Rant 823 / Upblouse And Downskirt

Looks interesting. Really interesting. But it also looks complicated due to the different classes and if I take into account that this is an indie game, I have a feeling that this is going to be a very short game that relies heavily on "replayability". Which basically means you go through the same shit 8 times on 8 different classes.

Well I don't know how many classes it has, so "8" was a random number I made up.

E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy is yet another thing I will look out for during this year's Xmas Steam Sale.












Looks like a crappier version of Sins of the Solar Empire. May be worth trying the demo. If it's available during the Xmas Steam Sale.

:P












He's got a point.














Nostalgia overload!












I have to say I really like this comment:

ROFL!

So much time must have been spent on this.












Amy Winehouse’s Grammys Returned By London Pawn Shop Out Of Respect For Deceased

Too soon?











Dino D-Day isn't that fun. Nice idea with great potential, poor execution, I guess.

Rant 822 / Nuclear Dawn Is Almost Ready For Release; Natural Selection 2 Still Isn't.

Why wear low cut tops if you don't want to be stared at?










These wife cakes aka sweetheart cakes (老婆饼) my uncle brought are fantastic!

He got them from this Kee Wah Bakery (奇华饼家) in Hong Kong. They're fragrant and is only has a light sweetness. I don't know about anyone else but I prefer my food to be not too sweet unless it's dessert. This is a snack.

Apparently it's a famous bakery there, so this is something to remember when friends go to Hong Kong and offer to buy something for us. Can't go wrong.












Nuclear Dawn finally has a price tag. At the current exchange rate of about 1.2SGD to 1 USD, its usual price is S$30. The current 10% discount would make it S$27.

Not sure if I want that yet. I'll give it some time. Probably get it with NS2 during the Xmas Steam Sale.

Nuclear Dawn is basically like the Marines from Natural Selection. Two sides fight against each other, one player on each team plays RTS as the commander while the rest play FPS. Apparently the structures are different on each faction. No idea how different.

As for NS2, I guess it's going to take some more time. After all, they only have like 5-6 people working on it full-time.

Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew said on Thursday that more competition within the public's transport industry could have negative implications for commuters in the long term.

LOL!

I can't even begin to describe how full of shit this sounds!











http://sg.news.yahoo.com/technology-addicts-lonely-upset-t-live-deprived-digital-153546407.html

Twenty-four hours without an internet connection or access to a smartphone, computer or tablet is described as "my biggest nightmare" or akin to "having my hand chopped off" by respondents in a recent study conducted by British consumer research specialist Intersperience.

I believe this isn't a bad thing. In fact I believe this is a natural outcome of our technological advances in communication.

Humans want a group mind, or at least, a form of it that allows a small measure of privacy. I still stand by my theory that we've been working towards this goal since prehistory when some hairy dude made a round thing and called it a "wheel".

That was the first step. Faster movement = faster communication, and so on and so forth, until the point where it's far more cost-effective to speed up data transfer rates than the movement of human beings (smoke signals, telegraph and etc) and for now, the wireless broadband Internet.

Next step: wireless broadband with (really) universal coverage and bandwidth huge enough to download whole movies in minutes.

So no, we can't do without some form of internet access in the long term, not anymore.

I'm not saying it's some kind of ultimate destiny for humankind, but more of a tool we instinctively know we have to keep upgrading in order to accelerate our progress. Needing it has something to do with something inside us, something unconscious.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that humans are social creatures.















Holy crap! This guy isn't even an engineering undergrad!













After watching so many people play Super Meat Boy, I've finally come to this conclusion about the game:

There are only 2 kinds of players - the really good ones and the really angry ones.

Yep, I'm 100% sure about this theory.










This month's National Geographic magazine features a report on someone's search for Cleopatra's final resting place.

Which reminded me of how people in the modern age don't really understand how serious it is when a country loses its sovereignty.

After Octavian successfully conquered Egypt, the Romans did such a good job of wiping out the indigenous culture that we now have a whole new field dedicated to the study and the recovery of it - Egyptology.

It's such a difficult task there is an entire global community focused on it.

That's how thorough the Romans were, and that's how thorough people can still be today.

Even in WWII, the Axis did try to do that by teaching German in occupied European countries and Japanese in Asia. Destroying the native language was only the first step.

If the Americans didn't drop the bombs and had instead signed a ceasefire treaty with the Japanese (it was quite possible since the US had just about run out of public support by then, and the Japanese soldiers were undeniably among the best armies in human history IMO), it is likely the Chinese language would have been in a worse state than what Chinese dialects are now in China.

It wouldn't be too imaginative of me to say that given enough time, the occupying nation could make it as if your ancestors, you and everyone you know never existed. Even now, historians are still unsure about the existence of certain pharaohs.











That must have taken some work. Seriously.

Rant 821 / So Standard Chartered Offers A FD Interest Rate Of 1.1% For Five Years

So the SAF has implemented a new design for the No. 4 uniform. We NSmen are entitled to 3 new sets of these, which we could either get during our In-Camp Training (ICT) or in e-Marts.

But I can't get it online despite the fact that it offers delivery service.

Nope, I can only get my free uniforms at the e-Marts of either Chevron at Jurong or Mount Faber SAFRA.

:(

And I was hoping I could just get everything in one go online.












I guess straight males aren't in their target demographics.













Oh shit!














Russian TV kids shows are so... adult-oriented.

It's funny how she kept trying to prevent a wardrobe malfunction inconspicuously while the cameramen focused on her doing just that so many times.










Why is it a good thing that property prices are rising, especially for public housing?

So what if we can make huge profits when we sell it if our next home is just going to wipe out the difference?

Furthermore, we can't just invest in HDB flats because we're only allowed to own a single unit.

The only way to really profit is to stay in private housing while "investing" in public housing for profit.

Which just makes you an asshole for doing that.











What? Battleship? Did the game even have a backstory in the first place?











Johnny English is back!












So I loaded the save where I was about to have my final talk with Dr Keine in Old World Blues. Explored everything, leaving only the creation of a robodog incomplete. Whatever.

There were fewer places than I thought. The most interesting thing I found was the Legendary Bloatfly that took forever to kill. While other bloatflies shot some kind of spikes from their bottoms, this monstrosity fired insta-killing plasma shots.

First time I almost killed it but it got back up and somehow wouldn't go down. One shot of its butt plasma exploded my head.

Second time, I managed to kill it and hit F5 to quicksave... at the same time as the body exploded and killed me instantly. So reloading that save was no use since all I could do was watch myself die over and over again.

Third time I killed it I ran away immediately and avoided the blast. 17 Psychos and 50 pieces of Bloatfly Meat, among other things. It was crazy.

The battle with the Legendary Bloatfly took so long my finger was tired from all the spamming. According to the wiki, it was actually the second toughest creature in the game, with the insanely humongous roboscorpion at Dr Mobius's lair being number one in the list.

Rant 820 / Talk Is Cheap Yet Silence Is Golden

Spent an entire day doing nothing at my camp for "briefing". Since everything regarding the briefing is supposed to be classified information, I'll not push my luck by blogging about it despite my low readership of (still) below 100 per day.

