Rant 622 / IT'S FOR MY TEETH!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

More ants! This time, they came from another point of entry!

Again, I found them busy gargling on my Listerine on my basin. I then traced them to the back of my cistern next to it. I got angry and sprayed everything with water first, then Baygon. Then I looked around and found more on my toilet bowl. So I sprayed that area too. Finally I found some running towards a tiny hole between the wall tiles and a wire cover near the ceiling.

I believe that's the new entrance after I covered the previous one with copious amounts of Baygon. They must have entered from there, went down to the pipes, followed them to the cistern and from there to the basin.

Of course I can't spray the wire cover with my shower head; I'm attempting pesticide, not suicide. But I went crazy with Baygon, holding it about 30cm away from the spot for about 3s before going downwards slowly following the path the ants took.

When I was done, the bathroom was slightly misty and everything felt a little oily. But I was not finished yet. I absolutely cannot risk ants entering my room if I can help it, not after experiencing what it is like to have ants on my bed at night.

After searching around my home for more pesticide because I recall seeing my mum buy those tiny packets of poison pellets designed specially for ants, I couldn't find them and settled for insect repellent. I still have one bottle from the last trip to Malaysia, so I sprayed it generously around my cistern, on the wire cover and the what used to be the ants' path down, around my bathroom door and again around the first hole where it all began earlier in the day.

All that spraying was probably going to cause an overdose of some sort in me, so I decided to leave instead of checking some more. My eyes were beginning to sting a tiny bit too, which helped me come to that decision quickly.

So now my room, despite closing the door, is filled with the smell of the insect repellent. It doesn't stink and gives my room a sort of somewhat nice smell that reminds me of the jungle. Better that than the smell of Baygon. I will have to clean my toothbrush thoroughly tomorrow, or maybe even get a new one. Good thing I also keep my mug upside down after brushing my teeth so that water doesn't collect at the bottom, so I don't have to worry about it now.

Still, if they come in one more time to steal my Listerine, I think I will freak out. IT'S FOR MY TEETH! MINE!!

Rant 621 / Invasion Of The Ants

I was wrong. Heroes of Newerth on Garena is completely free to play after beta. Only for SEA players on Garena is this game free of charge.

$30 fee was for the international version which we can no longer play due to IP bans. People from SEA who have paid that amount are now compensated with a few months of Garena Gold membership.

Join me and suck at it now! My id is senor_hybrido and I'm usually not on because I only play 1-2 games a day :P. I go in, get pwned, deflate ego, learn humility, exit game and then play something else. Once or twice per day. It's a healthy habit in a way.










Frickin hell! Ants invading my bathroom again! This time, things are different.

I first noticed them going around my basin. These ants are twice the size of those that I used to see in my room long ago, which made them a little more alarming. Ants in my room! I haven't seen that in months!

I keep my room clean mostly by keeping an eye out constantly for ants, a bottle of insecticide in my room and scrubbing my feet on the rag-mat outside my door every time I enter the room. These have kept my room ant-free so far, until today.

These ants came from a hole through my bathroom wall where the air-conditioners' drainage pipes go through. The water from them has to go somewhere, and in my home it is piped to my bathroom's drain.

These ants were coming out of the hole, up to and around my basin to my bottle of mouthwash. This is not the first time I've seen ants attracted to my Listerine mouthwash, but an entire trail of them trying to improve their oral hygiene at my expense? Never.

First came the insecticide. I didn't care if a little got sprayed onto my toothbrush and toothpaste. Extra spraying for the hole. I think I held the button down in front of the hole for like 2 seconds. All ants must go.

Second, I placed the bottle under the running tap as the cavity-free ants with a great refreshing breath tried evacuate from under the bottle cap. They didn't get into the bottle, but obviously a little of the mouthwash must have ended up around the rim. All ants must go.

Third was the rinsing. I turned off the tap, turned on the shower and sprayed everything with the shower head. Didn't try to rinse the hole since that's a special zone. Soap for the toothbrush to remove any oily feel on it. Dead and dying ants were washed down to the floor and swept to the drain. I even bent down to inspect the floor under the basin and the path of water flow to the drain. All ants must go.

