So a website I know of has been blocked by Starhub's SafeSurf programme. I don't know when it started, but I don't like to be blocked for any reason. =(
They should implement this only for households with children below 18, not for everyone. Anyway it's not compulsory for Starhub subscribers. In fact you have to pay $2.68 a month (GST included) for this service, except for those with the more expensive plans like MaxOnline Ultimate who are getting it for free until May next year.
Cancelled it just now because of a few reasons:
1) Don't need it. 2) Doesn't block everything that needs to be blocked. 3) TOR can bypass it. 4) It's not free of charge.
You can do what I did and also read about this service on this page.
It doesn't even block 4chan. Peace of mind my ass.
Also cancelled my International Roaming and got the Pay-As-You-Roam service instead. The former has a subscription fee of $5/mth but charges less when in use. The latter does not have an activation fee and subscription fee, but costs 20% more when I'm using my phone overseas. Didn't know about this until I looked around in the My Account section.
Just read about this Singaporean who's planning to ski to the South Pole. Ah, gone are the days when one can do the same to the North Pole. Water-ski yes, but not ski. Not anymore.
Was re-watching the video "Every OS Sucks" in the previous rant while proofreading again (found lots of mistakes) and was curious about what was so special about this game Zork. The spelling was rather intuitive so I googled and found myself at Wikipedia.
Apparently it's a very old trilogy of text-based games that are older than me. So I went to another link and interesting enough, I could play the game on the website itself. It must be so small it doesn't cost much to let anyone play it using their server resources.
Anyway, it's a text-based RPG in which you don't just pick your actions from a list. Instead, you type in what you want to do, freestyle. Unfortunately, there IS a list of available actions, but they aren't displayed for the players so they have to figure them out on their own. Kind of frustrating when I couldn't switch on a battery-powered lantern, but I could turn it on.
However, this is where the magic of the internet shines again. By googling "commands zork", one can easily find the list of all the available actions, so that players don't have to guess whether they can "drink" the bottle of water or "use" it.
This game, due to its primitive origin, is not player-friendly. Anyone who tries this game is advised to follow their old habits (if they played RPGs when they were young) to save as frequently as possible. Although players can save at any time, there is only 1 save slot, so do so wisely.
Unlike modern RPGs, this game focuses on you, the adventurer, who has to explore a dungeon and collect treasures. There is little background story, very little combat and is all about finding your way to the treasures and back to your trophy case.
1) That man is a Muslim. Even the most un-Muslim Muslim would be morally tortured if ordered to serve in a camp that's fighting in a Muslim country.
2) He's a psychiatrist dealing with men returning from Iraq. He had to listen to all the problems of soldiers who had lost friends to Muslims, yet cannot release his frustrations due to his occupation.
3) If you have to fight a certain race for years, you would probably become racist even if you weren't one originally. This is made more possible when the two sides have different skin colours because their differences just stand out. Hence he has to treat soldiers who may have certain views about him.
These are just 3 things that popped up in my head immediately after reading the report. I'm surprised they would deploy Muslims in Iraq. Even if we discount the dilemma they are placed in, we still have other problems like increased security risks. It's kinda like deploying American-Japanese soldiers in Asia during WWII - didn't really make sense if they had done it.
Sauerkraut. Sour Cabbage. It's a delicious German dish, though I've found small servings of it in the set meals of a certain Japanese stall in a food court somewhere. It's great as an appetizer but it seems they eat it on hotdogs too.
Also, it's easy to make. Shred/chop cabbage, pour salt, cover and ferment. It becomes sauerkraut within a month. Sounds really easy, but I don't have anything to ferment it in. I'm not worried about smells since sauerkraut doesn't have an unpleasant smell despite being fermented.
In the mood to try, just need to find the proper makeshift containers. Can't use plastic since I don't know if I have any that's safe for it. The sauerkraut is sour after all, so it's acidic.
Vinegar is only used for the modern pickled version, which does not have the healthy benefits of the bacteria in the traditional fermented sauerkraut.
You know, how did Singapore find out about its history? Before Singapore, there was Temasek. But who recorded it?
The Malays? The Sultanate of Johore maybe? At least for China and the Roman Empire we know there were historians who recorded everything in the news when it was still news. These archives were so complete that some countries have to go to them to find out about their own history.
I remember this guy from Kazakhstan I met in NTU, who said that his country had to get its history from the records in China because theirs were mostly destroyed during the USSR period. I hope China doesn't go through a similar period or get another Emperor Qin, or much of the world will probably lose their history.
Hmm, wait a minute. There really wasn't anything about our history until Raffles came along. By then the British would have recorded everything. That tale about the prince who saw the lion and named the island Lion City (Singapura) sounds suspiciously like a folktale, since no one has ever seen lions in the wild here. Boars and tigers have been spotted before, but even the tigers have disappeared now. Just not a single lion ever.
Was thinking about this while reading about the Egytian pet mummies in this month's National Geographic. Apparently those who could afford it mummified their dead pets. The Kazakhs are lucky compared to the Egyptians. The latter only has the Roman archives to refer to, but it isn't complete since their earlier history wasn't there.
