Monday 30 April 2012

Rant 987 / The Only Thing Worse Than The 32 Degrees Celsius Is A Broken Air Conditioner



And this is how an unforgettable first date should go.

And this is why I'm still single.

Can't afford a private plane.






















Ok I'm starting to see why Dragon Age 2 got bad reviews from players.

It's the story. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest problem.

Certain things just happen. Realistic for sure, but when it comes to fiction, characters of some degree of importance don't just die or disappear.

For example, Bethany. Spoiler here but the game's pretty damn old anyways.

If you didn't take her down to the Deep Roads, she gets taken by the templars. I didn't finish that run but I'm pretty sure nothing ever happens that involves her after that because if something was planned for her, her abilities would include that special Friend/Rival part too.

If you do take her with you, she dies suddenly at the end from darkspawn poison that somehow got into her.

Or there's Leandra who got killed and mutilated by someone that came out of nowhere.

Yea sure, shit happens IRL, but that's not how fiction is written. If we want an actual documentary or biography with all that hard-hitting stuff, a RPG is the last place people look for those.

Neither does that make it "mature", only simply bad.

This is like an anti-deus-ex-machina, which means something happens out of nowhere, except in the game they're bad.



Other than that, the Tactics system is rather tedious. It feels like I'm programming the AI with handicaps, as in I can only use one set of condition for each action.

If something happens, do something.

I can't use two conditions, like "If something and something happens, do something."

Doesn't really make sense either. Were they trying to force it to become simple? Because it's still tedious as hell, ie they failed.

In the end, I find that it's far easier to programme the tank(s) and healer(s) properly than the others, so even though my protagonist is a tank, I control a rogue to improve the efficiency of all the attacks.

















There's no such thing as too much money. There's always something more that we can do with that extra cash.

Singapore hasn't had a major corruption scandal only because it's still a relatively new country.

Humans are not infallible.

When it finally hits, what then?

Some stains can cling on for multiple lifetimes.


















Canada is a strange place.

Sunday 29 April 2012

Rant 986 / Purge It In Flames



THE MUSIC LOOPS BECAUSE THE EMPEROR WILLS IT SO!

If it doesn't, PURGE IT IN FLAMES!

Or hit F5 until it does.





















Made an account on Livestream (and a few others just to try them out) for the stream on this blog.

Since I'm in the GMT+8 timezone, it's unlikely that the channel will be very active at any given time. In any case, the channel's only limited to 50 viewers until the channel grows sufficiently, something which I'm currently not planning to work towards.

Also added that link so that it's clear what time it is in my part of the world right now.

When it's live, there will be a prominent red sign that says "LIVE" at the bottom of the stream, so hopefully there won't be any confusion about this.





















Surprised that Wasteland 2 didn't hit US$3M. It was so close, at $2.93M.

Then again, the Kickstarter page doesn't include money that went through Paypal which they might have also used. I don't know if they did and I CBA to check.

It might have hit $3M, but AFAIK it didn't.



Shadowrun Returns is at 14 hours from the end and it's at US$1.722M. This wasn't so surprising.

With Paypal's portion included, they claim to be only $233k short.

14 hours, $233k.

Anything can happen. I'll know for sure tomorrow.




















The iPad is working out pretty well for me right now. Good for taking down notes and storing numbers but unfortunately, I have yet to convert the photos of the written lists into tables yet.

And I don't even have an updated set of photos because my storage is so full a few paths have been sealed temporarily by the new stacks of jackets I've decided to unpack for the Australian winter.

I have to, regardless of any space issues I have. They were meant for this season and must begin to get out into the stores so that I can get things moving.

If this stuff doesn't go out, new stuff can't come in. With nothing moving, it would be like a clogged artery; my business will suffer a cardiac arrest.

Speaking of goods, I haven't been ordering enough. It's a bad sign when I have more cash than expected in my business account, cash that should have been spent already if I've been doing things right.

I want to get more, but somehow there's just no space for them.

How did she handle this back then?

She'd never mentioned such a problem before.

It's weird because all my stuff are selling decently, which in turn is because I'm perfectly willing to agree to any price cuts the buyers suggest. Whatever makes them sell, I'm ok with it.

That's why I'm baffled by this lack of space.

What am I doing wrong?




But anyways, it really does feel nice to have internet access any time, but I don't have much use for it. My business is relatively unknown so it's usually unnecessary to check it more than twice a day, which I do in the morning and evening.

There is really nothing to do with it because of the lack of Flash support. Most of the other things I use the Internet for require that, so I feel that I'm underutilising the 3G feature.




And sweaters. I need new sweaters and cardigans for men. I've been doing mainly ladies' stuff and a bit of unisex ones for the last few months and my buyers are kinda anxious for some mens' items.

But I have no space.

What do?




And colours. This is really stupid but I can't figure out why one shade of a certain popular colour suck more than the other shades. I have a few different items with this colour but apparently, one of the shades is selling worse than the other colours that the same design uses.

I can't understand why this is so because I have a jacket with a slightly darker shade and another with a slightly lighter shade and they're selling much better than their counterparts of different colours.

Obviously the colour is fine, but the shade is making it perform terribly. Doesn't make sense to me.

This is beginning to make me agree slightly with my mother about one thing - that maybe it was not a bad idea to have a sister.










Now I'm also confused about whether this one buyer is trying to help me or screw me over.

Her advices are rather mixed - some have proven to be good and some don't look very sound to me.

I don't get this either, so I'm currently inclined towards the theory that she's really that bad at certain aspects of her job despite evidence to the contrary.























Oh them Korean pussies.






















With Internet access being so easily available today, won't many old ideas that have been impractical in the past be more feasible today?

An example would be direct democracy, in which everyone gets to vote in every issue without the need for representatives in the government.

If not now, then maybe in the near future.

It will be funny to see entire countries being disappointed by what we now call "minorities" and "black sheeps" when these groups outnumber the other people who care enough to vote, especially when there are too many things to vote on.

Anyways if certain countries like Spain have it now, I bet the people would be voting against further austerity measures. And if Greece had had it, it could be worse - the country could be out of the EU already. I'm pretty damn sure the Greeks would have voted against several bills in the recent past despite full knowledge of the consequences.

Friday 27 April 2012

Rant 985 / Potatoes Gonna Potat

Oh hey look what I just found!





 Inb4 Steam ban.





















Diablo III coming out soon!

Not buying it yet.

Too expensive.

I'm just a poor guy who can't afford even a legit Apple HDMI cable.





I like some of the criticism the game is getting.

1) Apparently, Diablo III is too much of a "clickfest".

2) Health orbs are too unrealistic.

Because Diablo II has auto-attack, and unbreakable bottles of health potions that explode from a dying giant slug-like boss is totally realistic, right?



















Educational visit again at one of the stores.

I've been giving them sweaters of random designs because I had no idea what is popular, and I realized things are quite different from what I expected.

For one, the design of my 100% cotton sweaters is terrible but its colours are great.

Too bad.

Moreover it's cotton, so it's not exactly selling even though it's just $19.00 apiece.

Bad.

The most notable thing about the visit was their request for cashmere sweaters.

100% cashmere!

Kiss. My. Ass.

The people who visit their stores may be asking for 100% cashmere, but I'm willing to bet only 2-3 of them each year can actually afford one.

I'm not even exaggerating the slightest bit here.

