Rant 124 / Eye Haz Kane Danz Video In SWF Format! Wheee!

Watched a video of some guy who got totally pwned by Anonymous on Youtube. Paul Fetch is his name, and apparently, he offended Anonymous in his videos. One of his videos was supposed to be of him declaring war on Anon, or something like that. This video is no longer available on Youtube.

Another video of his has over 5000 comments, presumably from members of Anonymous.

These days, all sorts of people use the name Anonymous to do anything they want without fear of consequences, simply because it has become an established name of a random group of random people. But because of the novelty of the randomness of this group, people don't seem to understand that Anonymous is merely the sum of all internet users. They have no specific purpose. What gives Anonymous the notoriety is the part that consists of all the losers who vent all their frustration on the net. They are the ones who give prank calls, the comment floods, Youtube flag abuse and etc.

On a scale of 1-10, the morality of Anonymous is 1 to 10. On the scale of 1-10 for their violence in real life, 0. Despite all their death threats and blah blah blah on the net, no one has been killed by Anonymous. Thus, most of what Anonymous says is just talk.

The news articles make Anonymous sound like a coordinated group, gang or society (Internet Hate Machine ROFL!! Nice one Fox LOL!! Now you are a real life hate machine because of all the hate you're inciting against Anonymous with your inaccurate reports written by people who don't understand them!), but this is not correct. They are more like a loose network of people who visit many internet forums, especially the #chan imageboards, and post things anonymously. In the case of the Operation Chanology and such, it started as someone who spammed posts of comments that incited hostile feelings against Scientology, and somehow many people were affected to the point that they acted together.

It is like some guy screaming stuff on the streets, saying things that will work up the passersby until they form a mob. And in this case, an angry mob.

There is no rule for Anonymous because as long as you even read the forums where people post anonymously, you are part of it. And you quit the day you stop visiting them. Nothing more.

So in short, the part of Anonymous currently working against the Church of Scientology is merely another mob, except this time they work mainly in the Internet and hide beneath a cover name - Anonymous. Seriously, the majority of the /b/tards don't care.

Rant 123 / OMFG THE LONGEST POST EVER!!! PLEASE BE PATIENT!

Finally know what the Rule 34 of the Internet is:

"If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions."

This rule is so true!!! Seeing the porn of so many cartoons/shows has left me mentally scarred for life. Fuck, who wants to see Simpsons porn?!?!? They looks so alien! It's like watching animal or alien porn!!! Or Mickey Mouse......... seriously.

But then, it's not so bad because there is porn for just about every anime series and video games featuring human chicks (like DOA) in existence.

Now this is one reason why I keep saying that the Internet is a shithole. If I ever have children of my own, I will definitely not let them surf the net without my supervision. Not ever.





Okay going to test out a flash movie on the blog. Made a gmail account on the spot just for the google page account so that I can upload flash for free. This is the smallest flash movie (fliptopbox.swf) in my collection. Only 837k. The others range from 3-5M.



In the preview, at 3.50am now, it took only about 5 seconds to load. All thanks to this blog.




It is quite scary how easy it is to convert people to Christian beliefs. Here's a Christian comic that seems to persuade its readers to believe in Creationism, which is the belief that there was no evolution and God made all. I have some comments for some of the arguments but please read through the whole comic before reading my words.





Notice how the non-believer is portrayed as a rude bigot?

While the good Creationist student is a patient, polite young man. Already, it is easier to trust the words of the guy who seems to be the "good guy". Even if it is illogical, it is only human to judge a person by his looks at first. And oh yes, the name-calling habit of the teacher. However it is the spirit of science to think critically and question everything, and come to conclusions by logic, experiment and debate. So it's correctly portrayed at this point.

See? Another attempt to discredit the teacher. Obviously, if such teachers exist, they serve to only disgrace their country's education system, but do not reflect the attitudes of all scientists.

And more bigotry. What else can I call it?

Unfortunately for Creationism, no one saw God making everything either. In defense of science, I can only say that all that were derived from unbiased logic and recorded observations. It is "believed by faith" only by those who do not understand the science behind the theories, just like you believe by faith that your car engine works because of thermodynamics. On the other hand, maybe it works only because God made it work... So what does it say about God and global warming?