Fourth was the complaint to the rest of the family that I'm getting an ant invasion in case they could come up with something I didn't think of. My mum told me I could get a straw to spray insecticide deeper into the hole. That reminded me of the tiny plastic tube that came with some insecticides, but I couldn't find any. But all ants must go.

Fifth was the spraying with the straw. Made sure the straw was on the hole of the sprayer and its other end was inside the hole in the wall. Must have held it there for 3 seconds or so, shifting it around so that the entire wall around hole could receive the wholesome goodness of Baygon. All ants must go.

Noticed the straw felt cold as the spray of insecticide blew through it. Didn't expect that although I should have.

I'm worried a few may have entered my room. So I'm repacking all food that aren't packaged properly, like a bar of chocolate that I haven't finished. I merely re-wrapped it with the excess foil it was already wrapped in.













Yarrrr! Today is the International Talk like a Pirate Day, a Pastafarian holiday. Shiver me timbers!













So now there's a new kind of spam email. I've receiving those spam comments on my blog which are promptly deleted by the posters probably, since I never find them when I check on the rants those comments were posted on. However, these comments trigger emails to my inbox which includes the entire messages posted (and deleted).

They're always posted anonymously. Now I'm considering unchecking the email notification option.

Rant 620 / Gold?

Holy fuck! Didn't I just said that the next bubble may be gold the last time its price struck record high? DIDN'T I?!?!?

Now George Soros, an imminent figure in the financial world and also known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England", is warning that gold may be the "ultimate bubble"!

Am I psychic? Or am I just proof that if you spout enough nonsense, some may turn out to be true? Or was this just obvious from the start?

Still, if only I'm this lucky at spotting topics for exams :\













Yet another guess came true: sex robots. Roxxxy, the prototype, is the same as the dolls I discussed recently (and just as customizable) plus it can talk and "feel". It's not using the pressure-sensitive skin featured in another recent news article but has touch sensors.

How long before we see guys marrying these "girls" and divorcing their DS?

Now people cannot deny that sex is one of the most common factors that are driving the advancement of technologies (think cosmetic surgeries and the Internet), and this is probably the safest sort of sex that involves 2 partners, as long as they are both cleaned after regularly. Wouldn't want this to happen:


I mean, this can happen literally! And you really don't want them on your dick. I may not have any experience but I'm still pretty sure about it. Call it another of my guesses. They seem to come true often enough these days :P




Anyway if some guy records a video of him having sex with such a doll, is it heterosexual porn or is it gay porn? The former because it looks like a guy doing it with a girl; the latter because technically it's male masturbation.













So I watched the latest Resident Evil movie in 3D today at the Golden Village cinema at Jurong Point.

1) Glasses are too small. Doesn't fit my head so the glasses slips down to rest on the tip of my nose. Whenever it did, I could smell it. It stank of dried sweat. Then I pushed it back up. Then it slips down slowly again. The alternative is to lie back and rest my head on the chair, which means I have to look down my nose to see the screen. But if I do that, it stops slipping. Shit sucks.

2) Screen isn't large enough to have sufficient immersion. The borders of the screen are in view and really kill the illusion of realism. This is the first and biggest problem I noticed.

3) The movie didn't make use of the 3D effect enough. I believe it's because 3D film-making is still in its infancy, which reminds me of old black and white films when people just began to make movies and they felt pretty awkward. For example, they didn't use music to build up atmosphere back then and there was only silence when things were about to explode.

4) The director seems to love to combine bullet-time with 3D, which is great, but he kept using it throughout the film and it got old after a while.



Mainly due to the second reason, I'm not going to watch 3D films anymore.

Rant 619 / Gravitation

So US Internet users stay online all the time. Brings to mind something I once said about hiveminds. The Internet is probably the precursor to one. Since we already have glasses that connect us to the web to superimpose data on our surroundings, it is not too far-fetched to think that eventually we're going to be even more immersed into the Internet all the time, perhaps via contact lenses and earphones.

