Rant 424 / The Games I Grew Up On Are Now "Retro".

There are already people who grew up on Halo 1, who feels nostalgic when they see that game.

I feel nostalgic when I see SimCity 2000 and D/Generation.

I still remember those days when I watched my bro play D/Gen. Yea I watched him play because my reflexes have never been as fast as his. He was the one who went all the way to the last floor of the building but died before we could find the final boss.

D/Generation was a kind-of-3D puzzle/RPG/arcade game that required me to deliver a package to some dude 10 floors above where I arrived. Apparently the entire building was taken over by genetically engineered monsters that have escaped from wherever they were held. The building's automatic defense system had also gone rogue, killing everything that moved.

So the game was all about dodging the defenses and monsters and rescuing hiding survivors and killing the monsters when possible. And we gave up when we didn't save before going through quite a bit (can't remember how much we completed after the last save) and finally reaching the final floor... and died.

Speaking of nostalgic games, I also remember the first console I had was the Game Boy. Nothing much to speak of, really. The best games were probably some card and mahjong games.

Then came Game Gear. Despite the horrendous amounts of batteries it devoured, it had the best games we had ever played. Fortunately we had the power cord for it so batteries were needed only when we were travelling.

The most memorable games must have been Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. Now Ninja Gaiden is a famous game series, but back then I didn't even know the game by its English name.

Shinobi was our favourite game, probably because its gameplay was the most unique. We didn't really understand the story, but what we gathered from playing was that the Red Ninja had to save his 4 fellow Ninjas and enter Neo City.

Each Ninja was different:

Red Ninja attacked with a simple katana slash and his Ninjitsu was an earthquake that destroys obstacles and kills everyone on the screen.

Pink Ninja threw bombs as the normal attack and could walk on ceilings. (See the puzzle element?) His ninjitsu was a lousy flash that stunned enemies.

Yellow Ninja attacked with a ball-lightning-like thing that could charge up by holding the attack buttons (found it useful only when max) and could walk on water. His ninjitsu was temporary invulnerability. This was the worst ninja in the game, in our opinion. Only useful thing was his ability to walk on water, which was required in some parts of the game.

Blue Ninja was our favourite ninja. His attack was the chain that could kill enemies and could hook onto certain stuff so that he could swing like Tarzan across giant gaps. His ninjitsu turned him into this whirlwind that killed anything it touched and could fly. Basically this was the ninja who could get to almost anywhere and kill everything while it moved.

Green Ninja was the ninja we usually left to the last to get because it really couldn't do much. It flings shurikens at enemies and could double-jump. His ninjitsu was to make himself explode, which was a more powerful version of Red's earthquake. The catch was that it costed 1 life (when we ran out of lives, Game Over).

This is a small bit of my childhood, I guess. While everyone else was watching Sesame Street, we were killing ninjas.



I know this is obvious, but the guy who played it in the video had either lost his touch or just suck. I remember when we played this part of the game, our flawlessness could be taken for granted. On the other hand, we were pretty fanatical about it... Even the music, in my mind it was associated with "EASY".







I always thought the last boss of the Woodland stage was weird. I mean, a giant floating face?



At many parts of these videos, I feel like I'm watching myself play because it was exactly like the way we used to play it.



From 2:18 onwards, I can honestly say that I've never gone past this level before. Everything from that point on was new to me when I watched it.

If you thought that game was easy, you were very wrong. It took an incredibly long time to figure out where to go, which ninja to use at which part and which doors to enter. With the limited number of lives the player had, mistakes meant huge frustration, especially at Neo City. Also, there is no save option in this game, so if we had to stop to do homework/eat, we had to shut it down. Lots of missed opportunities there.

Ninja Gaiden! Not as interesting as Shinobi, really an inferior game. Didn't help that when I was playing this game I had no idea what those English words meant. Nothing in the game helped me understand the plot either but slicing up ninjas is, nevertheless, fun.



The most memorable part was Stage 3, where he climbs between 2 skyscrapers. It was the most exciting part of the game. Now that I'm watching this, it looks rather insane. Those half-naked guys who try to throw kicks at you in that scenario just makes no sense whatsoever.