Even though the rock layers was dated 212 million years old, the skull was dated 160,000 years old. Wikipedia cites a book which I can't check, while this comic cites a seminar, which I can't check either.
Also according to Wikipedia, the prevailing opinion is that Lucy should be classified under Australopithecus afarensis, which is a hominid. Her knees are evidence that she normally walked upright, which monkeys rarely do.


Lucy: I'd not be so sure that "nearly all experts" agree on that.
Heidelberg Man: The jaw was merely the first of the pieces found. More were found later in Heidelberg.
Nebraska Man: One of the favourites of creationists, this claim was really found to be a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake.
Piltdown Man: A famous hoax. Kinda like the South Korean cloning expert.
Peking Man: Totally ridiculous how it disappeared. It just vanished suddenly during WWII on its way to the US.

That was an ancient method. Modern tests include potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating, which are amazingly more accurate than this "circular reasoning".

I don't know, maybe this comic is old, but I've never heard of the gill thing either.

Yep, it helps us shit and absorbs small shocks. But it's not a "vestigial organ", but a vestigial tail. A remnant of a tail that is no longer useful as a tail, it now serves a new purpose - to help us shit.

Losing anything is not against the theory of evolution. Remember those blind deep sea creatures? Well, there are also many species of insects in newly explored deep caves that are completely blind and white, which means they have lost some or all parts of their eyes and pigments. They evolved by losing these features while gaining others, like hypersensitivity to motion in the air or ground.

Evolution is not like an engineer upgrading a machine by adding better and better features. It is more like someone tinkering a machine, adding and removing by trial and error. Those that work, prosper and proliferate. Those that don't, die quickly.

Ahh... quantum physics. Everything in that area is highly debatable. Nobody knows much in that area anyway, and there're really too few ways to find out. How do you detect something that is smaller than photons, which is the tiny particle that forms light and energy? You have to shoot something out and wait for it to bounce back to know another object exists, but if that object is too small to block your "something", what then?

Nobody knows, but we're still trying to find out. Waiting for the next Einstein to arrive.

Here's the best part. There's something here that may not come to the reader intuitively: where's the evidence? Nothing is depicted here but the Biblical quotes. Yet somehow you'd absorb all that at face value. See the effects of all the positive/negative portrayal of characters in this comic?

And more bigotry from the blasphemers...

Now everything he says is right? No one argues his words. This comic isn't even arguing properly. It is a one-sided presentation of all the loopholes in the theory of evolution. This is a depiction of what science should not be - biased, lacking in logical deductions from recorded observations and relying on other non-scientific factors to persuade.



And don't forget: Christianity has nothing against slavery. Got Christian slaves? Want!

Rant 122 / Poutine = Cheese Fries + Gravy = Sounds Delicious

Emailed most of my fake motivational posters to the BC a couple of days ago. No reply as of today. Either they're lacking in e-manners or they didn't receive it. Whatever.






No idea why I have to wake up at 12am. Been sleeping for 6 hours since 2 days ago, which is 3 hours less than my optimum. Yet I'm still waking at 12am tonight. Heck, I slept at 6.30pm just now and woke at 11.30pm. So I kept myself calm and forced myself to sleep again, but I woke up again at 1am feeling refreshed.

Strange. I'm becoming nocturnal, in an unorthodox sense. Usually nocturnal people sleep in the morning, but I sleep in the evening. Wonder what's going to happen if I ever need to go out in the evening. Probably skip a night of sleep.

But I'll be buying Half-Life 2 Ep1 after exams, which means I'll most likely be playing in the U.S. servers. So my current sleeping hours are perfectly fine for that.Woot! Zombie Panic 2 coming in 20+ days' time!




Another great news for me just now. Code Geass R2 is out and subbed!! RAWR!!





Yay! Another 1M donated in the past 3 hours. Can't remember how many I made before restarting the bot at 1am.