If we're constantly online in Messenger wherever we go via these glasses and use voice chat instead of text, it really isn't too different from a hive mind other than that we can hide our personal thoughts to some degree.













If we have an entire generation of people who were cared for by their grandparents instead of their parents, what happens when these parents become grandparents themselves?



























This isn't a new song but I've never seen the video till now.





The most sincere romantic gift of all. Only 3 simple steps. Probably the funniest of their discography.

Rant 618 / It's A Fruit Dealer!

Since I seem to be always discussing about what annoys me, it may be healthier for me to talk about what I like.

I like nothingness. I like a blank calender. I like the absence of alarms.

In short, I like it when there is no deadline for today, tomorrow, next week and next month.

It is hard to be insanely bored when you have the Internet, unlike in the past when you have nothing to do, you really have nothing to do.

One thing that can bring me closer to this dream is the grocery delivery service provided by some stores like Cold Storage. It is actually worth the $7 charged for delivery because it costs only about $2 less if I walk there and travel back by cab from the Holland V branch(which is the only choice when you're carrying 2-4 large bags of stuff).

The only reason I don't order online is because of the limited choices available. The most important thing that's missing from their online menu is parma ham. No parma ham, no talk.

If they had everything, I'd even consider setting a standing order for a fortnightly delivery. I pick fortnight instead of daily because I have to hit $60 to get the lower $7 delivery charge, or else it's $12.













When shit happens too often, sometimes it can mean that there is a reason behind it. Shit doesn't happen everyday or even every week. If it does, something may be horribly wrong somewhere.













Heroes of Newerth is 100X better than DotA because of the various asshole-proof mechanisms it employs. For example, in DotA there are occasional assholes who leave when the countdown begins after the host starts the game. In HoN, the timer stops when anyone disconnects.

Second, if anyone disconnects during the game, they can rejoin if they return within a few minutes (about 5, but I'm not sure).

Third, all players have some kind of skill rating. Newbies begin with 1500 and drops or rises according to each win/loss they accumulate. The lower their ratings, the less points they lose per loss and the more points they gain per victory. Working together with this rating is the autobalance function. When the host clicks on autobalance (aka "ab"), the game automatically shuffles the players so that both sides have approximately the same total ratings.

However, the host can also lock players so that they won't be shuffled when the game autobalances the teams.

Fourth, you cannot rage quit without consequences. When someone quits during a game, the game would announce "RAGE QUIT" and everyone would see who left. If I'm not wrong rage quits are recorded in the quitter's stats and may affect his rating. In addition, hosts can activate a "No Leavers" option for his game so that people who rage quit a lot cannot join it.

However, I still suck at the game. Several of the heroes feel pretty new to me, like Balphagore. This guy's abilities are all about slowing movement, which are kind of hard to master to me.













The film industry hires professionals to DDoS pirate sites. Wow.

So the difference between the usual Internet hackers and these guys is that they have the backing of wealthy guys. DDoS is a crime in many countries btw, not just in Australia. Therefore you can't say they have the law on their side.

Basically a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack is a major spam of certain data packets from multiple computers to overwhelm the websites' servers, causing them to crash. A DoS attack is the same except there is only 1 computer/server doing the spamming.

Unfortunately the average computer expert usually cannot find out the source(s) of a DoS attack, as far as I can tell. In fact, if you have the money it is actually possible to obtain a zombie botnet or part of one to DDoS for you. That is one reason why writing malicious softwares (aka viruses) is actually an established industry in certain Eastern European countries.

Reminds me of how our servers in Empires keep getting DDoSed because some guy wanted the players to go to his server to play with him. Yes he crashed all servers that have players to have people to play with.

According to the "experts" from our servers, the last DDoS attack peaked at 4Mbps on the largest server just before it crashed. The attack was formed by having more than 400 unique IPs sending 150 packets of 53kb each per second, with all IPs spoofed to make them untraceable by us non-professionals. Not even the server owners who rented them to the us have the expertise to do it.

