，也将“万”说成“十千”。但是，这么用是近期的事，我这一代华校出身的新加坡人，没有人是这么用的。这也是学习不全面所造成的结果。

XD

But my Chinese still sucks. If you think I'm trying to insult anyone, I'm not. I'm just stating what I found as I did my research for assignments. Apparently the assignments don't just cover what's in the textbooks. For example, Qn1b of the assignment I'm doing is asking for 10 examples of Chinese phrases that differ in meaning when used in Singapore and China. This is why I found and read through the linked page above.

I had no idea there were so many differences. How many years did China isolate itself? 50 years? 30? It's amazing how the Chinese language changed in just a few decades in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong as compared to China.

Shit, I'm not even that good at Singaporean Chinese, let alone PRC Chinese. Those 10 marks really aren't easy to get. Fortunately I'm not alone in this opinion. My class was pretty vocal about the difficulty of this question last week.

My instructor (that's the term they used in the evaluation forms) kept telling us that there are definitely more than enough examples even though he had explicitly told us not to use the examples he had raised in class, which were quite a lot, like "書記" which means "clerk" in Singapore and is a high rank in China. It's not used to refer lowly clerks there. That would be "秘書" or something.

And after reading the stuff I found, here's my list of 10 words and phrases that are 同名異實.


Should be correct. If there are any mistakes, I'll mention it when the instructor returns it to me provided I remember to do it then.

There are also many others that I found that I couldn't use because he had already mentioned it in class.













After reading some of my older posts, I've noticed a difference between them and the more recent posts - I used to think. Now I just observe.













RT first session on Sat. Ugh. In Bedok some more. UGH! Booked RT too late, in the end Maju was full. Left only 1 choice - Bedok. Fuck!

Fortunately I can change the venue from the second session onwards. If go Bedok for entire 2 months I'll be really pissed. Next month exam some more.

Not going to defer because I think the exercise may help me revise. I don't really know, so it's just an experiment. It's only 2 sessions per week and I can shift the days as I wish. Only 4 papers, so probably won't get too many clashes anyway.













Raise the retirement age in Singapore to 68? I know medical technological advancements are allowing people to live longer, but their brains aren't staying young. Not being offensive or anything, just stating the truth. They could raise it to 75 for all I care, but until they can actually prevent natural neural degeneration I'm not sure if raising the retirement age is going to help.












Been making croutons. Very easy to make and good for soups. Also can be eaten as snacks or used in salads like Caesar salad.

For my first batch I just cut 4 slices of bread into 16 cubes each. Didn't matter to me if they were flattened in the process. Then I poured them into a bowl and cut out some frozen butter onto them. When the butter softened I tossed them to mix them while warming up the oven.

I turned my oven to 110-20 degrees Celsius so that it's easier to handle. Didn't want to burn anything when I wasn't watching. Baked them for a while until they were golden brown, can't remember how long, maybe 2-4 mins.

Poured them back into the bowl and added pepper and salt. Tossed them again and they were done.

That wasn't so good. I didn't have very fine salt at home so there were bits of coarse salt stuck to some of the croutons.

Next batch was much better.

I basically did the same thing except instead of salt and pepper I sprinkled a bit from this bottle of Italian Seasoning I bought when I tried to make Bolognese sauce from scratch. Also added two packets of parmesan cheese from the pizza orders I had in the past. Haven't been adding them onto my pizzas, don't see the need for that much cheese.

Might have been too much cheese because there was a lot of it at the bottom of the bowl at the end.

These cheese croutons tasted even better when I re-toasted them the next day. Somehow the seasoning goes really well with the cheese.

Anyway I was really looking for oregano but I didn't have it. The closest thing to it was the Italian Seasoning which was a mixture of a lot of herbs including that.

This is a good way to use bread that's going to expire soon. That's the reason why I started making croutons in the first place. Even if I made mistakes it didn't matter as much. Explains why I didn't state the amounts I used. I just guessed everything and it turned out well.

Just proves that cooking is an art. Precise amounts aren't always necessary.

Those croutons I made are really just bite-sized toasts with herbs and cheese. Nothing special but theoretically it can lengthen the shelf-life of the bread plus give me a cheap snack out of stuff that are going to be thrown away anyway.

Those double-toasted croutons are good.













I agree that Singaporeans need to strive to be exceptional. There really aren't many Singaporeans who are seriously successful. Today's exceptional Singaporeans are rare. I really can't think of many right now. Sim Wong Hoo? Chee Soon Juan? Annabel Chong?

The Al-Qaida only has 500-1000 members, yet they can produce 1 guy that the entire developed world can recognize - Osama bin Laden. If Singapore can do it at their rate of 1 famous person out of every thousand, we'd have 5000 Annabel Chongs!

Five thousand!

Now think of what 5000 Annabel Chongs can do.

5000 X 70 men = 350,000 men!

A gigantic orgy involving 355,000 people for over 10 hours would break quite a number of records!

If you can't imagine how many people that is, think of the Singapore National Stadium.

It has a capacity of 55,000 people.

Don't forget Annabel Chong did a total of 251 sexual acts on the 70 men.

5000 X 251 = 1,255,000

Now how many Terabytes of space would a video of that fill?

Yes, Singaporeans should strive to be more than just above average. DO IT!

Rant 652 / NO VAC

So this CityCar is going to be tested in Singapore next year. Hopefully it will eventually incorporate the auto-drive system. On the other hand, I'm not sure why it's a great invention because it really looks like a glorified golf cart to me.

But it does sound like a good idea. I used to have this Chinese teacher who lived near my place and he would drive a car to our school. The thing is that the school is just a 5-10 mins (slow) walk from our flats. In fact, by driving on the road he was taking a large detour. There had been a few occasions when I took a ride on his car and I distinctly remember that the car would barely get cold by the time it reaches the school.

That was probably one of the most pointless waste of petrol. On the other hand, by driving the short distance he was able to conveniently bring our homework home to mark at his leisure.

This new CityCar will greatly benefit people like him, but not him specifically since he's no longer teaching there.

Older people should also like this, especially those with walking difficulties. If this gets popular, maybe lifts will eventually be able to accommodate them, allowing users to park outside their gates on their floor. Old people will definitely like this then. Lazy people too. Fuck walking.

Parking isn't an issue even on lift lobbies since it's really a 4-bar linkage. It's something I used to study about in Mech Engineering but anyone can see what that term means. In case it's not as obvious as I thought, it means it's made of 4 bars linked at each end to form a quadrilateral.

