Rant 131 / Exams Doubleplusungood. Bellyfeel Unluv Exams.

Watched episode 4 of Pro at Cooking. Another episode of a cook with attitude. Every episode he would have a different hot female assistant, but he had forgotten to sack the one from episode 3.

So in this episode, when she arrived, he said," Oh yea, I totally forgot to fire you last episode."

Then he takes a deep breath, and continues," Okay, you're fired."

And he closed the door.

Anyway, this episode's chilli sauce is too complicated for my noob skills. And too many different types of peppers to buy.

"If you get this in your eye. You will die."

ROFL!!





A funny (in a sick sort of way) discussion on some forum:

Original post: I just had my first wet dream ever (20 here). And it was about my mom being drunk. She had put on some make-up and she looked nothing like she did usually. In fact, she looked EXACTLY like a hot girl I knew. She made me caress her breasts and other shit like that and then I started cumming. I awoke immediatly.

Fuck, I feel sick now. Please someone explain this faggotry.

One reply: It could be worse, you could have dreamed it was your dad...

Another reply: I had this horrid dream in which my dad and I had very uncomfortable sex. My face looked like >=0 for a full week.


These posts are probably lies. Still, they're hilarious.




A new record! Setting 70 threads last night, with rest times set at between 2-7s, I have just donated 5.7m grains donated in 10 hrs. It didn't crash! I feel like I'm a good person now. Probably just a temporary condition. I'll go back to being evil soon.






I think I'm getting the hang of Newspeak, after 3 nights of reading the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Read about half the book and part of Orwell's explanation of Newspeak at the end of the book. So I've managed to translate a few things into Newspeak.

Exams doubleplusungood. Bellyfeel unluv exams.

Translation: Exams are extremely bad. I completely hate exams, all the way from my guts.

doubleplus = superlatively
ungood = bad
bellyfeel = completely,totally feel/believe that
unluv = unlove = hate


Am I good or what? :D



BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

Rant 130 / Big Brother Doesn't Necessarily Come With Communism IRL

Somehow Baldur's Gate 2 isn't capturing my interest the way Neverwinter Nights 2, its expansion and Torment did. Maybe it's because there are just too many side quests. Even before I leave the first tutorial dungeon, I already got my first side quest.




It's strange that there is no custom map for Kane's Wrath out there. There are a few, but none of them are things like Art of Defense. Where have all the map editors gone?? It's boring to play the normal maps.




The Japanese are so damn creative at sexual fetishes. Now there is even a PC game that simulates a train molester. Holy cow! According to a certain forum discussion, the whole point of the game is to successfully have sex with 3 unwilling women on a train (not simultaneously though).

Apparently, the other passengers on the plane aren't going to scream, the girls are going to enjoy being molested/raped and it's actually possible to have sex in the crowded trains of Japan. What a wonderful form of public transport it is. Train sex! 100 years ago, it was believed that no one could have sex on trains, just like the way people thought that flying was impossible for humans. Look it this! Molest simulators FTW!

Also according to some of the members' translation, this game was really made as a practice for the game designers, and that if it sells, they'll include more ladies for the guys to feast on.

Oh, the perverts!

Oh, the genius!

Who needs enlightenment to get to Nirvana anyway?




Finished Ilium and Olympos again recently. Might have mentioned it before. This should be the 3rd time I read them. Seriously, Dan Simmons is the only writer I know who can successfully combine gods(Zeus!!), Greek heroes(Archilles!!), Shakespeare(The Tempest!!), robots (moravecs!!) and genetically modified humans into a single epic tale.

My belief is that Archilles, in this story, ended up as an immortal. His probability of dying at the hands of Paris was changed, at birth, to 100%. Meaning: there is no other way for him to die except by getting killed by Paris, lover of Helen. But Paris was killed by Apollo halfway through the war! Therefore, he cannot die!

His battle with Zeus at the end may be the best fight ever written. I don't know, but I thought that the characteristics of the fighters were the reasons for it being so memorable. One was arguably an immortal who cannot be killed by any means, while the other was the King of all gods, the most powerful god in the pantheon of Greek gods. The best part was when Zeus tried to shoot Archilles with Odysseus's best bow at point blank... and missed.

