Rant 794 / Uninspirations

Tried World of the Living Dead. Not what I expected. Very distant.

When one sees something in the "zombie" genre, one would usually think of people shooting undead people while looking for places to hide and scavenging for supplies.

This game is exactly that, except you see none of the actual action.

Imagine there is a war. There are the soldiers who are out there fighting the enemies and the generals at the back planning the action on a map.

In WotLD, you're that general, and the map is a Google Map.

What you do is give orders to survivors assigned to your command in order to save their asses, and these can range from "GTFO AND HIDE!" to "Get in and find something useful" to "Move to this spot and rest".

The next step is Survival Points. These are points players get when their survivors do certain stuff and can be spent on raising their expertise in weapons or scavenging or whatever, or to build temporary safehouses to rest in.

In the larger picture, there are factions. I guess these are the game's version of guilds.

With guilds come PvP. It's logical. There's no point having factions against zombies.

So far I'm still a newbie. Got my party killed when I tried to complete my tutorial mission by going into a heavily infested area. Alright, the game's also not very newbie-friendly too. In my starting area, there apparently isn't any safehouses in the clear zones.

How am I supposed to recover Fatigue points when I can't safely reach a safehouse right at the start?

I mean I tried, and I went through hell for it! Seriously, my survivors had to trudge through multiple red zones, and red according to the map legend means "SUICIDE". What the heck?

Not entirely interested in playing anymore. It can possibly be a great game, but it is too harsh for newbies.











Aliens! When do we get to meet them? Perhaps after we finally eradicate racism among ourselves. Since they're going to look so much more different than people of other races, the racism and xenophobia will be over 9000 times greater.










Prosperous Kitchen is offering a half-price coupon today, $15 for $30 worth of food. But when I called them to ask if it could be used for takeaway, the answer I got was "No". Strange. What difference does it make if I dine-in or buy takeaway? Cost-wise, they should be roughly the same.

I'd have bought two if she'd given me a positive reply because they're one of the few places in Singapore that sells 咸水角 and it's the closest one to my home. It's so rare, they're usually sold out by late afternoon.

咸水角 is a Cantonese fried dim sum with a thick skin made of glutinous rice flour and contains a mixture of pork, chinese mushrooms, chinese chives, dried shrimps and turnips. Usually I can only recognize the pork, but it doesn't matter to me.











My current town in Die2Nite is awesome. They're so strict, one guy gave me a stern warning for using one piece of Semtex to make a Plastic Bag and Semtex, which can be filled with water to form an Exploding Water Bomb.

Actually I did it because I was bored and wanted to make something, and the items required weren't exactly in short supply at that point.

Still, that guy got a into a fit for the waste of one piece of Semtex, as if we were going to have to build a Waterminefield soon.

Anyway it's now Day 11 and we're doing very well. Most of the scavengers are now moving together in a single direction whenever one is replenished. Bad luck with the hacksaw though, because we only found one on Day 10.

In contrast, we've been having fantastic luck with the nightly attacks. Multiple low spikes cannot be anything but good luck. Not doing too good with the DOs (defensive objects) but we're still averaging 10 per day. Could have been more but I couldn't find any for the last couple of days.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Soon. No date specified.
















Whoa! What have they done to incur such wrath from the earth?













Again they're predicting the possibility of a collapse of the Chinese economy.

Not new but has a point. Overinvestment is always a worry, just like what we're seeing in Singapore. All the hot money coming in, it's fun for now but not forever. Someday the investors are going to find a better emerging market and it won't be a pleasant experience for us.

"I was recently in Shanghai and I took their high-speed train to Hangzhou," he said, referring to the new Maglev line that has cut traveling time between the two cities to less than an hour from four hours previously.

"The brand new high-speed train is half-empty and the brand new station is three-quarters empty. Parallel to that train line, there is a also a new highway that looked three-quarters empty. Next to the train station is also the new local airport of Shanghai and you can fly to Hangzhou," he said.

"There is no rationale for a country at that level of economic development to have not just duplication but triplication of those infrastructure projects."

What I think he's saying is that the big numbers we're seeing coming from China may be hollow.

You can either see this as foresight or overspending on image. Right now in some parts of China, it's cheaper to take a domestic flight than a ride on a high-speed train, so I'm favouring the latter. Some of these are built way too early, and they cost tons of money to maintain, so it's not like having them pre-emptively is a good thing.

Rant 793 / Why Didn't They Rob Burger King Of Its Burgers?