In the case of a crash, it shouldn't be that dangerous despite it's foldable structure. With a max speed of 50km/h, or 13.9m/s, an average guy at 70kg stopped suddenly would feel an impact of 973N, or roughly 99kg, spread over his whole body assuming he's not wearing his safety belt.

Might be lethal to old people and their brittle bones, but if the average guy is able to accidentally crash into stuff while driving at 50km/h, he definitely deserves the injuries.

Excluding COE, this car is supposedly going to be priced at around 18k USD. Nothing is mentioned about maintenance and durability though. Hard to judge if it's actually cheap and if it's actually worth getting since you can't just drive it anywhere.












I never knew China's counterfeit goods sell so well around the world that they even have wholesalers who don't sell to tourists. And there's even industry lingo too, like the "5-As" and "double A" grades. How good is 5A? So perfect that even experts have difficulty telling the difference? And how big is the difference between 5A and AA?

Speaking of counterfeit goods, check out this counterfeit game that's so blatantly ripping off WoW that I just had to try it.


As if that wasn't enough, here's the race option menu:


They didn't even bother to change the names of the races and factions and places.



Not exactly the same.

The game lags horribly so I left the game within the hour. The servers are probably not even in China. Mongolia maybe.













I'm stunned. Fruit Dealer got pwned by the fake BoxeR in the Ro32, even though apparently he didn't suck at all in Blizzcon. 2:0 so Fruit Dealer didn't even manage to win a single round against him. Fake BoxeR sucked for his entire match in Ro64; nobody expected him to win here.

He was supposed to be a piece of cake for a Fruit Dealer! WTF?

Fruit Dealer even managed to do some really epic Baneling drops and those didn't save the game for him.

This is so unbelievable, he didn't even end the game until he lost everything. He was probably just staring at the screen when the last of his army died.

Good thing the real BoxeR also won his match and better still, he's playing against Loner in the Ro16 on the 29th. Loner is the best SC2 player from China, so that's a big deal.












Fallout: New Vegas is really much easier with the DLCs that people get when they buy from certain stores, like the Caravan pack when they buy from Steam. Made a huge difference with those guns that come in good condition because it takes more ammo to do the same amount of damage with a gun that's close to breaking.

No wonder I never seemed to have enough ammo in the beginning in my first run until I entered the Strip.

Probably also helped that I'm focusing on the Gun skill this time. Even managed to have 2k caps before I reached Novac.

Speaking of Novac, I just realised that this is how the town got its name:

Rant 651 / FNV

Just completed Fallout: New Vegas (FNV). And before I forget, SPOILER ALERT!!

Was not exactly what I expected, but the differences made sense.

Fallout: New Vegas is a darker game. Fallout 3 was about a boy who became a man. Fallout: New Vegas, like Fallout 1 and 2, is about...

War. War never changes.

If my guess is correct, no matter what the player does there will always be casualties among the innocents.

I, too, unintentionally caused harm to people who shouldn't have been harmed. The first mistake I made was in getting the NCR to protect the town Primm.

Initially I thought since the NCR was the "good" faction, I should help them expand. Later when I learnt about Mr House, I realized I wanted this guy to be in charge.

It's true that the NCR is good in that it tries to provide for its people and protect them, but the Republic behaves like a bully towards anyone who isn't a citizen.

On the other hand, Mr House is the CEO of RobCo since before the Great War, the corporation that made just about every single robot in the Fallout series. That makes him the best businessman and leader alive in the Fallout universe at that point of time as far as I know. Who better to rule than him?

There was also the option of myself, but being king wasn't my goal in the game. I did consider this for some time but wanted to see Mr House win in this run. Not to mention on this path I get the House advantage.

I'll kill Mr House in the next run just for the different ending. The House can't always win, right? :P

Anyway, back to Primm. Since I let the NCR protect Primm, apparently Mr House decided to punish the town for supporting them. It was not even their fault since I was the one whom they requested to pick a sheriff for them :(

Another unintentional victim was the Kings, a gang that had monopoly over the personal bodyguard service in Vegas. They weren't bad guys. In fact they maintained order over Freeside, a town just next to the Las Vegas Strip, while impersonating Elvis Presley without knowing who he was. I had helped the NCR to take control over the faction so, in the end, Mr House annihilated them all for supporting the wrong side.

The Brotherhood's case was slightly different. They had to die. The faction isn't evil but it exists only to acquire pre-War technologies. If I were to take over Mr House's network of (seriously overpowered) robots, they would pose a significant threat to me. That wouldn't do.

Even if I had sided with the NCR and forego the benefits of having an army of Securitrons, they would still be bullied around since they had been fighting each other since before the game began.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how they could have had a happy ending in FNV. Everyone wanted them dead or gone and I couldn't find a way to make them leave the region.

Too bad.

Maybe the only way would be to make myself king without using House's Securitrons. That would probably be pretty hard.

As for the bad guys, Caesar's Legion was an interesting faction. The Legion, led by a man named Caesar, wasn't evil in the sense that the members wanted to destroy everything. That role was for the raiders. The Legion was really trying to save the world by radically changing society into a very extreme version of Singapore.

The area controlled by them was said to be very safe, with all criminals either dead or chased off (imprisonment was not mentioned). Drugs and alcohol were outlawed, and anyone caught possessing them would be crucified literally (as shown during one quest) on a cross, except they were tied with ropes instead of getting nailed like Jesus.

But like Mr House said, the entire faction was not following Caesar's ideals, but Caesar himself. Such an organization would fall when the leader is gone. Also, they owned slaves and burnt entire towns as punishment for being not being virtuous. That's not very nice.

Now that I've completed the game, I can confidently say that the plot doesn't exactly suck you in until the end when you finally see the real big picture. It got boring in the middle because I wasn't sure where I was going. The large number of quests overwhelmed me and got me a little frustrated. However, the game got a whole lot more interesting when I learnt about the master plan that the House had in mind.



Now I come to the gameplay. Not too different from Fallout 3. Sniping is very fun in this game because of one of the companions who can increase your detection range by 50%. I thought it was great in the early game when I was sniping with a 9mm pistol, but it just blew my mind when I bought a Sniper Rifle in late game. With this epic gun, I was seeing heads explode everywhere I go. It was so interesting, I went out of my way to snipe any hostile creatures I detected along the way to completing quests.

The hardest to snipe was probably the Deathclaws west of the Quarry, which were blocking my way to some Khans there. Due to their location, they kept being erased from the screen when I went to the other mountain (sniping from a high ground = tactical advantage) because that's how the game works.

When something reaches a certain distance from you, they get erased to lower memory usage. But to cut a long story short, I managed to find out by trial and error that if I kept looking down while climbing the mountain till I reach my perfect sniping spot, they wouldn't be erased when I looked up. The reason why is the long story, and it's cut.

