I rarely use Apple's Map app on my iPad these days, and I have Chrome in it so I can use Google Maps anytime.
Got a multimeter to see how much electricity I use.
Since I suspect that the biggest power guzzler is my PC system, I'm using it on them first. Fortunately they're all plugged into a multiplug so I can simply connect the meter to the multiplug for unified readings.
Yesterday I checked it while watching Livestream with my iPad and mobile router charging on the same multiplug, and I was using somewhere between 190-195W.
In other words, for every hour I do that, I consume 0.19-0.195 kWh.
Without those two, the meter says I use about 175-177W, ie every hour I use around 0.176kWh.
kWh, or kilowatt hour, is the unit of energy used by electric companies to measure energy consumption. A huge machine that's rated 1kW operating for 1 hour uses 1kWh of electricity.
Though 176W may be huge to some computer users, I have a 500W power supply unit in my computer, so this is not that big a deal here.
With Borderlands 2 on in addition to Firefox, things get a little hotter at 250-255W.
Electricity costs $0.2727/kWh from October till December this year, so if I take Borderlands 2 to consume 80W of electricity, then every hour of Borderlands 2 is costing me S$0.021816.
Since Borderlands 2 is supposed to provide about 30 hours of gameplay, then it's going to cost me $0.65 to finish the game.
I just came up with this interesting idea - I could order meal deliveries to my hotel room if I don't see anything interesting during window-shopping trip, or if I go back early due to fatigue.
All that is needed is internet access to search for something other than the hotel's room service.
Actually it won't be really cheap compared to what I can find on my way back to the hotel, but it's restaurant food vs street food. When I'm alone overseas, I feel that it's best not to tempt fate or, in this case, diarrhoea.
Made aglio olio again, except this time with spaghetti and fresh parsley.
I have to say that fresh parsley is seriously overrated. I've been using dried parsley all these months and I feel that fresh ones aren't particularly more flavourful; they just have the additional "fresh" smell.
Also added bacon.
I'm beginning to have this distinct feeling that I may have been mistaken about year-end sales. They may not offer the biggest discounts that I thought they would, just the most numerous.
The right thing to do, I think, was to check out the clearance sales during the last several months.
I'll know soon enough if I'm right.
So the sinus treatment worked but not as well as I expected. Apparently it's because there's still lots of blood crusted in there that I can't feel and are getting covered over by snot until my last appointment a few days ago.
That was when he used some really narrow suction tube to remove them, but he also told me that this won't be the last time I need this.
3D printers are becoming more and more affordable.
I think I saw those on Discovery Channel or something many years back, and now there are stores offering the use of these.
3D printers are actually already affordable enough for homes but the objects they create just aren't practical enough.
There are good reasons why everything is made of different materials, and even among plastic objects, there is a vast range of different plastics that, even when simplified for the convenience of recyclers, can only be reduced to 7 categories.
So when a 3D printer can only use one or a few materials, the number of usable items it can create is extremely limited.
It gets even worse when the those few materials aren't even the main components of common household items.
Someday, when they can use a wide range of materials together (or somehow mix components like 2D printers mix basic colours), they will be a lot more useful. Till then, they are going to remain the expensive curious novelties that they are now.
So Towns and Project Zomboid got greenlit on Steam. Both won't be actually playable via Steam until they're near completion because Steam does not publish unfinished games, and by "unfinished" I mean either alpha or closed-beta.
I like this because Steam makes life a lot more convenient through its automatic updating. Right now, every time Towns gets an update, I have to redownload the game again through a link. Fortunately, it's tiny so it doesn't take long.
Been re-counting my stock and it still surprises me how much of a hoarder my mum was.
Till today, I'm still digging out ancient stocks that even my oldest staff member don't remember.
Most of them are no longer in sellable condition but some of them still could be sold.
Except a sizable proportion of those are either samples, ie 1 piece per design, or fall under categories that don't sell well even in perfect condition.
So now I'm noting everything like that and eventually I will donate all of them to Red Cross. Most likely I'll get my delivery guy to send everything over unless the organization is willing to provide its own. Highly improbable, but who knows? I've got at least 300 pieces of various winter apparel right now ready for donation and I'm still finding new ones every few hours I'm in the office.
These were not found earlier because they're all buried under the newer stocks or placed on top of the shelves where they are close to unreachable. All the easy-to-reach ones are already being sold, albeit very slowly.
Once I'm done with the scavenger hunt, I'll contact the Red Cross and see if they can provide the transportation.
I'll also have to consult my staff to see if it's even theoretically possible to repair whatever defects these items have. They won't have to do it, but after enquiring on whether they accept defective unsold items through email, a representative of the charity asked me if it was possible to repair them.
I'm going to assume he/she meant that volunteers over at Red Cross could handle the QA because I definitely don't want to waste manpower on this. I would if the plan was to sell them, but why go out of my way to help others when I can barely handle things on my end? I think I'm generous enough already by donating what I estimate to be roughly 500 pieces of sweaters, scarves, gloves and vests.
In the past, my mum sold my father's old goods to some unknown person for $0.50 each. I think I could do that too, but it's only $250. I still don't understand why I'm supposed to squeeze every single cent out of everything.
Wanted to buy a compost machine.
I'm sure anyone who has to clean up after feeding a family should have felt that all the leftovers are being wasted in the trash.
Or maybe it's just me. I don't know.
So when I saw an easy-to-use compost machine, I was very tempted to get it. S$300? No problem. It doesn't stink and it recycles my uneaten food.
But then I realized it was going to create too much compost. I don't grow anything in my home, and even if I begin now, I'm not going to be having a whole garden in my flat any time soon.