I didn't go to the PC Show and neither am I planning to go anymore.

I changed my mind. Even the tablet isn't going to be useful for me. I'm not physically weak to the point where I can't carry the actual jackets in luggage bags. I'd sweat more but hey, it would give me an excuse to take a cab.

Furthermore, the tablet I was seriously considering at the end, a Creative Ziio 7" tablet, made my bro frown when I mentioned it to him.

Of course I asked him for his opinion. He's had more experience with Creative products and I do.

According to him, Creative stuff tend not to last long. Makes sense, since the Ziio 7" tablet was the cheapest among all in the PC Show.

But after further consideration, I thought if that was so, why bother anymore? If my backup laptop breaks down, I could easily get a $400 replacement at Sim Lim Square anyway. The prices at the PC Show, according to veterans, are the same as those in SLS except they give away more freebies in the event.

As for my phone, I found no good deals anywhere. Initially regretted the decision a few weeks back to ignore the promotion sent via SMS from my mobile service provider, but came to the conclusion that I couldn't have known anyway.

In any case, I'll be buying a new phone soon at one of the shops, probably the one at West Coast Plaza. Currently considering the HTC 7 Mozart for its 8MP camera, which is 2MP better than my current phone.

Internal memory of 8GB is a possible issue but I believe I won't be using it for anything else other than a few games.

Main purpose of this phone is only to take pictures discreetly of potential stuff we can sell when I go to Guangzhou in the near future. I'll probably need to buy a additional cheaper phone for my ICTs.


























Spain arrested a few Anons for organizing an online attack against some websites. Not linked to the PSN thing though.

Spanish police alleged the three "hacktivists" helped organize an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites. They were not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony's Playstation Network that resulted in the theft of information from more than 100 million customers.

I'd expected /b/ to be all over it but nope, not a single thread on this.

Either the Anons are no longer as active on 4chan as before, or the mods are getting really active on banning and deleting anyone and anything related to Anonymous.

After all, even the guys behind Piratebay were sued for merely having illegal torrents and not for making those torrents themselves. By the same logic, 4chan could be sued for having these discussions.










If a person goes into a coma when he was a teenager and wakes up 30 years later, would he have the temperament of a middle-aged man or a teenager?

If he reacts to situations more calmly, wouldn't he be considered "more matured"?

Yet how could he be more matured if his mind never aged beyond the day he went unconscious?

Does that mean that the above criteria is not a right way to judge a person's mental maturity?










Gave a "like" to some random travel agency for some crappy freebies. A $10 voucher and a small mystery gift from Japan.

Means I'll be going on the coming Friday most likely, before the dinner. Since it's closing at 6.30pm, I'll be forced to get to the restaurant early after that. Hopefully I'll be able to slow enough to be merely half an hour early.









Finally bought some coffee. Korean arabica. Accidentally made it too thin just now because I haven't made coffee this way for weeks now. Derp.

Rant 792 / The Current Trend Of Consoles Seems To Be To Maintain The Status Quo In Terms Of Graphics Or Even Retrograde To 20th Century Standards But With "3D" Features

I believe I've finally figured out what kept me going in the Fallout games.

It's the stories of those who survived the Great War in which nukes destroyed the civilized world.

I've been wandering around in Zion in the Honest Hearts expansion looking for diary-like notes written by someone who survived the nukes. It's a sad story that explained the background of the Father worshipped by the tribals living in the region.

**********************************************************************

Spoiler Alert!

**********************************************************************

The "Father in the Cave" was their version of God, except he was a real person (in the game's universe) who survived the Great War in the Zion National Park. Like Las Vegas, the nukes did not hit it, so it had clean water and relatively less radiation, to the point where he could survive short exposure to the radiation level within months.

Randall Dean Clark was some guy who was returning to Salt Lake City from Canada (the US annexed Canada just before the Great War in the Fallout universe) when his engine just stopped. When he saw that the old couple on the opposite lane also had the same problem, he recognized the problem immediately.

The Chinese nukes, as predicted by the media, had finally arrived.

He was lucky he looked at the direction opposite of the explosion, though the old couple was not. They were blinded by the flash that came while he kept his eyes shut once he saw the light brightening everything.

When the bombing ended, he put them of their misery with his gun, then hiked back to Zion National Park which he had passed days before to look for a place to hide.

Fortunately for him, the cave he chose turned out to be some kind of government research site. When the bombs hit, the researchers must have decided to rush home to their families, hence leaving everything behind.