We may have beaten the final boss. Can't remember. All its 3 forms are familiar to me, but I don't remember the ending. That doesn't mean I never finished it because even if I had beaten the game I wouldn't have understood what it was saying in the ending scene.

Too bad the guy who recorded the 5th stage didn't want to record the ending, and he is the only one to record this part.

Never did buy the sequels of those games even though they made more for Game Gear. We had no idea where to buy them nor did we know of their existence.












Computers came next. I remember my first computer, an IPC computer with 4MB RAM, which my late father gave my bro and I (we shared) when I managed to get good results for the Streaming Exam (Higher Mother Tongue, LOL I never knew what I was getting into until it was too late T.T).

One of the first games to catch our attention was D/Generation. SimFarm was next, then SimCity 2000 and Colonization.



Couldn't find a video of the entire game, but that's probably because it was too long. Anyway this guy looked like he was playing this game for the first time. By the way those red balls are the A/Generations. You can see how they attack, and they are the easiest to defeat.

The B/Generations were blue cylinders that bounce around like the A/Generations, except when they attacked, they moved faster than the A/Generations and stomped you into a pancake.

The scariest was the C/Generations. They would appear as one of the inanimate objects like a vase or a locker, but when you get close they turn into a black humanoid who runs and beheads you. Worse is that they're immune to lasers that kill the A and B/Generations, so the only way to kill them was to lure them into those pink plasma barriers that bounce around.

That was insanely hard because not only could you not pause to wait for the right timing, but the C/Generation could also run faster than you. Actually you could throw a Grenade to kill it, but Grenades were rare and had to be saved for other situations.

The D/Generation was the final boss which I've never seen. I do not know how it ends and what the D/Generation really was.












Colonization was the next big thing, but I believe I have discussed this game before. Back in those days it took so many tries to figure out what structures did what and we had no idea what to do to win. We didn't understand most of the words, so we didn't even know what the objective was at all.

I tried the game a few years ago and finished it within half an hour.

You play as one of the kingdoms that colonized the Americas, to do as they did. The English had more people willing to migrate to the colonies, the French could convert the natives more effectively who help them in their colonies, the Spanish received much more loot when they sack the cities of the natives and the Dutch could sell more goods to their homeland without inducing a raise in taxes.

I've always played as the Dutch. I didn't need more people and I didn't hate the natives. All I did was exploit the Aztec and Inca people by trading my beads for their silver (no gold in the game, strangely enough), then reselling all my silver to the Netherlands. Making a fortune this way, I built a huge army with only 1 or 2 colonies. This made my territories easy to defend and manage, yet didn't make me suck the way it does in the Civilization games.

That was how I beat the game in my most recent try.




They've remade this game as a mod for Civilization IV last year. This is the trailer.



Gameplay was not too different from the original Civilization IV, but the theme was all Colonization.

Gameplay demo in this link.







There were other games in my collection, but I'll get on to those next time.

Rant 423 / I Torque A Lot So That I Won't Be Too Strained By The Shear Force Of All The Stress I Am Getting

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says


I wonder where the Onion gets all the extras to act as the people getting interviewed in their "news" reports.










One of my professors seems to be really enthusiastic about this clicker thing. It's basically a tiny 12-digit keypad with a wireless modem that we're all issued with this year. All that needs to be done is for the professor to switch on something on his side and we can log into the lecture hall's server.

Now he's going to use it for half of the next test. It's a good idea since it means half the test will be multiple-choice questions. Problem is there is nothing to prove that my answers are received other than the green LED that lits for a second. So far we've done a few trials and it looks fine though.









There is no unintentional spelling mistake in this rant's title.










So my bro installed the Linksys WRT120N Wireless-N router early in the morning. Good thing I haven't been leaving my PC on overnight to download stuff, or I'd be wasting electricity leaving on a PC without a connection to the Internet.

My connection hasn't been improved though. Time to fiddle with the settings. I bet he didn't even bother with that.