I had designed my character to specialise in Melee in the beginning but because of this I eventually placed many more points on Guns instead. My melee attack was still powerful but it was not as easy as it used to be in Fallout 3.

Since I also played in Hardcore mode, all the ammo had weight. It was slightly annoying but challenging too. I was almost always carrying my maximum weight and in several cases, I had to make multiple trips to sell my loot. I just couldn't resist selling most of the guns I find later in the game that I couldn't use.

Despite this, I was still running out of ammo from my 10mm and 9mm guns in mid-game when I obtained the submachine guns (SMGs) for these calibres.

Hardcore mode also made healing gradual instead of instant, such that no healing items gave an immediate boost of HP. Instead, they regenerate HP over a small period of time. For example, Stimpaks gave me 6 HP per second for 6 seconds even at the end of the game due to my average Med skill. This is a major reason why I found melee attacks to be less useful than guns in FNV compared to FO3.

Teleporting has also been made easier. It used to be that even hostile creatures far from you would stop you from teleporting. Now you're only prevented from it when they're close enough to be visible (ie in direct line of sight), I believe.

The Speech skill has also been given a huge priority, which reminds me of older RPGs. By maintaining a high Speech level, I was able to save lots of lives and skip some very difficult battles.

The missions in this game were better IMO compared to those in FO3. For example, when I was supposed to protect the President of the NCR, I really had no idea who or what was going to happen other than a few clues. For example, the quest merely told me to watch the snipers because the secrecy of their positions may have been compromised.

I did comb the entire place but found nothing, so I gave up the pre-emptive security sweep without much result (expected to find and arrest/kill enemy infiltrators). In the end, I managed to snipe the guy who killed one of the snipers to impersonate him and then found the bomb in the Presidential chopper just before the President returned to it to fly home. Close. I was actually expecting a suicide bomber though, and half-expected to fail the quest.




Now for music. I didn't turn on the radio during the game this time because I found that it kept covering up the NPCs' voices. The ambient music, this time, wasn't so good. One of the new pieces was similar to Arcanum's music, too somber.

Voice-acting was not as good as it used to be in Fallout 3. Somehow I just noticed that the voices were kind of dead. In some cases, they were droning on without pausing over the punctuation marks. Pauses give impact, and without them the sentences had little force.

This absence was especially striking in the final conversation I had with NCR's General Oliver when I convinced him that it was to his and his Republic's best interest to agree to the terms of surrender in my hand. I think he was supposed to sound breathless and excited but he sounded too monotonous to give his speech any sort of emotion. The result was that he basically droned through his script without any pauses.

In FO3 you could hear the warmth from the father's voice and the crazy enthusiasm in the voice of Moira Brown, but in FNV there was no such NPC. Lily (the Nightkin companion) had a voice that was both funny and creepy at the same time though. She spoke just like a stereotypical senile granny, except in a Super Mutant's voice.

The DJ on the only radio frequency I tried to listen to was also horribly boring. Three Dogs in FO3 was interesting because of his antics, but this DJ sounded bored and like he was mumbling.



Bugs! I encountered some bugs, had some crashes. Fortunately I saved like mad, accumulating over 230 saves during this run. Thanks to this obsession to saving, I managed to solve all bug problems I found.

The biggest was with the chef Phillipe being absent from the game. I kept reloading from several previous points to no avail. In the end, I managed to find out that it was caused by taking multiple quests at once. On one hand I was about to expose Mortimer for being a cannibal but simultaneously I had agreed to help Mortimer cover up the murder.

The former was to be completed during a speech he was going to made. The latter was to be completed before he even makes the speech. I think the contradiction made the game go crazy. Took me a day to figure that out because the game is so new that nobody seemed to have encountered this problem.


Replay value of this game is much better than that of FO3 due to the different endings. I don't believe it's possible to see everything in even two runs, so it takes quite a bit of replaying. This is because when you complete a certain number of quests from one faction, you'll inevitably ruin your standing in another faction, making them stop wanting your help. There are 3 major factions plus myself in this game as I see it: the NCR (good guys I guess), the House (neutral), myself (Wild card, not a faction) and the Legion (evil), so it will take at least 4 runs to see everything.



One major improvement over FO3 was probably the humour. Some of the jokes were actually funny.

Overall, it's a very good game but also a much darker one than FO3. Can't say if it's actually better or worse because it felt like a different game using the same engine.

Still, it probably won't be as good a game for the younger players. Even without the deeper philosophical questions some Japanese games use (in the past), this is still pretty much an adult game (and not because of sex).












Lindt Extra Dark with soft filling is epic.













If cloud computing does succeed, computers will be revolutionized yet again. In Singapore, that would still require a big improvement in coverage and mobile modem bandwidth though.

Rant 650 / Image Uploads Will Be Disabled For Two Hours Due To Maintenance At 5.00PM PDT Wednesday, Oct. 20th. Learn More

I was wrong. It actually takes a much shorter time for the hackers to crack the games.

I've just observed the release of a crack for Fallout: New Vegas at about 12.55am local time.

Even before this, there were already disc clones by 8pm local time. These were not pirated copies as I see it as they still required the proper CD keys. Their purpose is to allow players to download this game faster than the speeds they get from Steam or wherever they bought their copies.

But this also provides a clue as to when the hackers (they call themselves "sceners") got a copy of the game and started working on it. Assuming it didn't take long to upload the game to file hosting websites, they actually took only about 5-7 hours to crack the game.

In other words, whatever anti-piracy measures the game had lasted for merely a quarter of a day. That's just for the PC. The XBox360 version was leaked at least half a week ago.

I hope they didn't spend much on it.

Btw I'm not talking about torrents here. Apparently piracy begins earlier at file hosting sites and people make torrents out of the files from those. Even these aren't the direct connection between the normal downloaders and the sceners. I have no idea how the first uploaders got their stuff from the warez groups. Maybe they have friends, but who knows?













I'm looking for a simple way to use my cider vinegar. Apparently it's best used on salads, but I'm allergic to significant doses of chlorophyll. What do?













I'd logged on since 5.55pm, or 1855 Korean time. I refreshed every minute. The button was still greyed out at 5.57pm. This is what I found at 5.58pm, the minute it began and 2 minutes before the games were scheduled to start.



Maybe there's no SQ stream at all. Maybe how it works is that all the spare bandwidth from the HQ streams is split into lower quality SQ streams and right now too many people have bought the tickets for the HQ streams and there's no leftover bandwidth.

Maybe the Test stream is really from a separate server.