The $200 sweater I bought was likely not 100% cashmere. If I'm to sell a genuinely 100% cashmere sweater, my target price would have to be within the $300-$400 range!

You see, my mum had one sweater that was 20% cashmere, 15% acrylic and 65% wool. It's been like 2 years since it first came out, and the price has just dropped to about $120 last month.

$120. Dropped to. 2 years.

If that was 100% cashmere, $200 would have been impossible.

So that means that branded store was also bullshitting on its tags. You can't sell a 100% cashmere adult sweater for $200. Either the store or its suppliers are being dishonest. Or they own a ranch and a factory to produce its own cashmere sweaters.

Btw that store is in fact dishonest. If you ask the salespeople for the country of origin of their products, they usually would tell you it's Japan.

When a product doesn't come with a tag that says "Made in Korea" or "Made in Japan", the purpose is to give the salespeople room to... mislead... the customers. After all, it's unlikely that a customer can prove both that the salespeople said it was made in Japan AND that it really was not.

This is particularly true for branded/chain stores since they have a reputation to maintain. For cheaper stores, they don't really care about this point.

If I have a product that's really made in either of those countries, I'd be happy to flaunt this fact just to have an extra excuse to jack up my prices. There's really no reason to hide it if it were true.

Also, I'm not going to name the store. Have fun guessing.


Anyway the buyers recommended that I get ones that contain either 20% or 5-10% cashmere instead, but I think I'm going to do neither.

20% has already proven to be unpopular for years. As for 5-10%, only an industry veteran can feel the difference. An average person like myself would be buying it just for the mere thought of that material and not because he can actually tell that there's cashmere in it.

And I'd be completely retarded to dabble in 100% cashmere just to please that 2-3 people who asked for it. It's going to cost me somewhere between $100-250 just for a sample!

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Rant 984 / Challenge Accepted

TUE



Watched In Time, a film that might as well be a retelling of an expanded version of the story of Robin Hood.

Again, like all the comments I often see online (I've begun to grow numb to the stupidity and even come to expect it all the time), it brings me to the issue of the distribution of wealth versus the creation of it.

How do you make an organization grow and make sure everyone gets his or her fair share?

What I find exasperating here is really the definition of "fairness".

To those in the middle and upper classes, fairness means getting what you worked for or what you can get.

To those in the lower classes however, it could mean getting what you deserve or that everyone is paid the same no matter what they do for a living.

Is the last really stupidity talking or is it proof of the inherent greed that lies within our every soul?

We've been taught that rewarding everyone the same would be unfair because each person produces a different results in terms of both quality and quantity.

If so, why are most members of uniformed groups paid according to their ranks? Why aren't factory workers paid according to the number of pieces of products they helped to produce?

Why do we simply accept such a contradiction without even a thought?

So which is right? Should we be compensated according to what we produce or what we are?

Capitalism or socialism?

In reality, that's not even the right question.

That's the funny thing about it all. Neither what we produce nor what we are truly matters where our incomes are concerned!

The truth is that our income is whatever others believe it should be. Employees negotiate with their employers to get as high a salary as they can. Businesspeople convince others to give them as much as they are willing to give.

In the end, it all boils down to what you can make others believe is fair.

Look around in your workplace and think about whether everyone who gets paid the same as you also do exactly the same work as you do.

How much you're paid isn't how much your work is worth, but how much the other person thinks it's worth. Your salary isn't based on what you should be paid, but on what your employer thinks you should be paid.

My income is based on what my buyers and suppliers think my products (and their efforts, in the latter case) are worth.

That's what's keeping the lower class down in the lower class. Not their productivity, not their qualifications, not their ages.

It's their inability to either see this or do anything about it.

The better you can convince others to give you more, the more you get.

I'm not saying it's all about the talking because having actual substance really doesn't hurt, but to convince others that something is true, there are more ways than just having a glib tongue or being actually talented.

And that's why I find the definition of "fairness" exasperating.

There is just no objective definition of it that all humans can agree on because even if it exists, we can't grasp it.

Which makes sense because we didn't evolve to what we are by being fair.


If everyone can see this, then we can finally stop arguing about whether the poor is being exploited unfairly or whether the rich is being overpaid, and start thinking about more important matters.

Like coming up with a way to convince everyone they're faily compensated for their work while actually keeping the system running, because if everyone gets what they think they deserve, two Earths wouldn't be enough.




Reminds me of the last line in the script of the intro movie of Fallout: New Vegas.



From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. But, truth is...the game was rigged from the start.

In most aspects of our lives, there are usually more factors than meets than eye. Our incomes are just one of the many things in this world that are not as simple as they appear to be. Of course most of them are also "rigged from the start" but the average guy like me will never need to know the details.






















I don't even need to expand this image. What does everyone else see in this picture?

Because all I see is "I GOT PAID FOR SAYING THIS" repeated everywhere on this game's cover.

Also, where's the title?

Oh well, it's not important anyway.


















WED

Went to the lawyer's office today. It was like the movie In Time all over again, the part where he crossed the zones from the ghetto to the zone where all the prices are in months and years.

Yea I haven't explored that part of the CBD in Singapore much, especially since there's no reason to visit that area of the country at all. There's only Lau Pa Sat, the notorious tourist trap and a few other similar places.

The last time I went there it was to buy my phone since it's got the closest Starhub shop to my home.

Today it was during office hours and I went there straight from my office in one of the industrial areas of Singapore. That was why it reminded me of that scene in the movie so much.

And apparently the $2 ERP charge I got was nothing compared to the morning peak hour ERP along the CTE - $4.

D:

That's like the price of a meal just to take that route, not to mention the peak hour surcharge.


Anyway I'm pretty sure I'm paying more than necessary just to get this Letter of Administration but I don't know any lawyers and nobody's recommended any to me.

It's funny because it's as if nobody but my insurance agent knows any lawyer in Singapore, and she only knows the really expensive ones.



$4000 for this letter and she will also help me inform all the parties who handle whatever assets my mother owned so that's pretty convenient, but excludes GST and whatever other costs.

Also asked her about a few other things.

According to her, making a will is going to cost another $2800. If I ask her for legal advice on my business it's going to be counted as a separate consultation that will cost me their normal rates of a few hundred bucks an hour.

I'm going to skip those for now or I might hit $10k on this.

Actually I only spoke to her legal secretary today. She was on MC and they couldn't contact me because my phone's been pretty busy all day and I didn't check my email in the afternoon.

Speaking of my phone, my transporter just hired this new guy whom I both like and dislike.

I dislike him because he had to keep asking me about the same thing more than once, but I like him because he dared to ask. Or maybe I should dislike him for that because he should have been asking his boss instead of me, or even my workers when he took those boxes from my office.

What made me mention him was mainly the fact that he had to call me four times within an hour just to bring 3 boxes of goods from my office to a relatively well-known store in Singapore.





















Oh maaaaaaan this pre-termination thing is terribad if it ever happens! The landlord company's rep just replied to me to explain their premature termination policies.

Basically, I have to find a replacement tenant who will have to sign a 3-year contract at the prevailing rates of that time. The company can also help me do it but I will have to pay for the agent and whatever. In addition there's a $250 administration fee.

That's not even the worst part!

What I find to be the most B.S. condition in the whole paragraph is that if the new tenant's rate is lower than the one(s) in my contract, I MUST PAY THE DIFFERENCE IN ONE LUMP SUM!