We're currently helpless against this. There is no way at the moment to stop this asshole until the mod developers include an IP ban to remove that guy's server from the list permanently in the next version of the mod. Also, he is able to quickly get his server back up when a few of our players tried to DDoS it.

Actually, we're not even sure if this is a DDoS or a DoS because a single computer can have sufficient bandwidth and there are certainly tools available online to help him accomplish the attacks.

This looks like some kind of cyber gang wars, doesn't it?











For all the talk about how meritocracy reigns in Singapore, I think the only reason it's that way is because the government, which appears to support and promote this idea, is the most powerful entity here. If it wasn't, meritocracy would be just talk.

I don't know why, but this article about how the CWS isn't proactive enough just triggered this thought in my mind.

Everything we have in Singapore today depends on the power that the government wields. This power, I believe, is derived from its wealth and its control of ours. This, in turn, is due to its link to Temasek and GIC.

Most Singaporeans are aware of who the top people are in Temasek and probably GIC.

Therefore, I believe that PAP and the Lee family must stay in power if Singapore is to remain stable and wealthy. If anyone else controls the government while the top management of Temasek and GIC remain the same, the government and its sources of wealth will become controlled by separate factions.

From this point of view, we really have no choice in the elections.

Obviously when the above happens, Temasek and GIC will, together, wield the most power. After all, nobody with a sound mind can deny that money is power.

So what happens if commercial entities become more powerful than the local government? See: USA.

Am I talking nonsense? I probably am.












There's a Korean professional Starcraft II player called "a Fruit Dealer". Yes, a Fruit Dealer playing SC II. Haha. Big news. He's pretty good from what I've seen in today's match against NEXTaeja. Yes, this guy got beaten by a fruit dealer in SC II.

I like his style. Can tell that he thinks ahead all the time. For example, he plants Banelings in his retreat routes to kill land units that chase his attacking forces when they retreat. According to the casters they work the same way as Spider Mines from Terran Vultures, except they can be manually detonated to explode in the midst of the enemy forces.

It's also funny how the announcer uses his real name "Won Ki Kim" instead of saying "a Fruit Dealer!!" I wonder why :P



Another notable player who played today was MaruPrime, with "Prime" being his clan tag. He's a 13-year-old player who won his way into the Round of 32!

Too bad he lost at that point. Would have been interesting to see a little boy in the later stages.


Also my first time seeing a Photon Cannon rush, done by oGsInCa in the 2nd round of his match today. It was a little funny to see InCa's opponent so obviously panicking when he didn't know what to hit and just focused his fire on a not-very-useful Pylon instead of trying to go down to hit the Cannons that were warping in. There was no point in attacking the Pylons because there were 3 more nearby, 2 of which were blocking the ramp exit.


As for the stream, it has been surprisingly smooth. Not a single instance of choppy streaming or pauses at all. I see why they limit the number of connections now. Excellent work there.

Again according to casters, there are people from over 87 countries logging in to watch these games. How many countries are there with SC II players??

Watching these games may not be the best form of entertainment, but there are only so many episodes of House and CSI.















So I booked the tickets for RE 3D. I did not have any idea how fast tickets go for a 3D film, so I decided to watch the slots of various times for RE 3D for these few days. Missed the last two days but today at about 5-6pm I managed to catch the one at around 7pm, which I expect to be the more popular time because it's just after office hours. The back half of the room actually filled up quickly and suddenly by 6pm.

In addition, I didn't want to go there more than an hour before the show starts just to get the better seats, hence the online booking. Also threw in another $10.50 for the ice cream/popcorn combo. We're not going for a buffet after, so there's no harm getting something to eat before the dinner.

Rant 617 / What To Do With The Extra Lemons?

That's fast! It's been barely a month since the US pulled out of Iraq and they're dumping their arsenal into the hands of Saudi Arabia already. US$60 billion worth of weaponry and other military equipment.

Japanese precision @ Yahoo! Video

Taking marching to a whole new level. I'm stunned by the collective precision of the students' paces.














