Thursday 1 September 2016

Rant 1232 / Thank You Indonesia For The Days When Your Smoke Does Not Reach My Country

31 Aug 2016




So hand dryers aren't that bad and when they say they spread germs, it actually means they spread germs from your poorly washed hands to other people, not from the dryer itself to your hands. Moreover, those cool new jet hand dryers that use UV lights and cold air jets are the worst.

Good thing I use my handkerchief. Probably the worst option to myself but best for everyone else and the environment. Then again, isn't the handkerchief meant to be used for almost every "dirty" thing that we have to do for ourselves?

Speaking of handkerchiefs, it's so hard to find good thick ones these days! Even Crocodile has switched to a fabric which obviously has a lower thread count and feels thinner and rougher. I'm still using two of the older ones bought like three years ago so I have something to compare the new ones with. Seriously, even the inconveniently large ones from Daiso are thicker than theirs!

Those Japanese ones are likely meant to be used like a bandanna though.


















When you are in control, it cannot be helped that you take it the hardest when things don't go well.


















The endlessness of 7 Days to Die is starting to wear on me slightly. I still have plans but they don't seem enough to stop this feeling.

My strategy is simple: once I've properly filled my first floor with reinforced concrete and a spiked dance floor at the center, expansion of the concrete walls will begin.

The current emergency exits will remain because as my concrete fort gets larger, the need for an escape route is reduced.

As soon as the first floor is expanded another three concrete blocks on each side, I'll thicken the walls of the second floor by one concrete block and then remove everything on the second floor to make space for agriculture.

Beyond that, I'm basically safe for quite a while but the general idea is to build a real fourth floor for a new base before converting the third floor that used to be the attic into another farm or storage area. A fifth floor will serve as my new spawn point and will be almost completely enclosed in reinforced concrete.

This is my plan now that I've read that building blocks in this game, despite having some form of physics, can support an infinite number of blocks on top of it, having only limits in the number of blocks attached to their sides.



















92.7kg today. YES! Broke the 93kg line once again!




















30 Aug 2016

Surprisingly small horde this time on the 21st day. There were merely over 60 zombies by 6am, just slightly larger than the 14th day horde.

The damage was more serious though: 3 holes 2 blocks tall were found through the house's original cobblestone walls, and the dance floor has been deepened and enlarged.

















So the Redmi Note 2 that I bought off Qoo10 turned out to be a fake after checking its IMEI and S/N on the Xiaomi website because it was getting ridiculously slow for a phone of its level.

My solution was to get all the photos downloaded from the SD card to my PC then format it. Hopefully it would become its original form, whatever it was.

I was wrong. Whatever those people did to the phone to make it look like a Xiaomi, it seemed irreversible. Can anything be done?

Of course I proceeded to find a way to root it. Never done it before and at this point, I don't want to use a phone which probably contains some kind of spyware or malware.

Kingo Root did it for me. Now my problem is that I've deleted too many apps that appeared to be bloatware and couldn't be removed previously, and it's stuck at its logo screen when I rebooted it.

It's bricked now, I guess.



















Ok I've lost momentum. After returning to Singapore, it's impossible to keep to the 6-day workout schedule of P90X. Now I'm making it 4-5 days weekly, maintaining the chronological order but adding in a rest day or two on top of the rest day.

Should still work fine though, just not as quickly. Weight has been maintaining at below 94kg in the mornings and steps still get easier by the week, so it has to be working, just that I haven't been losing fats as quickly as I'm gaining muscle mass.

Also found this article arguing that we're meant to chill as much as possible and that humans aren't meant to be working out all the time.

That's why we lose muscle mass so quickly - this conserves energy.

The thing is that until relatively recently, humans were still forced to exercise every once in a while by having to hunt for food and etc. Hunting for meat and leather without a gun can seriously require days of work outside, mainly because primitive bows and spears aren't as lethal and accurate as shotguns and rifles.

 So yeah, I've just found a legit reason to not exercise so much. Now it just leaves the issue of not eating as much to compensate for the reduction of physical activity.





















28 Aug 2016


Somehow I've forgotten whether this is my second or third week of P90X. I was convinced last night that it was only my second session of Legs and Back but Vanessa insisted that it was my third already. I'm confused.






























In 7 Days To Die, little progress has been made. So far, the biggest concern is the lack of materials because concrete depletes my stones and sand so quickly! I thought bricks would be a cheaper alternative that could be used in conjunction with cement but every brick block costs 60 clays! Well, at least clay is easier to dig up than sand as the latter is only found in narrow bands along the riverbanks in the only river in the forest biome where I am.