Heck, I'm not sure if all the old people who grow stuff along the stairs and corridors in my block will need that much compost. This is powerful stuff that only needs to be spread on top of the soil.
Oh well.
Still, I checked the website to see if I can do without a machine, in case I ever want to compost any trash at home in the future.
It's actually pretty simple, and the only thing that isn't is the motorized mixer that stirs the stuff once in a while. To prevent smells, the user just needs to add a little sawdust and baking soda, both of which are very cheap and easy to find even in Singapore, and make sure the browns and greens are balanced.
So basically, if anyone wants to DIY a compost machine, it's just a sealed bucket with a mixer. In fact I don't think the mixer is absolutely necessary because it merely speeds up the process. The user can just mix everything really well and don't open it at all for two weeks.
This is less convenient than the commercial one because that allows more trash to be added at any time.
So I'm planning to leave my PC on throughout my overseas trips so that I can use Teamviewer at any time. I'll also leave the monitor unplugged. It's not extremely useful but I feel safer in having access to my PC at any moment.
Democracy is based on the ideal that everyone is equal.
But that assumption isn't true at all.
The powerful don't have to force their own opinion on the rest, they just have to keep telling them their opinion.
It's like Coke's advertisement campaigns. They just have to keep telling everyone to drink it and now it's pretty much the default drink for a sizable portion of the world. In fact it's my beverage of choice when I have no idea what's on the menu and don't really give a damn about it as long as it's cold. Coke's everywhere and is almost always served cold, so it's the safest option in the world.
But Coke's neither the best-tasting soft drink not the healthiest.
The point is that the actual quality does not matter as much as the opinions of the people.
Same with governance.
In the story of capitalism vs communism, there is arguably no real evidence to date to prove that communism sucks, because every communist country is hit by sanctions by most of the developed world. It wouldn't be fair to compare the running speed of a normal man with that of one who has only one leg.
Or we can look at Singapore. Nobody can honestly say that we're a democratic country, yet we're doing pretty well today for a tiny island in the middle of a region that has never been known for its economic stability.
Yet the thing is that even in the most horrific of living conditions, people don't seem to want to change the status quo. Look at certain countries in Africa. Those people would rather war with each other for generations without fully understanding why their ancestors started fighting in the first place than work together for a better life. Or North Korea, where they would rather let millions of the friends and family starve to death than overthrow their dictator. Regardless of whether it is suicide for the civilians to fight against the military, dead is dead whether they starved or got shot, but at least one of the two options has a chance of changing things for the better. And what about the soldiers? Clearly they prefer the slow death of millions of their countrymen to changing the status quo.
I think we're simply more tolerant than we think we are.
In other words, it doesn't even matter what kind of governance we have, as long as the people think it works... and there are people alive to keep the government powerful.
As for the best type of governance, it's one that makes the right decisions at the right time. There isn't a specific name for it because any type of government will do.
The real problem is with picking the best minds to find out what the right decisions are and getting things done punctually.
Why does this supplier keep bullshitting me? Her acrylic-and-wool mix is so different from this legit (and expensive) acrylic-and-wool mix sweater I bought from a branded store. The ratios are the same, so it's a fair comparison.
Ugh.
Since there aren't many shops that still sell those small packets of used stamps in Singapore, I managed to find some online.
The shipping makes everything significantly more expensive but it's not like I'm buying the much heavier albums.
Also, there are stamps from countries that I don't have at all but am interested in, like those from North Korea.
Anachronox. I had watched a bit of it on a stream and found it interesting, so when it was 60% off on GOG I just had to get it. Got it for around S$3 (US$2.39) and I think I've got more than my money's worth of gameplay already.
Only just got out of Sunder so it's in the earlier part of the game, according to the walkthroughs whose table of contents I had scanned through quickly while searching for something.
Though most of the sidequests are straightforward, they are not recorded anywhere so sometimes when I forget a detail or miss a word here and there, I get confused. Hence the walkthroughs.
Game's fun but not the kind that makes me forget my meals.
Speaking of forgetting my meals, for some strange reasons my work is making me do that.
Anyways Anachronox is a Western-made RPG that feels like a JRPG. It's got the same battle system and ancient 3D graphics as FF7, as many kawaii lolis as Planescape: Torment, and costs a lot less than any of these games today.
The game did try to improve on the battle system by adding a movement action on a kind of grid-based battlefield, but when most battles begin with the enemies only 1 grid away from you, it's usually redundant.
For some reason, the guys also thought it would be a good idea to seriously jack up the dodge rate of both us and the enemies. This resulted in unpredictable battles in every encounter except for the really easy ones.
The story is decent enough. The protagonist, Boots, is a private investigator aka private detective who's been having a shitty time so far. I'm not sure if he deserved it, but he did digitize his dead secretary's mind to keep her... undead I guess... and she didn't like that. Kinda like the Spy in the Medic's fridge, except more useful since she forms the menu system in the game and gives you hints for your main quests.
So when Boots got defenestrated for owing some big shot money, he finally decided to actually try to get a job. Then blah blah blah, and they discovered that Mystech is magic.
Yea, sci-fi with magic.
Also, the battle system feels pointless after a while. I'm playing on normal difficulty and there's no challenge at all! Moreover, the battles are so rare and short. Encounters are based on zones. You step into an area that is marked by the presence of monsters and you get a battle. They die but do not respawn.
I feel that the battle system was just badly made, either because it was forced into the game or whoever was in charge of that part of the game sucked at his job. So in the end it was more of an interactive movie than a game, with some exploration (for secret loots) thrown in.
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