Read a little about Wireless-N, found out that it has this little trick known as "channel bonding". So I tried to turn that on in my router (change my frequency from the default "20MHz only" to "40MHz only".

Lost connection, couldn't reconnect. Had to ask my mum to let go of her computer for a min so that I could reconfigure the router through the wired connection from her PC.

So now I know how to turn on "channel bonding" mode in my router but not my adapter. =(

My adapter has its own connection manager but it refuses to be used because it has detected another programme which manages my connections. But the Vista's Network and Sharing Center doesn't give my any option regarding that!











So while I was having dinner I read about dinner. First I was at the Cuttlefish article, then I went on to the Squid article because I didn't know much about their differences.

Now I know 2: their eyes and bones. Cuttlefish pupils are a wavy W shape while squid eyes are similar to our eyes. Cuttlefish have a shield-like bone structure that has a gas chamber for buoyancy control while squids have a feather-shape bone used mainly for growing muscles on.

From squids my curiosity brought me to Giant Squids. Whoa! Those things are monsters! Growing up to a max (deduced from the fact that no one has recorded any sighting of bigger ones) of 13m, they're the reason why krakens exist in fiction.

Above is a dead giant squid frozen in a chunk of ice and preserved in Australia.

Just when I thought those were the biggest, I found the link to Colossal Squid!

LOL! Actually it's a species of giant squids, because giant squids are really just a name for a group of several species of squids that grow to prodigal sizes. Below is a picture of the largest cephalopod ever caught and recorded (the biggest ever recorded was never caught). Cephalopoda is the class of animals that includes octopuses, cuttlefish and squids.

That's... a lot of food, if anyone even dares to eat it. Measuring 4.2m and weighing 495kg, I bet those fishermen really made a fortune with just that one catch of the year, if not decade. I think all my hair would stand if I ever see something like that next to my boat.

Those fishermen weren't even trying to catch it! It was found trying to eat a fish that had been caught on their long line and it didn't want to let go, so they decided to just catch it. And what a catch it turned out to be!

Copypasta from Wiki:

- The beak is considerably smaller than some found in the stomachs of sperm whales, suggesting there are Colossal Squid much larger than this one.

- The eye is 27 cm (10.63 in) wide, with a lens 12 cm across. This is the largest eye of any known animal. These measurements are of the partly collapsed specimen: when living the eye was probably 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) across.

It's eyeballs are bigger than any of our palms and comparable with human heads. @_@











After such a very long time of playing Fallout 3, it's only recently that I detected rumours of nude patches for Fallout 3. There were those for Oblivion, but chicks in Oblivion are fugly. I'm curious, not to mention I'm a straight, sane, red-blooded, male homosapien, so I'm downloading the necessary files just to take a look. How long I look will depend on how good the modders are.

Rant 422 / Chen Shui Bian Was Mad! Retarded And Mad!

Proof of my noobness! I've only got a 66.67% win rate!










Woohoo! A new wireless adapter! This is the Rangeplus Wireless Network USB Adapter that supports the relatively new Wireless-N technology. My bro also bought a new router, again it's Linksys and supports Wireless-N. Now he's eagerly asking me to install it.

Too lazy. I'm not even that enthusiastic about it since I'm not having problems with the present router. Plus I don't need the extra speed since I haven't been downloading much.










I've come to the conclusion that today's singers can't sing for shit. Modern successful singers do not need to sing well to make money.

Welcome to the digital age. Sound can and has been manipulated by Man for a very long time, but now we can make noise into music and vice versa with the latest audio technologies.

Not only that, the human ability to adapt isn't always to our advantage. Throw us enough crap, and even cocoa-coated elephant sphincters would smell like food. We adapt to the complete absence of talent, and suddenly when we're offered something that even resembles the slightest trace of music-making ability, we go crazy over it.

Just listen to The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning by The Smashing Pumpkins, a Youtube video in one of my previous rants. That isn't singing; that's just speaking at the correct notes. They probably didn't even use their abdomens throughout.

But it's music, and an award-winning piece at that.