The Egyptians lost so much of their history that they couldn't even exactly revive their ancient language, the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Even the Jews were luckier in that they still kept the written form of Hebrew alive (eg via private letters between each other) when the verbal form was lost. The death of the original written language of the Egyptians was so complete the hieroglyphs has become a code that has to be deciphered.
Languages die all the time, but a language crucial to finding out about a long history and rich culture of an ancient civilization is a different story altogether.
The multiyear ice in the Arctic is as good as absent. Multiyear ice is probably ice that was formed more than a year ago. Now most of the ice in that region is ice that were formed within the year. A recent expedition to find multiyear ice was a failure. The only significantly large chunk of this ice they found broke up right in front of them by the waves. It must be very dramatic for the people who studied this.
Now Earth will warm up much faster, without the ice at the North to reflect light away.
This is proof that commercial mass-produced food isn't always bad. How can any sane human being dislike the Vienetta? Does this make you drool? It does for me.
I usually go for medium, but medium rare is fine too. Unfortunately the hygiene of hawker centres/food courts is not exactly the best so I go for only medium when eating in such places. To me, well done is only for meat that is almost spoilt (ie left in the fridge for too long, beef no longer bright red)
Good steaks don't need gravy, good gravy don't need steaks. =D
And steaks definitely don't need ketchup. Ketchup is only for bad food since it covers up all other flavours. Good steaks just need to be seasoned and marinated well.
A space hotel? Architects estimate it will cost each tourist 4.4million USD for a 3-night stay. Of course, this term "3-night" is misleading, since night is an Earthly concept. In space, things are very different, especially since the hotel won't be in geo-synchronised orbit.
Indeed, space tourists will be seeing 15 sunrises every 24 hours. By the time they're back on Earth, they will be pretty sick of it.
The space visit will also include 8 weeks of training, basically to get them used to the lack of gravity. Lots of things happen different without the aid of gravity, like when you sneeze, your snot will fly. Since this is going to be made for the wealthy, they will obviously provide suction where it is needed, eg in the various parts of the bathroom. Still, dropping a glass of water is a much larger issue in space than on Earth.
And the basic necessities of living in space is expensive. According to NASA, it costs $450 million per mission on the Space Shuttle. The max payload according to Wikipedia is 25,060kg. That's $17,957 per kg of payload. In other words, a 5-course meal will cost tens of thousands of dollars even if you have to eat the ingredients raw. However, this is only a rough estimate since they aren't going to use the Space Shuttle to transport cargo for them.
The price is actually quite different from those of early commercial flights. In the early 1900s plane tickets in the US were costing about $10-$20. Train ticket prices were probably still in tens of cents over the same distances.
Then again, the circumstances were quite different then. The Wright Bros had achieved success just before WWI, and it was quickly employed by the armies. By the time the fighting was done, planes were mostly built for the wars. Hence in early commercial flights, passengers were often travelling on converted military aircrafts, not the comfortable Boeing 747 most of us are using today. So they wouldn't dare to charge too much for the poor quality of the ride.
I was curious about the impact of China's efforts to keep the RMB down. Although some questions can be answered by laymen, it feels better to get them from someone who has actually studied economics. This Q&A seems to be pretty good, though I'm unsure of the credibility of the authors.
Copied from the article:
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF CHINA LET ITS CURRENCY APPRECIATE?
Theoretically, the cost of Chinese-made products would rise for consumers around the world. If prices rise sufficiently, other countries' goods might be substituted for those China now makes. Some in the United States hope that domestic firms that now say they cannot compete might decide that they can boost their share of export markets, in turn cranking up production and hiring. If Chinese consumers were empowered with a stronger currency, they might become more aggressive importers, perhaps even swinging China's trade surplus to deficit.
In practice, though, the yuan's 21 percent rise from 2005-2008 barely registered on the price tags of Chinese goods abroad, as buyers -- often foreign firms like Wal-Mart -- demanded that costs be kept down and their suppliers were able to oblige, thanks in part to productivity gains.
Economists often describe China's trade surplus as structural, referring to the country's cheap capital and over-investment, which generate excess production that is cleared through exports. The implication is that deeper reforms to China's economy such as building up a social safety net, and not just yuan appreciation, are necessary to stimulate domestic demand and rein in its yawning trade surplus.
To those who would say things like 'You wouldn't download a car!" I say,
Anyway, this contains 3 potatoes, 2 hard-boiled eggs, a small packet of "Smoked Salmon with Dill and Olive Oil", a tiny onion (maybe it's a shallot, I don't know), a generous sprinkle of black pepper and about 3 tablespoons of mayo.
Result is that the salmon is undetectable unless I am looking for it. Should have used bacon, but I ran out of bacon and was too lazy to go out to buy some. So I used my last resort, the salmon. Was saving it for something else, but this was worth a try.
Dual-screen laptops. Out by Christmas, probably. Now you can multi-task on the move! There will be a 16- or 17-inch model before a 13- or 14-inch one. Not exactly useful for most of us, but... it's a dual-screen laptop!
" I jumped out of the ambulance and I ran to the wreckage to make sure that the victim was still breathing or else was Glenn Beck."