Find that putting my laptop on this large plastic board (that once served as a box cover) only cools it as efficiently as if I placed it on my desk. Its upper left corner where the most active ventilator is always gets very hot. Maybe someday I should get a fan or something and a modified board. Or maybe one of those cooling boards or whatever they're called.

Testing a GIF file again.





Found this article describing the best audio/video system I've ever seen. I was speechless when I saw the pics. See it for yourself. This is probably what rich people do when they finally think they've made enough.




Found this song by Bobby McFerrin called Don't Worry Be Happy. His a cappella songs are pretty good. I guess from the sound of it he makes those drum-beat-like sounds by hitting his chest. Usually these beats coincide with his consonants (sounds of t, d etc), but when those beats are not accompanied by consonants, it sounds like short interrupts in his songs.

Overall I thought he was damn good at a capella. I've always found it hard to keep a the rhythm without some sort of cue/help while singing a song.


Finally got a copy of the film Soylent Green. WOOT! Probably going to watch it after the exams. Can't wait.



Just checked my yahoo mail after a month of neglect and found this email from acmabooks about some minor damage to one of the corners of my copy of Feast for the Crows. They gave me a choice of either a discount of $1.83 or a new copy which would require another 2-14 days. They stated that they were waiting for my reply and the email was 8 days old lol! Anyway of coz it was too little, so I asked for a new copy. A longer wait is fine, since I'm having exams anyway.

Rant 121 / Teh Intarweb - The Only Place In Existence That Is Worse Than Africa

Success! Another 3 millions grains of rice generated and still counting. As of this moment it's at 3.46million grains.

But then, I have been running it at 80 threads since 6pm and it's 6am now. It began spamming at a rate of 11X grains/s at first but right now it's at 81 grains/s. The threads are starting to crash I guess.

And it appears that the bot doesn't need the online dictionaries anymore. It has been relying on its internal dictionary throughout the night! Woot! Godlike internal dictionary FTW!




Found this picture from 7chan yesterday that made me laugh out loud. Apparently there was this thread in somethingaweful.com that asked for people to turn porn pictures into non-porn pictures. What a novel idea! Here's a pic from that thread. Fucking hilarious.


Of course I went to browse through www.somethingaweful.com then, but everything there sux. There was nothing funny to be found, so I didn't bookmark it. In fact this is another website that I'm going to forget about.






A few months back, there was this documentary on Discovery about how the FBI lures pedophiles from the Internet and catches them. The online chat is easy, but then they have a woman with a really squeaky (read girly) voice to handle the phone chat which follows. Throughout these conversations, the FBI woman pretends to be an underage girl, while the pedophile pretends to be a teenager. Through the phone chat, she gets the guy to go to her house, where the door is unlocked, and tells him to strip and wait for him from upstairs. Once he's done, the FBI officers run down the stairs and arrest him. Justice!

But apparently the FBI isn't the only group of people who do such things. Many guys on the net hates pedophiles too, me included. But this is how some of them handle it:




This isn't the only screenshot of such conversations that I've found, but this is the best among all. It has also helped reinforce the idea in me that there are no girls on the internet, only guys with voice-changer programs. "Girls on the net" is a myth, just like masturbation among Asians and that girls surf internet pr0n.




Hmm... I'm testing an animated GIF here...




My books aren't here yet!!! But then I haven't been reading novels much these days. Need to keep myself at minimum energy so that I can maintain my sleeping hours till my body clock is tuned properly. Better to be damn shag at the proper time than to be "kinda tired", at least for now.

One of my books that I ordered is out of stock!! Rise of Endymion! Gah! How can I miss that book when the sequel is arriving with the rest of them?? This means I can't read 2 books out of the 8 (I think) that I ordered. BS!!! Bloody Acmabooks! Update your website properly pls!

Guess I will just have to wait....





Was reading the featured article on Wikipedia on Suleiman the Magnificient, one of the greatest Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. What really caught my attention was not how great he was, but how sad things turned out after him. One of his eight sons, Mustafa, was known as the best choice to be his successor, so talented that the Austrian Ambassador hoped that his country would not have to deal with him in the future. Luckily for him, due to court intrigues, Mustafa was killed by his father.