Man, I want to be a fecking landlord now.

Sucks to be a tenant.

But I think I might just sign this. I've been thinking about what happens if I lose this job and this pre-termination policy would really be the least of my worries. I'm close to 30 now and I'm years away from my first degree. If I get a job, it's going to have shitty pay and long hours, meaning I will have little chance of climbing back to where I am now.

In short, it has become a fact that I'm now beyond the point where I can just turn back and walk away.

It's either sink or swim from now on.


Tuesday 24 April 2012

Rant 983 / A Fridgeful Of Fruits

Shopping is tiring work.

Just bought a piece of 100% cashmere sweater and a woolen one at a store along Orchard Road for self reference. Had to be branded for me to have a certain degree of confidence that they are what they are supposed to be.

I've been so stupid! My buyers haven't been asking me for 100% woolen sweaters; they were asking me to get mixed ones.

That's why I can never get anything from my supplier that's similar enough to what they wanted.

I totally had a mental facepalm when I realized it.

And yes, I'm really that bad at my job.

But fuggit. Since I can afford to suck, I'm just going to keep on embarassing myself until I know all that I need to know.

And I know I'm going to be pretty embarassed when I explain to that supplier that it was all my fault.

Good thing she's worked with my mum for a decade so it's not as bad as making this mistake in front of a total stranger.

Got to be positive, y'know.

And cashmere. Oh man, cashmere.

Apparently none of the sweaters we sell are 100% cashmere, which is why as a newbie, I couldn't really tell the difference between those and some others that don't contain cashmere.

When I held that 100% cashmere sweater in my hands, holy crap! I could totally feel the difference! Never mind that it was almost S$200, I just had to get one to constantly remind myself what I'm feeling for.

That's the goal, the target, the finale, the clearing in the forest, the one ring, etc etc.

Now that I have a piece of 100% wool and another of 100% cashmere, hopefully they can help me be less noob in the future.

Basically, my aim is to balance between the luxury of cashmere and the price of wool, because none of my buyers target the very wealthy, only the upper middle class at most.

Unfortunately, my current sweater supplier doesn't do cashmere because it costs too much, so I'm going to have to find one that does soon. Probably this week.





















After all the effort I put into protecting that portable router, I discovered that I had missed a major issue - heat.

Derp.

This makes it pretty hard for me to keep it wrapped up, so I guess I must keep it in a well-ventilated area or something.

Or I could just use 3G only when I'm in a restaurant or something where I can leave it on the table while I use it, because there is no feasible method as far as I can tell to keep it switched on in my bag.






















I don't really know which lawyers to pick so I randomly picked one with a decent website.

They said it was going to cost me several thousand dollars to get the Letter of Administration.

Went for it anyway. It's just a one-off thing, not like I'm going to need to do it regularly.

I'm also going to need a Hong Kong lawyer after that. No idea how I'm going to get one. Maybe ask a relative. I don't really know right now.



















After all this, I'm glad I don't have to get out of the house tomorrow. Not that it was terrible, just tiring. Doesn't mean I've got nothing to do tomorrow, just that I can do everything I need to finish at home.




















Just realized Dragon Age 2 has mods at Dragon Age Nexus. Oh boy!














Tintin was a nice movie. The expensive computer generated graphics style wasn't actually necessary because the old cartoon style was perfectly fine IMO. Moreover, I feel that it didn't really add much to the film.

Our graphics still haven't advanced to the point where everything looks completely real in the film, and I believe it was supposed to be a live action film with impossible stunts and characters who looks almost identical to their counterparts in the comics.

All the unrealistic things in the graphics kinda ruined it. For example, all their skin looks silicone-ish in bright light, as if it's a trifle translucent.

Sunday 22 April 2012

Rant 982 / Post-apocalyptic Psychiatry

Been watching a few movies. I had missed almost every film released last year, so I can now afford to watch one every dinner for a while.

Today it was The Divide, a movie about several people who survived a nuclear strike in a basement that had been turned into some kind of emergency shelter by this guy who was a fireman involved in the 9/11 incident.

So anyway, I notice that in all the post-apocalyptic film I've watched so far, it's always been about how people would turn barbaric when faced with survival issues after a while.

This made me wonder what would happen in a film about a group of people who survived an apocalyptic event... if they were all shrinks (aka therapists).

To make things worse, they managed to survive in the basement of a mental institution where both food and medical supplies are plentiful.

How would it end?





















It used to be my idea of life that I'd either know what to do or be told about it.

That's not all there is to life.

Right now a lot of things that I do, I do them because there's no one else.

That's normal.

I'm not saying I like it. In fact I'd rather not be doing any of it, but life isn't just about making it the ideal one we have in our minds.

When they say that life is about how you want it to be, that you can choose how you live your life, they aren't talking about that perfect life you've always dreamt about.

No, that isn't it.

The problem here is that in obtaining and maintaining the possession of them you must sometimes do things that you would prefer to avoid.

In my case, I want to preserve this business and I am interested in trading, yet I'm neither interested in fashion nor conversations. Meanwhile I've been observing my own behaviour and confirmed that I'm more interested in games, cooking and reading, none of which is going to help me become a better judge of fashion trends.

This is what I'm talking about. Life is about the things you want but it's not about that ideal carefree life on a tropical beach for eternity.

If I'm going to find someone else to run this business for me, it's going to take time. Years. Many years.

Not to mention quite a bit of legal advice.

There's no law in Singapore that forbids a person from owning multiple businesses, so that's my plan in the long term. Maybe in 10-15 years' time.

I'd ask my bro but he's just a more extreme version of myself. He couldn't even talk to our mother, let alone buyers.

Of course everything can be learnt, just like what I'm doing now, but clearly he's just not interested.

Maybe once he gets a job and gets a taste of what it's like to work as an employee, he might suddenly love to run a business and have the motivation to learn. Right now though, he's not the person I'd envision running the business in the long term.

I can't even see him chatting with the suppliers nor the buyers.

Not that I can chat with some of them but I'm trying.



















Sniper Elite looks interesting and I'm pretty sure sniper fans will like the game a lot. While the bullet physics appear more realistic than that of most other games, the realism is a lot worse in most of the other aspects of the game.

For one, the player is a lone sniper fighting against entire platoons of soldiers. That's like two unrealistic points combined. Snipers work in pairs and snipers do not engage in prolonged firefights. They work mostly as scouts and do not just kill random soldiers unless it's necessary, like the ones that were defending an area in some episodes of Band of Brothers.

Another point is how easy it appeared to hit a vital part of the body. Once I totally saw that the bullet had hit the liver or kidney and that was counted as a "vital hit". What? You might as well label the entire body as one vital organ!
















Bought some mint leaves last week. Now I'm making random minty juice-and-gin cocktails.

Because lamb is expensive.

Saturday 21 April 2012

Rant 981 / "Wypierdalaj" And "Spierdalaj" Are Both "Hello" In Polish :3



Luckily for us, none of the Hitman games were as disturbing as this.

And by "disturbing" I mean seriously disturbing on multiple levels.


























So I've finally got a reply from my landlord and the company is offering me a slightly different contract that could be much more beneficial for the both of us.

Initially the contract offered to me would last 3 years and the gross rate would be uniformly at about 40% above my current rate. Now, the company representative is offering me a 5-year contract in which the rate will increase by less than 10% from the first year to about 25% in the final year.