That really drove home the point that his probabilities of dying by Paris's hands was at 100%. There really is no way to kill him because the Universe will make sure he doesn't die. This power is far greater than that of any superhero ever conceived, except the God of several major religions, that is, if u consider Him a superhero.

Too bad some Greek heroes never appeared in the story. I'd love to see Heracles making an appearance, but I think he died before the Trojan War. I'm not too familiar with Greek mythology. It was nice to see Atlas making a short appearance in the story as a statue. According to some variations of the myths, Atlas was turned into stone when Athena showed him the head of the Medusa.

In the story, the only point where I got confused was when they revealed that the Mount Olympos where the god lived were actually on a different planet as Ilium. I had the impression that the Mars on the original Universe was the one that contained Ilium. Then they said they were on Earth. It was only till later when I figured out that Setebos switched our Mars with Ilium-Earth, and the Greek gods were living on our Mars that was transported to another Universe.

I guess the most memorable thing in this story is Archilles and his unique form of immortality. Most other immortals in fiction can be killed, but don't age(Highlander). Or they can be killed, but they always rise again(Planescape: Torment). Or they can remain alive and conscious no matter their physical state(liches in some stories). But Archilles cannot die simply because he cannot die!

I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four now.

WAR IS PEACE!

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY!

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!

And never forget, Big Brother is Watching You!

Rant 129 / Everything Is Costing More Except Downloaded Stuff

Finished Planescape: Torment. It took about 3 days of intense concentration but I got the best ending. I had the help of a few walkthroughs because the game's maps aren't exactly user-friendly.

This game is the first I've every tried in which the final boss fight is OPTIONAL. Yea, with enough stats, I managed to talk my way through. LOL! In fact, talking is the only way to get the best ending.

The music in this game is fantastic, and it's not relative to the standards of that era. Whoever composed them really is good at creating sad music, and there are so many touching scenes in the game (it's all about dying after all).

And the characters are well-designed with great depth. Everyone's got a big background story, some of which are tied to the hero's past.

And the scriptwriters were the best! Because they were not able to create every single scene in CG, they had to describe everything not shown as vividly as possible, yet not make them too long.

If they had made this game using today's technology, it would have been a far greater masterpiece than Neverwinter Nights 2.

The combats were quite easy in the last dungeon even though I was a mage with the minimum DEX throughout the game. With an epic dagger found late into the game, I totally had to rely on it to kill everything. There was nowhere that I could rest and replenish my spells, so I had to be stingy with them.

Fortunately, knowing that money no longer matters in the last dungeon made me buy 300 healing charms, the game's equivalent of a potion. That was the best choice I made in the game on my own. Together with the bug that allowed me to use an item in the Inventory without wasting a round, I kept myself at full HP all the time.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of the game was not the last dungeon, but the several parts in the Outlands, which precede the final dungeon. First reason is that right before I entered the portal, I was unable to afford many healing stuff. Second, I needed a lot of healing stuff in the dungeons in the Outlands. Third and final reason is that there were no shops available for a long, long time after a certain part.

In the end, the hero found his mortality, but the ending was not disappointing. It was a very satisfactory ending with the possibility for a sequel, though it's already been 9 years since its release. Sad. A sequel would have been nice.

In summary, great music, unforgettable plot. My theory is that developers these days tend to spend more resources on impressive graphics than on character/plot development. Torment is an example of what RPGs are meant to be. More story!

Time to go on to Baldur's Gate. I had completed the beginning till the part where I finally escaped the prison, before I started on Torment.









Something's wrong with my aircon. Every time I turn it on, a sour smell is emitted for a while. Takes about 10mins to dissipate. Smells like old sweat. No idea why, but the smell's not horrible enough to require a repairman. Hopefully it's not because something died in there.




Are South Koreans really xenophobic? It'd make sense that they are, in general, because their gaming scene has no foreigner whatsoever. So far, there has been only 1 American commentator. Not even a player. Racism?

Rant 128 / Overdrive!

Starting this article with a 5MB Flash. Never forget what Japanese Flash artists on crack can accomplish.

