This really isn't impossible, but it requires more miniaturization than we have today. The computer doesn't need to be in the tiny device, only a modem, a microphone and a projector. Hell, it might as well be a handphone. The real computer will be somewhere else, maybe at home. The device would really be just the input/output device that maintains a direct connection with the master computer all the time in addition to the Internet connection.
I think this is quite similar to what they call cloud computing.
One problem would be the radiation issue. The current mobile modem from Starhub has a warning printed in small fonts in the users' manual that says the user should stay outside a radius of 2cm from it. Maybe the device could be coated with lead on one side of it.
Disciples III! I have practically forgotten about it until now. It's going to be released in Fall 2009, which should be soon.
The Disciples games have always lost to HoMM in terms of complexity and one major shortcoming of this game is that players have to upgrade their units by using them in battle. In the first two games, its battle system is very simple, but units are only available in the lowest rank. As players use them to win battles, they gain experience points and upgrade themselves.
I hated that. It makes it impossible to have secondary armies later in the game because there usually aren't any weak monsters in the map left to kill.
The best thing about the games is that their units look much cooler than those in HoMM. They may look drab at lower levels, but the high levels units reward the player with both their battle capabilities and looks.
Their music is great too, better than those in HoMM, but are usually darker in tone. Most of them sound evil and/or supernatural.
The 3rd battle music is my favourite among the DII soundtracks.
There isn't an impressive trailer for Disciples III, even their E3 trailer is somewhat dull. All the above are from Disciples II.
So it seems by the time I feel so hot that I have to turn open my windows and doors, it's at 31-32 degrees Celsius already. I just took this old pencil-holder someone bought and left next to the TV and placed it next to me out of curiosity, and it has this thermometer on one side of it.
My room is hot.
According to this thermometer, it takes about 5 hours to bring the room temperature from 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, with my desktop switched on for the later 3. This temperature then gradually rises to 31-32 until I open up the windows and doors, then stabilize at 31 for the rest of the day.
This is why I have a fan at full blast almost all the time at about 30cm away from myself, which annoys me sometimes when I handle paper.
They say that admitting your weaknesses is the first step to improving yourself. They say facing the self that you don't like to see is the most difficult stage of the process.
Well, I say they were wrong. I've been saying that I'm lazy for years and I'm still lazy. I'm so lazy, I wake up from my afternoon nap (weekends) so that I'll be punctual for bedtime.
Nah I'm exaggerating slightly here. I wake up for dinner, not bedtime.
Sometimes I am tempted to go on sleeping when I wake up in the evening, but I don't want to end up like before, when I woke up at 12am feeling refreshed then get sleepy in the late morning or early afternoon. I prefer to do that in the holidays instead, when I have the freedom to sleep and wake up at any time I want.
After all the talk about democracy and capitalism, the US is leaning more and more towards communism. If the government has the power to adjust the salary of top executives of a corporation, it is getting close to what is usually defined as nationalised. It is quite possible that someday, this would be cited as why capitalism doesn't work, while there is no real example that proves that communism isn't possible.
It's like how the salaries in China is capped at certain amounts by the government.
Why do you visit blogs? Why do you want to know about things that aren't exactly out of the ordinary? Why would learning what someone ate for lunch yesterday interest you?
Why are you reading this?
There are now videos of people unpacking stuff they received from Lockerz. If this is really a scam, it is amazingly elaborate. I'm more inclined to believe it's real but they have very limited stock for everything.
Lots of members are also unhappy that they didn't get anything from the website because either they were too slow or they were busy during those times. Now some are asking Lockerz to change the system to such that they can all order something, but the stuff will go to the first orders until they're out, then the rest of the orders become backlog.
I can see how they're going to accumulate such a huge backlog that within a month or two people will be ordering stuff they won't see till a work year later. So this suggestion was ignored.
This month's issue of National Geographic was about redwoods. These trees are able to grow to prodigious sizes. In one photo, the climbers seemed like ants compared to the tree they were climbing.
They are so big, their branches can support a whole ecosystem on their own. Because of their width, they accumulate dead leaves and stuff which become dirt and new plants can grow in them. Then insects inhabit these dirt and even tiny aquatic bugs can survive in the pools of water that collect on these branches. Water creatures in the sky!
And did I mention their branches are large enough for new trees to grow on?
About the Tower of Babel, so the Jewish God got pissed by humanity working together to build a tower so high it touched the heavens. But don't we have quite a few of those now? Many skyscrapers are tall enough to go beyond the lower clouds, and they serve a worse purpose than the Tower of Babel - they are built to make a name for only certain groups of people.
If that isn't enough, we also have rockets, a space station and even plans to send men to the Moon. If the Jews are right and their God is real, he must be having a stroke for the past few decades.
Reinstalled and finished Culpa Innata. I had completed about half the game a long time ago on my laptop, so it took only an hour or so to bring myself back to where I stopped. This time my computer can handle Alt-Tabs without crashing, so I used Firefox to search for hints whenever I got stuck.
This game has a lot of loose ends. The plot is like a Y-shape, and the entire game only covers the two upper strokes without tying both together. So it's like having two separate plots bound only by the fact that the protagonist is involved in them. The next game is about to be released and what information was revealed in past interviews state that all the dots will connect in this sequel.