Or maybe it's that we no longer like the sound of a perfectly controlled human voice. Digitally edited voices have proven to be just as popular. Who cares about Frank Sinatra? Now we have Daft Punk, DJ Tiesto and other musicians who can mix different crappy music tracks into epic masterpieces.

Maybe it's that our tastes are changing, evolving, instead of degrading.









The Watchmen is a pretty good movie. R-rated because the blue guy is naked most of the time and there is some female nudity here and there.

This film is about a group of people named the Watchmen, who are really just normal civilian vigilantes wearing outlandish costumes that do not look the least bit helpful in what they do (except for the Night Owl II who has that really cool goggles). In one of the flashbacks at the beginning it was shown that one of them did die because his cape got caught by the door.

The only thing special about them is that they're all exceptionally fit, and that Rorschach is also incredibly intelligent at the same time.

Ok, not all of them. Dr Manhattan, the blue guy, is the only one who has superpowers. He's practically god-like, being omnipotent and omnipresent if he wants to, but not omniscient. He can see through time but only for himself. He can even manipulate time and space, teleporting his friends and himself to anywhere he wills.

In the story, all of them have retired after a law was passed that outlawed all costume vigilantes. Some went to work for the government but Rorschach, a somewhat insane guy who thinks his mask is his true identity and the identity he was born with is a disguise, continued and is considered a criminal despite putting numerous criminals in jail.

But one day, the Comedian was murdered. Rorschach learnt of it and began to investigate, thus starting the story.

Most of them actually did live up to their names.

Rorschach's name is derived from his mask, which changes continuously into different Rorschach inkblots that display his emotions. Note that the continuously changing mask is impossible to create in real life. I've searched, mainly because it looked really cool.

The Night Owl II is the successor of his idol, the first Night Owl. He has this ship that's shaped like the head of an owl and a pair of special goggles that can see in the dark and identify people. Kinda like Batman, but more out of shape.

Dr Manhattan has relatively little to do with his name since he's not radioactive or anything, except he can control atoms and molecules, among other things.

Ozymandias is actually another name for Ramesses the Great, who is often seen as the greatest of Egyptian Pharaohs. In the story he is also believed to be the smartest man on Earth, building a great corporation after his retirement from fighting crime.

The Comedian is truly a comedian, though his joke(s) is/are not obvious.

The Silk Spectre II is the only one who doesn't have much to do with her name, except maybe by looking pretty like silk. Or maybe she has silky smooth hair. I don't know. Anyway she's the successor of her mother, the first Silk Spectre.

One interesting thing about this film is that the villain is someone you would never guess till they reveal this secret, and even when you think you know it, you probably still don't.

This movie followed the original comic really closely. I think the only thing they changed was the catastrophe, from a fake alien attack to something else. Quite different from all other movies that were created from games/comics/novels.

I think I'm going to add this comic to my cart and skip the last book I was waiting for. Leave that for next time.












The best part is at about 1:06 when he impersonates that movie trailer voice guy. XD










Alright, took a long look at Dungeons and Dragons Online this time, since RoM got too boring and Elements... just doesn't require much of my attention.

I probably didn't turn up the graphics to the max the last time, so now it looks much better. Plus, since I was a beta tester for the free version of the game, they gave me 250 Turbine Points for free, the currency that can be bought with real money like Diamonds in RoM.

It seems in DDO, higher level quests have to be bought. Or at least quests sets are on sale for Turbine Points.

DDO has a very different system compared to World of Warcraft and Runes of Magic. Actually it has little in common with most MMORPGs I've ever played. I know this isn't saying a lot since I haven't much experience in this field.

One huge difference is in its levelling system. Apparently, judging from the max level cap which is set at lv20, raising each level is a very big deal. I'm not sure how it actually works, but it looks like I'm in for a very long time as a newbie lv1 Paladin.

Dungeons are also very different. In RoM and WoW there are monsters outside every town and there are a few dungeons, aka instances, in each zone.

Instances are called instances instead of just dungeons because they have multiple copies of themselves so that each group of players can fight monsters in their own copy. It's like a karaoke lounge where they have many rooms that are exactly the same with the same songs available in the same TV sets, and each group of customers get to have one room for themselves.