According to another source, the onboard computer of the Lunar Module used by Neil Armstrong contained only NOR gates. After checking Wikipedia, I found out that the computer had 5600 NOR gates, could complete 8 tasks in parallel and skip low-priority tasks in emergencies.
In short, the designers were fucking geniuses.
According to NASA, it had 2048 words of RAM, each word being 16 bits. That is 32,768 bits of RAM, or 4096 bytes, or about 4kB. They went to the moon with less computing power (it used a 2MHz CPU) than an iPhone, which has 128MB of RAM and a 600MHz processor. A 2Mhz processor would be quite similar to an average scientific calculator.
The moon landing itself was an incredible feat not only because some dudes went to the moon, but also because of the machines that made it happen.
It is strange how 30 degrees Celsius can be either warm or cool.
Getai, a form of public performance similar to busking but more annoying. Each time they set up their stage in my neighbourhood, they entertain the entire region with their singing. Seriously, why do they even bother to arrange for chairs under a temporary shelter when I can hear their songs clearly right here in my bedroom with my window shut?
And it's not like they're particularly good either. Some of them sound like my neighbours when they're enjoying their karaoke in their living room, or worse. It gives me the impression that the getai is really just a larger form of karaoke and people who find themselves enjoying life too much would sit in front of the huge speakers to get a large dose of exquisite audio torture in order maintain a balance of yin and yang.
Where do they find those singers anyway? Do they post recruitment ads in KTV lounges? Do they hire deaf singers or something? Why don't they at least make some effort at sound-proofing the area where they preform?
Maybe Singaporeans are living lives that are too comfortable and this is our karma. I'm pretty sure if the getai singers are wearing good solid headphones that are blasting hard metal into their ears during their performances, their singing would remain the same.
The military should hire them. They would be excellent at PSYOPS, or whatever the equivalent is here.
Finished Borderlands. Not exactly a long game, especially if you have people helping you. Multiplayer games tend to go faster if the host picks the right quests and keep completing them. In Borderlands multiplayer, the host chooses the quests to be completed and everyone enters each zone together, so if the host keeps focusing on completing the main quest, no one can stop him. Not that anyone would, since the main quest is the most exciting part of the game.
In fact, if I just keep doing main quests, people would usually stay, instead of getting bored and quit. More players also means tougher enemies and better loots, and loots dropped when there are 4 players are very much better than those dropped in solo mode. In after getting all my weapons from multiplayer, everything seems to die like flies when I play solo.
After this, there really isn't much to do in the game. I can play a second time, with tougher enemies and even better loots, but it's not as interesting anymore.
We're going to have an increasingly powerful space defence system to protect Earth against possible alien invasions. Introducing... space junk, an economical yet effective entry deterrent. By leaving all our defunct satellites, dead machines and smashing them into bits, they form a randomly generated network of high-velocity projectiles that will cause difficulty for even an ant to enter our atmosphere without getting hit.
Borderlands multiplayer mode allows 4 players but doesn't restrict all 4 players from using the same characters. I just went through a game with 3 Hunters and it was pretty interesting. Apparently, they don't just snipe - a few of them actually ran ahead and used their swords while some used shotguns.
Unlike other games, Borderlands require the players to forward 4 ports in order to host online games. Quite troublesome but didn't cause further problems for me. Another complaint from me is that the chat messages appear on the right instead of the lower left corner of the screen which is the standard for 99% of the games I play.
Interestingly, it has no copyright protection at the moment. Players using original or pirated copies can all play online using GameSpy, a legit online gaming service.
If you're planning to host, you need to forward several ports beforehand so that other players can join your games. The ports are 7777(UDP and TCP), 29800(TCP), 28910(TCP), 27900(UDP). Your router's port forward menu should look something like this:
So WWE is "toning down" its violence to attract more children. Are they going to give us G-rated wrestling action? I know they said they've been keeping it PG, but that may not be enough. Why not have a WWE Kids, where there is no violence but is still wrestling.
Come to think about it, that would be rather hard to accomplish. Yes, it would be hard to distinguish from gay porn. 2 half-naked men in a ring, no violence. =/
Next thing we're going to see will be the porn industry trying to nurture a new generation of audience with the same method. It will be porn, but without the private parts shown and with the erotic moans muffled. The actors will be so discrete and everything will be so covered-up that you won't be able to tell that it's porn unless they say so.
The Blackadder series is just amazing. No other series can make me literally LOL in every episode. Usually shows like Family Guy would just make me chuckle and smile, but Blackadder can be described as "one in a million". It's just that good.
Right now the US economy is only just beginning to recover. Maybe it's a good time to buy their stuff. I mean, it can't possibly drop any more, right?
And RMB too, because they can't keep forcing its value down forever, right? Then again, it might just drop in the future.
I am untrustworthy. I always say yes under pressure, but whether I keep the promise is arbitrary. A math tutor in JC managed to discern this habit of mine and told me to change that, but I never did. It was an issue about homework, because like in most of my secondary school days, I rarely did my math tutorials in JC. Any warning they gave me were ignored that way, including his advise to change my habit of saying yes without meaning it.