Superbug that sounds like it's more dangerous than SARS is threatening the world. We all knew such a bacteria was going to appear sooner or later, especially when we have people who believe that it's better not to finish their prescribed courses of medicines because their bodies might get resistant to it.

So I wonder how lethal it actually is. Being contagious is one thing, being lethal is another.













Should Asia's economy stop depending on the West? So it's that bad that people are seriously considering this. Ever since 1997 I don't think I've heard any news of economic booms, but there's always news of crises and slow recovery. What do?













So if I spend 1 dollar more to book tickets online, I get to buy this Ben & Jerry combo which includes 1 Ben & Jerry ice cream (probably 1 pint), 1 large Coke and 1 large popcorn for an extra $10.50.

Which means I'll be getting this combo for $11.50.

The problem is that I have no idea what the prices are like at the popcorn vendors at the GV cinema.

If it's worth it, I'd book it. If it's not, there is no need to book online because tickets don't seem to be running out anytime soon.

But if not for the extra $1 online booking fee, I'd definitely book online with my debit card since it has this 0.3% rebate, which cash lacks.













This is going to be interesting. Today's matchup for the first day of the Round of 32 on GOM TV includes IdrA on the first match. IdrA is probably the best white guy in the SC scene, which means he can probably beat the average Koreans, but definitely not the best like Flash.

Since it starts at 5pm, I'll start to try to log in at about 4pm, which is 10mins from now. :D

Kiasu, I know.

Rant 616 / Artificial Pressure-Sensitive Skin!

The lobster may be a delicacy today, but once upon a time it used to be eaten only by the poorest in North America. It had such a stigma that servants had to sign an agreement to limit the number of times they can eat lobsters each year. It was actually quite different in Europe where in France and Netherlands the lobsters have always been eaten exclusively by the wealthy. Then again, the French would eat anything just like us Chinese.

:O













From this twitter page:

"See, you think I give a shit. Wrong. In fact, while you talk, I'm thinking; How can I give less of shit? That's why I look interested."













You know, I have a really crazy idea today. My allergy to the local climate has always got me to think about how I can keep air conditioner on without spending billions on electricity. In fact I think about that whenever I have to open my window to ventilate my room, which is almost everyday. Sometimes it gets rainy and cloudy the entire day so I don't have to open anything.

Anyway just now I suddenly recalled those booths the Starcraft players stay in when they're playing in the tournaments. If you haven't seen one, I suggest you watch a game or two. There are plenty of videos on Youtube.

Basically it's just a tiny booth just for the guy and his computer. What if I have a slightly enlarged version in my room and instead of my air conditioner I buy one of those smaller ones that stand on the floor?

Disregarding the space issue, how can I construct such a booth?

It is definitely doable. I just need to look around to see if there's any junk at home I can dismantle to build the frame. Then I need to find a way to make sure the cold air does not seep out too much at the bottom. Next I have make sure the warmed air from the back of the computer casing gets out of the booth either by sticking the back of the casing outside or by piping it.

Above all, it needs to be lightweight and non-permanent so that it can be lifted when the floor needs to be cleaned.

Hmm...













Barely 2 months since the release of Starcraft II, TG-Intel Starcraft II Open Season 1 begins! However, the live stream has limited number of connections available, so one has to open it early to watch any of the games. I tried it just now for half an hour, going back to click on it every now and then, and I could not get in at all.

On the other hand, I'm sure someone was streaming it on www.livestream.com although I didn't bother to go to that site because I was too preoccupied with other things. It is common for such hot games to be re-streamed live by someone who is watching it at the same time directly from the website.

Can't blame us for watching the games somewhere else and causing a loss in hit counts on the GomTV website if they can't handle the traffic.













Just found out about www.mturk.com where people can work for money which they can spend on www.amazon.com. The work available is mostly about writing essays which pay like US$1-2 each and the word limits are 100-500 each. Don't really dare to try the sampling tasks which require me to register for trial memberships even though they pay more than most and claim that we can cancel them easily. I just don't feel comfortable giving away my debit card number for such things.













So right after I ranted about sex dolls, I find news about artificial skin that can detect pressure. Interesting development, eh?