This is far lower than the original shorter contract and extremely awesome IMO, so I guess they're really focused on the long term.

Honestly speaking though, I have very little motivation to shift anyway. It takes a lot of work and money to do it, especially when most offices in the industrial areas are only furnished with the lights and the sprinklers on the ceiling.

In comparison, a friend of mine who has just gotten a new unit nearby got a "special" rate of about 30% over my current rate, which was fantastic for a shorter contract compared to the one that I got. I don't really know how many years his contract lasts but as a brand new startup I find it hard to believe he would go for a 5-year contract.

However, I am concerned about the length of time because my future is pretty uncertain here. If shit happens this year, 3 years are the longest that I think I can last. Therefore 5 years is very risky for me.

That's why I'm now asking him about the consequences of premature termination. The closest thing I can find in his emails is the line "no pre-termination clause" and I have no idea what that means. Yes, I've also asked him to clarify on that in my reply.

Now I'm waiting for his explanations.

If I were confident about my business, I would have jumped on that 5-year contract without thinking. Now, I must take into account the risks and consequences of an unhappy ending and see if it's really worth it.



















Now playing Dragon Age 2 again. I didn't complete it the last time because it got too hard on Hard difficulty and hence stopped being fun.

Currently playing as a Warrior class on Normal so that I can do without Aveline. I don't want to go with the "moral" decisions all the time and I don't want turn her into an enemy or anything.

I'm also kinda curious about why everyone hates the game so much. I find the game rather well-designed, like the tactics system for the allied AIs. It's so nicely made I can find the right instructions almost all the time, which makes me wonder how much time and effort they put into it.



















As expected, the casing wasn't a perfect fit for my iPad. It was the first and only casing available on DX before the iPad was even released so it wasn't surprising to find that it's probably meant for the iPad 2, which is slightly thinner than the new iPad, and the manufacturer was being full of shit, which is typical of manufacturers in China.

Still, it fits except it's kinda bloated because it's slightly too small. And it stands and only cost US$10.

The pouch fits too so that's good.

As for stuff that my friends asked for, I'll be mailing them via snail mail. Since both the packages are about 100g each, it's only S$0.80 each, far cheaper than any other way except for walking.

iPhone screen protector and casing = 49g

3 20cm USB extensions cords = 61g

It's even cheaper than taking a single trip on a bus these days.

Now my new concern is the weight, an issue that was completely unimportant compared to the possibility of a router or casing that doesn't function as expected. Since they're all settled now, it's the most pressing issue I've got regarding this.

My bag is heavy enough as it is with all the papers, umbrella and water, and now I've got to throw in the iPad-with-casing (0.827kg) and the router-with-modem-in-a-shell (0.106kg).

That's almost another whole kg in my bag.

I'm going to need to get rid of the documents. Keep them in the office probably.




















So there's this Japanese anime that depicts Nyarlathotep as a kawaii loli.

What. The. Fuck?



(」・ω・)」 (/・ω・)/ (」・ω・)」 (/・ω・)/ (」・ω・)」 (/・ω・)/


No seriously, wtf? Nyarlathothep is one of the evil beings (or deities, if you can call that a "deity") created by H.P. Lovecraft, one of those that can choose to be pretty terrifying in appearance. I think that should sufficiently describe the level of... wrongness... involved in this.

And if you don't know who Lovecraft is, you can go screw yourself.

Thursday 19 April 2012

Rant 980 / Indian Missiles Are OK; NK Ones Are Not.



















Japan saw its largest trade deficit ever in 2011. That's what you get when your government tries to please the majority even when it's unfeasible in the long run. In this case, they were going for the votes in the agricultural industry for decades since even before Koizumi's time.

I think he tried to do something about it but it either failed and/or was too late.

You can't be a successful developed country and focus mainly on agriculture at the same time. To me it just doesn't make economic sense since farms by themselves are a rather inefficient use of good real estate and manpower.

Unfortunately it was either that or piss off the people in order to save them because relying solely on urban votes is just not enough in Japan.

As for all the other PMs after him, I don't see how anyone in that position can accomplish anything significant in just a single year.

I'm not trying to be negative about it, but if you can have 5 consecutive PMs leaving their positions after a year each, it's quite obvious that the terrible situation the country is in is close to unsalvageable. People don't just throw any moron up into the role of the PM, and with 5 of those, surely at least one of them must have been a decent one. If things are getting so bad that none of the PMs seems to be able to do their jobs, the problem may not lie in those men themselves but the entire infrastructure as a whole.


















My portable routers work!

Both were tested and one shall be kept as a backup.

These HAME brand MPR-A1 model routers are about as big as two thumbs and work as both external batteries and wireless routers for 3G USB modems.

It's pretty cheap, about US$22.70 and it's got a lousy battery life.

As an external battery, its capacity is only 1800mAh; as a router, it only lasts 4 hours of usage, or 10 hours of standby.

And that's what's printed on the box of the Chinese-made electronic product, which means it's even less in reality.

Still, as long as it lasts a few months it's going to be worth the money.

As far as I can tell it's quite easy to use. The USB 3G modem( mine's a Huawei E170 HSPA USB Stick) works immediately once it's plugged into the router without the need for any installation like it did with my computers, so I could just connect to the wireless network which contains the brand in its name using the default password printed on the label on the back of the router.

After that I only had to log on to the router's IP and change the network name and password. Didn't set it to hidden because when I plugged it into my PC via USB there was no popup telling me a new device was connected. If anything happens and I somehow can't connect to the router, I won't be able to access it via a wired connection. That would mean a reset to its factory settings.

I'm not sure if there's a way to improve its power efficiency but I've set it to N-only so hopefully that counts for something.

As for using it, I'm still waiting on my iPad casing which should arrive tomorrow. Once I get my casing, I'll be able to use my iPad with 3G without having a 3G SIM card or even the 3G function in the iPad at all.

Meanwhile, I'm still thinking of ways to keep it in my bag conveniently and protect it from heavy objects and moisture. I've once gotten water all the way into the bag during a particularly heavy storm despite all those layers and an umbrella, so I need to give it some armour of sorts.

Currently my best idea is to cut a piece of bubble wrap that DX uses for its postal packaging and stick it on the inside of two combined toilet roll tubes. I'll cover it with the brown tape I use to seal my boxes of goods the next time I go to the office, for extra waterproofing.

It looks ugly but it's supposed to stay in my bag permanently. I'll only have to slip the router/modem out to switch it on/off every time I use it.




















So apparently I've been brewing my coffee for too long and before that, I was using too little coffee beans.

Ever since I tried using the larger filters my bro's gf bought, my coffee's been far more awesome than I expected.

Back when I was using filters meant for a coffee cup and brewing two cup's worth of coffee, I was letting half the coffee sit for 5-10minutes while the first half is being filtered, sometimes even half an hour.

Worse is that the first half usually clogs the filter so I either have to rinse it or use a new one. Rinsing it means more water in my coffee while using a new one feels kind of wasteful.

I don't have the patience to stare at it every morning waiting for it to go through.

Now that I'm using filters meant for pots, I'm letting the entire batch through at one go, making my coffee less bitter.

It's not because I was scrimping on filters by buying smaller ones, but that I hadn't figured out a way to use it back when I first started brewing coffee. You can't just put a paper filter in a cup because paper softens and the filter collapses. With a large sieve holding the filter, it would go too deep into the cup and the filter would be soaking in the coffee once the cup is half full.