This isn't a new flash movie. It can be found on Youtube. I just managed to find the flash download version on some website. Forgot the link. But now I can play this on Full Screen Mode!! Weee!





Started playing Planescape: Torment. Graphics are undoubtedly outdated, but it was released a long time ago. The game itself is good. The plot is quite original. Instead of saving the world, it's about saving the protagonist in this game.

The hero, this time, is an immortal. He cannot remain dead. He can be killed, but he will always rise again. As far as I can tell, the story is about him finding a way to finally die forever.

The good thing about this is that it's hard to get to the GAME OVER screen. It's still possible, like when he gets eaten or trapped forever. But the autosave feature is so amazingly efficient, it saves almost everytime I pass through a door. So there is little need to save manually. But out of habit, I always maintain 3 different saves other than the autosave and quicksave, just in case my mistakes don't become obvious immediately. It happens.

There are few bad points about it, but they are all due to the game being so primitive. For example, I can only buy one item at a time. I.e., I cannot buy 20 potions in one shot, and I have to click BUY 20 times for that.

It's not a big deal. The worst problem is that the AI it uses to plot a path when order the guys to move to a point sucks. First, it pauses everytime I click, so when I need to run quickly round a corner, I cannot spam clicks like I always do. Second, the AI just plain suck. It walks into walls when walls block their paths. I guess I've been spoilt by modern AIs like those in Neverwinter Nights 2.

It sometimes, in a way, crashes. Somehow my com just cannot process the magic effects fast enough, so they often turn out to be giant black rectangles. Worse, my screen freezes when the effects are huge. I accidentally found a solution to this when I pressed Alt-F4 when the screen first froze. I was returned to Windows, and Windows asked me whether I want to change my display to 16 colours because it cannot run the game properly in its present colour scheme. I chose to maintain the present display settings.

Then the game asked me whether I'm sure I want to quit. I clicked "No". This brought the game back, and the screen was not frozen anymore. This is my wonderful solution to frozen screens due to games being too old. (fucking vista)

I love the game. I just spent 10 hours straight playing it. I didn't even bother to get more water to drink. Heck, I didn't even eat a thing till 8pm just now. This is how good the game is, to me.

And the lack of GAME OVER helps too.






Found this news article recently. It's from 2 months back. It's about this 18-yr-old kid who is now legally a sex offender. Wow...

Apparently, at 16, he met this 13-yr-old girl in a teen club who told him she was the same age as he. They had sex, someone found out, he got charged for statutory rape. GG.



Consequences include "kicked out of high school, thrown out of parks, taunted by neighbors, harassed by strangers, and unable to live within 2,000 feet of a school, day-care center or park....prohibited from going to the movies or mall with friends because it would require crossing state borders, which he cannot do without permission from his probation officer."

Holy shit.

So you see why premarital sex is bad? Who knows whether the girl is lying? :P

"One neighbor came to the house and told Mary he wasn’t going to leave them alone until they took their “child rapist” away, so they moved". Mary is his mother.

The kid is WRONG! Their whole FUCKING COUNTRY IS WRONG! It's not his fault. It's the fault of his country's culture. USA, land of the free.

The general public cannot handle true freedom. True freedom only happens when everyone has to fight for himself, protect himself and live for himself. Once there are rules, once there are LAWS, there is restriction, the antithesis of freedom.

True freedom is anarchy. People cannot handle that. People want the illusion of freedom while living in a protected society. The U.S. excels in that, giving the illusion of freedom.

People are allowed to own guns, but they cannot use it as they wish. They can worship anything, but the majority of the population will just ostracize the minorities.

But in a way, there is some freedom, in terms of sex. And this led to this kid's situation. People cannot handle true freedom. This is an example. Give them freedom, and they won't know when to restrain themselves. Kids having sex. Is that pedophilia?

Not exactly. To be a pedophile, one must be an adult.

This question came to me when I was in lurking in 4chan. What if those guys who seem so interested in CP are really kids themselves?? (CP means Child Porn.) Wouldn't that be understandable???