This is a point-and-click sci-fi adventure game that revolves around the the only playable character, Phoenix Wallis, who is a Peace and Security Officer, ie policewoman in our world. The fictional world is set in the future in which the world's governments have been reformed into 2 groups - the World Union which consists of all of today's developed nations and much of Africa, and the Rogue States. The rest of the world are either WU-controlled or labelled Unexploitable for some reason.
The game is all about Phoenix's investigation into a murder case, in which a WU citizen was murdered in Odessa, Russia, now a Rogue State. As the clues are revealed, another set of curious clues can be found that lead to something quite unrelated. While Phoenix works in official capacity to find out who killed Mr Bogdanov, the player can look out for clues as to why a certain NGO working for world peace seems to be secretly inciting chaos in its kiosks through which citizens donate money to them.
Spoiler Alert!
After finding out that a Russian Mafia family was responsible for the murder, the game ends with the representative of the Gambino family being arrested and Phoenix is sent to Russia to find the hitman. The other plot reveals a possible truth of the society, that she may have found the true masters working behind the scenes.
Though the story is a little unsatisfying (especially the secondary plot since the player is not told what their purpose is and what their role is in the world) and the game started a little slowly, it ended with too many loose ends for players to ignore the next game.
What's up with Starhub tonight? I've been getting really bad pings inconsistently. Definitely not my wireless connection since I've been pinging my router.
Something is wrong with either my tiny thermometer or my air-conditioner. This morning just before I turned it off the thermometer read 20 degrees Celsius. First time I read it so quickly because usually I just assume the room temperature to be what I set in my aircon.
OMG! There's actually an academic institution dedicated to the study of sex. It's "not accredited" though, which probably means its degrees aren't recognized in most places. Then again, how cool it must be get a degree for fuck's sake.
Coursework, depending on the degree, can include hands-on training. ^.^
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Spoiler Alert!
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Spoiler Alert!
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Rama II is the sequel to the sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama. Just like some reviews said, it is written in a more personal way. The first book was totally about describing how Earth had changed by the year the book was set in, how there were colonies on several planets and moons, and how the cosmonauts (no idea why they used this Russian term instead of the modern American "astronaut") explored the alien spaceship Rama.
Rama II was... disjointed. The first half of the book seemed to focus on a conspiracy to make certain members heroes. An ambitious journalist wanted the greatest story in history written by herself and worked to control the entire project to get the most sensational news.
Then the book focused on one of her victims, the doctor on board who suspected that she had poisoned the commander in charge. The doctor, trapped in a pit in this second Rama, then found sentient lifeforms that weren't organic robots. Though unable to communicate, they seemed to understand her situation and gave her food.
Eventually another member of the ship's crew went against his orders and went out to search for her, only to find themselves unable to return to the human's ship. This is where the interesting part begins.
They found a computer of sorts and because he was a robotics specialist (I think), he was somehow able to decode the alien computer language within days. It turned out one of the things the computer could do was communicate with some sort of factory on board which could create anything, as long as they could inform it about the chemical structure.
With their elementary understanding of the computer and the doctor's expertise, they were able to create disgusting but nutritious food to survive. Eventually they were able to enlist the aid of the aliens (not likely to be the Ramans) and flew back to their own ship.
Nowhere in this part of the book, ever since the two found each other, was the conspiracy ever expanded upon again. It's like it didn't matter even though it didn't seem completed. By the time they returned, everyone had gone and the ship was rendered useless. After that, only three people were on board Rama and the rest of the crew were never mentioned again.
It's like these were written separately. They might as well just cut the first half and paste the second half into the third book. The third book seemed more interesting since it was all about them surviving on Rama, which was flying away from Earth and into deep space. This probably means they will never return home again. Haven't finished it, but it seemed to have more potential than Rama II.
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End of spoiler.
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End of spoiler.
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Spoiler Alert Again!
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Spoiler Alert Again!
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Also finished the Watchmen comic. It ended slightly different from the movie in that the thing that killed half of New York was not some sort of explosion, but a psychic giant monster that sent huge wave of psychic energy filled with horror when it died after being teleported into New York. According to Ozymandias, all living things die upon being teleported by machines he had developed even though he was trying to recreate this particular power of Dr Manhattan. Also, they explode if they teleport into space that is already occupied.
This was probably removed to reduce the work for the artists and it seemed pointless to create such a huge monster that wouldn't appear for more than a few seconds in the film. The explosion was simpler and the story ended the same way, with Manhattan leaving Earth forever.
It is also until I read the comic that I understood what Manhattan was experiencing. In the movie, his interaction with time was not depicted clearly. It seemed he was able to foresee the future, but that isn't what he was doing.
Dr Manhattan exists in all points in time in his existence simultaneously. He was in five minutes ago, now and five minutes in the future at the same time. He acted like a normal person only because that was what was supposed to happen. He knew what was going to happen not because he saw it, but because he was already living it.
A normal person, given this circumstances, may only be able to mind one part of the time. He may only be able to control himself at a certain point of time, like a person with 1000 computers playing different games simultaneously can only use one computer at a time. But that is how Dr Manhattan was god-like - he could use all the computers at the same time, if time meant anything to him. If time is a continuous slideshow, he was looking at all the slides at once.
The comic was clearer in this way. The movie was misleading.
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End of spoiler again.
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If you're worried your great-grandchildren are going to run out of names for huge numbers of bytes of computer memory, fear not - we are very well-prepared.
A computer with an Omegabyte of RAM and hard disk space. Ah, dreams.
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