I still haven't changed.
The second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is very much better than what I expected. In the first Chronicles, the bitter person is tortured by the beauty of the Land, convinced that it was a dream but so tantalizingly real. It pained him because he thought if he accepted the Land to be real, he would be insane. But it was so much better than living in the real world, where he was a leper and everyone hated him. In the Land, he was a hero and was magically cured of his leprosy. He wielded magic powers and everyone loved him no matter what he did to push them away. How could anyone not want to live in that situation? Hence the torture.
In the second Chronicles, he returned to a very different place. All that was good had turned bad, and the Sun seemed to be the greatest evil of all. It appeared all the beauty of the Land was gone, the people had forgotten their magical lores and the castle where the Lords resided had become the heart of evil.
In addition, a doctor from his world was brought to the Land along with him, which added to the mystery.
Only read half the book, but it's a real page-turner. Haven't had such a good reading experience since the first time I read A Song of Ice and Fire. I stopped only when I noticed that I was so tired I was having difficulty understanding what I was reading.
The responsibility was diffused? They thought it was a joke? They thought someone had already called? They don't want to be caught snitching by the gang?
If the responsibility was diffused, it means some of them were thinking along the lines of "Who cares?"
If they thought it was a joke, then their jokes are obviously overboard, such that they can no longer tell practical jokes from actual crimes.
If a fire is raging in a building, everyone would call. A girl gets raped, no one calls. And they call Middle Eastern men in rural villages barbaric for not punishing rapists.
If they fear the gang that much, it reflects on the impotency of their law enforcement officers and how little confidence the masses have in them.
The bystanders were aware of the crime but did not report it to the police. Aren't they now accomplices and can be charged as such?
I know this is an extreme, but I also know this is not an isolated case. That this is even possible shows how moral people are. Furthermore, it shows how far people can go just to be "normal". If "normal" means raping a baby everyday, most would do it.
Ask yourself how many things you've been doing that you don't like but make you appear normal. Or rather, what have you done that does not conform with the norm?
No matter what you think you would do in such a situation, the above questions can be a good gauge (in my opinion) of how you would respond. You see, you won't have time to think, so the "you" who makes the decision will be your subconscious, your real self.
For example, if you're drinking at a bar and suddenly two guys start shouting at each other. Then one of them takes out a glass bottle and smashes it into the other's head repeatedly before running out of the bar.
Do you think you're going to be in the right state of mind to weigh the pros and cons of calling for help or stopping the fight? Do you think you'd want to mess with a guy who has that jagged piece of glass in his hand? Most likely, you're just going to stare and only think of "WTF?"
Better still, you may pull out your handphone and start recording. =/
Played a bit of Borderlands, a new game that's similar to Fallout 3 but seems more suited for consoles than the PC. It's a first-person shooter (FPS) set in a wasteland not very different from the Capital Wasteland.
Borderlands is not as serious as Fallout 3 and tries to be much cooler-looking. There is a multiplayer mode similar to L4D in which you join small games of 4 players using 4 different characters: Roland "the Soldier", Mordecai "the Hunter", Lilith "the Siren" and Brick.
So far I've only tried the Soldier, named Roland (default name, but editable). His special ability is the turret he can deploy for a minute or so. This turret comes with a small shield so that it acts as temporary fortification. This character can also heal by shooting allies and is proficient in medium range weapons like rifles and shotguns.
Unlike Fallout 3, this game can feel boring in solo mode. I think the problem lies in the lack of music and radio because Three Dogs and his songs were very entertaining by themselves. Now after playing Borderlands with its slow ambience music, I think listening to GNR is half the fun of playing Fallout 3.
Need to play online.
Compared to Fallout 3, Borderlands is more focused on the FPS side and less on RPG, while Fallout 3 is very much focused on its RPG side and its storyline. Also, side quests in Fallout 3 are usually more developed, eg with a background story. Those in Borderlands can sometimes have no relation to anything - they just tell you to do something and then you get rewarded for that.
Even though I set my aircon to 26 degrees and the fan speed at 2 out of 5 bars, my thermometer is reading 23 degrees. I guess it really doesn't matter what temperature I set because it feels no different even when it's set to 17 degrees.
============ Spoiler Alert! ============
Rama II ended with the doctor, the engineer and the communications officer flying in Rama towards deep space. Garden of Rama picked up from here and got even more interesting. So far this third book is the best of the three that I've finished reading.
Again, half the book was quite different from the other half. The first half described their journey to the Node, a space station where they were told the purpose of their trip - that the aliens were collecting data of all creatures that were capable of space travel. Then they were instructed to return to Earth to bring back 2000 more humans for further observations and tests.
This half was all about new aliens and stuff. At one point the doctor was even allowed to communicate with an aquatic eel-like alien whose civilization had been spacefaring for thousands of years.
The next half of the book was more about how the humans behaved during the journey. Pretty ugly, not very interesting except for the part where it was found that the flying aliens from Rama II was actually in a symbiotic relationship with two other species. They were almost wiped out by a war started by the mob boss (he took control of the colony by killing the original leader) who needed to distract the people from their other problems, but a few eggs were saved and taken elsewhere.