So as usual, I watched it at Team Liquid's website.

No Artosis and Tasteless now. They're casting for Blizzcon, so Idra and Jason took over.

I remember Jason replacing SuperDanielman during the Averatec-Intel Classic days. He's not that great at explaining what the players are doing, but he brings some kind of life to the commentary. IMO he sounds very much like a sports commentator. Maybe that's his actual job and he's here only because he plays SC2.

Idra is another strange choice because he's a player in this very tournament. In fact he's playing tomorrow! So maybe Jason is casting alone for that match. Won't be good. Idra's the one who can guess the minds of the players just by looking at their units, like in one instance, he explained that just by sending 4 early Hellions to try to harass the Zerg opponent, the Terran had already slowed down the Zerg's economy by forcing him to buy 4 pairs of Zergling instead of 4 Drones.

Even if he didn't use them to attack and merely enter the Zerg's sight near the Zerg base, the Hellions had already dealt a big blow to the Zerg economy especially since the Zerg player was trying to expand early.

So this current pair of commentators is actually quite similar to the usual combo of Artosis and Tasteless except the current commentators are much more specialized in their roles. While both Artosis and Tasteless tried to describe what the players do and what their plans are (with Artosis doing better in the latter task), Jason is now the one who does all the describing while Idra does all the guesswork and explaining the significance of the actions.












Blog may not be updated for a couple of days because...

War. War never changes.

Rant 649 / Whale Milk?

Didn't catch the earlier games on GOMTV at 12pm but fortunately managed to log on just in time for TLO's games. Too bad he lost again. Truth to be told, I think TLO is overhyped by the commentators, probably and understandably out of some kind of white pride.

Apparently in one of the earlier games before I logged on there was a player named "Loner" who's from China, and he won his match. He may be the only player from the PRC to be entering the Ro32, but I didn't actually check every player on the roster so I may be wrong.

The unique thing about him is that Starcraft 2 is actually not officially released yet in the People's Republic of China. Therefore he came from a really different environment compared to the rest of the players.

And of course, it's always interesting to see non-Korean players in the tournament.

Anyway I didn't watch it on GOM because as usual, it's full and the Test stream sucks. Instead I found another stream on TeamLiquid.net that was almost perfectly smooth.


As for the evening session, missed it.












Am I the only one who finds it painful to hear someone say, "十千"? 一萬就是一萬﹐哪有十千的呀?














Watch the above before the video below.





See what censorship really does?







Probably the most subtle song Kpop has to offer.













Corals here are dying. So less food for fish, and then less fish.

Speaking of fish, this month's National Geographic magazine was about how eating different types of fishes really don't have the same effect on the food chain.

For example, for each unit weight of blue tuna you eat, it is the same as eating 10 times the weight in herrings or squids, or 100 times the weight in lobster, or 1000 times the weight in seaweed.

So if you really want to be more environmentally friendly without going vegetarian, stick with lobsters :P

Or else zooplanktons are fine too since they're only 1 step above algae, seaweed and phytoplankton.

I used to think that zooplanktons are micro-organisms like phytoplankton, but I was wrong. Zooplanktons actually include jellyfish, crustaceans and molluscs, according to Wikipedia. This kind of contradicts the diagram in the magazine, so I guess it means they're only talking about herbivorous zooplanktons.

The important thing is to look at which part of the food chain you're feeding on. Whales are probably level 3, which is where herrings and squids are, except they're mammals so they don't really count. Salmons are on the 4th level together with tunas and probably sharks, so eating them isn't good for the fish populations even if they're farmed, because fish feed is usually made from other fish.

Btw how do whales mate?

I know fish reproduce by spraying sperms all over eggs that have already been laid, but whales aren't fish. Mammals reproduce by sexual intercourse, so that means whales do that too.

What does a whale penis look like? I'm actually half serious.

So I googled it. Yes I did.

Look at what I found!

Impressive.

But I do kind of pity the guy who had to measure the 2.4m-long penis of the blue whale.

I also found a few other interesting pages.

First is this Russian luxury SUV. It features a whale penis leather interior. Not sure about the appeal of that material because no matter how much you want to enjoy the experience of being in that car, you'll always be reminded of the fact that you're really riding a giant cock.

Maybe it's designed for the ladies.

Next,






And whales "breastfeed" by spraying paste-like "milk" into the mouths of the baby whales.

Hmm... whale milk.

That would make a really exotic product.

Rant 648 / Scans, Scans And More Scans

Just tried the new campaign, The Sacrifice, for L4D2. Short, as expected from a DLC.

This is the campaign that explains why Bill's corpse can be found in the last chapter of the campaign, The Passing, where the 3 remaining members of the L4D team help the L4D2 team lower the bridge to let their car pass through.

This last chapter, which takes place in the last map of The Passing, might have been nothing special if not for the randomness of the Tank spawns.

I've attempted the last map 4 times and in all 4 times the spawn times were different. For example, in one try two Tanks spawned immediately after we started the generators.

On another try, a Tank spawned immediately after the first Tank died. The resetting Tank music confused us and made us think it was a bug. When the Tank finally arrived from whichever faraway corner it spawned from, I was lucky I had picked up a second Molotov after throwing one on the first. No one, not even I, expected this so no one else did.

What is consistent is that there are always 3 Tanks total while the generators charge up and 3 more Tanks spawning simultaneously when you begin to run to the ladder at the end. Obviously Molotovs are precious commodity in this chapter.

Also, you can't rely on one guy to sacrifice himself because the lone guy may get overwhelmed by the hordes and the 3 Tanks before he can reach the switch. In 2 of my attempts, the guy who went to the switch lone kept getting downed by something. First it was a Smoker, followed by Jockey.

When he was incapacitated by the Smoker, we were all up on the bridge and 3 tanks were climbing the ladder up. We got raped.

On the final attempt when he got ridden by the Jockey, I rushed down while the other 2 covered me. Even though I managed to snipe the Jockey off him he was overwhelmed by hordes of Common Infected, so I had to sacrifice myself instead. So unless the sacrificing guy is really pro, it's best not to let him go alone.

Overall, this latest campaign is exciting but short. The best thing about it is probably the fact that it's a better campaign than any of the custom ones out there.



The better L4D2 players seem to be back. Now I'm no longer the best with 38% accuracy even though I'm usually the one who kills the most Special Infected. For the last few games I played, there was always some guy with over 40% accuracy.













I've never been able to find a copy of McDonald's dine-in menu online. All I know is that the Double Cheeseburger and the McChicken both cost S$2 each, which is why I've always assumed that the prices are the same for both McDelivery and dine-in.

Now I'm not so sure.



