I spent an entire day in the camp, from 7.15am to 6pm, and I still don't know wtf my role is. Sure, I know the name of the position and sure, I know I'm in "Company HQ" which is outside of any platoon, but I still have no idea what it is about!

Best of all, neither does anyone else.

I'm not even joking. It's like it's so "top secret" even my officers, sergeants and myself are not supposed to know what I do.

And I'm not alone. There were like 6 of us there being referred to as "the HQ people".

Wtf does that even mean anyway? It sounds kinda demeaning and offensive, like we had some kind of special needs or something.

So yea, I spent almost 11 hours in the camp and never found out what the heck I was there for.

We just tagged along with the rest of the company everywhere but kept to ourselves as a group.

They called it "bonding". They could call it "bondage" for all I care since we're all bound it whether we like it or not.

Well, as long as I get paid, I really don't mind doing nothing and knowing nothing. I don't get paid extra if I do anyway.



Met some old friends there, mostly from my NS unit. Also met CY who was doing absolutely nothing as an officer with no specific duties. Like us "HQ people", he was just "tagging along" with the company.

I guess it really sucks as an officer or sergeant for reservists. For our unit just for this one-day briefing, they had to come to camp an extra day just yesterday in order to get briefed by the CO and prepare for today. The organization was so bad before today, they were instructed to arrive at 7.30am when they were only expected in the afternoon. The nominal rolls, aka the name lists, were ready only by late afternoon.

Awesome admin staff.

Oh, and they stayed back for more briefing after we left. CY offered me a ride home when we first met but in the end I went back on my own because he had to attend a briefing by the CO and he had no idea how long it would last.











Dammit. I'm seeing so many photos of people going for durian buffets in JB, Malaysia this month! Mainly because it's now durian season.

I've got to organize such a trip next year. I'm missing so much durian.









Fuck it. I'm going to use that email for my relatives too.

Rant 819 / The World May Be Your Oyster, But It Sure Isn't Mine.

It was so embarassing. I hadn't been sleeping well and have become quite absent-minded. Yesterday when some relatives came I wore my shirt inverted. Twice. I have no idea what I was thinking. I flipped my shirt and somehow got it still inverted.

...

Wasn't so bad this time. Another group of relatives came. The above was the family of one of my mum's sisters. This time they came together with the family of one of my mum's brothers.

No trouble except I gave my cousins the wrong email.

Damn Murphy and his laws.

That email is owned by me but it's one of the "less serious" ones that's also kinda associated with this blog.

This means if they ever google the name in the email address in some form, there is the possibility they might find this blog.

I don't want my relatives to know me as this person.











Got to go back to the army camp tomorrow. Purely for wasting time. Apparently it's Battalion Day tomorrow, whatever that means. When I called the NS hotline, the guy told me it's most likely some games and such, which explains why I'm also supposed to bring my PT attire.














Growth. It's a joy at first and a pain at the end.

Growth is a neccesity.

So much so that an organization has to grow by hook or by crook.

It's not like they even have a choice.

And it pisses people off when they do it by crook.

People work for money. People stay in the same job for the promise of future pay raises.

Fact is, there are too many new employees versus the number of management positions. Ergo, not everyone can get to become managers. Ergo, at a certain point, they're going to stop getting pay raises.

Unless the pay of everyone else also rises.

How do you accomplish that?

Growth.

Similarly, a country needs growth, especially one that's run like a company.

Everyone wants to climb up the ladder.

The catch is, there can only be so many people at the top.

How do you make the people at the bottom feel like they've risen then?

Put more people below them.

How?

Your kids. The next generation. The newbies.

What happens if your country doesn't produce enough kids?

Rant 818 / Heartless, Brainless And Spineless

Old World Blues is out! Haven't checked Steam Store for so long since the end of the sale.

Also downloaded War Inc but it sucks. It's just a shitty version of Battlefied: Bad Company 2. War Inc is free-to-play; BC2 is free for me when I bought my Sapphire graphics card.

I'll give it another try next time if I ever run out of games and probably will uninstall it after that.

Anyway Old World Blues!

Installing...











If anyone ever makes a movie about the nukes in WWII in Japan, it will probably make a pretty epic film.

Too bad the Japanese are still very touchy about this subject, so much so that in the Japanese edition of Fallout 3, they had to remove the quest about blowing up Megaton.











Finished Old World Blues in two days. Didn't complete everything, just the quests I got. Apparently the fact that I didn't explore every place in the Big MT affects the ending.

Not an easy DLC because the scorpions were so numerous sometimes, like at the entrance of the Magnetohydraulics Complex. Luckily I still have my fully upgraded and repaired War Club from Honest Hearts. Its Fatigue damage really makes combat easier, although its effectiveness is still greatly diminished when I have to fight multiple enemies at the same time.

This DLC's design seemed to be focused on the humour, the way Dead Money was focused on the eeriness. With the Wild Wasteland trait, I was encountering all kinds of weird and funny stuff everywhere, even during conversations.

The Animal Friend perk was a better choice than I expected before trying this DLC. There were just so many Nightstalkers everywhere, so the perk which stops animals from attacking me gave me several nice respites from all the violence, although killing Nightstalkers would have given me very useful items.

Story-wise, some of the things I encountered in the Big MT explained certain elements in the Sierra Madre of the Dead Money DLC.

For example, the zombies there were really corpses being reanimated by their suits, which were originally designed to help injured people walk back to safety. It seemed a certain design flaw had prevented the suit from recognizing their wearer's death, and this flaw was ignored because this would have made body retrieval easy.

I guess they didn't count on the suits to also attack their own side.

Anyhow, these suits were invented in the Big MT, thus there were also "zombies" in this DLC, albeit redesigned to be faster and able to use guns. Probably a later model.

Other facts about the Sierra Madre like why the poison was there in the first place were also revealed in the Big MT.

As for the plot of the Old World Blues DLC, it's again quite a tragedy. I'm keeping spoilers minimal here.

There were many occasions when I, while bashing everything's head in with the War Club, imagined what the truth would be like.

Would it be that those robots weren't actually the real scientists? That would have made a good twist. Maybe the real Think Tank had died during the nuclear war and these "scientists" were really the assistants who were somehow fortunate enough to survive? Or maybe they weren't even scientists, just members of the support staff like the janitor or clerk or even test subjects.

Test subjects would have made sense too. Maybe they were supposed to be experiments for this new technology that transplants the brain into some kind of tank in those self-levitating robots. The prototypes. And the technology couldn't be further developed because of the nuke that killed everyone else.

Or perhaps they were the AI clones of the original scientists and that these AIs were aversely affected by the nuclear radiation over the years.

All in all, I felt that the chances of them being the original scientists were lower than the chances of them being not.

Not saying anymore about the story.

Weapons! Totally crap for me. I'm a melee fighter, and the best melee weapon was the Proton Inversal Axe. My War Club still pwns everything. It's just that nothing can beat a weapon that disables almost everything within seconds. Fans of energy weapons would probably have a field day at the Big MT though.