All these time, another species of aliens they called the "octospiders" were watching the carnage. Regular reports were also sent from the ship back to "the collective intelligence" behind the Node.
It is in Rama Revealed that another moral issue is shown. In the octospider society, there are 2 sides - chaos and order. Octospiders who have agreed to take a certain drug to stop sexual maturity live in the peaceful part, where there are strict laws and his/her role in the society is carefully planned out. These octospiders are healthier, safer and have a very long life expectancy.
Those who prefer to have more freedom would have to choose to mature sexually at a certain age and they would live in a separate part of the society where their life expectancy will be very short, but have a more intense life.
In this, it seems they believe that sexuality is the root of all desire. It can appear so at times for us humans too, since many of our problems come from this inborn instinct to find the best possible mating partner.
===================
End of spoiler.
===================
But I don't see how sexuality is the cause of all our problems. If we are completely uninterested in sex, would we stop being greedy, selfish and etc? No, being greedy is necessary to promote competition among humans, thus forcing us to evolve into fitter people. "Survival of the fittest" always applies in life, whether "the fittest" is referring to one or many.
What I think is that the root of all problems is desire. Quite Buddhist, this view. But going further, I think that the mother of all desire is the desire for satisfaction. Or is it happiness? Aristotle claimed that desire for happiness is the mother of all desires, and he's a smart guy. But even Einstein made major mistakes, so he can be wrong about this.
Would you do something that makes you happy, yet unsatisfied?
Would you do something that satisfies you but not make you happy?
How can a person be happy and not satisfied, or vice versa?
An example can be this: if you were expecting to score an A+ but got an A- instead, you may be happy without being satisfied. Maybe this isn't such a good example, since you can also be satisfied without being happy.
I had at first thought of using revenge to illustrate the second case, but seeing someone I dislike fail in what they do can sometimes be one of the greater joys of life.
Hmm...
So it seems curry kills cancer cells. I can already see future cancer treatment including curry baths as part of the procedure. Imagine, soaking in a jacuzzi of therapeutic sterilized chicken curry, with an assortment of chicken wings, drumsticks and potatoes around your butt as you sit in the tub with a plate of Mutton Bryani resting on the side.
Joy.
Just don't fart. You don't want to eat curry that tastes even remotely like shit.
I want a computer that I can wear comfortably, like one of the earpiece-thing called a Personal Assistant in the game Culpa Innata. It's voice-activated and uses a projector to display output.
This really isn't impossible, but it requires more miniaturization than we have today. The computer doesn't need to be in the tiny device, only a modem, a microphone and a projector. Hell, it might as well be a handphone. The real computer will be somewhere else, maybe at home. The device would really be just the input/output device that maintains a direct connection with the master computer all the time in addition to the Internet connection.
I think this is quite similar to what they call cloud computing.
One problem would be the radiation issue. The current mobile modem from Starhub has a warning printed in small fonts in the users' manual that says the user should stay outside a radius of 2cm from it. Maybe the device could be coated with lead on one side of it.
Disciples III! I have practically forgotten about it until now. It's going to be released in Fall 2009, which should be soon.
The Disciples games have always lost to HoMM in terms of complexity and one major shortcoming of this game is that players have to upgrade their units by using them in battle. In the first two games, its battle system is very simple, but units are only available in the lowest rank. As players use them to win battles, they gain experience points and upgrade themselves.
I hated that. It makes it impossible to have secondary armies later in the game because there usually aren't any weak monsters in the map left to kill.
The best thing about the games is that their units look much cooler than those in HoMM. They may look drab at lower levels, but the high levels units reward the player with both their battle capabilities and looks.
Their music is great too, better than those in HoMM, but are usually darker in tone. Most of them sound evil and/or supernatural.
The 3rd battle music is my favourite among the DII soundtracks.
There isn't an impressive trailer for Disciples III, even their E3 trailer is somewhat dull. All the above are from Disciples II.
So it seems by the time I feel so hot that I have to turn open my windows and doors, it's at 31-32 degrees Celsius already. I just took this old pencil-holder someone bought and left next to the TV and placed it next to me out of curiosity, and it has this thermometer on one side of it.
My room is hot.
According to this thermometer, it takes about 5 hours to bring the room temperature from 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, with my desktop switched on for the later 3. This temperature then gradually rises to 31-32 until I open up the windows and doors, then stabilize at 31 for the rest of the day.
This is why I have a fan at full blast almost all the time at about 30cm away from myself, which annoys me sometimes when I handle paper.
They say that admitting your weaknesses is the first step to improving yourself. They say facing the self that you don't like to see is the most difficult stage of the process.
Well, I say they were wrong. I've been saying that I'm lazy for years and I'm still lazy. I'm so lazy, I wake up from my afternoon nap (weekends) so that I'll be punctual for bedtime.
Nah I'm exaggerating slightly here. I wake up for dinner, not bedtime.
Sometimes I am tempted to go on sleeping when I wake up in the evening, but I don't want to end up like before, when I woke up at 12am feeling refreshed then get sleepy in the late morning or early afternoon. I prefer to do that in the holidays instead, when I have the freedom to sleep and wake up at any time I want.