At this rate, I will have to consider spending a day in the desert to harvest sand and stone. Probably some yucca and aloe vera on the side too. I've run out of aloe vera long ago after harvesting some along the way to town on the first day. Not important though because there are nine first aid kits in my possession now.
















Been playing more Rebuild 3 though. Just reached Trail and it looks really easy. My strategy has always been rapid expansion in order to block the expansion of all other factions while keeping good relationships with them all. That's where a high-level leader gets really useful. In terms of food, it's mostly about scavenging while farms come later.


























26th Aug 2016

Now skipping steps on the stairs is just effortless - P90X really does work if you try! And by "try" I mean work so hard that you're panting and/or at least some of your muscles ache the following day.

I'm terrible at motivating myself to exercise so I have to keep the difficulty low or the bad memories will just reduce my little bit of motivation to nothing. Hence this is how I definite "try" in this case.
























Day 14 came and went in 7 Days to Die. 58 zombies were spawned in total and wrecked my bottom floor far more than the Day 7 horde did. The first horde only destroyed my doors and made a few small holes in the original cobblestone walls in the house, but this time, several large holes spanning 3-5 blocks were found in those walls. In addition, they dug a pit 1 block deep and probably 10 blocks large after destroying most of the wooden floor at the center of the house almost under the spot I was hiding at throughout the attack.

Fortunately, the center of the house is the least important in terms of structural support for the rest of the house, so my plan now is to turn it into a pit of log spikes where the Day 21 horde can hang out and mingle and make merry. In the meantime, the outer wall has been immediately repaired with either bricks or concrete. IIRC bricks are on par with cobblestone in terms of durability while concrete is at least twice as tough.

As for my emergency exit plans, the sky bridge has been completed. It is a one-way path that hangs above the roof of the adjacent house whose stairs to the ground floor have been removed and covered. The pillars, a necessity whose importance I had learnt the hard way, are reinforced wood surrounded by both wooden spikes and log spikes. Shifting of the bedroll and emergency supplies has become a secondary priority, however, given the extent of the repairs required and the planned construction of the zombie dance floor in the newly formed basement.





















25th Aug 2016 

Looks like the 1234th post is coming soon, with "soon" being relative to the history of mankind.



























Of course I've known all along that the current format is like shyt. I mean, with this layout, it reads like I'm moving forward in time, then leap back, then forward again. Being the lazy slob that I've always been, this was completely ignored. Now, however, since I'm in the mood, let's try something new.

Instead of adding new sections for each date chronologically in each post, they will now be in reverse order. Just a little more work on my end but it should smoothen the reading experience, at least for myself when I'm checking my previous rants.

























Playing a lot of 7 Days To Die on PC recently. My style pretty much is just asking to get wrecked but the thing is that I'm actually trying to see how much it takes for the zombies to destroy a good solid house in the town in Navezgane.

My base is a three-storey house in one corner of the town on the side closest to the river, for obvious reasons and also because it was also easy to get to on my first day. The stairs to the second storey has been destroyed and covered with wooden frames upgraded as much as possible with wood alone. The only way to get to my base in the attic, aka the third floor, is through a series of three sets of ladders on the outer wall that do not touch the ground.

At the point of writing, it's day 11 and the first horde on the 7th day had properly wrecked the first floor, leaving almost no indoor wooden walls intact and even destroyed two to three outer walls that are made of either concrete or cobblestone. I was too new to tell which they required when I repaired the walls afterwards, although I've now made cobblestones and even bricks that I plan to use later to reinforce the house before day 14.

Several layers of spikes have been placed around the house, with the front and back being the most protected. The attic has been further divided into two more floors, with the new fourth floor being the new spawn point complete with a chest of emergency supplies and an emergency exit planned using the other window of the attic. Hay bales have been added at the bottom but I don't really expect that to work out.

Hence a new porch has been planned to be built below that emergency exit with hay bales on top for me to leap onto. Additionally, a more elaborate emergency exit is being planned in which I create a narrow sky bridge between the attics of the houses. This will be made using wooden frames upgraded with wood, perhaps supported by the occasional pillars also consisting of wooden frames. Afterwards, the bedroll will be moved to another corner of town, in another house with the stairs destroyed and covered up and all windows barricaded.

If a major seventh day horde ever gets into the top floor of my base, the idea is that even if I respawn, it will take a while for them to move through the town with all its houses to get to my new spawn point and then break through everything to get to me.

If this doesn't work, then it's time to restart the game and rethink my strategy.

As for the base itself, the first floor is also missing some of the wooden floor blocks, so the plan now is to build reinforced log spikes in most of the holes and covering them with support blocks so that as they destroy the supports, they will have to fall and move through the spikes.

Three more days to finish all these. Hopefully it will work.


























I can do proper chair dips now! Woot!