The armour was also a slight disappointment. I had even upgraded the Stealth Suit thoroughly by completing all the experiments in that lab that was researching this technology (and without using Stealth Boy I might add) but... sneaking around just isn't my current style. I'm all about rushing in and smashing everything till they explode into bits.

The loots in general other than the two above categories wasn't very impressive. The Big MT was truly a scrap electronics galore. Seriously, they were everywhere. Scrap metal too, but to a significantly lesser degree. I had little use for scrap electronics.

Exploration was much more interesting in this DLC than in the previous 2 (especially Dead Money)  because the developers added so many strange stuff everywhere, like the Ulysses' Point where the Lobotomites seemed to have built a shrine for a Holodisk containing the virtual personality data of a toaster.

In fact I didn't explore everything only because I thought I could do it after finishing the main quest, kinda like a dessert after the main course. I did not expect that what I missed would affect the ending.

Finally, if I heard the voice right, they got the guy who did the voice of Wheatley in Portal 2 to voice the player's brain. Don't ask me why it speaks. It would be a big spoiler there. Anyway it was a very humourous conversation, though not as hilarious as Wheatley.










A bullet train in China got derailed. No idea how many casualties.

Not trying to be offensive but I think we all saw it coming. With it being a Chinese product complete with all the corruption, it was never an issue of "if" but "when".

Over the years they've made fake eggs, fake milk, fake wine, fake rice, fake Apple stores and even an entire fake Austrian UNESCO village. Fake safety standards certainly aren't out of place in China's repertoire.

Lives are cheap in the PRC anyway.

Rant 817 / The Crossbow In Killing Floor Is Awesome

Currently in the Dungeon campaign at the mission where I stopped last time.

I've just come up with a new strategy for the Dungeon race in HoMM V.

Usually I'd just use one tough unit in battle. It would take all the ranged damage while I kill everything with my spells.

This strategy is often used when the enemy either has a hero or ranged units that will attack (and kill) mine, and the main goal of this is to prevent losses completely.

Unfortunately, some armies will always kill one or two of it, and I don't like that, especially if said units were Shadow Dragons or even Black Dragons.

Previously, I'd just take it as acceptable losses, albeit uncomfortably. Heck, losing even a single Shadow Dragon is a painful thing to watch, but I didn't know what else to do.

Now I do.

The new strategy is suitable for situations where losses are inevitable but the opposite army is easy to deal with using spells alone.

This needs to be done with empty slots available, which can be accomplished by:

a) keeping a simple army of few unit types
b) having a town nearby
c) having another hero nearby

1) Choose a single unit type that you deem very expendable. In my case, I'd pick Blood Furies, otherwise Scouts. Blood Furies have no place (or little use at most) in the hero-oriented strategy that the Dungeon race seems to encourage anyway.

2) Split them into stacks of one and fill all your slots with single units.

3) Now kill your enemies with Meteor Storms and Chain Lightning before your units get wiped out!

Problem?

IMO losing even 6 Furies or Scouts is preferable to losing a single Minotaur Guard.

For this battle, I've tried 2 other strategies:

1) nothing but 2 Shadow Dragons - resulted in 2 dead dragons and a loss
2) 60+ Scouts, 2 Shadow Matriarchs and 70 Minotaur Guards - resulted in 2 dead matriarchs, a couple of other deaths and a victory











Phew, my throat is much better today. Yesterday it was so painful I winced whenever I swallowed my saliva.














First-person melee combat :(

4-player coop mode :)

I believe the decision to focus on melee is to bring the player closer to the zombies. Makes it more intense, more personal.









Had to get new shirts for work. Now that I'm starting to have to meet people, I need new and more formal clothing.

Polo shirts.

And a couple short-sleeve shirts.

Not cheap, especially when I need XXL shirts. Cheap brandless stuff never includes such sizes because:

1) Requires more materials
2) Much less demand

Even in my work, most of our jackets and sweaters only hit XXL at most so that people can wear multiple shirts underneath.

As for what the measurements are for each, there's actually no standardized international measurements for each size, so it's pretty subjective. Therefore once in a while, even XXL doesn't fit me. Usually when it's cheap, because in China, people are skinnier.

So if I want good clothes that will definitely fit me, I have to find branded stuff. I don't exactly have a choice.

Timberland this time. Spent over S$300 there. It's a necessary investment; I didn't have a single polo shirt previously, only t-shirts.












I used to have lots of trouble with Scrakes in Killing Floor. They're so tough and their melee attack is so painful. As a Commando, the best thing I can do is to snipe its head from afar with my submachine guns, then spray at its head when it gets close.

Usually, it will still come close enough to attack someone. That's how tough it is. After all, it is the second toughest monster in the game after the Flesh Pound and excluding the final boss, the Patriarch.

Not when someone has a crossbow though.

I just started using a Crossbow as a Sharpshooter today, and if I'm right, one crossbow bolt to the head instantly kills the Scrake.

Feels so good.

Rant 816 / Throat Ulcer Is Over 9000 Times Worse Than Mouth Ulcer

Bad night.

Yesterday I thought I had what was the beginning of a sore throat when a portion of my throat was sore.

It got worse by nightfall, but not because it had spread.

Instead the pain just became more acute whenever I swallow. I've now come to the conclusion that I have some kind of acne/ulcer in my throat, somewhere around the back of my jaw.

The pain kept me awake but not completely. Could go back to sleep when I got sleepy enough.

But that wasn't all.

Some asshole called me at 4 and 5am this morning. Same number.

60301

I have no idea what kind of number it is.

Initially my family guessed it was a local number because "60" is one of the many combinations that local numbers begin.

But Google gave me a different answer.

Apparently people are getting calls from this number even in Malaysia, so it's definitely not a Singaporean number.

It's actually a number for international calls.

So someone called me at those unholy hours probably to scam me.

Fuck!

So that woke me up and my throat kept me awake. TWICE!

I could barely keep my eyes open when my alarm rang for the third time this morning.










So today I encountered a cab driver who really believed in following rules.

I was at this almost empty taxi stand at Clementi Mall (went to duplicate office keys to have my own set instead of using my mum's all the time) and there was these 2 middle-aged ladies with this entire trolley of groceries.

Even with the help of their cab driver, it was taking quite some time. Moreover, there was this curb that prevented the taxis behind the first one from leaving. Thus I just stood there and waited.

Then another middle-aged lady came out of nowhere and tried to board the cab that I was supposed to take.

I saw it but didn't care because there were like 5-6 more taxis behind it.

But the driver simply refused to let her in and pointed at me. So I waved my hand to signal "no" and tried to use hand gestures to tell her to take it.

If she wanted to pay the extra fare for waiting another half a min for the two women in front, I'm fine with it. It's not like there's a shortage of cabs anyway.

So I walked up to her and told her it was okay to take it and that there were plenty of taxis for everyone, but she just told me what the driver said, something about me and queuing up, so I stopped talking, looked at the cab in front where they were almost done loading and just boarded my cab.

In the cab I said it should have been ok to let her in since there were so many more behind, but he replied that not everyone thinks that way.

I couldn't deny that.

Which is sad, yet... somewhat comforting that there are people who still follow the rules.

It's just that sometimes, it's alright to bend the rules, like in this case.