Oh, so I downloaded the Avira Antivirus Premium instead of the Avira Antivirus Personal! The main advantages of the Premium version over the Personal is that it scans your emails and protects you as you surf the web.

The Personal version is just a scanner but is also free of charge.

I'm going to get the Personal version after the Premium trial ends.

So from now on I'll be using 3 scanners. I think it may be a bit paranoid but this last virus I got showed that even 3 is just barely enough, if at all, for my downloading habits.

I could make it 4 or 5, but the free scanners from McAfee and TrendMicro have proven to be junk.

I think I'm also eligible for Norton's 90-day trial or something. Hmm... Maybe I should download it just to give myself a bit more certainty that my computer's clean.

...

I've never liked Symantec's products and now that I'm looking at their website, I'm even less impressed.

Even their Antivirus programme contains pointless functions like chat and file-sharing. This is exactly the same as the 5 cans of Coke in the combo meal I ordered from Pastamania - filler trash to boost the price.

Still, I can get a 30-day trial just from its website. I can get another trial from my bank iirc if I need it. I'll use the 30-day trial and delete it when it expires.

Hey Symantec is offering free scans too! Just what I need! But the download has already started, so I might as well install it.

Let's see if the free scan reveals anything new.

Btw ZoneAlarm also offers a free firewall but I don't need that. Furthermore, the last time I used it I found it to be hypersensitive. Annoyingly so.



Feeling so safe.

Nothing. Oh well, this confirms nothing. All the others found nothing either.



Sometimes I think all those NOD32 evaluation passwords and usernames are provided by ESET itself as a form of advertisement. Instead of providing a free antivirus programme for the world, it reduces the number of freeloaders by making it seem kind of illegal.

Since they haven't said or done anything about these and that if you type "nod32" you will end up with the following results, I think it's safe to say it's their marketing technique.

It's been this easy to get free trial keys like this for years.












How do mobile phones benefit the poor? So people who make a dollar a day or less have handphones?

What do farmers do with them?

What do poor children do with them?

... Phone sex?













My bro's gf told him that she likes steaks (beef). My bro's response was to tell my mum to buy steaks. My mum's response was to tell him she really wants to eat out.

My response is to blog here. I don't even know her other than her name and face, and I suck at reading intent and motives anyway.

Plus, I have no right to give him any advice of this sort.













Deepavali is the next public holiday. If I have the time I'll set something up for it here.













I'm going to set up a list of free scanners here since there are now so many of them. I probably won't be able to remember them all next time, just like how I forgot about some of them during this last case of malware.

I cannot be sure that I will be able to use the bookmarks on this computer the next time I get hit by anything, but

Blog. Blog never changes.



:P













Been playing Front Mission 5: Scars of War. Just 1-2 missions at a time. Fun but gets tiring/frustrating after a while.

Although the gameplay is nice and there are lots of customizable parts on each of the wanzers (Front Mission's version of mechas), it takes a bit of concentration and lots of saving.

Almost everything is good except for the storyline which feels rather disjointed. Yes all the parts of the story so far can be linked together but it feels like I'm missing a number of insignificant chapters.

For example, in between each of the missions in the early game before the protagonist joined the Wyverns, there are always 1-2 years of... nothing. Why do they need to separate all the events by a few years?

So I checked the Wikipedia article on this game and the answer lies in the following paragraph:

In Front Mission 5: Scars of the War, players assume the role of United States of the New Continent (USN) soldier Walter Feng. The narrative takes place over several decades from 2070 to 2121, passing by time periods from other Front Mission installments (2089: Border of Madness/1st/2/3/4). In addition, unresolved plot elements from the said installments are explored in greater depth in the narrative. These plot elements are answered conclusively as the player progresses further in the game. However, because of this, only those who have played all of the previous installments mentioned above will fully understand Scars of the War's narrative.

(Just learnt to use the Blockquote function here :P)

I'm not saying the story sucks or incomprehensible but it just feels weird that there are always such large gaps in between. I get the feeling that there should be something to fill the gaps but even though I have no idea what, it does not affect the plot of the game.

It's like reading a book with blank pages between each chapter. Maybe if I know everything, it would turn out to be an epic story, but it's fine with the blanks too.

Considering playing all the other Front Mission games if this game is good enough. I finished Front Mission 4 too long ago to remember anything about the plot right now, so that needs to be replayed too if I'm ever going to play the whole series to fill in all the blanks in the current game.













Disappointed by the GOMTV streams. I was only late by 2 mins and I couldn't join even the free-of-charge SQ stream. So I tried the Team Liquid streams and the best stream was so crowded it was only slightly better the Test stream provided by GOM in that it only paused every 5s instead of every second.

It's only the first day and we're already at 5k viewers. I have a bad feeling about the final match. But Fisher has a Youtube channel where he uploads the replays (I think) so anyone who's really interested in learning instead of just watching for fun can try that instead.

Half the time I was missing exciting scenes. But I didn't miss the nukes from MakaPrime, especially the last one which he used to nuke himself when he won. He won despite being sick, so sick he couldn't be interviewed.


Screenshot taken after the first round of BoxeR's match. 12k viewers! TWELVE THOUSAND! Excluding those who are watching it at GOM!

I endured all the other matches just to watch BoxeR's match and 7k other people had a similar idea, except they didn't start watching until now.

...

Good that he didn't let us down. SlayerSBoxeR lived up to his reputation... for now.

I actually do wish that he can win the tournament. Among all the players in the tournament matches I've watched, he's the only one who has the confidence of a star. Moreover he's probably the oldest player still playing competitively in Korea (born 1980), so everything he does is going to set a precedence for all the other players.

Even if he doesn't win, he should at least reach the quarter-finals, just to prove to the rest of the community that even at the age of 30 they can still make a living as professional players.

Prizes for SC2 GSL:

Champion: 100,000,000 KRW ( 116,389.40 SGD)
Runner-up: 30,000,000 KRW ( 34,918.64 SGD)
Semi-finalists (3rd-4th): 10,000,000 KRW (11,640.40 SGD)
Quarter-finalists (5th-8th): 4,000,000 KRW (4,656.11 SGD)

If not for the unconfirmed (at least by me) belief that our Commonwealth Games representatives get paid extra by the government, I'd say that one can make more out of playing SC2 in South Korea.

Prizes for Commonwealth 2010:

Gold medal: Rs 20 lakh = 2M Rupees ( 58,586.45 SGD)
Silver medal: Rs 10 lakh = 1M Rupees ( 29,294.03 SGD)
Bronze medal: Rs 6 lakh = 600k Rupees (17,622.54 SGD)

This list assumes they didn't raise the prize pool as suggested in the news report linked above. Since I couldn't find anything else on the prize money or prize pool, I assumed that they didn't and hence used the article as my source.