Talking about 4chan, that forum is pretty interesting. I rarely go to their most active section, the Random section (aka /b/), but I have been there before. Some of the people there are sick. Avoid /b/. Visit /ck/ instead. Full of recipes!




Back to Torment I go!

Rant 127 / The Best Days In One's Life Comes Right After The Last Papers

Daft Punk. Discovery. One More Time. Aerodynamic. Digital Love. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Crescendolls. Short Circuit. Can never get sick of them. Some of the few that I can listen everyday and not stop it.




Recently been lurking in live.yahoo.com. Found this "DJ" called Mr Hand Returns. It's a virtual party every time he's on. He's just good.





Another truth I have understood. Most girls look better with their clothes on. Something I have seen but not seen.






This Western stall in my neighbourhood that I thought was closing down didn't close down! More steaks! His steaks are steaks, not thin slices of meat! Thick enough to be medium rare. LOL!





My books have arrived!!! But I accidentally ordered an extra copy of "A Feast for Crows". Guess I'll wait for Christmas or something.

But the important thing is that now I have all the books I need to cover a month or so of holidays!

And the following pic reminds me why I should read more:


Translation: What revolves around the Earth? A: The Moon B: The Sun ...

And yes, 56% believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth.







Found a blog recently of this guy who teaches in Wabash College, which is a liberal arts college. He is planning a one-sem course on history of RPGs. RPGs as in Role-Playing Games. Fuck! His students (limited to 20 per sem) has to play (PLAY!!!!) RPGs for the course and have to finish some of them.


FUCK!!!!!

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK

Rant 126 / Ash Ketchum - He's An Ass Man

From the blog update by Geoff on www.purepwnage.com dated April 14th 2008,

"Adapting to the modern music business is going to be all about convenience. I've been in situations where I have wanted to listen to a particular album that I have bought on CD and I have to choose between searching through a folder/box full of CDs or the quicker and easier option of downloading it from an illegitimate source. Digital downloads are a must for my generation of music consumers.

I'm not advocating piracy, I'm illustrating the fact that media retailers have yet to match the convenience, simplicity, and quality of illegal sources."


This is what I've been thinking all along. Even though I don't listen to music much, I find it strange that people would want to go to a record store to buy music.

Steps to buying music from record store:
1) Find the store
2) Travel to store (Transport = $$)
3) Find CD/DVD from shelves
4) Pay (More $$)

Steps to downloading music from internet sources:
1) Google or find out about website from friends (Computer use of electricity = $$)
2) Search for album/song title
3) Click Download

Anyone who has heard of downloaded music cannot deny that the quality is the same from both sources. Yet the second choice is much cheaper and convenient. That's why iTunes is making so much money for Apple. That's why record stores are closing down one after another.

Stop blaming us consumers. If you can't adapt, if your goods don't sell well enough, why look at us? CDs and DVDs are no longer the best storage medium for small quantities of data. As broadband internet access gains popularity, even games are being so online via download, like through STEAM. If not for the limits of our cables, CDs and DVDs would have long been obsolete. And all the CD/DVD stores would have become museums/antique shops.






Can't stop thinking about the train journey across half the world! Since it is going to take a long time to prepare, I shall plan it for my graduation trip. RAWR!!! This trip will take about two months! If successful, it shall be one of the biggest event in my life.

The trip will be tough. Much of my daily routine will need to be adapted to suit the backpacking/train-riding life. Clothes will be a problem. Maybe I will buy new clothes during the journey while starting with my old clothes.

Personal hygiene will be another factor. I may or may not stop overnight often. If I do, I will still need to find somewhere to stay. I will need to do research on that for all the countries I go through.

And visas. Does the point of entry make a difference? I mean, for example, if I don't go directly to China, will the visa be different?

Sleep and safety. I will probably spend many nights on trains/train stations. This means I will have to sleep in rather uncomfortable places like on the train or on benches. Trains are uncomfortable. Benches aren't safe. The Middle East and/or India and China and Cambodia and Vietnam are not exactly low-crime zones, but I have to go through them all in the journey. I will probably need friends, though they are not necessary.

Not only that, I will be holding on to some cash. I will need currencies from every country, plus some extra money to change into local cash in case I run out of it. This either means some really convenient credit card, or loads of cash.