A lot of Singaporeans avoid tipping. Not all though. I know some people who tip 10-20% of the bill when they go to bars.

Yet the other day when I went to this Turkish restaurant with some of my friends, I was shocked at how hard they insisted on not tipping.

Except... the money was mine to give away.

You see, they had all paid me their portions of the bill while I used my $50 notes for the bill itself.

The change was about $3.50.

I didn't even want to take it and told my friends we could leave right after I handed the money in the bill holder.

Mainly it was because the waitress was nice enough to patiently explain to us each dish and recommended dishes we could share amongst ourselves. Another thing was that we took the restaurant's best table, the only one with a large square table and cushioned seats, and stayed longer than most of the other customers.

So an extra $3.50 was nothing.

But my friends insisted that I waited for the change.

Alright, so we waited. When the bill came, I just took the $2 note and receipt and closed it.

And they were like, "No, take the rest too!" but I couldn't make myself do it. It's just less than $2 in coins. I had about $7 worth of change in my wallet already.

In the end another guy took them and left the holder empty.

Justification?

We weren't earning a lot of money and we were already paying 7% GST (aka VAT in some countries).

I guess it could be subjective. Personally I tip when I like the service.

Also, apparently it's alright to tip when you pay by credit card by putting cash into the holder.

I don't think I'll be going back to the restaurant any time soon. That place was so full of tourists. Surely they must be used to getting a lot of tips.











UOB is offering 1% interest p.a. for fixed deposits with a minimum sum of just S$40k for 18 months! Only for this month!

Awesome!

Rant 815 / Moisturizing Sanitary Pad

Sometimes I wonder what they mean by "competition" in the public transport system. Their logic about the privatisation and profiting by the transport companies is sound except... what competition?

True there are 2 companies, but they seem to be working hand-in-hand with each other.

Brings to mind the phrase "divide and conquer" because that's exactly what they seem to be doing - monopolizing the market as partners, each with its own portions of the island.

I mean, has anyone seen any conflict between them ever? No, together they work smoother than whipped cream and not even a whiff of trouble has ever existed. Better yet, they apply for fare raises together every time.

They're practically brothers, if they were human.

So you can throw away all that nonsense about how private companies need to make profit and shit now and move away from that point of view because it's invalid. They are as good as nationalised when both are them are mainly owned by the government; the "private company" thing is just an excuse to profit.










Finished Ex-Heroes. Not a thick book but awesome story. This genre blend is so fresh I totally didn't expect the source of the infection. Not revealing any spoilers here.

The plot was simpler than I expected though. Basically it began with the Mount, which seemed to be the final bastion of civilization in Los Angeles, where the last superheroes were protecting the last survivors of the city.

Later, it was revealed that they were constantly harassed not just by the zombie hordes but also by some kind of raider gang whose base of operations was unknown. Eventually, they learnt that these raiders were more than the minor irritation than they first appeared to be.

I think I can reveal one small spoiler here since it was actually quite obvious when I thought about it. In a previous rant I had mentioned that I wondered why a city with superheroes could have a problem with zombies.

Apparently, when superheroes become zombies, they retain their powers. But which superhero would be stupid enough to get close despite their superhuman speed or flying ability or whatever?

Those with "issues", of course. Superheroes are just people with special powers, after all. They could easily be insane just like normal people.

That's why one of them had tried to have sex with a zombified Jessica Alba (hopefully she was still fresh).

But some of the others were just plain unlucky.

Anyway I like how the book alternates between the present and the past. Every alternate chapter presents a back story of an ex-hero and how he/she died. To keep them from getting stale, the writer tried to switch between first and third person for each story.

Of course there were parts of the plot where it didn't make sense. For example, they could have just asked Zzzap to fry the villain(s) and end the story right there. The author could have made him a lesser hero than he was to make this little issue go away, eg remove his flying ability, but somehow he didn't. No idea why.

He wouldn't have been able to fly around to fight everything in the past but that wasn't exactly a problem in fiction. And if he couldn't fly, he wouldn't have been able to reach the antagonist at the end.

Oh well. Fiction.

Anyway it was a good book, albeit somewhat short. Hopefully it will get more popular and he'd write a longer sequel.




As for Dead City which I've also just finished, it's above average. The plot was typical and there wasn't much that made it stand out. But it was interesting enough.

Similarly, Apocalypse of the Dead contains a plot that I feel like I've seen before. Religious leaders who saved many people but later turned out to be evil/insane aren't exactly special in the zombie genre.

But books in this genre are very limited AFAIK so I'll cut them some slack and say they were pretty good books.






And so I finished all three zombie books I bought. I have a feeling I'll be re-reading Ex-Heroes in the near future. It really is that good.











Now I've to look for some place to print my namecard.

Easier said than done.

I need foil stamping aka hot stamping which really jacks up the prices, and I don't need a lot - 300 pieces is my current target.









Currently reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Pretty funny so far.

Rant 814 / Dies Illa, Dies Irae. Calamitaties Et Miseriae.

TA-Q-BIN delivery service from Yamato Transport is amazing. I hadn't checked the email associated with Opentrolley 2 days ago so I missed the email telling me that my order has been despatched, ie handed over to Yamato Transport for delivery. According to the fineprint, I would be receiving in the next working day.

But I still didn't check the email the next day (I've now reached the stage where I've got to start work early in the morning occasionally) and didn't see it.

Thus I missed the delivery last night at 8.03pm. The time period for the Home delivery option was 8-10pm, so I can say that was pretty damn punctual. FYI I know because the tracking system is extremely accurate. I just received it 5mins ago and according to the tracking system, it's been delivered. I think the delivery guys update the system via their handphones.

Anyway I missed it last night. When I checked the email at 11pm last night, I was shocked. So I went to the website, checked the tracking number and confirmed I missed it, and requested a redelivery at 10am-12pm today.

They delivered it at 11am or, according to the system, 10.57am.

I'm surprised. The request was made on a Friday night at 11pm and they could deliver it on a Saturday morning. If it was cash-on-delivery I'd have tipped the guy for being so punctual on a weekend morning.












So some guy wrote a sci-fi novel entitled "Rule 34", which was about internet police solving a murder mystery.

Now the big question is - is there rule 34 of it?

'Coz there better be.

NO EXCEPTIONS!










Some Taiwanese guy got scammed about US$400,000.

The bait?

A croissant.

"French bread which is so delicious that it will make you cry"

Oh yes he cried alright.















This is so epic.










Scientists have invented a time cloak. If I understand this right, it just delays the light from the event. What I expected was... more.

Creating a visual delay in reality would make a great magic trick.












Currently also replaying Heroes of Might and Magic V for the story before playing HoMM VI in the near future when it gets released.

HoMM VI is the prequel story-wise so it could be a better idea to play that first.

But I've aleady played HoMM V and all its expansions before, so I might as well complete everything.

It's like watching Star Wars Episode 1-6 versus watching 4 and 6 before watching 1-3 followed by 5.

I've also begun to like the HoMM V main theme a lot.



I didn't used to like it that much. No idea why. I've probably changed in some way that I haven't noticed. And yes I know it's from some kind of Catholic funeral chant.