So I was half right. Only the champion and runner-up get paid more in SC2.












The predictions made by that guy in this report is actually quite plausible. At the rate our world is advancing, having Petabyte as the norm in 40 years as compared to Gigabyte at present is too easy to achieve.

The difference between a Petabyte and a Gigabyte is only 6 orders of magnitude - the same difference between a kilobyte and a Gigabyte. The first games I played, eg Sim City 2000 and SimFarm, required Megabytes of hard disk space. SimFarm, in particular, only required 5Mb.

SimFarm was released in 1993, so games released 5 years before must have required only a single Mb at most. From this, I can deduce that it took us about 30 years to to raise our games' hard disk requirements by 6 orders of magnitude.

So 40 years? More than enough.













12AM in Singapore! New Vegas is about to be released in the US in about 10 hours! I can't wait!

Rant 647 / Yooooooooooooo!!

Just when we thought Japanese sexual fetishes are crazy enough, the Japanese game developers throw us something beyond anyone's expectations.

Hold on a sec. Make sure you're sitting down and you're holding on to something, preferably something firm and isn't part of you. Brace for impact!

*drum roll begins*

Introducing...

...

...

*drum roll ends*

The Penis controller!!!!

Btw the link above contains NSFW stuff, so beware. If you're below the age of 18, pretend you're not.

I think it's obvious where you stick your penis in. I removed the top half of the image to make it PG but I think most people can tell what's on the screen.

The thing is called an onahole controller and I don't really know what an "onahole" is. But I do know that an onacup is a male masturbatory device that consists of a cup containing solid foam with a hole in the centre.

This can probably be combined with their versions of the Fleshlight and become a cheaper version of the robotic sex doll, one that can be seen but not touched.

I can't believe they actually made such a controller even though the article says this is just a prototype and may not become commercially available.

Who're they kidding?

The website that contains this article is also full of other incredible Japanese products of the same genre.

(Edit: I think I misunderstood the controller. It's probably a handheld controller used for controlling the ingame penis.)





Think outside the box, they said. Be creative, they said.






You may want to keep your mouse cursor on the volume control while watching the above video.


The anime in question, Boku no Pico, apparently falls under the genres of yaoi and shota. All I know is from this Wikipedia article which says it's about effeminate boys.

Yaoi = male homosexual relationship
Shota = adult-child romantic/sexual relationship

(Disclaimer: not 100% accurate but I feel this is good enough)

Since the character on the poster on the Wiki article is a boy and shotacon is involved, I shouldn't be too far wrong to say that another term for the theme of this anime is pederasty. That's why it's so disturbing to us normal people. Reading about pederasty is probably much much milder than seeing it. So yea, listen to this guy.

I do have the impression that the Japanese entertainment industry is rather obsessed with the sexuality of children. However, they do have some of the lowest sexual crime rates in the world. Furthermore, there is no report of anyone remotely like Josef Fritzl in Japan, unlike some other countries, eg the UK and Australia.

I don't know about everyone else, but as much as I dislike the prodigious amount of loli-hentai they produce, the Japanese people just don't seem to be as extreme or as active in committing their sex crimes as their anime and hentai imply.

Some people try to explain it with the theory that this is because Japanese people normally suppress their sexuality. Since they keep it inside all the time, it mutates into all sorts of fetishes. I don't really buy it.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I am quite surprised at the lenient sentence in the Australian case, even though it's a record sentence and that man was already 66 years old.



You know what these guys need?

Buddha and his 66" automatic Magnum, from the Jesus Christ Superstore. They'll reach Nirvana, one way or another.

(The largest shell ever made was only 36" calibre or 914mm in diameter and weighed over 1600kg.)















Something strange happened just now. I logged on to one of my Yahoo emails to check for new mails and it suddenly popped up a notice saying I've been disconnected because I logged on to Messenger via another device/computer.

Raising further my suspicion that my password has been stolen (still unconfirmed), I went to check to see if I added anyone to my contacts in that email. Nope, both Messenger and Contact List had 0 contacts.

So that made me begin to follow the guide, after which I will be changing my passwords.

First step is installing Avira AntiVirus. It's only free for 30 days, which sucks. Nevertheless I've updated it and it's scanning my computer right now. Scanned 5.8% in 20 mins and nothing so far.

Gave me about 8 infected files but 2 of them were the streamer files from the GOM player that I need to watch the SC2 streams.

Restarted computer and scanning again now with both Anti-Malware and Avira. Anti-Malware isn't giving me anything. Only Avira is showing results. NOD32 is being an ass and alerting me that Avira is creating viruses every time it produces a file whenever it detects an infected file during the scan.

I am amused.












I marked the most recent comment as spam because it's a lie. I know it's a lie because I know what keywords/image you searched for to find this blog.


As you can see, the stats are quite detailed. The screenshot is for the last 7 days, so some of the keywords that resulted in only 1 referral to my blog may be missing. I don't know. But we have the following options at the top of the page,


so it's hard to lie to us.













So the USD is depreciating allow the US to compete with China.

Maybe it's a good time to buy USD.

The US wants China to raise the value of the yuan to a more "normal" level in the short term. China has said that they prefer to let their currency appreciate slowly and strongly refuses the idea of a quick change.

I think China is on the right side, regardless of its effects on other countries.

A change of that magnitude on a large country like the PRC is going to piss off a lot of important people the government gets its support from, not to mention wreak havoc on one of the world's largest economies. Which government would ever agree to that?

The US is demanding the impossible. This is probably not just about the currencies; it may be just an excuse for something else!












So now the Catholic Church has a saint for all whistleblowers, snitches and little boys who were molested by holy men.

Like that guy in Starcraft 2 once said,

It's about time!

Rant 646 / LoLHoN

This is interesting. Everyone thinks that piracy is more common on the PC than on any console, but here's something strange.


I find the lack of seeds conspicuous and suspicious.













So League of Legends is also going to be hosted by Garena together with Heroes of Newerth. I like where Garena is heading.

As of September the game is in the Closed Beta phase on Garena, so we should see some news of it soon, maybe next month or December.

IMO we're going to be confused for some time while the majority decide whether they're going to stick with either or both.












So now there's all this hype online about the unnatural longevity of a McDonald's hamburger. Does it mean if I eat a Double Cheeseburger I'm going to shit beef?

That's going to make a lot of people happy IMO. All the thrill of eating and none of the frills from digesting the meat? Miracle!