Personal safety. I will need to exercise a lot before going on this trip. And get some useful gadgets like bear spray. But then bear sprays are classified as ARMS under the law of many countries in the regions that the trip may go through, including Norway. So perhaps a Swiss Army knife is a better choice.

Handphone. I will need auto-roaming and the necessary services to allow myself to call anyone at anytime.

Camera. I want to have a digital camera and a conventional camera. The digital camera may not last as long as I want, and I may not be able to get the right batteries all the time. A conventional camera also gives a different feel to pictures of sceneries and such.

Transportation. I will definitely stop for a day or two in some of the countries I pass through and do some sight-seeing. This means a lot of walking, or looking for transportation. That needs to be researched and planned.





I was quite surprise to read that inflation is actually a healthy phenomenon. I've always had the idea that a society with 0 inflation rate has a perfect economy. This is because if it is growing and yet maintain at no inflation, or maybe deflate, its currency would get stronger against all other currencies. Why wouldn't it be good?

One basic reason is that when a currency gets stronger, it becomes more expensive for foreign companies to buy its goods. It lowers demands for its stuff.

When I used to play Europa Universalis III, I always strived to maintain a zero inflation rate until I can build tax assessment offices, which causes small deflations. This way, my inflation rate will always stay near to or at 0% p.a.. It cannot become a negative rate, aka deflate.

What's wrong with deflation?? With deflation, we may even get back to those days when a meal cost 5 cents or less. LOL!

Inflation seems like an incurable disease, unless one sees it as a relative term. In other words, if it is not seen as a relative term, inflation is when your noodles cost more than before. In relative terms, inflation is when noodles in other countries are also costing more than before.

Thus in the latter, everything is really costing the same everywhere, and it's only the numbers that are changing. But in this case, someday our numbers will grow too big, just like what Turkish Lira used to be before they made a new Lira.

Doesn't that seem like an incurable disease? If so, isn't deflation the cure?

But if that is the cure, it must be applied everywhere for it to work, i.e., deflation must occur in most countries. Woe to those that don't deflate!

Fat chance. It's more probable that I'll get laid within the next 5 hours than this ever happening in the rest of the 21st century.

People are greedy. They want more money. When more people get more money, prices go up. I mean, if you're selling stuff and you see your customers getting rich, won't you jack up the prices just to get your share of the pie?

Also, there really is only so much stuff in the world. Even if everyone has a billion bucks to spend, one can only snatch so much before everything runs out.




To end this post, here's an extremely entertaining post from 4chan:

Rant 125 / The Longest Train Journey On Earth!!! Want!!!!

Just watched my bro play Assassin's Creed. His pimped CPU is allowing him to play it at mostly high video settings smoothly. On a 20-something inch wide screen LCD. Compare this to my laptop. I set everything to the absolute lowest settings. And I cannot get past the 1st scenario in the tutorial. It was a major lagfest. GG.

Now the difference between his desktop and my laptop has finally dawned on me. It is incredibly huge, even though his costs only 500 more than mine. Damn.





Recently, I saw this troll on some forum saying that "God exists" and daring people to prove him wrong. All replies were basically trash except one, which contained reasons that I've never encountered before.

This person said that if God is omniscience, then he would not need to change anything in the universe, because he would have known about all these problems and created everything in such a way that things would not end up in these situations in the first place.

And because God is omnipotent, he definitely would have the power to enforce the above at the very beginning.

Unless He wanted his creations to suffer. Unless he wanted Satan and all other problems in the world to exist. Unless everyone is wrong about perfection and Utopia except me, that perfection is really a balance of good and evil, that a place where only good things exist is not Utopia.

Either these, or He doesn't exist. Proof. LOL!






A flash movie on www.newgrounds.com again brought up the Tibetan issue. Now that I've read more about it, it seems so complicated. In fact, it is just as complicated as the Israel thing.

First, on the Tibetan side, we have accusations from the Dalai Lama that the Chinese are creating a form of apartheid system, where the Tibetans are oppressed. Also, due to a huge influx of Han Chinese into Tibet, they believe that "pure" Tibetans are bound to become extinct. This country was supposedly a peaceful place filled with peace-loving monks.