Now I'm using two sieves to do it (I don't have a coffee pot).

The first is a small one that's probably meant for fishing out tea leaves from tea.

The second is a large one meant for removing stuff from pots of liquids, maybe noodles or other food.

I just place the small one on my ceramic cup and the large one on top of that sieve, and then the coffee filter in the large sieve. This prevents the coffee from reaching the filter unless it's close to overflowing.

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Rant 979 / Kurva

So I learnt that I didn't get cheated by one of my suppliers this morning.

For a few weeks now I've been thinking about how to talk to her about this without saying anything offensive and really never called her. Haven't even paid her but I'd already told her before it arrived that my money has been rather tight since the last major shipment.

I think she's thinking that I can't pay yet.

Anyways I realized that her most recent batch of sweaters was really 100% wool. When the final product was at least twice as heavy as the sample after I repeatedly told her that the sample was too thin and the weave was too sparse, I thought she used a thicker weave and mixed it with cheaper materials.

It was only when an uncle came over to visit my mum and we talked about this that he told me there was a foolproof method to test a material - you burn it.

I googled it that night right after I got home.

It's probably not the best idea to tell everything but it's already on the Internet, just hard to find. I googled "how to differentiate between wool and cotton" and never saw the guides.

What I found after using the right words is this:

Watch:

- if a tuft of loose fibre catches fire before the flame touches it, it's likely to be cotton.

Smell:

- if it smells like burnt paper while burning, it's cotton.
- if it smells like burnt hair, it's wool or silk
- odourless, some kind of plastic like acrylic

Examine:

- if it ends up as ashes, it's cotton
- if the remains are black and brittle, it's probably wool or silk.
- if it's a hard lump, it's plastic




Disclaimer: It's an online guide. There's no certified expert backing these words. I cannot say whether this list is completely true, only that I think it is likely to be true because it makes sense. Also, don't blame me for any health effects caused by the inhalation of gases produced by burning plastic.




As for the piece I experimented on, there was no ashes, there was a strong odour of burnt hair (and I know the smell only too well from my cooking experience with the frickin gas stove) and the thing that remained was black and crunchy.

It was pure wool and was so heavy!

It's now clear to me it was a terrible idea to sell those sweaters for just S$49 but I don't think I can raise the price now that they're already on the racks.

Damn.

I should still speak to my buyer about it.

Hopefully they will sell quick and I can make a slightly different version at a much higher price.























Also learnt to write the stuff on those bags of offerings.



This isn't completely correct, according to some people, but this is what I did.

I was fortunate enough to find this blog that had very detailed instructions on this. Slightly different from what my relatives did but that's not really important. The terms for the familial relations can be found on this website that was also linked from that blog.

The year was written by the stallkeeper herself when I bought it because few people my age know anything about this sort of thing here in Singapore.

I took a few photos for personal reference, in case I ever feel like doing it again for whatever reasons and that blog dies or something.

I wasn't sure about which date I was supposed to write but since she wrote the name for this year, I thought I should put in the date for the day I burnt it. Had to check an online calendar for it since I no longer have a Chinese lunar calendar.



These bags are the next best things to the paper chests which contain even more papery goodness for a better quality of afterlife.

I couldn't find those chests because the stall was closed at TWELVE NOON!

The other only stall only had these, so I got one for my father, one for my mother and one more for my grandmother. S$10 each.

Red ones are for guys, so this bag in the photo is for my father, while green ones are for women. Apparently it doesn't matter which dialect group the deceased is from where these bags are concerned even though the funeral traditions are different.



This was for my grandmother and I made a mistake there. I was actually correct originally but I somehow thought I was wrong so I cancelled the surname there and wrote it below.

Her maiden surname should have been below as I originally thought while her husband's should be right where I wrote and cancelled it. The larger blank space below was for her given name.

I left those blank because I didn't know it and I was going to let my uncle finish it when we go to the temple together.

It's simpler for guys because there's only one surname.

Also cleared out most of the offerings my mum bought just in case she didn't feel like going shopping just before any days that required them.

Took half of them together with the bags.

Not sure what I'm going to do with the rest but that's not really an important question when we found evidence of termite presence at the back of the cupboard.


















Rant 978 / Enjoy Your Lemons!




















SCIENCE!





















Perhaps the greatest Italian film I've ever watched.

Not to mention it's the only one, but this alone should not diminish the fact that it is the greatest.




















The Lemon Law sounds as if our government is listening to the idiocy on the Internet. Protecting the consumers?

Hah!

The only people on the retail side who are going to suffer are the ones working in customer service.

Already I'm being advised to gradually jack up my prices to cover the potential increased losses once the law is in effect.

6 months! Customers have 6 months to return the sold products and they don't even have to prove anything!

Of course we're going to see a lot more used-and-washed clothes being sent back to us... 6 months after we sold them.

Most retail companies are already trying to make guesses and estimates on how much more they're going to lose, then adjust their new prices accordingly.

Why would businesses let themselves be at a disadvantage because of this?

That would be stupid, like myself if I didn't have anyone to tell me I should do it soon.

And to think so many morons were celebrating online about this new law.




Clearly the 7% GST isn't enough; Singaporeans have too much money to throw at us.

Speaking of GST, do you know who's going to get a raise in a few months' time?

The only consumers who are going to benefit are the ones who return defective goods and get some sort of refund, and only at the expense of all the others who didn't.

I'm annoyed because I'm also a consumer and I recognize the fact that I'm going to be in the latter group almost all the time.

On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not in the retail business.


Monday 16 April 2012

Rant 977 / Glorious Democracy Will Not Be Hindered By The Mere Limits Of Mortality

Putin is so popular, even the dead ressurected themselves to vote for him.

Most of the Kremlin’s efforts were focused on Moscow, where an exit poll suggested that United Russia had won less than 30% support. But after a long delay the result came in at 46.5%, supporting Stalin’s famous maxim that it is the counting rather than the voting that matters. The internet boiled over with stories of election-rigging. In some regions turnout appeared to exceed 140%. In Chechnya United Russia scored 99.5%. A similar result was reported in a Moscow psychiatric hospital.

Not even death will stop democracy!

Clearly the influence of Putin's party has spread beyond the boundaries of the mortal world.

(I know, old news. Still funny though, unless you're Russian, and if so I'm sorry).

People who think Singaporean politics is disgusting know nothing about real democracy!























I'm glad this isn't happening here, or I'd be moving to another country immediately.

















So it's been 49 days since her death and I was supposed to do something about it.

I didn't.

All I did was get a monk to perform some ritual to bring my father's spirit back to the columbarium from the altar at home.

Now I'm not sure what I should do with the altar. The monk said I could do anything with it so I guess I should call the Town Council to get some people over to handle it.

An uncle is coming tomorrow to burn some stuff for her so I bought a few bags for my parents and my recently deceased grandmother to burn together with his stuff tomorrow at the temple.

Also bought some vegetarian food and fruits but I'm undecided on whether I should bring them.

Probably will.

Whatever.


















Finished Grotesque Tactics 2.

This genre is a good backup for those times when few games are fun and have not been played recently, but this game isn't something I'd spend even $5 on.

I think I got it from some indie pack or something.

The story is mediocre, the humour is incredibly offensively misogynistic and the gameplay is average at most.