It's like how the salaries in China is capped at certain amounts by the government.
Why do you visit blogs? Why do you want to know about things that aren't exactly out of the ordinary? Why would learning what someone ate for lunch yesterday interest you?
Why are you reading this?
There are now videos of people unpacking stuff they received from Lockerz. If this is really a scam, it is amazingly elaborate. I'm more inclined to believe it's real but they have very limited stock for everything.
Lots of members are also unhappy that they didn't get anything from the website because either they were too slow or they were busy during those times. Now some are asking Lockerz to change the system to such that they can all order something, but the stuff will go to the first orders until they're out, then the rest of the orders become backlog.
I can see how they're going to accumulate such a huge backlog that within a month or two people will be ordering stuff they won't see till a work year later. So this suggestion was ignored.
This month's issue of National Geographic was about redwoods. These trees are able to grow to prodigious sizes. In one photo, the climbers seemed like ants compared to the tree they were climbing.
They are so big, their branches can support a whole ecosystem on their own. Because of their width, they accumulate dead leaves and stuff which become dirt and new plants can grow in them. Then insects inhabit these dirt and even tiny aquatic bugs can survive in the pools of water that collect on these branches. Water creatures in the sky!
And did I mention their branches are large enough for new trees to grow on?
About the Tower of Babel, so the Jewish God got pissed by humanity working together to build a tower so high it touched the heavens. But don't we have quite a few of those now? Many skyscrapers are tall enough to go beyond the lower clouds, and they serve a worse purpose than the Tower of Babel - they are built to make a name for only certain groups of people.
If that isn't enough, we also have rockets, a space station and even plans to send men to the Moon. If the Jews are right and their God is real, he must be having a stroke for the past few decades.
Reinstalled and finished Culpa Innata. I had completed about half the game a long time ago on my laptop, so it took only an hour or so to bring myself back to where I stopped. This time my computer can handle Alt-Tabs without crashing, so I used Firefox to search for hints whenever I got stuck.
This game has a lot of loose ends. The plot is like a Y-shape, and the entire game only covers the two upper strokes without tying both together. So it's like having two separate plots bound only by the fact that the protagonist is involved in them. The next game is about to be released and what information was revealed in past interviews state that all the dots will connect in this sequel.
This is a point-and-click sci-fi adventure game that revolves around the the only playable character, Phoenix Wallis, who is a Peace and Security Officer, ie policewoman in our world. The fictional world is set in the future in which the world's governments have been reformed into 2 groups - the World Union which consists of all of today's developed nations and much of Africa, and the Rogue States. The rest of the world are either WU-controlled or labelled Unexploitable for some reason.
The game is all about Phoenix's investigation into a murder case, in which a WU citizen was murdered in Odessa, Russia, now a Rogue State. As the clues are revealed, another set of curious clues can be found that lead to something quite unrelated. While Phoenix works in official capacity to find out who killed Mr Bogdanov, the player can look out for clues as to why a certain NGO working for world peace seems to be secretly inciting chaos in its kiosks through which citizens donate money to them.
Spoiler Alert!
After finding out that a Russian Mafia family was responsible for the murder, the game ends with the representative of the Gambino family being arrested and Phoenix is sent to Russia to find the hitman. The other plot reveals a possible truth of the society, that she may have found the true masters working behind the scenes.
Though the story is a little unsatisfying (especially the secondary plot since the player is not told what their purpose is and what their role is in the world) and the game started a little slowly, it ended with too many loose ends for players to ignore the next game.
What's up with Starhub tonight? I've been getting really bad pings inconsistently. Definitely not my wireless connection since I've been pinging my router.
Something is wrong with either my tiny thermometer or my air-conditioner. This morning just before I turned it off the thermometer read 20 degrees Celsius. First time I read it so quickly because usually I just assume the room temperature to be what I set in my aircon.
OMG! There's actually an academic institution dedicated to the study of sex. It's "not accredited" though, which probably means its degrees aren't recognized in most places. Then again, how cool it must be get a degree for fuck's sake.
Coursework, depending on the degree, can include hands-on training. ^.^
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Spoiler Alert!
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Rama II is the sequel to the sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama. Just like some reviews said, it is written in a more personal way. The first book was totally about describing how Earth had changed by the year the book was set in, how there were colonies on several planets and moons, and how the cosmonauts (no idea why they used this Russian term instead of the modern American "astronaut") explored the alien spaceship Rama.
Rama II was... disjointed. The first half of the book seemed to focus on a conspiracy to make certain members heroes. An ambitious journalist wanted the greatest story in history written by herself and worked to control the entire project to get the most sensational news.
Then the book focused on one of her victims, the doctor on board who suspected that she had poisoned the commander in charge. The doctor, trapped in a pit in this second Rama, then found sentient lifeforms that weren't organic robots. Though unable to communicate, they seemed to understand her situation and gave her food.
Eventually another member of the ship's crew went against his orders and went out to search for her, only to find themselves unable to return to the human's ship. This is where the interesting part begins.