So he stayed in the cave in preparation of the nuclear fallout, and stayed there living on the supplies and whatever water he could find inside.

After two months, he noticed that the water from the stream inside had become drinkable again, albeit with some radiation medicines presumably also from the researchers' supplies, and he could get out for short periods of time to look for help.

Eventually he found new lifeforms outside and edible food.

7 years later, he hiked back to his home in Salt Lake City. Everywhere that wasn't a crater was flattened. He was unable to find his family nor his home at all. On his way back, he found his truck and the other car, but not the bones of the old couple. Nearby, there was tracks of men leading away.

Guessing that they were likely cannibals, he returned to his cave and constructed security measures for his home.

11 years passed before he encountered other survivors for the first time. It was a group of Spanish-speaking people, likely Mexicans. He watched them secretly but never contacted them. Once he helped saved one of the men who accidentally broke his leg by luring the others to him with screams that sounded like that of the injured man. Later when he learnt that the man had an infection, he quietly left a bottle of antibiotics for them.

They thought it was from God.

Sadly, they didn't last long. Hostile survivors from a nearby underground Vault (nuclear shelters built in preparation for the nukes), for some reason, killed the adults immediately upon arrival. The kids and the few women who didn't resist were captured.

Turns out the newcomers saw them as food. None escaped.

Randall, who was trying to find a way to rescue them, had to change his plans. After killing 24 of them (a third of the group), his lair was finally discovered by scouts. He quickly slipped away.

10 months after their arrival, the remaining 34 left Zion. He won.

Unexpectedly, a woman from the Vault people escaped from them and was found by him. Apparently, as a female in their society, life was not good. Therefore he took her in and eventually got her pregnant.

Wanting his new family to live better lives than his last, he even went to the ruins of a nearby city to look for books on medicine to prepare himself for the birth.

Again, tragedy struck. The baby died in a breech position when he started the Caesaeran too late and the mother, who was unconscious from the drugs he gave her for the operation, never woke up.

7 years on, he encountered the Vault dwellers again, though this time he thought the 10 of them were walking corpses. Strangely, they did not smell of decay, but they had turned feral, so he had to kill them all.

He celebrated his 60th birthday 5 years after. Often regretting the deaths of his loved ones and frequently contemplating suicide, he never managed to pull the trigger.

At 70, he discovered a new group of children setting camp at the same spot as the unfortunate Mexican refugees. As before, he secretly listened to them and watched over them. According what overheard conversations, they had escaped from "The School". Its location and purpose was never revealed.

He left them books, starting from storybooks and later moving on to weapons manuals and other practical literature. Other than those, he also left them notes teaching them about morality, always signing as "The Father" because he saw himself as their father of sorts.

At the beginning of the following year, he realized he was dying. He gave them almost everything he had and decided against revealing to them his identity, not wanting to destroy their faith in what he represented to them.

Leaving them his final notes telling them he was going to be silently watching them from then on, he left his cave to find a spot to die at.

And that's where I found his corpse and the final pages of his diary. Not to mention all the loot and his rifle.

The children went on to become one of the peaceful tribes in the region who worship the Father in the Caves as their god and treat his many homes as sacred grounds.


.....




But when I explored the Vault dwellers' camps later, I found a note from the last Overseer of the expedition group saying that they were attacked by the Mexican barbarians, followed by a vengeful spirit who killed the six Overseers before him.

When he was made Overseer, the 34 of them left Zion immediately.

Nowhere did he mention eating the captives.

If I'd read his note before Randall's, it would seem that these explorers were the civilized "good guys" victimized by barbarians and a demon.

Then again, in those times, cannibalism might have started out of necessity.

Hence this story lies in the grey area.

**********************************************************************

End of Spoiler!

**********************************************************************

Not well written at all, the above, but whatever. I just felt like rearranging what I've read in proper order because I didn't find these notes in chronological order and I couldn't shift them in my Pipboy in the game.

And it's stories such as these that keeps me wandering around in the Fallout games to the point where once I'm sure I'm done with random exploration, I'd check the wikis for places I have yet to visit.

The more of these they make, the more replay value the Fallout games have for me, in addition to the multiple endings.

I think what I'd welcome more, if this is true, would be more novels set in post-apocalyptic worlds.

...

Completed Dead Money. This expansion was surprisingly small.










PC Show is here and I feel like buying an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. It's very close to what I want.

Initially I wanted a tablet in order to store and display images for my work. This means it needs to be light and has a large screen. Tablet sounded good.