The Sultan who succeeded Suleiman in the end was a useless guy who spent all his time getting drunk and left all his duties to his Vizier, which should mean his Prime Minister or something like that. It was very fortunate for him that this Vizier was a very good general/ruler too, so the empire was not greatly affected. But then, he did not help his empire expand or grow - all he had accomplished was to maintain the status quo. Compared to his father, he was shit. It was claimed that he died when he slipped and fell in the bath while drunk.

Then most of the Sultans in the subsequent generations were pretty useless too. Basically the decline of the empire began with the death of Suleiman. Even though some of the later guys had some successes somewhere somehow, they were not enough.

For example one of them is described by historians to have been the closest, among all the Sultans in Ottoman history, to toppling their northern rival, Russia. But he did not quite manage to accomplish that because of riots within his empire. He had to return and pacify his people, and by doing so, he missed that golden opportunity.

Another example was one of the Sultans around the World War One era, who started to implement reforms to save his country. By then, the Ottoman Empire was really militarily impotent. But because of the size of the Ottoman Empire, there was a great inertia against his changes and everything he tried was either too little or strongly disapproved by everyone.

After all that, the Empire disintegrated during the period between the two World Wars (specifically in 1922) and the final remnant of this once-superpower is now known as Turkey. Yes there is still a Sultan(Ertuğrul Osman Osmanoğlu, Prince of the Ottoman Empire (full title : Devletli Necabetli Ertuğrul Osman Efendi Hazretleri) )but he doesn't rule at all nor given a place anywhere. Heck, he was only given Turkish citizenship in the recent decades and he is still living in the U.S. It's pretty sad how royalty lives when the kingdom dies, especially if they are compared with their ancestors.

On a lighter note, I want to try their Turkish coffee!!!!! If I ever visit Turkey someday, there are two things that must be done: visit Hagia Sophia and drink Turkish coffee. Man, they make their coffee sound damn good!






Feminism. How do I put it? It's fine with me, but only up to a certain degree. Women want to be treated equally. They want to have the same jobs, same opportunities, same sort of lives as men. Basically, they do not want to be seen as the weaker sex. Fine.

On one hand, they want to be courted more than they want to do any courting. They want guys to ask them out. They like guys who treat them like princesses during dates. Lesbians are acceptable, gay men aren't. For safe sex, men are the ones who have to cover up their sensitive parts while the ladies get the full pleasure. To look gorgeous, all that a woman needs are breast implants. Nightclubs only have Ladies' Nights, never Gentlemen's Nights. When a female accuses a male of molest/rape, she always get the sympathies. When a male accuses a female of molest/rape, he always get the ridicules. When a female stumbles into a male washroom, she only gets strange looks and curious glances. When a male stumbles into a female washroom, all hell breaks loose. When a woman cries in front of a camera, she is a victim. When a man cries in front of a camera, he is a dramafag.

But on the other hand, to argue for the feminists, we do have several valid reasons. Women give birth. Women have periods. Rape/molest victims are usually female. No one seriously believes that Virgin Mary was really a virgin. Britney Spears. Women have often been oppressed in the past. Balding women are much more unacceptable than balding men.

But let's look at things from another point of view. If men are the ones who give birth to babies, imagine how many babies would have been born alcoholics. Imagine how big the penis would need to be. Imagine the pain for the ladies then.

Men don't have periods. But men have the insatiable lust that drives them crazy, force them to make stupid choices and be easily manipulated.

No one really cares if Virgin Mary was a virgin.

Britney Spears.

Women have frequently been the actual rulers behind the kings and emperors of many kingdoms and empires. There have also been many women who are as powerful, if not more powerful, than other men of their times.

Men bald more easily.

Finally, some women are just not that attractive, yet they seem to believe that they are. Evidence: girls who wear revealing clothes when they are not well-endowed (either have too little or too much). Confidence is fine, but if you end up being single forever after demanding too much from the guys, don't blame it on them. Same for the men - don't blame the women.

And if anyone is still wondering why more people are remaining single as the years go by, blame it on feminism. Here's a clear example.

Rant 120 / "Pwn" Is Not "Pawn", But A Stronger Version Of "Own", Which Means "Trash"

Found 2 problems with the Ricemaker bot.

