Rant 693 / Coin Flips

Been spend more time than usual (ie nothing) on Lockerz when I discovered they were offering 3X the PTZ for watching videos for 3 days. I saw that notice only on the second day. So I spent that entire day playing Warband and playing videos (not watching). Spent half of the next day doing the same and the rest at Vic's place. Now I've made an additional 3k PTZ and I see there are some interesting items on the daily auctions at Lockerz, like the Paypal cash.

For an entire day on the 1st of Jan, they only had Paypal cash available for bids. Pretty cool but nothing I found worthy of my bids. Seriously not going to waste all my PTZ just for US$25 when I can get Dragon Age: Origins or even the Blu-ray for the movie Kick-Ass for less. IIRC 45 before the auction ended for Dragon Age: Origins just now the highest bid was around 2k PTZ. Right now, over 1hr before the end of the auction for Kick-Ass, the highest bid is only over 1300PTZ.

None of them are anything I actually want, but they're pretty cheap IMO. A slightly more useful item whose auction is close to ending is this Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo Printer that's currently 5h30m away from closing and the highest bid is only at 2k.

Too bad it's just a photo printer.

There's also a PSP bundled with a few good games that's already at 4k PTZ even though there's still 8 hours left. Hot, and no way I can afford it. It's probably going to go for 10k PTZ or more. I remember there was a Kinect bundle yesterday that came with a 360. Obviously even hotter than the PSP but that was probably the only thing I would have bidded for if I could.

Anyway the 3 days are over but I'm still playing the videos for more PTZ since I can still watch the videos 3 times each. Not much of a hassle when I play everything in Windowed mode.

Another reason that motivates me to do this is that the bids are now less obscene than the first time I saw them. IIRC some even managed to hit 30k PTZ, which I mentioned in a past rant. Or was it 20k?

Then again...

Just came out for 2 hours and it's already too expensive for me.







China announces that it has discovered a way to reuse nuclear fuel. I sense Nobel Prize laureates. IMO this isn't just big, but huge, especially if it could stretch China's known uranium resources to anywhere remotely close to the 3000 years they said it could. Even a thousand years is great TBH, since at our current rate of technological progress humanity will very likely be able to mine other planets for resources in less than half of that length of time.






Empires on my laptop is so bad. It's been so long I've actually forgotten what it was like.

My frames-per-second (FPS) on my desktop was around 130, though it does drop to 10 on rare occasions when the server gets very full (55-60 players). My laptop drops to 9 FPS even when there are only over 20 players and randomly rises to 30+ for a minute or two once in a while.

I can't play except as an engineer and stay back to build/repair stuff. Even then, I can't listen to instructions they say on their mics because the lag makes their voices stutter.

And I'm not even going to talk about the drastic reduction in screen resolution.

Oh well, that means I'm stuck with playing only engineers and grenadiers, and very bad ones at that.







This sucks. I can't pay my UniSIM course fees online now. Apparently this is the norm... except I could do it for my first semester. Why are first-timers given the option of paying online while the rest aren't?

Anyway the rates are quite different from that of NUS and NTU. In UniSIM, fees are charged according to the number of credit units of the modules (aka AU in NTU). The average CU of my modules are 5 (average AU in NTU for me was 3) and they cost me $600. That makes the price of each CU $120. Modules worth 2.5CU (electives mostly) cost $300 and the more serious ones with 10CU cost $1200.

All that do not include the 7% GST.

This semester actually does worry me. 2 modules are Chinese courses while another 10CU module is on the comparison of both languages. Furthermore I picked yet another course beyond the usual 20CU but that's just a 2.5CU elective on the law.

Now I'm considering removing it because I might get overwhelmed by the Chinese-heavy content of the other modules. Wednesday, which is today, is the last day for such changes.

Then again, it's just a small course and it's going to cost me $53.50 to apply for the change.

I wonder if it's got an exam or if it ends with a big assignment. I'd rather get the assignment, obviously. I can't check for that now but I remember seeing exam dates when I first picked the courses. If I had taken any screenshots, they're all in my desktop at Sim Lim Square.







My laptop burns and slows down during battle in Warband. It's more difficult now to KO my enemies with my extremely long Balanced Blunt Tip Lance. I keep missing because the FPS drops and even hangs for half a second when I get close to enemies.







It's strange. 60 years ago China fought against the UN in Korea. Now it's in the UN. It's just hard for the average guy to see how fluid political boundaries are.