They found a computer of sorts and because he was a robotics specialist (I think), he was somehow able to decode the alien computer language within days. It turned out one of the things the computer could do was communicate with some sort of factory on board which could create anything, as long as they could inform it about the chemical structure.
With their elementary understanding of the computer and the doctor's expertise, they were able to create disgusting but nutritious food to survive. Eventually they were able to enlist the aid of the aliens (not likely to be the Ramans) and flew back to their own ship.
Nowhere in this part of the book, ever since the two found each other, was the conspiracy ever expanded upon again. It's like it didn't matter even though it didn't seem completed. By the time they returned, everyone had gone and the ship was rendered useless. After that, only three people were on board Rama and the rest of the crew were never mentioned again.
It's like these were written separately. They might as well just cut the first half and paste the second half into the third book. The third book seemed more interesting since it was all about them surviving on Rama, which was flying away from Earth and into deep space. This probably means they will never return home again. Haven't finished it, but it seemed to have more potential than Rama II.
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End of spoiler.
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Spoiler Alert Again!
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Also finished the Watchmen comic. It ended slightly different from the movie in that the thing that killed half of New York was not some sort of explosion, but a psychic giant monster that sent huge wave of psychic energy filled with horror when it died after being teleported into New York. According to Ozymandias, all living things die upon being teleported by machines he had developed even though he was trying to recreate this particular power of Dr Manhattan. Also, they explode if they teleport into space that is already occupied.
This was probably removed to reduce the work for the artists and it seemed pointless to create such a huge monster that wouldn't appear for more than a few seconds in the film. The explosion was simpler and the story ended the same way, with Manhattan leaving Earth forever.
It is also until I read the comic that I understood what Manhattan was experiencing. In the movie, his interaction with time was not depicted clearly. It seemed he was able to foresee the future, but that isn't what he was doing.
Dr Manhattan exists in all points in time in his existence simultaneously. He was in five minutes ago, now and five minutes in the future at the same time. He acted like a normal person only because that was what was supposed to happen. He knew what was going to happen not because he saw it, but because he was already living it.
A normal person, given this circumstances, may only be able to mind one part of the time. He may only be able to control himself at a certain point of time, like a person with 1000 computers playing different games simultaneously can only use one computer at a time. But that is how Dr Manhattan was god-like - he could use all the computers at the same time, if time meant anything to him. If time is a continuous slideshow, he was looking at all the slides at once.
The comic was clearer in this way. The movie was misleading.
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End of spoiler again.
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If you're worried your great-grandchildren are going to run out of names for huge numbers of bytes of computer memory, fear not - we are very well-prepared.
A computer with an Omegabyte of RAM and hard disk space. Ah, dreams.
Devilled eggs, a dish anyone can make. Just boil eggs, cut into halves, squeeze yolks into a zip-lock bag, mash yolks with mayo and mustard, cut hole in bag, squeeze contents back into egg whites.
In this photo, I added 1 heaped tablespoon of mayo and 1 teaspoon of mustard and a few drops of Tabasco sauce with 3 yolks. Can't taste the Tabasco, mustard flavour rather mild, need more of both next time, and less mayo.
For the inexperienced, here's how to make hard-boiled eggs:
Add eggs into pot, fill pot with water till they're covered, heat to boil, turn off heat and leave for 15mins. Guaranteed hard-boiled without bursting, which happens if you add eggs directly into boiling water.
The only difficult part was peeling the egg without breaking the egg white because you need to keep the semi-spherical hole unbroken to be able to fill it with the processed yolk, and the white near the yolk is usually much thinner than the rest.
Also, recommended additions include pepper flakes and chopped onions. I was too lazy to chop onions.
I wonder what will happen after I'm gone. Will I be remembered? Or will I be just like one of the innumerable nameless farmers in the Ming Dynasty - gone and forgotten?
I don't expect to have any children, though it still wouldn't do any good if all I want is to have someone to remember me. Just look at, say, the innumerable nameless farmers in the Ming Dynasty... again. I bet all of them have huge families with 9-20 children per set of parents, yet they are now among the billions of bits we have only a common noun for - dust.
Logically speaking, I will be forgotten unless I accomplish something great. Even then, I still run the risk of having memories of me blurred into unbelievable tales. Take Xuanzang for example. He risked his life for years and travelled by foot to India to bring genuine Buddhist scriptures back to China, but now most people remember him as the guy who fought demons with the Monkey God.
An even closer example can be your own family. Some of us may still know the names of our grandparents, but definitely not our great-grandparents! How many years ago were they born?
One of my great-grandfathers was a minor official in the Qing government who escaped to the countryside when news spread of a major revolution happening. The Qing Dynasty ended in 1912. From this it can be deduced that he was born somewhere around the 1880s, with an error of plus/minus a decade. That would be a mere 130 years ago - less than 1.5 centuries. Therefore I can conclude to some degree of certainty that I will be almost completely forgotten within 150 years of my birth.
That's only 120+ years away.
Or if we're counting from death, he died when the Japanese lost the war. Drunk Japanese soldiers used him as a punching bag when they learnt of their Emperor's decision to surrender. That must have been pretty sad, you know, like, just when they thought they had survived. The Japanese surrendered in 1945, 64 years ago.