First, I was wrong when I guessed that the bot crashes due to Connection Time Out's. In fact, I find that threads can disappear without crashing the bot. I discovered that when I used 5 threads while doing something else. When I checked the bot after a while, only 3 threads were appearing. Therefore, I concluded that crashing threads =/= crashing bot.

Second, apparently something is very wrong with its usage of dict.org. Started last night, when I found its accuracy at 5% and generating rice 10+ grains/s with 30 threads. So I expanded the command prompt it was in and saw that every single entry that uses dict.org to check for definition gives a wrong answer. Absolutely no idea why. When I tested dict.org myself, the definitions I get were correct.

I guess I have to make it skip dict.org now. Another command to add to its starting commands.... it's already pretty long and inconvenient as it is now:

ricemaker.py -t50 -l2 -m7

and now I have to add "-bdict.org" too.





Tried baking salmon just now. The notion of baking fish started last night when I woke up. I remembered this piece of salmon left in the freezer for more than a month and was wondering if it was still edible. Since it was probably way past its expiry date, I took it out and opened it to see if there was any odour.

It was frozen, so that was no smell. Being too lazy to wait for it to thaw before testing again, I sprinkled black pepper on it liberally, wrap it with its original wrapper and put it in my fridge for a slow thaw cum marination.

At 7.30am, I started to prepare my breakfast. Took out the salmon, thought it smelled slightly wrong. But I decided that the baking process will solve the problem. With a piece of butter-covered aluminium foil, I wrapped the salmon up neatly and placed it in the oven. Using the maximum heat at 230 degrees C, I baked it for 14mins.

The recipes I checked on the Net either stated about 17mins at 175 degrees C or "depends on the size of the salmon". So I decided on 230 degrees at 14mins, which is about the same, to me.

When I took it out finally, it didn't smell as wrong anymore, but it was not cooked thoroughly, so I put it back in and baked for another 15mins at 230 degrees.

At last, it was done, after 30mins of waiting. I eagerly poured it out, with the melted butter and all, onto my plate. I cut out a small piece and put it into my mouth. It didn't take long for it to happen. What struck me at that point was the truth. It was not my 1337 skills that affected my cooking. Not was it the lack of spices and stuff.

The fish was really way past its expiry date.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING! SKIP THE FOLLOWING PART IF YOU ARE STILL AN INNOCENT LITTLE KID WHO CANNOT STAND EXTREMELY OBSCENE IDEAS!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!




Was looking through a list of videos in some forums yesterday when I saw this video's description: why u shouldn't stick something into your urethra.

Being a sane young man, I thought it was a funny video about dildos stuck in pussys, so I clicked on it. While I waited for it to load, I checked its comments. And thank whatever powers that are out there that I did. The comments ranged from short ones like "..." to something about "forks and pens" to extremely tortured screams like "OMFG YOU SICK BASTARD!"

That kinda made me close the browser tab right away. Close shave, but the idea still gives me the shivers now. Seriously.

Brrr...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------









Noticed that one of the worst time to use the Net is about 8-10am. My bot crashed a lot during these few hours whenever I have 10 threads or more running. People shouldn't surf for pr0n so early in the morning. Kidding. I know everyone checks his/her email and etc at this time when they arrive in their offices, or even at home. Sucks.





After the last few days' torture, my sleeping hours have finally stabilized at a more acceptable time. I am beginning to start sleeping at 6pm and waking at 12am. Happened the day before and yesterday. This is much better than sleeping 6am, at least for now. Sleeping at 6am is the best because I get to do everything in the silence of the night, but only when school is not an important factor.






Seriously, why "Free Tibet"? Those protesters are morons. Tibet doesn't need to be free. Tibet should not be free! Shit, if Tibet wasn't part of China all these years it would still be the mountain shithole today that it once was. If not for China's help, they wouldn't have developed shit! Even the Dalai Lama understands that.

What the Dalai Lama is a measure of autonomy. He doesn't want Tibet to be separate from the wealth of China. He just want a separate system for Tibet. But all those idiots with their ignorance and hot blood just want to "Free Tibet". How can an independent Tibet survive in the world today? What do they have but rocks? They don't even have enough flat land to build on!
Entrepot? LOL!!!