Anyway in DDO, there are no monsters outside of instances. Quests can be found outside of instances, but not monsters. Each instance also offers up to 4 levels of difficulties so each dungeon is actually much more interesting to replay even at higher levels. Groups can also pick their own difficulties depending on how confident they are in each other.

Perhaps the greatest difference between RoM and DDO is the community. Even at pre-dawn hours in the US there are still many players online in DDO, presumably Europeans and American insomniacs. When servers die at night in RoM, they die. Only at a few zones would you ever see any signs of life even in the most populated server.

The players also seem to be friendlier and few noob questions go unanswered during my stay.

Right now I'm still not sure if I should switch, but I'm certain I can use DDO as my Plan B if I ever run out of games.

Rant 421 / Unsuitable For Prudes

No, I didn't say that no one reads this blog. I'm sorry you misunderstood my words in previous rants, but not sorry enough to click the Edit button. Keep tuning in, maybe one day I'll reward you with nude photos of myself.

Oh wait a minute, that's for blogs of hot chicks. Right, sorry for the mental picture.

Just in case the mental picture was fuzzy. Okay, now I'm sorry for the vivid mental picture with the excellent resolution.










It seems there is a spot in the Antartica where the sky is exceptionally clear due to the a gap in the weather system. If an observatory is built there, it is theoretically possible that it could beat the Hubble Telescope in both power and costs.

What are they waiting for?










September 12 is Masturbation Day. If you feel inclined to help your partner, here is a guide.


Sorry, no guide for the guys who wish to aid their girlfriends in times of need.














North Korea has one of the highest literacy rate in the world at 99%!! In fact, it's been growing steadily since independence, albeit at a much slower rate than South Korea! Pictures below to show how slow we're talking about.

This is how the two Koreas are separated. Note the smaller picture of the entire Korean peninsula at the lower right.


This is what the Korean peninsula looks like from space at night.



Electric lights are often taken as a good rough estimate of the development of a country. Doesn't look good, but hey it's 1000000 times better than Africa.


Not that I'm racist or anything, but things are what they are.

Rant 420 / I Like September 12

Holy crap! The swine flu virus was able to develop a resistance to the flu drugs in two girls at a camp in the US. One of the drugs was Tamiflu, a drug now famous for being effective against the swine flu. Well, maybe not anymore.

Fortunately they recovered and there is no mention of the new strains spreading. On the other hand, it just proves how easily the virus can become immune to the flu medicine we have now.









Now waiting for Tuesday when they finally add the new expansion for Runes of Magic. It is such a big deal, all US servers and the official RoM US website will be down from Monday 6pm ( local time) to Tuesday 6pm.

A new race and two new class will be released. Additionally the new zone, Savage Lands, will finally be opened. The Savage Lands is the unnamed zone with the incomplete buildings that I visited during my hike through the restricted areas.

This means lots of players will be starting brand new characters, ie the Savage Lands, designed for lv53-55 players, will be relatively empty.

Few players will also be gathering high level materials. Though fewer players will be crafting high level stuff, I'm pretty sure the guilds will still be running endgame instances regularly, therefore requiring high level potions and possibly equipment.

For this reason, I'm hoarding all my highest level materials (those that require lv51 gathering skills) for the new era. At the moment they're selling for prices similar to those that require lv44 gathering skills, so it's not worth my time to gather/sell them. But soon...











Woot Comex! No I'm not going, but my bro is. So he's going to buy a network adapter for me, plus a new router just in case our aging modem finally hits its expiry date. My mum also needs a new PC since the motherboard is practically in need of an ICU, but it would be not be worth it to buy a computer at Comex.

The prices aren't actually low, but it's just that they give lots of freebies to make it look cheap. Freebies that we don't need. We already have 2 printers, 3 portable hard disks (1 of them with 1TB capacity), multiple copies of Office 2007, 2-3 flash drives, 2 working laptops and enough copies of NOD32 Antivirus.