Second, we have the Chinese side. Tibet was once a starving land. The Chinese, while occupying Tibet, also rescued the Tibetans from starvation. Not only did they send food to the region, they imported rich Chinese soil to the mountainous(thus infertile) lands and taught the people modern agricultural techniques.

I guess it is because of this that racism probably arose. The Tibetans were a pretty poor bunch then, though it's much better now. Their monks, though many, were not farmers. Anyone can guess what they did for the lands that feed them. Buddhist teachings and spiritual enlightenment is pointless when the people are starving. Parents strive to make their children seem like reincarnations of late monks by making them say the right things and memorize certain words, just so that they will be accepted into the monasteries. Therefore, to some of the Chinese who have seen the situation, the monks are a group of lazy people they do not respect, even now.

Of course, China profits from this. By having this land, they gain a direct path to other countries like India. Plus, Tibet does have a few mines. In these ways, both sides prospered.

In the eyes of the Chinese, the Tibetans are an ungrateful people. They sacrificed their precious soil and food in a time of turmoil to feed a people who are unable help them in return. And now that the Tibetans are not as poor as before, they kill Chinese people. What atrocity!

Alas, things are never that simple. The love for one's land, culture and people are always naturally within humans who have lived their whole lives in their homelands. So the Tibetans want independence. If they were to be granted that, China will lose dignity, prestige and a few resources. It will be painful for China, but it will, by no means, be too damaging to them overall.

Meanwhile, the Tibetans will lose 90% of their government's revenue. The people will need to start paying taxes. They will lose direct access to their food supply from China. There will be chaos because their new government will have a hard time solving this problem and many others. China will probably embargo them for decades to make up for their losses. Which will make the Tibetans lose confidence in their new goverment unless something drastic is done. Like propaganda. Or civil unrest will be rampant.

Or perhaps the Dalai Lama will save the day. Buddhist teachings will feed the people. Prayers may turn edible. The lamas will start to farm. Who knows?

In the end, it really is hard to say who is right. I mean, how much of the history we read is even accurate? Even if they are, both sides have valid reasons to do what they are doing, and to stop doing what they are doing. The western media is just doing what they've always been doing - making foreign issues seem more serious while ignoring their own countries' problems.

Why don't the U.S. get rid of all the homeless people, drug addicts and racism in their own lands before trying to save other countries??










Here's an exceptionally fantastic idea. I want to take the longest train journey possible without going in a loop, from Singapore. From Singapore, one can take a continuous train ride all the way to, as far as I knew before googling, Vietnam.

But now with some research, I found this blog here and this blog detailing what can be the longest non-continuous train ride in the world without going in a loop.

In the first, the blogger did it in the year 2000, and he travelled through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Turkistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Originally I expected it to end in Scotland, but I guess going through Norway would make it even longer. But the total cost is pretty huge. In 2000, it cost this guy US$4000! 1000 for visas since he didn't wait in each country, 1000 for tickets and 2000 for accommodation.

But the thing is that this trip is kind of like backpacking through Asia and Europe, except this uses mainly the train. But the idea is fantastic! I thought of it during dinner last night. Somehow it just popped into my head.

What this guy did was just take trains and stop a while at each stop. He'd walk around, take photos and stuff. Sounds like quite an intense journey though. It took 30 different trains and 60 days! The planning must have been seriously tough. He must have had to do some research on all the train schedules, know all the necessary languages and where to get accommodation when he had to stop and wait.

The main difficulty would be the language barrier, I guess. Without knowing the right words, I would not be able to ask for help. The visas wouldn't be all the bad now since travelling through most of EU only requires a single visa now. I will need visas for all the Asian countries and Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless, I seriously want to try this someday!






Apparently, Europe and Asia is really a single landmass. The only reason we were taught them as 2 continents is mainly due to cultural and historic reasons. And some social inertia. Probably coz the Europeans want nothing to do with Asia. And Australia will cry if everyone finally agrees that Asia and Europe are one continent, coz it will be so lonely. LOL!