The story could have been better, but the pace pretty much killed the whole thing.

I wouldn't say the humour was terrible but if you aren't female, chances are you could find a few chuckles here and there just like in a Ben Stiller film, and by "chuckles", I meant the sort that may require a bit of conscious effort to produce.

Heck, that was probably made pretty clear when I mentioned "Ben Stiller film" anyway.

As for the gameplay, seriously, meh.

Equipment - nothing special, just a new set after every few missions or so.
Items - just potions, 2 types of HP potions, 2 MP and 2 others.
Skills - hahahaha!
Combat - the only tactic you need to know is to hit them from behind while avoiding the same from them.

The main reason I played and finished the game is that it's so easy there was little to demotivate me from continuing the story.

Besides, such games are rare on the PC these days.

Kudos to testers though because other than the quest bugs, the game feels pretty bug-less TBH. No crashes or whatever.

Fck the guy who programmed the camera though. It's through this game that I learnt that it is an extremely terrible idea for the camera to accelerate and decelerate when moving around, however smoothly it goes. Just swing or jump to that spot immediately.

Another gripe I have with the camera is that I can't zoom far enough and there's no minimap. Give me some way to see the entire map at one go, dammit!

All in all, a semi-decent game if you already own a copy.

Sunday 15 April 2012

Rant 976 / Never Use Salt With Bad Coffee



You better fcking smile.





















Looks like I'm going to have to re-calculate everything just because of the change in rent. The guy on the other end hasn't replied to my query but I don't expect a positive reply.

I've always expected problems to crop up so this doesn't come as a surprise.



















What's up with the increased page views this blog's been getting lately?

I'm used to seeing roughly between 70-110 page views daily in my Overview graph for the week and it's been holding at that rate for... I don't know, a year?

Now it's gone up to somewhere around 150 for a whole week.

The strangest thing is, Google is telling me there's no specific traffic source and the incoming traffic isn't going to any page in particular.

I have no idea what's going on.


Oh well, it's going to drop back to 100 or below once I stop blogging for a week or so, as I have done every so often in the past.


























I don't know how to advance in Towns anymore. I just cannot clean out the third level where the goblin leaders are.

Right now I'm giving everyone bone armour sets and stone weapons because iron is so rare I need all of them for stoves and such and I'm only getting some copper. Strangely enough, I'm finding far more copper than iron which doesn't usually happen.

After my last foray into the dungeons, I managed to exchange 30 soldiers for quite a bit of goblinite. However, I don't have an ITE smithy so I can't make Goblinite armour nor weapons.

I could say I'm kind of stuck in something that's extremely close to a stalemate, except I'll still win eventually by means of attrition warfare - I get new immigrants, they don't.

It's going to be a pyrhhic victory, giving me a lot more graves by the time I get through this level, but it's not like I have anything else to do in the long term in this game.

Graves are a serious problem right now because they produce ghosts occasionally, and my soldiers have been getting gradually whitted down to nothing because they have to keep fighting ghosts all the time.



I have admit this isn't going very well at the moment. This game needs a frickin exorcist!

Without a good way to get rid of these ghosts, I'm going to have to resort to cheating and just destroy all corpses and graves.




















GOG.com looks pretty interesting and they keep offering sales regularly. Like right now, they're offering 50% off for the old Interplay games.

It's mostly about classic games so the prices are all pretty low anyway. Fallout 1 and 2 are going for US$2.99 each and that's half-price, while Heroes of Might and Magic III goes for US$9.99, no discount.

I'm going to wait and see how low the prices can go when the festive season sales begin, mainly because I'm in no hurry to play those games.

On the other hand, it's not a bad idea to take advantage of the slightly more favourable SGD-USD exchange rate at the moment.

Nah, the difference isn't big enough.

















Shadowrun's fundraising on Kickstarter hits a million bucks. Not too shabby. On the other hand, it's probably still far more than was necessary.

The game's going to be a 2D turn-based RPG that mixes cyberpunk with fantasy, with character classes like Street Samurai, Hacker and Shaman.

I think that hybrid genre has been used before so it's not totally new, but there just isn't enough of them.

Friday 13 April 2012

Rant 975 / Game Of Thrones RPG





















So Wasteland 2 is probably going to have the same isometric view as Fallout. From his language it's obvious nothing has been set in stone.

If the graphics are really like Fallout or better, awesome!
























Yea...










































So the contract for my office rent is ending soon and they're offering me a new 3-year contract with a new rate.

I have a major issue against this new contract - they're jacking up the rent by 40%!

FORTY PERCENT!

Is this even normal?

...


So after asking a friend who had recently set up an office in another block nearby, I realize the new rate is kind of normal. I guess I'm probably just jaded from the awesome rate my mum somehow got years ago.























Ever wondered about how every video that features such stupidity never ends in death?

Is Death allergic to idiocy?

The answer is no.






















Proof that we're not very nice people.



















My poor town in Towns got wiped out by a bunch of giant spiders during an amazing double siege.

And by "bunch" I mean like 40 of them or so, enough to form a list that spans from beyond the top of my screen to somewhere outside the bottom of it.

It was like the frickin Spanish Inquisition - whoever would have expected a siege the moment I unpause the first siege warning?

So after I did my routine of increasing my standby militia from 8 (out of about 33 residents) to 15, I realized after first contact that they weren't enough. Moreover, they were not going in together but one after another due to them spreading out before the siege.

By the time 10 soldiers died, I decided to mobilize every resident I had except for 5 in the expectation that this should end the battle.

Nope.

Desperate, I converted another 3 to soldiers before looking at the number of spiders remaining and decided it was over.

Reloaded the last save from hours ago.

This time, I'm taking advantage of the fact that the monsters cannot penetrate walls.

It's not that I don't have a fort but that I need my people to obtain resources from across the river. Since they need to do that, I've got to have a door and that's a weakpoint in my defense.

Fortunately, there is a bit of land that goes across the river in the middle of the map, so I'm walling off that area and up to the entrance to the mines on that side of the map.


The reason I needed to get there is because I accidentally broke through the riverbed and the river is currently flooding the entire half of the dungeon on this side.

The worst thing about it, other than the fact that I'd already explored and linked most of this side with tunnels, is that the flood overwhelms all walls. There is still a bit that is still unconnected and therefore will remain dry, but I need a larger source of easy stones.




Okay, so I've completely walled off my settlement... only to realize new immigrants can't get in.

Replacing a segment of the wall with a door is only a temporary solution because monsters can easily break it down, rendering the entire fort pointless.

It looks like I should use a tunnel to bypass the wall and destroy the ladder when monsters attack.

Not sure what I'm going to do when new immigrants arrive after that though.

Hmm...

The only way will be to exploit the Add Fluid function and drown the monsters.

Thursday 12 April 2012

Rant 974 / Equipotential Marmalade

Is it just me or do games suddenly feel more interesting when I'm about to go to work?

Seriously, I spent like the two days here in front of the PC and yet I felt like playing none of the games I have.

The urge to play Grosteque Tactics 2 returned only this morning when I thought I should go to work today.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Or in this case, the potential distance.


















As for Trapped Dead, I got tired of it quickly. The idea was admittedly pretty damn awesome but the execution left a lot to be desired.

First, my guys do not always attack first even though the humans have faster reflexes than the zombies. For some strange reason, they would frequently run to the zombies and just stand there to get hit by the zombies once before retaliating.