I'm starting to like Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. I just found out I can update it for free. So I can scan and update it for free. I am satisfied. Plus it has proven itself the other day.

If I buy the software, I get the other functions like the constant protection that I'm using NOD32 for and the Flash Scan. The protection probably means the automatic monitoring of files that I download and websites I visit. I don't actually know and I don't care since I'm not buying. As for the Flash Scan, it's for scanning memory and autorun objects. Not sure what it really means by "memory" since hard disk contains memory too. Or am I wrong?

Also just found another virus this morning when I scanned just for the heck of it.

NtWqIVLZEWZU (Trojan.FakeAlert)

What the heck? Something is still wrong!

That's it! I'm going to Safe Mode.

...

Didn't help. Anti-Malware kept crashing during the Full Scan.

This may require further investigation.

...

Upon further investigation, I found this page on how to remove viruses.

I did see this thread before but I never clicked on it because I knew it was going to be long and tedious. I was hoping for a simple solution initially and I have seen such guides before in my previous experience with malwares. Such guides made by experts are never as short as "Install this programme, run it and everything will be fine.

No, they are always comprehensive and detailed. I understand the necessity but I am lazy. Now that I have no choice, I have to read it and follow their instructions.

I plan to do this later when I switch on the air conditioner at night because I'm going to do this with the help of my laptop. My room is going to get very warm with 2 heaters. Right now my computer isn't blowing up or spamming porn on my screen so I don't see any need for haste.

Also, I recommend bookmarking this. At least that's what I'm doing. I'll delete it if it doesn't work.













Can't believe I guessed the meaning of "cheese" wrong as it is used among Starcraft 2 players. I thought it came from the word "cheesy" and meant something like cheap and/or inferior.

The actual definition of "cheese" in the SC2 community, according to the Liquidepedia 2 page, is a build that depends on secrecy to work and will surely lose if spotted too early.













North Korea sounds like it may declare war on South Korea.

Not now! What if they call back Boxer to help defend the country?!?

Or worse, THEY MAY CANCEL THE TOURNAMENT BECAUSE OF WAR!

DON'T DECLARE WAR!!!

Yet.

Rant 645 / NOD32 Failed Me.

Accidentally installed a virus today. NOD32 failed me. I am disappointed.

I scanned the file and NOD32 is always updated. Nothing showed up in the scan so I double clicked on the file.

The name was suspicious, true, but I've seen worse. It was also small but lots of programmes are too, like utorrent.

Nothing happened when I opened the file. That almost confirmed that something was wrong. I've read about other peoples' accounts of what happens if you open a virus. In fact I've just read about one in The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick.

Alarms were sounding in my head and I was on RED ALERT mode. So I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to look at the task manager. Nothing was running that had a similar name.

I minimized it and the file suddenly vanished.

There was definitely something terribly wrong.

So I ran the NOD32 in-depth scan and looked through the task manager again to look for anything suspicious. Didn't think the scan would do anything but it didn't hurt to try.

On the task manager I did spot a few programmes that I haven't noticed before, namely "cj1.exe","cj2.exe" and "cbadea.exe". All 3 had the same description in the list, "Silvers". Most programmes I didn't know had long names like "WZCSLDR.exe" (and btw I googled this name too, just in case, and it's a legit Windows process), that's why cj1 and cj2 caught my eyes. And since they were suspicious, then cbadea was too due to the identical descriptions.

Cbadea.exe was the first thing that I googled for because it looked like it was the most important one. Google gave me absolutely nothing on it. I was so surprised I googled a few times with quotation marks and without the ".exe". I got nothing.

Googling "cj1.exe" gave me a few results that say it's a malware. Like I didn't know that. What I wanted to find out was how I could completely remove it.

Still finding nothing useful, I went to TrendMicro for its free virus scan. While both NOD32 and HouseCall were running full scans, I thought I would just find the source of those cj1 and cj2 programmes and delete all of them. So I did and emptied my recycle bin too. Also did an advanced search (includes hidden files and stuff) to find the original vanished file.

Next I came up with the idea of googling the name of that file, and finally I got some answers.

After reading the advices given to other victims, I downloaded Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. Then I ran a full scan with it too.

So at this point I had 3 deep scans and 1 advanced search running simultaneously. I felt safer.

One of the advices also mentioned that some virus files may have been created in the %temp% folder, so I went there and indeed there were some suspicious files that were supposedly published by Borlands International, according to the Properties menu. However, it also said it was created just 20 minutes ago, which was same the time I made the mistake of opening the mysterious vanishing file. To the Recycle Bin it went.

In the meantime, the Anti-Malware scan came up with 6 infected files while the others gave me nothing.

Finally, I was satisfied that I was going to be safe and there's nothing more I can do short of reverting to a restore point or formatting my drives.

So I disconnected from my router and unplugged my USB antenna. That was half an hour after I opened the virus. Enough time to get all my emails and passwords and forward them to somewhere else. But what's done is done. At least I didn't make it worse by typing any passwords in case it also included a keylogger.

After 2 hours the first 2 scanners, NOD32 and TrendMicro's Housecall, were done and told me my computer was perfectly clean. At the same time, I noticed Anti-Malware was stuck on a .sys file that was apparently in the Recycle Bin. I don't really understand that but I ignored that and tried to stop it. Maybe I should run it in Safe Mode, I thought.

It didn't stop immediately, so I took the time to re-read the discussions I had opened in the tech forums. Apparently the expert had told the guy to run a Quick Scan, not the full scan.

So I closed the scanner in an attempt to stop it, and it worked. Then I reopened it and did the Quick Scan.

10 infected files. I removed them all and restarted when it prompted me to.

Did another quick scan after that and I got nothing, so I think I'm safe now. I mean, this is about as far as I can go as a layman. The processes don't include anything suspicious and none of the 3 scanners are giving me anything new.

In any case, I think I'm going to cultivate the habit of typing all my passwords with the on-screen keyboard (Start Menu - Accessories - Ease of Access) in case I still have any keylogger in my computer. It may help although there are keyloggers out there that also record mouse movements.

Yea I'm not totally satisfied.

P.S. If you receive some junk email from me and you have my number, please notify me via SMS asap so that I know I should change my passwords via another computer and do something drastic on this one.










That was disappointing. It would have been nice to see a Singaporean owning an English football club. Those guys appear to be the sort of people who are covering their eyes to deny the truth. And the truth is that Asia is becoming wealthy enough to have people like Peter Lim who's willing to splurge on soccer.

The fact that it was completely ignored and not even a flimsy excuse was given shows that they didn't even want that offer to exist. They're just pretending it's not there.

