Rant 476 / Laws.

Remedial Training was not as hard as I expected, but was still pretty strenuous. The first actual session involved only some "light" physical training followed by a 3km run. "Light" is a subjective term though.

The RT sessions made me realize how much the strength of my arms and fingers have degenerated since my surgery. I find that I cannot even maintain my grip on the chin-up bar now, which was certainly embarrassing but I was not alone.

Despite being officially excused from upper limb exercises, I decided to go ahead with them. It is not a good thing to let the degeneration continue or remain in this condition. In fact I find my lack of strength in my fingers alarming. Something needs to be done about that.

As for my jogging stamina, I'm now definitely back to my pre-NS standards. In other words, I can't run to save my life. Ugh, life.












As for Face of Mankind, the troubles never end. Actually it ended for my faction when we got back our colony (KD) plus our original home (Tokyo). Now that the war between the Eurocore/BoS alliance and the Global Dominion has ended (with Eurocore and CMG exchanging Necar's Field and Paris, and BoS taking Titan Station leaving the Mercenaries homeless), the Senate passes a new bill that basically makes the police faction (LED) pretty much godlike.

In addition to allowing the LED to patrol our base colonies (personally it feels like letting the police patrol your room), it also seems to allow them to do anything they want with line 7.2:

• Terrorism:
  • 7.1.Conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks against Global Dominion personnel and facilities (F)
  • 7.2.Committing terrorist attacks against Global Dominion personnel and facilities (F)

What exactly defines "terrorist attacks"? That is not stated, hence one can easily interpret this as "anything that pisses them off". It's not just about firing guns at them or throwing grenades, but even something as small as saying vulgarities can be a terrorist attack.

Surprised? Here's why: according to dictionary.com, one of the definition of the word "terrorist" is "a person who terrorizes or frightens others." Hence if you're hurling expletives or even un-holstered your gun (a very common action in the game), you can be considered as "frightening", hence you're a terrorist, hence you can be arrested.

Therefore, this bills makes it possible that we cannot do anything against them if they harass us legally. There are many ways to do so in the game, like repeatedly sending trade requests and verbal abuse.

Lots of people are unhappy about this, but somehow I think it just makes the police more similar to their real life counterparts.












Been discovering some new mods included in Beyond the Sword expansion for Civilization IV. Final Frontier was the first one I tried and it was pretty good. The new system of colonizing star system instead of placing your city anywhere you want, and the ability to build multiple copies of the same buildings per star system makes the game much more interesting.

I have only two complaints for this mod. The first is the lack of tools to make my citizens happy. Only the sporting arena and the Religion Value seems to raise happiness level. This means if I didn't found this Value and I'm too far from the founder, I will never be able to please my people. Second is the lag. It is so bad when it is the AI's turns to move that the game actually becomes "Not Responding" according to Windows for a few seconds. It's like risking a crash every time I hit the End Turn button.

The other mod is the After World, a complete change of the game. Instead of an empire building simulation, this mod is a turn-based tactical combat game. Each unit has different upgrades when they gain levels which makes it fun to play.

The best thing about these mods is that they can be played together with FoM when both are in windowed mode. Perfect combination.