WHY?

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

TOO MANY MEDKITS?

OR ARE YOU SOME SORT OF MASOCHIST?

"OOOH YEAH! HIT ME! HIT ME RIGHT THERE!"

The problem I have with this isn't the loss of HP but the possibility of bleeding. If he bleeds, the zombies in the game are seriously like sharks and they can smell blood through walls and from the other side of the Earth.

Second, there are no loot drops nor experience points. If I kill a zombie, the only reward I get is a dead zombie.

Hence I have no reason to kill anything that doesn't get in my way. In fact, I could simply run the heck out of any situation that allows such a strategy and the results would still remain the same.



















Yesterday I got a wake-up call from a buyer. She was the second buyer whom I was showing this jacket to and it didn't go well.

The first buyer knew my mum and was very nice to me probably because of that. And some other reasons, most likely. She didn't make any comment about that design and set the price to the lowest I could take without making a loss.

Which means I'll probably make a loss eventually, just a minimal one... if they all sell.

I described that as "nice" because the next buyer who saw that immediately remarked that it look very ugly and told me to give her half of the usual quantity. Apparently, this design will be used to offset the other products she's selling.

She didn't actually say that but it was strongly implied.

I have several hundred pieces of that, which is a significant problem.

Such a thing has always been expected to happen but it doesn't make me feel any better when it did.

Her comment made me rethink what I've been doing, which isn't much.

I'm genuinely interested in the trading aspect. Buying and selling stuff for real profit outside a computer game is exciting to me, but when it comes to actually sieving through all the junk to find the few sellable products, the thought of that feels extremely boring and kinda repulsive.

The profit is just a score, an unimportant factor when I have nothing to compare with. As long as I have all that I want, it feels like too much work to calculate my net profit.

What are important to me are the unpacking of my goods, receiving orders for my products and knowing that my transporter is coming over regularly for work.

Despite of this, I've come to the conclusion what I'm doing now is insufficient. I cannot simply ignore certain things just because I'm allowing myself all kinds of mistakes for this year. I may have expected losses but that doesn't justify the complete disregard I have for those numbers.



















So again I've confirmed that most things are cheaper on DX than at Sim Lim Square.

Actually it's just based on two products - a USB hub and a 11200mAh external phone battery.

The USB hub I saw was a human-shaped 4-port USB 2.0 one that was priced at S$5.90. It's US$3.50 on DX, or less than S$4.50 (plus free delivery via snail mail).

The 11200mAh Yoobao battery was priced at S$89.90 at SLS and was about S$60-70 on Gmarket. On DX, a similar one cost US41.90, or less than S$55, but it was significantly bulkier.

I was actually shopping for earphones with hooks because I find it hard to believe that it's so difficult to find a decent set under $10, USD or SGD, especially when I had a great pair for S$11 last year.

I couldn't find the same one anymore and neither can I find anything similar. The current set I'm using costs over US$12.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Rant 973 / 4G

The IDA is going to auction 4G frequencies next year.

The Infocomm Development Authority said it intends to put 320 megahertz (Mhz) of fourth generation (4G) spectrum up for auction in the first half of next year.

A cap of 90 Mhz will be imposed on individual incumbent providers to prevent excessive hoarding by any one company, the IDA said.

New entrants to the industry may bid for the remaining 40 Mhz.

This sounds like an incredible opportunity if you ask me. 4G, a much faster mobile broadband than the current 3G, is definitely going to be huge in a place like Singapore.








































So I discovered this Remee on Kickstarter and got interested in lucid dreaming.

It's simply an eye mask with LED lights and a timer, and it works by blinking after several hours when a person should be in REM sleep according to various sleep studies.

The blinking would then make the user realise he's in a dream, hence turning it into a lucid dream.

I'm kinda on the fence here. It's unproven, for one. Besides, would it just simply wake me up instead?

For US$95 ($80 + $15 shipping), I don't think this is worth it.

Moreover, it's an aid, not something that would induce lucid dreams with immediate effect.

So I've decided to try out the Wake-Back-To-Bed (WBTB) method before actually spending money on anything. So far I can kinda remember two things - a dream and something that's sort of like a dream except it was caused by the loud banging noise from outside in the morning. Like I was visualising in my dreaming state what could be producing the noise.

According to multiple online guides, this is the first step to lucid dreaming in the WBTB method, which is the easiest method meant for beginners.

This method, in short, requires the person to wake up after 4-6 hours of sleep, stay up for a while, and then going back to sleep.

To improve the effectiveness, a person can mix it with other methods like MILD and also recall his dreams like I did.

I believe recalling dreams is the first step to recognizing recurring dreams. Since the average person pretty much lives the same routines all the time, generally speaking, it makes sense that we would have similar dreams all the time.

The only disadvantage of this method is that it disrupts my sleep cycle, something I'm only too familiar with. Therefore, I do not plan to do this frequently if I ever get it to work.

To recall dreams, the first step, according to online guides, is to stay still right after you wake up in the morning and try to remember your dreams. It's like when I wake up for no apparent reasons at night and I try to go back to sleep by slowing down my breathing, relaxing and keeping my eyes closed, except now I try to dig up memories of my dreams.

Not easy, really. It felt like grabbing at water - I keep almost remembering some of them and somehow they just vanished from my mind, leaving just the impression that I managed to recall something... but recall what?

According to the guide on Lucidipedia, I have to recall at least two dreams regularly before I can move on to the actual WBTB technique.

I've hit one, so one more to go.

Rant 972 / Nobody Said Everything Had To Be Used As They Were Intended

Lawmakers in Arizona are trying to mess with time.

Under Arizona’s H.B. 2036, the state would recognize the start of the unborn child’s life to be the first day of its mother’s last menstrual period. The legislation is being proposed so that lawmakers can outlaw abortions on fetuses past the age of 20-weeks, but the verbiage its authors use to construct a time cycle for the baby would mean that the start of the child's life could very well occur up to two weeks before the mother and father even ponder procreating.

What the heck??

In other words, if this law is passed, all fetuses will legally be 2-weeks-old the moment they come into existence, pun unintended.

I'm not a big fan of abortion because of the responsibility issue, but this law is ridiculous on multiple levels.

TBH I'm starting to wonder what sort of people are making the laws over in that American state. Do they really think about what they're doing?




















I should have done this a right after I bought the Blog Docs app but I didn't. Now that I have, I'm excited that it works!

This is what I got when I sent it to my Dropbox folder. Apparently it only saves it as a HTML document which is opened by my Firefox by default.



It looks ugly but it's functional.

I should also consider adding more spacing between each column so that the absence of lines won't cause the table to become a confusing mess of numbers.

I'm also considering buying another ipad for my workers so that they can switch to this instead of recording everything on paper. It's very messy after while.

My current concern is that it's kinda expensive and not very necessary. I have no worries about them learning to use it when monkeys in Wisconsin have learnt to use it to play videos and music. I mean, if I tell them that they probably will try harder to learn to use it.

It's not that hard, really. If I do get them one, I'll also post enlarged screenshots/photos in a step-by-step guide on how to open the app and save it.

Maybe in the future when I have more money to splurge on quasi-necessary things.






Now that the screen is slightly oily from frequent usage, I'm starting to feel alright about rubbing my fingers on the surface.





