The "Free Tibet" supporters should read a little more on what they're really protesting for, or do the world a favour and shoot themselves in the head together with the skeptics of global warming.

And many of those reports we see are phrased to make it sound different from what really happened. Like the casualties. Not all reports on the Net mentioned who were killed, and without stating that it was mainly the Han Chinese who were the victims, many people would assume that it was the Tibetans who were killed fighting Chinese troops.

True that the Tibetan genes are probably going to be replaced by the Chinese genes in the future, but without China to depend on, they're going to live really shitty lives. According to the Wikipedia's article on Tibet's economy, "the Central Chinese government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditure."

Free Tibet. Genius with a capital "G".

So, should they lose their Tibetan identity or live in poverty and under constant threat of a Chinese invasion? And who's going to support their independence? Are they going to be like Taiwan, sucking up to the U.S. 24/7 just to prevent China from completely pwning them with a sneeze?

Both ways are shit, but if they would just think about their descendants, perhaps turning into Chinese is a preferable choice compared to making their kids' future look dark as Hell. I mean, all Chinese people have ancestors who suffered that fate. When the First Emperor conquered all the kingdoms, they lost their identities. It became worse when he unified the Chinese language and burnt all those books. It happened again at the end of the famous war between the 3 kingdoms. So, Tibet, you aren't anything special in the eyes of the Chinese.

So far in every leg of the Olympics torch relay, there have been pro-Tibetan protesters making trouble for the torch-bearers. This is sad and stupid. The world is full of fools.

Pro-Tibetan separatists,






I have spoken.

Rant 119 / It's Not That Bad. It's Worse.

I found this website www.7chan.org yesterday. Full of Internet trash. Of course, even in the rubbish dump, there are sometimes hidden gems to be found. So it is the same with this website. I'd say that 90% of its contents is junk that people need not see, but once in a while I find something funny that is worth the search.

There is porn, but I don't need to go any further into that. Generally, I don't touch such sections since there are usually things that I don't want to see in there. Like Goatse (/shiver). But they have a rather large section of it, so it's worth a mention.

The best section should be their /wp/, or wallpapers section, where users request and post nice wallpapers that are often clean, i.e. no names and websites on them. Took a few of their sky-themed wallpapers.

Their /b/, a.k.a. random section, is the essence of the Internet. That is where all random shit goes, and when I say "shit", I mean shit. To summarize what this section contains in the style of the American netizens, I need only 3 words: "fail" and "EPIC FAIL".

This should describe most of the anonymous users.

But then this is...

So, really, 90% of everything you find is trash. However, there is still that pulling force that makes me want to search for forums like this. It's...



According to Wikipedia, this website is also a "stronghold" of Anonymous. I'm really only interested in their Project Chanology. Though Scientology hasn't affected Singapore yet, thanks to its strict censorship, I'm still somewhat unhappy that it is successful in attaining tax-exempt status in countries like Australia, using the reason that it is a religion.

Fuck that bullshit. Non-violent protests FTW! In some of the protests, they actually rickrolled the Church of Scientology (CoS). Utterly pointless, but funny, thus catches attention.

To understand rickrolling, one must first see the Wiki definition of "rickrolling".

There, if you've clicked on the link, you've just been rickrolled.

If you still don't understand this, imagine you are reading an article on the net, then you spot a link that says something that attracts your eyes, like "New C&C3 Expansion Announced! Click here to see trailer!". You click on it, just like the way you click on this link. All you see is this campy music video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up".

It is basically a trick, a joke. Instead of saying,"You've been tricked!", with this you say," You've been rickrolled!" Thus "rickroll" means "to trick someone into watching the music video of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley". And in the case of Project Chanology, they played the song during the protest, and apparently this is also a form of "rickrolling".






The following picture has a good point...


So that's it for now. Can't put too many pics or it'll take too long to load.

Rant 118 / Divided We Stand, Together We Fall

Slept quite early yesterday - somewhere between 1830 - 1900hr. Was quite happy, expecting to wake up at about 4am like my bro, since I slept quite little that night before.