Now in the Necromancer campaign. I had stopped in the Dungeon campaign the last time, but I wanted to play the whole game again to refresh my memory.

Since I want to play this mainly for the story, I'm willing to use cheats, albeit only when I'm really not in the mood to replay the mission.

So far I've only used cheats once to give myself 500 arch-devils in the mission in which the elves kept leaving and I had only one Inferno town and 2 Sylvan ones against one Sylvan town.

The odds might have been in my favour but I did not expect the huge army that the last town had and hence didn't bother to develop my Sylvan towns (what for? the elves kept leaving my army on a daily basis.)

Since it was the final bit of that mission, I just cheated to end it with the 500 arch-devils.





Searching for HoMM V music somehow led me back to older HoMM music. Now I've found the music from the original HoMM again.




The nostalgia!

Brings back the odd feeling when I look at the dragon tower. Doesn't it appear strangely out of place? It is, after all, a sci-fi structure in a fantasy setting.

Anyway, the towns with the black dragons, regardless of their names, have always been OP (overpowered) since HoMM till HoMM V. I wonder it will still be the same in HoMM VI.

Alright, maybe black dragons were a little less useful in the later games because you couldn't use beneficial spells on them, which got more important strategically in those sequels.





And I have no idea why cyclopes live in pyramids. The ancient Greeks didn't have pyramids as far as I know. This mystery will probably remain unsolved for the rest of my life.

The ogres were probably the ones I remember most for this town. Bloody good tanks, but slow.





Maybe all the devs of the HoMM games have something against peasants because they've never been anything but shitty. Honestly, they don't even make good cannon fodder.

Even with the new 1g/day ability, they still aren't worth much because it takes 20(?) days just to recoup my capital from buying each one of them. These days in HoMM V, I just leave them in town as a minor source of income.

But the crusaders (or were they paladins? Or did they need to be upgraded from paladins to crusaders just like in HoMM II?) were awesome. The next best thing to black dragons IIRC because they hit twice... hard.





Never used the Sorceress much. The most memorable creature to me was the dwarf because of its annoying ability to resist magic. Throw in the fact that they were inherently tough with low attack and had a high weekly spawn rate due to being a mere level 2 creature, and it becomes obvious they were designed to be nothing but a pain in the ass for the opposing army.










Why are male jackets so hard to find? Suit jackets are easy enough but weatherproof jackets are a whole different story compared to those in the ladies fashion section.

Rant 813 / Collaborative Denominations

Finished my coffee on the 12th. Asked my mum to buy more for me since she was going down to the market in the morning anyway. Specifically told her to ask for South American coffee since the stall owner mentioned it once.

Nope. He only had Central American coffee today. No idea which country.

I'd expected to get Brazilian coffee instead. Oh well.

But it smelled familar, something like an instant coffee I've tasted in the past. I can't recall which brand now.

...

Now I know what it reminds me of - the coffee smell in buffet breakfasts in hotels.














Dammit, Japan. Y u so crazy?












Finally realized how hard...

the employees whine.

Ever since my mum stopped going to the office with me, they've been whining directly to me.

I'd only smile and say,"Yes I'll pass that to her," but when I do, she'd laugh and explain to me why they've been feeding me bullshit.

For example, yesterday they told me that the new jacket was hard to iron. We have to iron our jackets so that they don't look so wrinkly when put on display. The shops don't bother with that.

I thought it was strange because if there's anything I know for sure, it's that we have been using the same few waterproof materials for our jackets for many years already.

But I'm a newbie so I kept it to myself and gave the usual response.

When I told my mum, she confirmed that that jacket couldn't be particularly hard to iron because this was not the first time that material was used.

It's funny how hard they whine. That's not the first and only time they gave me this kind of nonsense. Everyday without fail, they have to have something to complain to me. Without fail.

At least they're consistent.

... I guess.

And it's not like we've been giving them more work over the years. On the contrary, my mum has been taking less work gradually.

I have to ask my friends if this is normal someday.













Killing Floor once again proves that my motor coordination is inversely proportional to how tired I am.

Today I played it at about 3pm. I was awesome, though not as good as the best player. I was getting headshots everywhere and before it started getting tense halfway through the second wave, I was killing with headshots every single time.

Somehow maintained my second place from the first wave till the end.

Last night when I played, I was nothing but a zombie count muliplier. Every player increases the zombie count per wave IIRC.

Headshots? I could barely hit anything before they get close enough to get killed by some guy in front with a shotgun.

That was wrong. I can snipe with a Bullpup easily. Unless the entire team was snipers, I should have been getting kills. Yet I stayed at the last place throughout the game.

One thing I noticed was that as a Commando, I'm somewhat useless against the final boss. True I help cover the rest from the normal zombies but against the final boss, I simply have inadequate firepower, even with the best gun for the class, the SCAR.

I guess it's always necessary to have a good Sharpshooter with a crossbow.





















So it happened that this young couple flagged a cab about 20m ahead of me.

Except I was in a taxi stand and we had queued for about 15-20mins. It's been a rainy day so there was a long queue for taxis.

And they just flagged a cab in front of everyone.

The worst thing is the taxi driver probably didn't see the stand because two vehicle were temporarily parked between him and us along the slightly curved road, so he stopped for them.

They were looking at us as the cab drove pass us.

Small things.










Oh wow. After years of Chinese mainlanders scamming everyone else with all kinds of fake crap, Singaporeans have finally managed to give them a taste of their own medicine.

So this Singaporean furniture firm Da Vinci has been advertising their goods as "Made in Italy" but as many as 10% of them are actually made in China. The manufacturers have even been told to use cheaper materials.



This is no longer the Singapore I remember. Probably hasn't been for a long time already.

Rant 812 / Connotative Deductions

I should probably find someplace that shows the entire series. Or just get all the seasons.












:O













ROFL!!















Looks useful.

















So I realized why I kept missing calls the other day. The speaker is actually located in the protruding part of the phone next to the camera lens. So if it's being pressed into my leg inside my pocket, my leg and the cloth seriously muffles the sound. Furthermore I was in a mall that day so the noise basically covered up any sound that could escape.

Now I need to always remember to leave the screen facing me when I put it in my pocket.












My first time meeting a buyer alone. Two actually. I think the other was on OJT (on-job training) or something. Quiet and about the same age as me. My guess is he's a local grad with a business degree. Random guess.

Probably won't last longer than a few years. Also a random guess.

Didn't go quite well but still alright. My mum prepared me almost thoroughly for the meeting but she missed one of the details that was mentioned during the discussion. No idea if it was deliberate.

In the end the buyer called my mum directly instead to discuss it directly with her.

I'm a newbie but hopefully it won't happen next time.










Atom Zombie Smasher is so easy on Casual Mode. I didn't even know it's possible to gain points by capturing territory until now because I've never wiped out the zombies before nightfall. I've always thought that the part where it calculates points for territories was meant for the zombies to have an inherent advantage to offset human intelligence.

Now in Casual Mode, a team of snipers can easily handle one entry point's worth of zombies. 2 if given more time. Hence I've been able to kill everything for every mission. Half the map's currently mine.

Too easy.

