Rant 757 / April Fools' Day 2011

No I'm not doing anything for this year's April Fools' Day. Didn't come up with anything interesting. Wanted to embed an invisible music player but didn't want to break the trust of visitors too often. I can understand this because there have been times when I visit 4chan only to be greeted loud gay music blasting through my headphones when I wasn't expecting it. Not a pleasant experience.








Trying out Mythos currently. It's based in the EU but is open to everyone around the world. No idea what's going to happen with the US version.

Initial impression: it's such a Diablo 2 ripoff.

There are 4 races and 3 classes, although each of the latter can be further split into sub-classes that are close to the standard MMO classes.

Races: Human, Gremlin, Satyr and Cyclops
Classes: Gadgeteer, Bloodletter and Pyromancer

So far I've only tried a Cyclops Bloodletter and as far as I can tell, one can play as a summoner, a tank or a DD by choosing the proper skill tree. In fact I believe all 3 classes can be played as summoners. The Pyromancers have that big fire golem, the Gadgeteers have their robots and the Bloodletters have two types of minions.

Race only affect stats AFAIK, eg Cyclops have more Str.

Gameplay is so D2-like. Go into a dungeon, kill stuff, pick up loot, open chests/trash piles, etc. The sounds for loot dropping and chest opening are so similar to those from D2.

Anyway it's not really worthwhile to go through all the troubles to get a beta key for the current closed beta since there will a wipe before open beta begins on the 12th of April. Open beta doesn't require a beta key.

Currently I'm unsure what is supposed to make this game stand out other than the unusual races and classes. Gameplay is pretty normal as far as I can tell after hitting level 7.








Facebook personalities apply to people outside of FB too.

The women surveyed were also asked to indentify personality types they were friends with on Facebook.  The results are as follows:

65 % were friends with a "documentarian" - someone who constantly documents his or her life
61 % said they were friends with "a drama queen"
57 % were friends with '"a proud mama"
46 % were friends with "a liker" - someone who constantly "likes" Facebook posts
40 % were friends with "a poser"
35 % were friends with a "frenemy - an enemy whom both parties pretend is a friend
30 % were friends with a "one upper" - someone who constantly tries to do things better than others.
26 % were friends with an "airbrusher" - a person who alters photos to appear more attractive

I think it's obvious which one I am, except I don't do it on Facebook.

Maybe someday there will be a field called "Internet psychology" just because people behave very differently online and IRL due to various reasons including anonymity and different tools available to netizens.







A few comments in the Spam box look too legit to be spam. How did they get there? What's Google trying to accomplish by categorizing every single comment posted in this blog as spam? 他们真的宁可杀错，不可放过? (Translate: they would really rather kill the innocents than let the guilty ones escape?)

While trying to translate the above, I was somehow reminded of yet another difference between the two languages.

In Chinese, having a noun as the subject in a sentence is not always necessary. While English can almost never omit the noun and escape the standard templates of SVO (subject-verb-object), SVOC (subject-verb-object-complement) and etc, Chinese only requires a predicate(谓语) in its sentences (eg 下雨了。).

A predicate, in English, is always a verb, so to English users, predicate may as well be synonymous with verb. But in Chinese, a predicate can be formed by the following 4 categories:

- verbs (他走了。)
- nouns (昨天星期四。)
- adjectives (她很美。)
- subject-predicates (我手脚灵活。)

The predicates are underlined in the above examples. I could translate the example sentences but in order to do that, I'd have to add in missing words that would beat the purpose.

Anyway, it's ok if a student says in class,"老师，上厕所。(direct translation: teacher, go washroom.)"

In Chinese, that's a perfectly correct sentence whose purpose is ask the teacher for permission to go to the washroom. In English, the exact same sentence would be telling the teacher to go to the washroom.

This is a simple example (but often used by younger students in Singapore in both languages) to show how a subject noun is not a requirement in Chinese sentences but is of absolute importance in English.







OMG! Wendy's is having a promotion for its Double Stack Combo.

$9 for 2 Double Stack Combo plus 2 6oz Frosty. There's a Wendy's that replaced the BK at Holland V some months ago but I'm too lazy to go there just for this.

Meanwhile, McDonald's come up with "new" products using old ingredients.

Kind of interesting but the ideas are getting old. The salad's been done by KFC long ago using their popcorn chicken. The Double is an ancient idea that's been used on every burger MCD has on its menu.

The question is, why isn't BK responding this time?

Are they... chickening out?