But alas, life doesn't always turn out the way you expect it would! I woke up in the dark, refreshed, and stretched out my right arm to get my handphone. I flicked it up, and looked at the time. WTF!?!?! 11.47pm?!?!? I couldn't believe my eyes, so I went out to look around. Sure enough, my mum was still hard at work in front of my bro's 20+ inch wide screen LCD monitor (She sleeps at around 1-2am).

Holy Shit! I thought my lack of sleep will help me get through the times when my body is becoming accustomed to staying awake, namely 12-4am. But no, it didn't help. So I decided not to sleep in the morning, not to sleep during the new sleeping hours of my body clock (10am), not to sleep in the afternoon, and held on till evening. With help from 3 packets of instant tea (yep I'm sensitive to caffeine, thanks to my abstinence from coffee and tea, and my rare contact with Coca Cola)

So I'm still quite awake, even if it's been 17 hours since I came awake. I totally couldn't mug after I woke up last night, so I played till 7am. Neverwinter Nights: Mask of the Betrayer. Then since my mum wasn't up yet, I decided to cook some breakfast for myself to make myself stay awake with the energy input and the work (not because of hunger). Surprisingly, sleep deprivation doesn't make me feel hungry. Yes my stomach does growl at the appropriate hours but I don't have the motivation to eat. My mouth stays as dry as normal times even when I see food.

So I cooked a heavy breakfast again. Didn't care about my bro. He microwaved last night's leftover fried rice when I went to the kitchen. Anyway he wouldn't want to eat such evil stuff that I was planning to cook anyway. Asked him once, yesterday morning.



Felt like eating bite-sized buttered toast, so I need to cut them properly. With crust, because the crust makes it more crunchy and gives it more "substance". Or else it'll feel like chewing on air.


Yes, that's my "chopping board". I had to balance the paper plate on the round cap and still cut the bread as softly as I can. Turned out pretty good, eh? The usual area where the chopping board is placed is occupied by a pile of vegetables that my mum bought. She didn't expect me to use that space.


And the beef patties. The main course. The almighty processed meat. Of course I didn't cook 10. Managed to tear out 2 frozen patties, whole, and put the rest back.


Eggs. Natural, chicken eggs full of wholesome goodness. Fresh enough to eat raw, but not too fresh that I can still smell the chicken vagina. Not that I'd be able to recognize the odour even if I actually did catch a whiff of it, of course, but you know what I mean.


The toasts, buttered before toasting, and toasted to a state of post-perfection. Man, it was only 4mins at 230 degrees Celsius!


Closer look at the better ones. What did you expect? It was 7am and I was damn bored!


The final product. Note the broken yolk of the upper egg and that the two patties are stacked. Also note the black patches on the top patty. The taste of the patty wasn't affected by the black patches. It may look more seriously burnt in the pic because of the colour contrast, but it wasn't that bad. But the broken yolk was unforgivable! Those eggs were fresh! Theoretically.

That was what I ate this morning and I washed them all down with a huge mug of iced milk tea.

Moral of the story:
a) if that didn't look appetizing to you, never, ever ask a sleep-deprived gamer to cook for you.
b) if that looked delicious, try cooking it! It's easy. Substitute patties with bacon strips to make it even easier.





Finally read the article of "ethics of file sharing" on Wikipedia. I like this reason especially:

A further argument in favour of file sharing is that not all of its users would buy all of the material that they download. In other words, one illegal download will not immediately translate to one lost sale, as many anti-piracy groups maintain. No study has yet been done to ascertain the proportion of users that would buy any of the material they download, if downloading were not available, and there is no currently available method to determine the number of sales that are represented by a given number of downloads.

This is so true. If there were no PS2 games available online or being pirated in the streets back then, no one would have even bought the console itself! They were so damned expensive! Who would have bought Xenosaga Episode 1 for a price that exceeds S$50? Well, other than the die-hard fans.