Rant 811 / Compressive Expansion

That is one angry man.











I know this is old but HOMM VI is going to be released soon, so I'm kinda excited.












Worries. One can never run out of them. That's probably one of the true constants in life.









Haven't bought anything since Killing Floor and Atom Zombie Smasher. Did consider X3 and Terraria but thought they weren't worth it.

X3 appeared like a great game but after looking at the screenshots of actual gameplay (not those of their ships which are so plentiful on Google) I found it a little too boring.

Terraria looks nice too but:

1) I probably won't play it for long.
2) It's now back to 50% discount from its initial 75% on Daily Deals. No idea why they reduced the discount after a few hours.



But I did spend money again. This time on books. I haven't been checking on my favourite authors for months so I went back to look again.

First, the Sword of Truth series is not ending, contrary to the author's claims when he finished the last book. The Omen Machine is a new plot involving the same characters. Still in hardcover, so I'm keeping an eye on it by leaving it in my wishlist on Opentrolley.

Second, the Runelords is still stuck at Chaobound. The final book will be out in a few years, and then I'll have to wait a few more years for the paperback edition.

Third, the Wheel of Time's final book, which was split into three after Robert Jordan's demise, is near completion. The first book is already out in hardcover and the second is available for pre-orders.

In the science fiction genre, I'm not too familiar with the best books. The Ilium/Olympos duology obviously wasn't going to get a third book in the same storyline seeing how everything was nicely tied up in the second book, but I went ahead to check anyway.

It's still merely confirmed for a film adaptation. No new news.

But zombies. I did find a couple of promising ones on Amazon. It seems to be quite a niche market so the various lists recommanded by zombie fans appear to be rearranged clones of each other.

Nevertheless I'm still going to try three of them.

The first that caught my eye was Ex-Heroes. It's interesting mainly for its blending of two genres - zombies and superheroes

I'm surprised a world with superheroes could have trouble with zombies. Therefore I just had to get it.

The other two books were from Joe McKinney, apparently a prolific writer of zombie fiction (and a few other genres), namely Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead, both of which were set in the same world.

Finally I added a book on sewing. Got to learn the theory. There are just so many things I don't understand.









It's been so hot since yesterday. I don't know what the temperature is, but 2 hours ago I had a shower and now my bathroom is completely dry. It's only 1.30pm now.

...

Oh wow, cloudy for most of the afternoon but no heavy rain and no wind in the right direction :(

Rant 810 / Apparently LOTS Of Singaporeans Bought Killing Floor Yesterday. Everytime I Say, "I'm New," Someone Always Says," Me Too."

No longer thinking about the THQ pack. Not worth it. I don't feel like replaying most of the games inside and there's no guarantee I will suddenly feel like playing it. It happens but it's too random and there are too many possible games.




My package from China has arrived. Now using the black silicone protective case, the screen guard and the more expensive stylus.

The silver hard casing was too gaudy and I don't think it's as good a shock absorber as the silicone one. But it's not hard to change the former.

The screen guards are identical as far as I can tell so far. I'm probably using the second cheapest because:

1) I haven't seen a single scratch yet.
2) The reviews for the cheapest said it was prone to scratches.

I also realized I suck at putting on the screen guard because now there are lots of very tiny bubbles underneath. I tried to use the sticky tape on those spots and then press it down with a card, but after some time I just decided it was too much work to clear the smallest ones.








Oh hey I didn't notice that one of the redeemable prizes on Steam is a playable game!

Alien Breed 2 is on the right lower corner of the menu and it's kinda like Alien Swarm as far as I can tell. Usual price is US$10 and current Summer Sale discounted price is $5.

Probably will redeem it near the end if I have to choose between this and the TF2 spectacles.

And it's free for anyone because 3 tickets can be collected easily without playing any games.

First ticket can be collected when you join the Summer Camp Official Group on Steam.

Second one is for linking your Steam account to your Facebook profile.

Third is for entering a comment on a friend's Steam profile page.

Fourth is for recommending a game that you have on Steam.

Fifth is for posting a screenshot by hitting F12 while playing a game via Steam.

Sixth is for playing a free demo on Steam.

Seventh is for downloading (must hit the Download button!) and watch a trailer on Steam. Don't have to watch the entire trailer.

There, seven tickets. Those that require a game, there are free games that can be used like Alien Swarm, TF2 or any of the free MMORPGs currently available via Steam.











仙剑奇侠传5! Whoa! That's probably the most successful Chinese RPG series ever.



Looks like they really didn't change the game much other than improving the graphics. Exactly what I like in sequels. It's a sequel, I don't want an entirely different game.









Nothing that interests me in today's Daily Deals. Universe Sandbox looked good at first but I just somehow don't want to buy anything that doesn't have at least a 75% discount.

And now that I have enough games to last a while, I feel even less compelled to buy new ones.

Rant 809 / Considering FD At Sing Investments & Finance

Holy cow! I didn't know such people still exist today!

Apparently there's this couple in Hubei, China who didn't know how to have sex!

A highly educated couple, in their 30s from Hubei, China, thought that the wife would get pregnant by sleeping on the same bed.

The guy's got a PhD, the girl's got a Masters degree.

For three years they've been trying to conceive by lying next to each other overnight.










Bought Atom Zombie Smasher and most of the Killing Floor Bundle except for the Steampunk DLC because I'm redeeming it with the tickets for free. The whole bundle would have cost me about a dollar more despite the displayed calculation saying I'd save about a dollar just because of that DLC.

Also received 2 Guest Passes for Killing Floor and I sent it to CZY and Ed because I'm sure they are interested in FPS games but do not have this game. Guest Passes lets them play the full game but only for a limited time.

Doesn't matter if they don't try it since they didn't cost me money.

Anyway the DLCs for Killing Floor are only for new playable characters. No new abilities or whatever, just different skins.


...


Tried both games. Killing Floor is definitely fun. A totally different game when playing with others.

At first I wanted to get a hang of the game by playing solo, but it was no different from a horror game. The maps were mostly quite eerie and silent, while the monsters were all grotesque in appearance. It's like playing Resident Evil, the original scary ones not the newer crappy ones, on first-person view.

Multiplayer is not scary at all. Exciting due to the invisible creatures and the fast moving ones, and that they can come from anywhere. What makes it not scary is that you can always stick together and someone will always be there to watch your back.

But I don't think sticking together is the right strategy for hardcore veterans. I've seen more experienced players play on certain streams and what I noticed is that they instead divide the map and then each person would cover one strategic spot where they only have to watch up to three different sides. This way, they can kill them while they're still split up.

So far I've only really played as a Commando. This class, out of the six or seven, is the best at submachine guns like AK47 and SCAR. That means it's good at midrange and large groups of weak creatures. I can snipe with the SCAR but it's not that great.





As for Atom Zombie Smasher, I think I can call it a RTS game. The objective is to evacuate civilians from rectangular maps. You set up an evacuation point and you blare your horn when you arrive to alert all the wandering civilians to get there.

Zombies would spawn from certain ends of the maps, then from all ends of the map when night falls. Upon contact, civilians would turn into zombies. No deus ex machina that saves the last guy who then hides in some basement with hoards of food and supplies.