The thing about human nature is that everyone wants to be remembered after the end. That's why we strive to create a legacy for ourselves, something that will stand after we're gone. Hence the scientists who name stuff after themselves, which makes remembering theories and equations annoyingly confusing.
Perhaps this blog will be my legacy. After all, this is just about the only thing I can do that can possibly last centuries that a great career or a dozen children won't achieve. That is, unless I build a giant commercial empire or my fertility breaks the current world record of 888 kids to a single father. I dread the thought of having to have sex with an average of 1.2 women every night for 60 years. Monetary costs and physical exertion are just two of the many reasons why this is not a good thing.
Maybe my bro's descendants would read this and know what it was like to live during the transition period at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Wonder what they would think of it. And if they read this particular rant, maybe they would understand better the effects of WWII, not to mention how "great" a cook I am.
I'm curious about what it will be like to live at the end of the 21st century compared to the end of the 20th. Will the clothes be even skimpier than those of today? I can hardly imagine how that can be achieved, other than by walking around in your birthday suits. Maybe nipple stickers will be the normal top. "Wow! Look at those glossy nipple stickers! Going clubbing later?"
Just like there is a huge difference between photos of the past and the videos of today, how will people remember each other in the near future? My bet is on 3D videos, possibly played in a holographic form. Cameras will be categorised in Gigapixels or even Terapixels. How close am I going to be to the truth? I can't be too far from it. Look at it this way: when your parents were young, they wouldn't have believed that an object the size of roughly three fingers that is able to record thousands of songs can exist, not at affordable prices anyway.
I wish my ancestors wrote diaries. Even one would be a huge treasure trove of first-hand accounts about seemingly mundane stuff of those times. I wonder what my grandfathers thought about my grandmothers before and after they met. I mean, they were having arranged marriages in those days, so all they could have known about each other was from the matchmakers and maybe a photo or two.
It is entirely possible that when they first saw each other they had thought, "Oh shit! I got scammed! That pic must have been photoshopped!" Other than the Photoshop bit, it might really have happened, but now I'll never know. Only my maternal grandmother is still alive today, and I haven't spoken to/met her in years. Maternal grandfather died of pneumonia before I was born. Paternal grandfather, leukemia when I was young (pri school age, I believe). Paternal grandmother, some years ago, years after my father's passing, unknown causes, don't know, don't care.
If I had a diary belonging to one of my ancestors, I'd probably translate and record the interesting bits in my computer. First-hand information is always the best, just because it came directly from a person who had personally experienced what was described. At the very least, it beats any sort of record written in third person.
There are so many interesting stories about the pre-war and post-war days. I've only heard a few, so I'm sure there must be many more. In one (very short) story, there was this porridge shop near where my maternal grandfather used to live. For some reason, this shop never stopped selling pork porridge even during the war (WWII). Another strange thing was how starving orphans who slept at the door (very likely because of the aroma) sometimes seemed to disappear overnight.
My grandfather frequented this shop for their pork porridge, probably because it was one of the few that still offered it in those times. He never thought it tasted unusual. This may be nothing but a rumour, or he may have been eating long pork instead of real pork all along. Who knows?
This story wouldn't have been interesting if not for the fact that my granddad used to visit it often.
I guess I'm a sentimental person.
How will the videos on Youtube end? They cannot possibly store all the videos forever, can they? Will my blog someday have patches of bad links because the videos were taken down? What about my pics? Will Google hold my pics for centuries? My blog too? Or will I have to resort to spamming Ctrl-S for an entire day to archive this?
Right now, "RIP Kanye West" is the top trending topic on Twitter. I found out about it on 4chan where they were spamming threads telling everyone to log on to Twitter and say that phrase. 4chan is making itself more infamous. I bet moot must be happy about the rising ad revenue.
Reading the Watchmen comic. The fans were right, the movie was very very similar to the comic. Even the more memorable phrases were quoted word for word from the original book. There are some differences but only minor ones, nothing that makes the plot any different.
The comic may be less dramatic due to its format (moving pictures are always superior to stills), but it is much more detailed, even containing excerpts from fictional books like the memoirs of the first Night Owl.
My router is acting up again. Now it's giving everyone bad signals (3-4 bars out of 5 usually, 2 for most of today) for some reason. I get really bad pings and even time out from my connections. I just hope it's not dying, though I can't think of a more likely reason for the symptoms.
The US economy is pretty bad. China isn't very happy about it. Why? Because as the USD is dropping, their consumers have increasing difficulty in buying Chinese products. Indeed, the RMB has risen against the USD so much that China is effectively pegging it to roughly 6.8RMB to a dollar by maintaining its value near that number, ie forcing it to stay low. According to the IMF, the actual rate should have been 3.798RMB per USD in 2008. That means the Chinese basically halved the value of their own currency.
On the other hand, certain experts are mentioning the possibility of an economic bubble forming right now in China.
Sauerkraut. Sour Cabbage. It's a delicious German dish, though I've found small servings of it in the set meals of a certain Japanese stall in a food court somewhere. It's great as an appetizer but it seems they eat it on hotdogs too.