Then for the opponents, they have:

Opponents of file sharing argue that not only does sharing files decrease the income of the actors and bands; it especially affects the staff that works for them. For the film industry, the set builders and makeup artists take the fall. If someone downloads a movie from the internet, that person may not go to see the movie in theaters or buy the DVD. If that happens then the production studios make less profit or may not be able to recuperate the high costs of production. This leads to salary decreases for employees. It also leads to less financial backing for both mainstream and independent filmmakers because investing thousands or millions of dollars in a movie becomes even riskier.


This is, in my opinion, not exactly true. Think again.

First, do movie stars really deserve the millions they make just for one movie? Do certain singers really deserve the millions they make just by singing about 13 songs that are really digitally enhanced to make it sound better than the crap it really was?

In my opinion, no. They are not contributing to society as much as people like, say, doctors in your neighbourhood clinic. Heck, even mushroom farmers are contributing more to the world than actors. Imagine a world where mushrooms are incredibly expensive, then imagine a world where movies are not affordable by the middle-class people. Which is worse?


Second, if a singer can't sing and requires digital enhancements to sound good, if a movie has no plot whatsoever and relies purely on special effects to attract its audience, should the singer be paid more than the guy on the controls and should the actors be paid more than the special effects specialists?

In the first case, the singer is merely selling her looks. The songs could have been sung by someone else, and with enough digital enhancements they will sound like her voice, only with better singing technique. So, if people refuse to admit that they buy her albums for her looks, then they cannot deny that the guy who improved her songs should be paid more because he's the one who made what they say they're buying it for - the songs! The singer should be paid less, not the employees.

In the second case, what makes the movie sell? The actor or the explosions? Take the latest Die Hard sequel as an example. Without Bruce Willis, the movie wouldn't have sold well. Without the stuntmen, computer effects experts, explosives specialists and etc, the movie would have sold in the first week and gain notoriety for being shit by the second week. Just like Snakes on a Plane. So if anyone should take a pay cut, it definitely isn't any of them!

Third, when it comes to investments being riskier, that's bull! In the first place, they shouldn't even invest in shit movies like Meet the Spartans! They degrade the intelligence of American civilization. Yes, it sold pretty well, but what does it say about the viewers who support this kind of film? And it sold well only because it wasn't released in the holiday seasons, when the good movies are out.

If investors become less willing to take risks, perhaps they will have stricter criteria on what to invest in. Perhaps Hollywood will stop flooding the world with shit. Perhaps they will even hire scriptwriters who actually have this apparently close-to-extinction-among-scriptwriters talent called creativity. Maybe, just maybe, Hollywood will even produce its own original horror movie, instead of the run-of-the-mill gory thrillers! What a dream!

And speaking of that, I think Hollywood is doing to the U.S. exactly what the Coliseum had done to Rome. Back in the past, the Roman Empire had many problems, like rebellions in its newly conquered states. These generated other problems like the huge amount of money needed to be spent on its military, and etc. But with widespread and very accessible entertainment for the masses, the public remained happy or satisfied with their world. Kind of like a drug for the people.

And that is what Hollywood is doing now, it seems to me. By flooding the American minds with harmless, mindless entertainment, the people forget their troubles more often while filmmakers make massive amounts of money helping them do that.

If it very risky to make movies, then why are there so many box office flops these days? I mean, why do so many people want to try bad scripts and gamble that they will sell? It's risky! Isn't it logical that they should think more about it before spending millions of dollars on it?

So if it gets riskier, will they not read through the scripts a few more times, do more research on the directors and etc before making the actual movie? Then won't we get better films more often? Then won't people stop downloading so many movies because more movies are actually worth the ticket prices??

Anyone can tell you that watching a film at home can never beat watching it in the cinema. The main thing that stops people from paying for the movies that they don't believe they are worth the price of the tickets. Is it not true that the price is determined by the customers? If the price is not worth the product, potential buyers will not pay for it.

So if more and more people download movies, doesn't it just mean that the movies aren't worth the current ticket prices? Ditto for song albums.

So my argument is that if more people are turning to illegal downloads, it's only because they are willing to sacrifice the quality of the experience so that they won't have to pay a price that they don't believe to be worth it.

You know, I believe I've said something very similar long ago...