Peter Lim probably saw this and withdrew his bid in order to stop it from getting any more awkward.

I hope he will try again in the future if opportunity arises. After all, he had offered 60 million pounds more (320 million bid plus 40 million for buying players), or 20% over the bid from NESV which is at 300 million pounds. They had little legitimate reason to reject it, let alone snub him like that.













Very soon the term "automatic cars" will have a new meaning. Google is now testing cars that drive themselves. I always thought it will come to this but I had expected that it would require something more solid as a guidance system, like a form of rail such that the car would be more like a train/car hybrid that runs on both road and rail.

In fact such a car has already been designed and tested long ago, but I guess it just wasn't practical since it would require a major overhaul of the traffic systems it is used on. Blocking an entire lane on busy roads long enough to install a rail is a very big thing, too big to be worth the benefits apparently.

So now they are using laser, radar and video cameras as the eyes of the guidance system. At first glance it may seem like it's a very expensive combination (to me at least), but come to think of it, they have to be pretty cheap nowadays.

Radar is an old technology. By now I guess it's even older than the 3.5" floppy disk drive, which are currently almost worthless. Therefore radar probably isn't expensive, especially since the car will only need a tiny one compared to those ships use.

Laser is bloody cheap. The car is probably going to need one that's slightly bigger than those found in optical mice, and an optical mouse are worth only slightly more than a floppy disk drive these days.

Video cameras are also cheap. Webcams, for example, can cost as much as an optical mouse.

The important part is the software and processor to combine and coordinate all three plus the driving mechanisms of the car. That may be the most expensive component IMO. Oh, and it must be compatible with the GPS devices.

Someday, all your driving licenses will be obsolete and the only driving test that matters only involves knowing how to use the software. And drunk driving won't be a crime anymore.

Half a century from now, people will look back at our era in horror when they learn that our cars kill more people everyday than anything else.

How about a battery-powered self-driving car that has solar panels on top to help with the recharge and is able to drive itself to the nearest charging station?

You can keep your Rolls Royce. I'll have that car instead. If I can ever afford that, I'll probably try to get my license just for it.

The law regarding the driving license will most likely not change for another 50 years or so until the self-driving cars have proven that manual driving is obsolete with solid statistical data.

As for the downside of such a car, I kind of pity any children who plan to be taxi drivers when they grow up. Driving a cab is a respectable legit job, but if the automatic car becomes cheap enough cabs will be relegated to the same status as trishaws.

And if machines can see well enough to drive for us, there are many other things they will be able to do for us. Robot butlers?

If they can drive a car, they can drive a trolley in supermarkets, drive back and use the elevator. The only problem in this process is that it will need a different system to pick the products up.













So I found some photos of the competitive gaming scene in North Korea.

I think they look pretty hardcore. And check out that white towel on that guy's shoulder. These Pyongyang guys have style.


Disclaimer: I don't know where these are taken at. The characters do look like Korean though.













Boxer confirmed in GSL. GSL is short for GOMTV Global Starcraft 2 League, which is the one that's about to be shown live on GOMTV. 18th Oct, Monday, Season 2. 6pm SG time. Probably won't be very hot on the first day since it's only the Ro64, so there's likely no need to log on early.

However, after checking the schedule, it seems that some big names are playing on Monday, including.... *drum roll*... a Fruit Dealer!


First match of the day. I see some pretty big names here, not just the defending champion, so maybe it's a good idea to try and log on early after all. Time shown is 7pm Korean time, which is 1 hour earlier than SG time.

I feel sorry for this ButterflyEffect guy. Monday is still 3 days away and he's already lost.

As for Boxer's first appearance,

Second match on Tuesday. Note the first match begins at 12pm SG time, which will be the same on the 20th and 21st too. Hectic days ahead for the casters. Tasteless has been known to almost lose his voice by the finals and semifinals and looking at the schedules, it's really not surprising.

Also, last match on Tuesday stars HopeTorture, runner-up of Season 1. This means I'm going to have to stay in front of the screen for a few hours.

Another thing is that this is no longer the TG-Intel tournament anymore. Apparently it's now called the "Sony Ericsson Starcraft 2 Open Season 2". Change of sponsors, I guess.













Ordered Sarpino's today. This is making me reconsider my impression of my own spending habit.

Anyway, it is pretty good. Or maybe I'm tired of Pizzahut's style. I don't know.

Ordered 2 medium (12") pizzas, thin crust: a Ranch Style Chicken and a Sicilian. Also included a set of Chicken Cheese Meatballs (8pcs) and a set of Beef Meatballs (8pcs). Cost about $47.

Pizzas were pretty nice but only slightly better than Pizzahut's in that it tastes better and is less salty. Pizzahut uses a larger amount of cheese but IMO they all seem to taste the same after a while probably because of that.

As for the meatballs I've only tried the beef ones and they're much better than those from Pizzahut. For one, they taste beefier because it used leaner beef. The balls were also made in a visibly different way. Pizzahut's beefballs were pressed into balls and they tasted much fattier/greasier. Sarpino's beef meatballs were obviously rolled or twisted into balls because the meat inside was oriented in a circular fashion, kind of like these rolls:

Those aren't meatballs but the top of each shows what I mean by "circular orientation".

Compare these with the usual meatballs you find in many places including Pizzahut, which are kind of like this:

These aren't from Pizzahut but this is what I mean. The meat looks like it was mashed and pressed into balls.

I suspect it may have been this that caused the difference in texture. Sarpino's were more chewy, bouncy, whatever the culinary term is for that. In Cantonese we call it "彈牙" and it's probably the same for Mandarin. In Taiwan they call it "Q". According to some google results this can also be translated to "al dente", probably when describing pasta.

Another important difference is that Pizzahut's meatballs are ten thousand times greasier.

The small container of unidentified white sauce that came with Sarpino's meatballs was also strangely suitable even though it tasted a little sour. Maybe it's some kind of yoghurt sauce.













I'm bored. I'm waiting-for-New-Vegas-bored. It's coming out on Monday in the US, so it will take a few more days before I can get it. Reading any article on the game just makes it worse.

Should I finally uninstall Fallout 3 now?













While the US blames China for forcing them to induce inflation in the USD, China is blaming the US for using the inflation to make the entire world help pay their debts. Though I can't say I understand economics better than any other layman, that Chinese economist's claim does sound plausible. After all, the Americans are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, importer of almost everything. Since inflation = decrease in purchasing power, a weakening USD never sounds good.















That guy is right. It does sound too good to be true. I'll really have to see it used by a spacecraft to believe it. If this does work, space travel may turn incredibly affordable and this guy will definitely win a Nobel Prize.