Singapore's 3rd episode of severe floods in 2 months. What's up with that? Is it the drainage network at fault or is it really climate change manifesting itself in these downpours?
These rare floods are less rare than we're told to expect. Why?
Late last month, PM Lee warned Singaporeans that they cannot expect the island republic to be completely free of floods.
But we can expect such floods to be actually rare instead of being supposedly rare. I don't remember these many flood reports last year or the year before.
I'm not going all government-bashing now. It's too late for that. I'm no longer pissed, just disappointed.
He also added, “We have to learn from these episodes, do post-mortems, find out what happened, and upgrade our infrastructure and systems.”
I very much agree that this needs to be done. Problem is whether they can adequately upgrade them soon enough and whether they're going to plan far ahead like in MM Lee's day.
I see this flood problem as a symptom of a lack of foresight. Inadequate upgrades, poor maintenance (they wouldn't be clogged if they were good) and lack of supervision of road sweepers (I've seen a few sweeping dead leaves and trash into the drains) are the factors that appear to be causing these floods.
So, will they be looked into? Or are we to be told there are plans while they continue to hire cheap workers that provide shitty services that correspond to their shitty wages?
Star Wars Episode 3 was probably the best of the trilogy. Although some parts were a little abrupt while others were there for no other purpose than to link the film with Episode 4 (why wipe the memories of the droids in the end?), at least most of the acting was good and the story was more or less decent.
I don't know why but the lightsabre fights have been improving as time went on. In Episode 1 and 2, the Jedis seemed to be making poses instead of fighting. I believe it had to do with how they all appeared to slow down at the end of each stroke and felt no impact as the lasers collide.
In the third movie, the fights were much faster and there wasn't time for them to pause at each stroke, hence they looked more like sword fights.
Also, I think I figured out why I disliked Episode 2. It was basically a drama film about teenage rebellion and I have no interest in that.
I think the biggest flaw in this third movie was how the villain was so obvious right from the start. I know it was already easy to tell who Darth Sidius was from the first film but still, they could have tried.
But on the whole, I like the movie. The plot in general was interesting, the fights were realistic and George Lucas finally finished telling the whole story without ruining it any further.
Bridge of Birds was a better book than I expected. Although it started slowly, it became more than just a story of some guy trying to save his village halfway through the novel.
This book was written by an American and set in an imaginary ancient China. A village was struck by a strange plague so they sent one of the men to find a scholar sage who would help them.
Through the point of view of this man, Number Ten Ox, the story was told. Soon he found Li Kao, who actually did have "a slight flaw in his character", as he would say whenever he introduced himself. This man was so intelligent, he stopped being a criminal only because it was more challenging to solve crimes than to commit them.
Together they worked to find this magical ginseng root that would cure the plague. While Number Ten Ox was strong, Li Kao was cunning and not above using underhanded (and sometimes humorous) means to resolve tricky situations.
I'm only about 3/4 through the book but I have to say it was not what I thought it would be when I first read it.
Tried to record a video of my performance in L4D2 but it failed badly. It was supposed to be a record of my gameplay when I'm tired but I ended up with 46% accuracy due to the modifications (mods) used by the host.
A free game on Steam. I have no idea why an online game store would do anything that's unprofitable, but this Alien Swarm is about to be released in a few hours. Copied from the Steam page:
Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community. Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes.
Sounds interesting. Trying it tomorrow.
Holy crap we're getting close to seeing cyborgs that once only existed in sci-fi!
Someday, it's going to get so real it will become part of the field of cosmetic surgery. It won't be just about improving appearances but also for increasing physical strength and dexterity. And what's bad about having an arm that has a USB drive for direct PC connection (and hence control)?
I wonder if this particular arm in the video is the same as the one featured in the National Geographic magazine some months ago. In the magazine the main point about the prosthetics was how they no longer stuck wires into the flesh but instead have some sort of wireless connection between the nerves and the mechanical limb.
Just like the one in the video, they had to wear this shoulderpad-like device, so it might be the same but more advanced. I believe the biggest problem is still about increasing the number of degrees of movement of the arm and hand, ie the number of ways they can move.
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