Zombies follow the survivors, and the survivors follow your horn.

To save more people, that's where the tactics come in. As the game progresses, you get to hire mercenary groups. Since they're mercenaries and not your army, they aren't always there for you, so you won't get to use all of them every mission.

Hence the brainwork. You need to make do with what you have. Fortunately you're given unlimited time before each mission to plan the whole thing and place your mercenaries.

All mercenaries are static defenses. Some can move while some can turn, but they all do these very slowly. For example, the snipers can only turn their view while the infantry can move very slowly. Another is the mines that only detonate when in contact with zombies. They blow up once, kill all the zombies and civilians in a small radius, and that's it.

The only really mobile thing you have is your evacuation point, since all it consists of is your evacuation chopper. No fences and troops and MGs. If any zombie gets into the point, the chopper lifts off immediately and leaves all civilians outside behind. You can set the evacuation point elsewhere if there are any civilians left to be rescued.

To make it more challenging, the game also has a Victory Track.

You have a race against the zombies.

Each survivor you save gives you points, depending on the difficulty of the mission. On the other hand, the zombies get one point for every civilian killed and more points per zone they occupy after each mission. In addition, they occupy additional zones every time you're done evacuating a city.

Obviously the zombies have an easier time since they invade new zones faster than you can evacuate them. To beat the odds, you have to play the tougher missions where there are more zombie spawn points.

As a RTS game, of course it has upgrades. Each scientist you rescue gives you a Research point. Upgrades cost at least 15. Cities generally have at least one  for the level 1 missions, about 5 in the level 2 missions and a lot more on the level 3 ones.

But you can't focus on them because they're randomly placed among the civilians. The overall strategy shouldn't be compromised too much for the sake of these points, lest you fail to save enough civilians to win the mission, not to mention the fact that you need more points for the Victory Track.













Wat the heck?


















Was thinking about buying CitiesXL 2011 on Steam but...

5 machine activation limit? I've been having lots of PC troubles in recent years, so no thanks.

Rant 808 / 老王卖瓜

Tried AI Wars: Fleet Command.

It's a pretty hardcore RTS game. Good for RTS fans who really love the genre, I guess.

As a sci-fi RTS game, it's simpler than the scale may imply. Even though it's usually about huge maps with over 20 planets, the smallest you can go is at the planetary level, as in you can place turrets and docks in the space close to a planet.

Since there's not much tactics involved (no need for micro here), it's just kinda like playing chess.

Attacking an enemy AI planet is easy. Build a giant fleet of unmanned spacecrafts, fly them through the right wormholes, and bang bang bang, they do the rest.

The catch is that each time you attack them, the collective AI enemy grows more wary of you. The more attention you attract, the stronger its attacks against you. If that's not bad enough, the AI fleet also vastly outnumbers yours even if you max out your limits.

Each type and upgraded level of spacecrafts has a limit that you cannot exceed. Capturing planets will increase this limit IIRC.

On the other hand, if you destroy the heavily guarded Data Centers near some of their planets, you could somewhat lower the threat level they categorize you in.

Hence the strategy.

Expand or keep a low profile?

And to make it even more complicated, you have to manage 4 resources: metal, crystal, energy and knowledge.

All 4 has an increase rate and can be accumulated just like the resources in Supreme Commander, except for energy which cannot be stored.

The first 3 has the same purposes as the resources in Warcraft 3 and other RTS games. Knowledge is research points which unlocks upgrades of your choosing, and only 3k of these points can be found on each planet for each player.

Upgrades cost at least 1k.

Unmanned crafts, starships, turrets and upgrades come in large varieties in this game, which does nothing to make it simpler.

That's why I said it's good for RTS fans. There really are plenty of strategies possible in the game, and not tactics that most RTS games are really about.

If you have to micro, that's tactics. Minimal micro is necessary in this game. It's mainly about what you attack, what you attack it with and how you exploit your resources, ie strategy.

Too hardcore for my taste.

















Yes! Finally found a jacket that's actually good. Cannot reveal much here. Trade secrets. But it's special!

Over the weeks I'd found several items that I thought were pretty interesting and new, like fingerless gloves with an attached pocket that covers the fingers and form mittens. Those weren't really new; it's just that I haven't seen them before.

Yea I'm not familiar with winter fashion enough, so I'm learning now.

After searching through the online stores of multiple countries, I've also finally found the right country from which their winter fashion sells better in Singapore.

It's not easy to search through their stuff because I don't know the language well. Fortunately I'm used searching through websites of unknown languages from my younger days when I searched for JAV without knowing there are English websites dedicated to this type of film.

Although I can figure out what category I've been clicking on, the fact that I can't read the descriptions prevents me from learning certain details about what I've been looking at.

Oh well.

I'll probably be able to reveal what jacket it is once there are confirmed orders for it, which will take some months because it can sometimes take several months just to get the sample from the factory. However I don't think I'll post a photo here because it will become too easy to find out who I am.

Nothing about the copyright or anything. We'll be making significant changes to the design to make sure nobody complains.

Because of the uniqueness of the jacket, it won't be cheap. A ballpark figure would be S$200. No certainty here, just a rough guess judging by the workmanship and material required for it versus that of what we usually sell.

And it's female. Definitely female.

Now I shall create the order document.









YES!!!! Killing Floor Bundle AND Atom Zombie Smasher on Daily Deals!

Woot!

Wait.

Must wait overnight.

Rant 807 / Blueberry Waffles

Some day, public washrooms are going to serve the additional purpose of water dispensers. You pee and you get drinkable water. If demand is strong enough, miniaturization is going to make reverse osmosis possible right in the cubicles.










So I didn't buy both FNV and Trine. Trine had appeared in "Indie Packs" that cost as low as a dollar (US). No reason it won't happen again.

Fallout New Vegas still has more DLCs coming, or rather, at least one more. Obviously when they're done making DLCs they're going to give us the "complete" version of the game at an even lower discount.

Christmas Sale.

So yea, that's it. I'm still going to save for Christmas Sale.

But the THQ Complete Pack is still under consideration, mainly for Company of Heroes.








The Japanese reconstruction minister quits, making the PM even less popular than he already is.

Actually I'm not too concerned about the latter since he's already promised to quit "soon".

What I find important in this is that too many of the Japanese ministers have been quitting. Just look at their Prime Ministers - they're literally having a new PM every year!

Obviously all these frequent changes aren't going to be good for Japan. A country needs long term plans to prosper; a long term plan requires long term care; long term care requires ministers who serve more than 2-3 years.

If a society can easily tolerate a change of leadership annually, PMs and Presidents wouldn't need to serve terms of 4-5 years. All democratic countries could have an annual vote and things would be really cool.

It's not impossible. With the Internet, it can't be too hard to have annual votes. I mean, is the secrecy of your vote more important than the secrecy of your credit card number?










Hellgate can't be played by anyone in SE Asia. This sucks. SE Asia has Japan and Korean servers but they're only for Japanese and Korean IPs respectively. The rest of us in the region can't touch the game.

And I was so looking forward to trying the game. :(

Oh well, it's not like it's that fun anyway, after looking at the forums.

