Rant 257 / Veni, Veni, Veni.

Watched the 3 SC games between stork and Backho. Backho was simply amazing while stork's ability to repel attacks was just what I expected from one of the best Protoss player in existence.

The moment I remember most was in one of the battles, when Backho managed to keep his Reaver alive several times despite 3 Dragoons shooting at it while its HP was red. He managed to pull his Reaver into his Shuttle more than 3 times in a row just a microsecond before the Dragoons' shots reached the Reaver. 3 times I thought the Reaver was dead, just to be proven wrong when it popped out again from the Shuttle to attack something. I was thinking," Didn't the shots hit the Reaver just now???!?!?" They all almost did. If you didn't see that battle, you don't really understand the definition of the word "almost".

stork, on the other hand, managed to pull himself up despite several mad tricks Backho pulled during the 3 rounds.







Now that I've played Left4Dead for more than a day, I've learnt that there were several mistakes in my previous rant about the gameplay.

First, the Tank is a special zombie that is assigned to a random zombie team member and only appears once in each round.

Second, all zombie bosses have 2 attacks only. The Tank can throw huge objects and bash people. The Hunter can Pounce on survivors (thus disabling them) and claw. The Smoker can use his tongue to pull people (thus disabling them) and claw. The Boomer can vomit on survivors (which attracts normal AI zombies to them) and claw. The Smoker creates a small area of smoke when it dies. The Boomer explodes and hurt everyone in a small radius when it dies. The Hunter and Tank just die.

The Hunter is the easiest to use because it totally relies on the element of surprise. Ideally, it should make the survivor it pounced on go "WTF?" And this works best on noobie stragglers when they're alone.

The Boomer really needs a lot ofstrategic knowledge of the maps because it moves slowly and dies easily. It must know where the best places are for it to attack, especially places where it can hide till the survivors come close.

The Smoker also needs some strategic knowledge and cunning because its tongue is breakable and cannot pull people over obstacles. It is also very weak, which totally works against its attack which must be performed in direct line of sight. Means you must pull the guy towards you when both of you can see each other. Which calls for much teamwork for a Smoker to succeed.

The Tank is the tank. It can take fuckloads of damage and its bash throws people back some distance and stuns them for half a second. People don't shoot at it if they have grenades to throw, because guns aren't too effective against it. It's throw can also stun people for half a second. This guy is best used as the trigger of a full-team attack. Everyone should support this guy while he stuns everyone and block their view.

Unless the server is on Easy mode, which makes the Tank too weak to do much.

I've only been the Tank once, and my team managed to take down 2 guys when I attacked. I totally raped one of them by bashing them to a corner and kept bashing the same guy while throwing stuff at the others once in a while. The rest of my team used the opportunity to do their stuff, especially the Hunters. Oh I love Hunters, whether they're controlled by me or not. Unless I'm a survivor, of course.

There's also the Witch, which is always AI-controlled. It is a zombie that keeps crying until someone shines his flashlight on her. Walking near her does nothing; only the light triggers her attack. One hit from her will knock a survivor down. Then she'll proceed to claw him to pieces. If no one disturbs her, her constant crying is still extremely creepy. Really adds to the atmosphere.

And the last thing I must mention is that the music's great. It changes abruptly every time something happens. Like when you die, suddenly the music would end and change to the very calm piece. Which is the perfect match for your state of mind, because the moment you die, all the fighting stops. One moment, you're looking at the last millimetre of HP you have and spamming bullets like there's no tommorrow and in the next moment, every stops - you're dead.






Almost finished the second book of Thomas Covenant. It's so good it's hard to sleep at night. This is the sort of book that makes you read till you get so tired you don't know what you're reading anymore.

Though only a few days had passed for Thomas before he was re-summoned back to the Land, it was forty years for the Land since his last departure. This time, another guy from his world was there too. Hile Troy was part of a think tank for the US Department of Defense, one of those people who makes all those plans that the military uses. In the Land, he became the top general for the good guys.

Also as bitter as ever. I can understand him, somewhat. He had seen some examples of lepers who had too much hope in life and tried to live normally, thus harming themselves. Leprosy attacks nerve cells, so lepers may not know when they get hurt. What worsens this is that their wounds don't heal easily. Thomas believes that lepers should stay focused on what they have and constantly remind themselves that they are different from others.

However, all much of what was written about leprosy are actually untrue today. This book was written in the 70s and the effective treatment used today was first proposed in 1981.

The cause of leprosy is bacteria, which until recently, was unidentified. This is because there is no way to cultivate this bacteria in labs due to its genes. Though molecular genetics has helped us find out what bacteria are the root of this problem, how it is spread is still unknown. Pretty scary. One day, a person may wake up to find sores on his body and not know what it is. Then he goes to the doctor and the doc says it's leprosy. Then both go "Wtf?" because none knows how he got it.

The only assurance we can have is that it's notoriously hard to get infected. It is estimated that 95% of all humans are immune to leprosy.

I believe the author had little knowledge of medieval battles, so he really didn't describe much in the way of strategies, unlike the Wheel of Time and the Sword of Truth. He did, however, described the effects of forced marches pretty well. In this book, the army which forced marched for a few hundred leagues, its condition became terrible and over half the men were abandoned because they were unable to catch up near the end. In contrast, the Red Hand in WoT seemed to be comprised of the usual armies but were able to withstand long forced marches and fight well at the same time.

In A Song of Ice and Fire though, there was little emphasis on the common soldier unless he was part of the main cast. Except for the part where some soldiers no longer knew which lord he was fighting for because so many of the lords they served had died, and each time they were transferred to the winners of the battles. Probably because there is no space for anyone else but the main cast.

Damn, I'm still waiting for the next book. I certainly hope he doesn't die before the end could be written, like Robert Jordan and the WoT.










This is what's happening in Gaza. Note the wedding ring. This guy had a family.

The luckier ones, or the unfortunate ones, depending on your view.

This is war. The real sort.

Now they're even hitting a UN school. Notice though Bush has commented on this attack, Obama has yet to condemn this attack. This may be partly due to the fact that he has, in the past, made public statements regarding strong US support for Israel. Now he's screwed. Bush, though, is defending Israel, mentioning its desire to protect itself. I don't know if this is true but is he trying to be a lightning rod for the country? I mean, he's done nothing for the whole 8 years except to do everything in his power to make the world hate him. And I've got to say he's pretty successful at that.

However, Hamas isn't very innocent either. Victim it may seem to be now, most of the civilian casualties are actually caused by them. Hamas militants are known to blend into the civilian populations and, at times, use women and children as decoys and shields. Freaking low, both sides of the conflict. This is so disgusting. Both sides are losers. No one can win in battles like these.

The UN has proven itself useless yet again in preventing wars. Just like its predecessor, the League of Nations, the UN is just plain BS. Just a bunch of politicians trying to make themselves look more useful. The League was unable to prevent WW2. I don't see how the UN can prevent WW3 if it can't even stop tiny Israel from attacking Palestine.

I'm not ready for another WW.

But the conditions are getting closer. The tinder is getting dry. Food and oil prices going up means civil unrest. People tend to get unhappy when things become expensive. When the masses are unhappy, they can become unreasonable and emotional. But it needs to be drier still.

They should just nuke Israel and Palestine. No, just kidding. In a way.




Here's a news article of an American pro cop. Shot and killed a handcuffed guy. At first they denied he was handcuffed, but thank goodness we have handphone cameras today. Now they're saying he mistook his gun for a taser. Pro. Just pro. Wonder what sort of retarded tests they have their in the police training centres.

The US is just so full of interesting news.