Today I somehow was in the mood for semi-vegetarian meals, so after having a beijing-cabbage-with-carrot dish for lunch, I had a simple salad and a piece of fried salmon for dinner.



While frying the salmon I decided to try doing it without a shirt on because it was hot.

Nope, bad idea.

The salad had too much onion. I used a butterhead lettuce, half a tomato and half a red onion in each bowl. I should probably reduce it to a quarter of an onion per lettuce next time. Also used the Kraft French salad dressing because that was the only creamy salad dressing I have at home. All the rest are the vinegar-and-oil sort.





















MFW they're all DUDES!



DUDES!

And at 3:13, that's a DUDE TOO! WITH THOSE HIPS!



















Why do they worry about the change in the Chinese language caused by online communication?

And this is a change, nothing more. This isn't the first nor the last time a language adapts to major societal changes, just the most rapid one that we've ever seen.

But Professor Ding said there is no cause for panic yet. He feels that Chinese as a language is evolving as China develops economically and socially.

"This can be called an era of sudden change. And the evolution of language now will make us feel a little helpless and astonished. But the development of society will reach a point of stability and these sudden changes will pass, as history has shown," he said.

This is what I'm trying to say. There's no need to fear the "destruction" of the language when all records of it, in many formats, will still be around for a very long time. That would be like mourning the death of Old and Middle Chinese, or Old and Middle English.

And, there will always be foreign students like Thawithak whose fascination with traditional Chinese will keep the language alive for some time to come.

Bah! There are plenty of videos, recordings and texts of this version of the Chinese language!

What about how Beijing is trying to eliminate the various southern "dialects" in China? Or how they're called "dialects" in the first place despite the fact they're technically as good as individual languages in their own rights.

And why don't they talk about the immense changes in Mandarin after the fall of the Qing Dynasty?

Worry about Mandarin, the most common language in the world? Hah!

Sunday 8 April 2012

Rant 971 / Imba Sven

















Whoa! My separate orders of screen protectors for my phone, routers and a few other items got shipped before my large order of iPad accessories.

Do they prefer to handle smaller orders?

I'll keep that in mind next time. Perhaps I'll turn it into several smaller orders, grouping them such that they're as close to the dollar as possible to get as many points as I can.

Some of those redeemable rewards look pretty good although most of them are out of stock, like the micro-SD cards.

















OMG! I didn't know I can set a time for the deliveries of my goods! My mum never did that so I thought maybe that was the fastest they could do it.

Yesterday after I tried to set an earlier time than normal for one shipment and a later time for another, the supplier told me I could just tell them when I want my stuff shipped.

Obviously I then asked why my mum never did that, and he just laughed and said that was how she handled things.

I don't really know what he meant but what's important is that I CAN NOW MANAGE MY SHIPMENTS PROPERLY!!!

WOOHOO!
















I've just unwrapped my iPad.

My screen protector and casing have yet to be shipped from DX but I have no choice - dust was getting under the wrapper.

The pristine screen!

How gorgeous!

The back casing is so smooth, so polished. Feels so... $600-ish.

This could very well be the last time I see it as pristine as it is. Got to stare at it more...

Ok my fingers have touched it. It's no longer pristine. Time to move on.

The iPad is so worth the money. It's great in every way to me right now except for one thing - I don't like the feel of rubbing my fingertips on the glossy screen. Unfortunately I have to do a lot of it when I multi-task.















Filed my income tax for the first time. It was simple because the accountant did all the bookkeeping for me. I just had to type some numbers into some blanks.

During the process, I also realized that I could make claims for my university tuition fees and my life insurance premiums. For the tuition fees, I could claim up to S$5,500, but I didn't check the latter.

None of that actually matters though because I made a loss last year and I'm techically still in the red now.

But I'm going to have to keep a lot of receipts for the rest of the year.
















DotA 2 is unbalanced. Ursa, Sven and Invoker in particular are severely OP. For the first two, I've seen players who can start raping their AI lane opponents alone before the first wave of creeps arrive at the spot.

Seriously.

I'm not sure about what the Ursa bought but I've partnered with this Sven who just bought a pair of basic Boots and two pairs of Gloves, took his stun as his first skill, rushed out to the bottom lane and just went all the way till he encountered the enemies and attacked the heroes.

That guy only died once in the entire match because we kinda abandoned him in the enemy base, but he ended up with First Blood, Beyond Godlike (it was a "HOLY SHIT" spam throughout the round) and over 40 kills versus a single death.

If that's not OP, nothing is.

Same for Ursa, except I helped him in the beginning, and he soloed Roshan just like all Ursas do.

The Invoker was OP in the later part of the game. By late game he was camping in front of the fountain by himself and required no help from the rest of us at all. In fact he wasn't even losing HP overall.

OP as fuck? OP as fuck.

Saturday 7 April 2012

Rant 970 / Wasteland 2

The Yale-NUS College passes a resolution that might as well be a protest.

The first line reads:

We, the Yale College Faculty, express our concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore, host of Yale-National University of Singapore College.





Maybe it's just me, but I don't support the idea of forcing a democratic change on any country. I mean, look at what democracy did to Africa and various countries of Asia. I feel that it's the inherent cultural differences that stops democracy from working the way it should in these parts of the world.

My point is, democracy does not work for everyone. TBH it doesn't really work for the US either. Their two-party system really stretches the meaning of being democratic. How do you actually represent millions of people when there are only two viewpoints that you're allowed to support?


“This is a set-back for Levin’s vision of Yale… because of some likely negative reaction from Singapore,” said political science lecturer Jim Sleeper, husband of philosophy and political science lecturer Seyla Benhabib who proposed the resolution last month in a blog commentary.

He added that “everyone [in the meeting] understood the resolution's passage as a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the growing corporatisation and centralisation of governance and liberal education at Yale.”

In a short column posted on Yale Daily News prior to Friday’s meeting, Benhabib also defended her resolution as one to “express faculty dissatisfaction … with Yale’s collaboration with a government that severely constricts human rights, civil liberties and academic freedom but also with the administration’s decision-making process … that should have been decided by a vote of the Yale faculty — if indeed Yale’s name is to be attached to the college in Singapore at all.”


It is sad because of what it implies.

Some people here paid them a lot of money to come here, and the faculty members aren't happy about that.


Wealth solves all social problems. This particular problem just requires an additional dose of Wealth.





















I'm surprised that someone would admit to that. Don't they have to sign some form of non-disclosure agreement or something?


















You know why they call The Old Republic the TORtanic?

 Because it was expected to fare as well as it does now.



They're throwing so many free trials at us even though it's been released for 4 months.

It's only a matter of time before they announce that they're free-to-play with an ingame store, and even then I won't be trying it.















Now that Wasteland 2 has hit 2.1 million bucks with 9 days remaining, I'm beginning to get worried that there are tens of thousands of backers who don't know what they're really supporting.

Played a bit of Wasteland and it turned out to be really quite different from Fallout 1 and 2. Apparently the similarities lie in the plot and setting.

It's still pretty good but it wasn't what I thought it would be, and this made me think about what the other backers are thinking about this game especially when no screenshot was posted for Wasteland 2.

Moreover, Wasteland 2 is going to be almost the same as the original game so it's going to be very, very classic in appearance.

This is Wasteland 1.


I just hope this doesn't end badly for everyone.

In short, I know what I'm getting... do they?