I'd be better off looking at the guide at hardwarezone and buying a PC built using the list of components given. At Fuwell they would recommend to you which is the closest to what you want if anything is out of stock, which some will definitely be. It is close to impossible to get exactly what is listed in the guide from a single store. The actual prices would also be slightly higher than those listed there.

However I would get a PC that is good at what I need it for, at a lower price. No warranties though, so a little expertise in PC first aid is a necessity.

Of course I could also buy some of the components at Comex, but I'm too lazy to learn to build a PC even though I know of an excellent video guide.











Oh no! The website that provides free NOD32 userkeys and passwords has just turned over a new leaf! What kind of mad world is this that pirates have, of all things, conscience??!

Anyway, time to hunt for a new password provider.

Hah! What do you know? There are tons of those websites out there! It seems the passwords are for demo purposes. So they expire within a week, but the websites always provide new userkeys and passwords just as frequently. No idea what their sources are though.

It's the best antivirus out there - free! What's not to like about it?











Americans Observing 9/11 By Trying Not To Masturbate

Sept 12 is Masturbation Day. ^^










Bored waiting for the new expansion and tired of farming, so I hiked to the edge of the world. Here are some pictures I took as souvenirs.






It can be deduced that where the world ends, the laws of physics are different and the Sun is purple.

Also, the white part is pure emptiness. I'm very very sure of that. If I fall in I'm either going to die or fall forever, depending on what the programmers coded for that.










Today a door-to-door salesman approached our family, claiming to sell "好看的东西". He was rejected, but then he asked if there were adults here. -.-

Excellent marketing skills there. Hope he gets caught with all his discs unsold, meets a suicide bomber on the way to prison, goes to the radicals' Heaven where he gets brutally gangraped by 72 male virgin weightlifters. And I hope he still constipates despite the artificially enhanced asshole.


Anyway I was wondering why anyone would buy from him in this day and age, when broadband internet is everywhere on this island and free porn sites are a dime a dozen online. It must take some ignorance to pay money for porn these days.

Or am I overestimating everyone? I probably am, judging by the way some people are still unaware that there are options in their computers that changes the power consumption and processor power.

The stupid exploits the more stupid, and the chain goes on until they hit those babies with Down's. At that point society can't exploit much anymore. Well retard porn does exist, but it's one of those less popular genres that's disgusting to 99.99% of the world.

Rant 419 / "Guns Don't Kill People, My Cousin Does"

The original Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.





The Sound of Silence by Gregorian, video shrunk because it is taken from Farscape, sucks and is unnecessary.

Pablo Francisco - Ecstacy at Techno Club

Pablo Francisco - Mexican Music



Pablo Francisco - Mexican Comedian/Brokeback Mountain



I love this joke:

"The next time you wanna get a family portrait do what I do: bring your whole family, put them in the back of a pickup truck, run a red light, it takes a picture."





Muse - Take a Bow *Watchmen spoiler alert!*







The Smashing Pumpkins - The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning

Rant 418 / Egocentricity

I have no idea who reads this blog. Seriously. All I know is that no one comments, other than the incredibly annoying bloggers who self-advertise on my blog.

This is plainly a monologue, not a conversation with anyone.

I rant.

I won't bother to guess if you've been here. I won't even place a hit counter here, so whether you visit this blog is entirely up to you. No unspoken expectations, nothing.

When I meet anyone in real life, I don't expect to meet a reader of my blog. Hence I may repeat what I have already mentioned. Tell me if you do not wish to hear me discuss what I've already typed, because I do not know.

Sometimes I don't even remember what I've typed here.

I forget.











"All" is a strange word. It can be treated as plural or singular, depending on the situation. "All" is treated as singular when it means "everything", or when it is referring to uncountable objects.

Eg, all is lost, all are guilty, all hair is white, all eggs are edible.

English.











It's all about me.

My entire blog is egocentric.

Other people is the world's largest minority group; I am the majority.

The world revolves around me.

I am merely what I think I am.

I am unique, just like the other 6.783 billion people out there.

I am "me"; you are "you".

There are over 6 billion "you"s, but only 1 "me".

There is no U in VICTORY, but ironically I and U exist in SOLITUDE.