Rant 1162 / There Is Not A Single "I" In This Rant.

That auto-translating chat in Game of War is awesome. It's like the Babelfish from Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy but in text form. Somehow it's able to automatically detect which language each person is typing in and immediately translate the text into whichever language the reader is using.

It's not perfect but it's as good as Google Translate IMO. One feature it has that makes it so good is the Correct for Rewards minigame in which players can correct wrongly spelt words for a small reward. However abuse is reduced by removing any incentive for players to spam it nonstop through the 5-word limit for each player every 6 hours. Since there's no reason to play it quickly, we might as well correct the words seriously.

In addition, there are two tiers to this to reduce mistakes. First, we're given the entire sentence with the word highlighted. In the next tier, we are given the sentence and the game makes us choose among 2-4 of the corrected words from players who played the first tier.

























So Shadowrun Returns has just 15 hours of gameplay.

Short, but for the quality of the plot and the price, it was worth it.

Fortunately, the game also has a content editor and there is already at least one custom campaign available, a remake of the SNES Shadowrun game still in alpha stage.

With the amount of hype this game is getting, it's very likely that there will be good campaigns ready in 6 month.






















It's amazing how much stuff  needs to be thrown/recycled every time a part of my home is cleared of old stuff and tidied up. Although this should have been done over a year ago, better late than never, right?

So now all that's been cleared and settled are two shelves and half of my mother's room. The plan is  to clear out as much trash as possible and find a space for one of the wardrobes in my room. How many wardrobes does a guy need anyway?

When the room is done, the entire living room, the balcony, the kitchen and the aforementioned wardrobe will need to be settled. Who knows how long that's going to take at this pace?

Tiring work. While exercises work specific muscle groups, this trash-clearing job uses my entire body, so no specific part of my body is tired - the entire body is tired.

Clearing out trash sounds easy but everything needs to be sifted through so that everything that's thrown away is indeed rubbish or recyclable. At the same time, in order to avoid creating heaps of unsorted stuff, everything that's been sifted through needs to be placed at the right parts of my home, eg screwdrivers go to the hardware drawer and coins go into the piggy bank.

Now my living room is filled with bags and bags of unwanted stuff, mostly faded clothes and ancient leather bags. The relationship between women and their bags is probably one of the most famous (or notorious), so imagine what it's like when after a woman passes on. Plenty of leather to dump, mostly dusty and flaking (bad leather). Some were good but all of them went into recycle bags regardless. Not sure if they're recyclable but who cares? Those recycling company guys will sort them out anyway.

One thing is for sure: there have been and will be a number of happy people after the bags are dragged downstairs to the bins, both the recycling and the trash bins. Just last night (Sunday), we brought down several bags as we went for dinner with my bro's in-laws, and on my way back to the lift afterwards, an old man was at the void deck rubbing the thick layer of dust off one of the old luggage cases we left at the trash chute exit.

Despite being so dusty and with all metal parts very greenishly rusty, someone actually wants it. That's a win-win. There's now more space and less dust in my home; he gets something he finds to be of value.

To be honest, it was a little hard to throw away all the luggage cases. Every single one of them were in perfect condition on the inside; only the metal zips and handles and rivets or whatever were rusty. It took constant mental reminders that nobody here will ever use any case that rusty, so there was no reason for them to be kept here.