Apparently the high level content must be bought with money, so it's just a better version of the demo now offered for WoW, which allows players to play up to level 20 and have very limited features for everything.

So I'm not missing much.









Item to consider among today's Deals is AI War: Fleet Command. Downloading demo. Will try tomorrow.

So far everything I've read about it is good. I'll probably buy the entire set for $4.49 if I buy it at all. It's an independently made game developed by a single guy, which is another reason to support it.




I'm also considering to buy Killing Floor now. If it ever appears among the daily Deals, I'll snap it up right away. The current 50% discount isn't enough.

If I buy it, I'll spend my 3 tickets on the Killing Floor prize which adds new playable steampunk characters to the game. Otherwise, I'll spend the tickets on the TF2 prize which is a pair of glasses.

Both are free and pretty much useless, but freebies are freebies.

What I redeem all depends on what I buy by the 10th of July.

Rant 806 / Sleeping On Many Things

I don't really agree with this list. Crocodile soup, mud cakes and sea lamprey don't belong in this list IMO. But the rest, I wouldn't dare to try.

Also, where's balut?









Things that one should not google for: "2girls1cup", "tubgirl", "blue waffle" and "meatspin".










Hellgate is out. Has been since the beginning of this month. Forgot about it while I was busy on Dungeon Siege and Cities XL 2011. Download's pretty fast on torrent (433kb/s atm).

As for Cities XL 2011, I just learnt I can't get the best city by just building one lone metropolis.

The main reason is that the higher level stuff require low air pollution but the foundation of the economy, the heavy industries, must pollute the air. The best solution is to build the heavy industries in a different city altogether and trade with the clean city.

Which is pretty much like real life.

I learnt about this when I noticed that my business hotels were dying off one after another. Business hotels rely on offices - the more offices I have, the more business hotels I need. The problem is that although I have allocated large tracts of land for office towers, they weren't being developed.

So I looked at the info menu of random offices that were built and saw that the Quality of Life factor was red, ie bad. This, in turn, is mainly influenced by pollution, both air and noise, the only kinds of pollution in the game.

Noise pollution was minimal in my city, which only gets it from the 10-15 wind turbines in my industrial zone. Didn't invest too much into it because it was too much money for too little power.

Air pollution, in contrast, was represented by a significantly sized red patch above my heavy industrial zones and manufactoring district. Even the farms were making losses nearby despite only being in the yellowish green slightly polluted area (now I know not to put my industrial zones near the fertile land).












I feel like forking out the US$50 for the THQ Complete Pack. Since it is a significant sum of money, I'm going to sleep on it. Postponing my decisions overnight helps prevent me from making rash ones. For example, last night I wanted to buy Defense Grid (US$2.49 plus 3 map packs at US$0.24 each) but today I decided it is unlikely I will play it for long.

THQ Complete Pack, on the other hand, has Company of Heroes with expansion (which I haven't tried), Metro2033 (which I've long decided I'd buy some day just to support the developers), and the complete set of Dawn of War 2. The rest are unnecessary bonuses that I may try.

$50 for the above games I've named is a pretty good deal since they normally cost about $100. Then there are 7 games and 1 expansion that I treat as freebies, only one of which I'm absolutely not going to bother to try - AX vs ATV Reflex.

Good deal? Good deal I think, at the moment.

Like I said, I'm going to sleep on it and decided near the end of the sale which is on the 10th. Six more days to consider.

Who knows? I may find all the games I want among the next few Daily Deals and pay even less, albeit for no freebies. But a lack of freebies isn't a major concern.





Meanwhile, Steam is down for some reason. It was fine earlier today but now at 6.30pm, I can't load TF2.

And I spent money on TF2. US$0.99 spent on a Medic melee weapon mainly for the premium status.

Not planning to spend more although I still have US$4.01 in my Steam Wallet.

Anyway, nice sales trick there, the Steam Wallet. By only allowing customers to add in increments of $5 at least, it makes us spend more than necessary and raise the possibility than we might have some loose change left that makes us spend even more. Chances are, we would have to add more money into the Steam Wallet to buy what we want.

Evidence: many of the games are priced at $XX.99, $X.19, $X.49.

Obviously many people are going to have some spare change remaining after buying what they want. If you don't buy more, they win. If you spend them, it's very possible the remaining cents won't be enough even for an indie game on discount, hence making you spend again, and they still win.

Like in my case, I have $4.01 remaining.

How am I supposed to spend exactly $4.01 and still get only what I want?

I can't. The smallest multiple of 9 that has 1 as the last digit is 81.











This is kinda insulting yet hilarious.

When I googled the term "bangla worker", the first image I got was not something I expected.

This is a screenshot of the results:

For non-Singaporeans, that's our President. I'm not sure what Google is trying to tell me...








OMG It's Fallout New Vegas for $15!!!

And Trine for $2!

I'm so tempted...

I'm going to sleep on these too.

Rant 805 / Transit Office Of Exchange

Forgot to log on in Die2Nite and my guy died. 25 days again. What a waste.








I know I haven't been blogging. My page views now have dropped to what I consider my "initial" rate of below 100.

Most likely because I'm only blogging once or twice per week and I don't bother putting in new videos.

That's because I haven't found any.

I haven't been staying long at places I used to frequent.










In mainland China, whores are cheap. Here's one who's willing to exchange her virginity for an iPhone 4. Oh that's not the worst part. That distinction goes to the fact that they're about to start making iPhone 5 next month.

Girls will be girls.








The PRC government needs to hire people with more expertise at using Photoshop.

Apparently they got some dude to photoshop 3 officials into a picture of a road to be published in a report that described their inspection of the new road.

Except they have no shadow and the view encircled by the arm of the guy on the left looks rather out of place.

So now other mainlanders are making spoofs of this picture.

Some of them are actually better than the government-made original.










Completed Dungeon Siege 3. It was as long as I expected (for a current gen RPG).

I have little idea why people think it's bad; I thought it was a pretty damn good game.

The ending was totally not what I expected though.

What I thought I'd see was the usual ending in most RPGs, but what I got was the sort of mishmash ending more commonly seen in the Fallout series.

All the major decisions made and certain quests completed in the game will be reflected in the end.

As for the final boss, it was very hard. Although Reinhart has crazy AoE spells, they weren't epic enough to defeat the final boss at one go.

And AoE spells were vital to the final battle. The Geometry of Annihilation was particularly useful since at one point, the monsters spawned mainly from one corner of the field. Unfortunately, some of the monsters also leech mana, so it takes more than brute force to win the fight.

Anyway nice game.









Now I'm confirmed for coffee addiction. Yesterday I decided to go without coffee and drank tea instead. I was yawning so much at 12pm even before I had lunch.

I was considering putting a stop to my morning coffees because they stained my teeth.

It's not that bad. I'm not completely zombified without coffee but I just keep yawning. I should probably stop after I finish the bag.








Since the 27th of June, the status of my package from DealExtreme has been:

I thought it meant it has arrived in Singapore and "Location" meant "origin". Apparently, I was wrong. This really means that it's still sitting in Guangzhou waiting to be flown here.

:(