Later I learnt that tablets are terrible for typing. This won't do because it may eventually replace my Acer laptop as my backup computer when it dies. Furthermore, I may need to type in other data for work.

However, netbooks aren't light enough. The lightest I've seen so far are 1.27kg. In contrast, tablets are in the range of 600-700g, ie half the weight of netbooks.

Therefore, the Transformer. The tablet itself is 680g and the dock's weight is not an issue. I'll bring the pad alone when I'm outside and put it back into the dock when I'm indoor. Solution found.

The trouble is that it's priced at S$659 without the dock and S$799 with, which is somewhat unreasonable for a product that's sold for US$399 without the dock in the US.

My solution is to talk to the promoter. Apparently they're offering further discounts if we order the products directly from them outside. Ignoring the legalities, this sounds like a good deal. One has even offered S$100 discount in addition to extra freebies, though he has yet to confirm if that discount applies to the Transformer. It sounds so damn good, it may not be true.

...

Okay, I've cooled down enough now to realize how bad the above decision was even with a $100 discount. I really don't need it. It's just a tablet with a laptop-style keyboard. Let me analyze how it would be used:

As a tablet: bring it around outside, leave the dock (aka keyboard) in the office.

As a netbook: use it for data input in office. Secondary purpose is to use as backup computer when PC is giving me trouble

If so, I could easily just get a tablet and a keyboard. I'm most definitely not going to bring the Transformer with the dock when I'm out. That would defeat the purpose of having a tablet.

Let's see what I'll be able to get for less than $500.

Currently considering the ASUS Eee Seashell 1011PX at $349 (bottom left).

But still more inclined to find a cheap tablet.

Also considering the Sony Cybershot WX7 @ S$399 but... I don't need it. My current camera's still working.

Must... resist... temptation...


You know what? At this rate I'm just going to get a random cheap tablet below $400 that has an Android OS, Bluetooth (for a Bluetooth keyboard) and a USB port (for my mobile modem), then recontract with Starhub for a free phone.

And that's about it.

I'm most definitely not spending over $1k here, that's for sure. I already feel guilty enough as it is for my new PC that I shouldn't have needed if I didn't ruin the processor of the last one.

Then again, the last PC was giving me a lot of trouble.




According to personal experience at the last IT Show, the cheapest items won't be found in the brochures online.











I find it disturbing that I have yet to produce anything that can be sold.











So our President has written a book that will become commercially available after his term ends. This book will cover only a tiny portion of his career.

Not interested. His career, on the whole, was far more exciting than that tiny bit when he was just a union representative.

No, I'm more interested in his experience when he was the director of the SID. I've worked there during NS, so I really want to know how the way they work came to be.

Too bad this dream will never come true. Everything about it is such top secret stuff that is unlikely to get declassified in my lifetime, if at all.

It would make a pretty epic biography though.

Rant 791 / Omega Male

E3 Nintendo. Not too exciting. Wii U looks nice but I'm not sure if it's going to be a success.

It might if this becomes reality:

I remember a few occasions when I talked about crumbling empires and how they collapse, that they don't die overnight but slowly decay. What would be visible is that they might get hit hard by some issue and they would have difficulty recovering from it before the next one hits.

I believe there is something else too and that something is similar to our flood issue. Usually, things are peaceful. Shit sometimes happen but never anything particularly newsworthy. Therefore people get complacent and decide it's not worth the money and effort to keep watching out for the big one.

So they stop and they laugh and they think nothing will ever happen.

Then it happens, and strains the overall system. Just one problem, true, but it only takes a single final straw to break a camel's back.

Singapore's flood case isn't as simple as that though. Not only does the monsoon come every year, but according to some experts, our urban development has caused our island to be less efficient at draining away stormwater.

Sounds logical. More road, less grass, less natural drainage. Due to space constraints, drains can only be so big, and is expensive to upgrade after construction. Moreover, some suspect our Marine Barrage is keeping water back on the island.

No linked source because I'm too lazy to google.

I'm not saying this is anything that would cause the downfall of the country. I'm just using this as an example (since it's fresh) for something I'd said before. It's just a heavy storm.

It's similar to the uselessly beautiful castles in Europe. No defensive value but look gorgeous. I'm pretty sure a few kingdoms had been conquered more easily because of that.

And the current economic issues in the EU.









This is so full of shit. This news report warns that whatever they implement to deal with the floods will be expensive.

Why?

In an email response, Mr Martin P Li, a past president of the Singapore Chapter of the Institution of Engineers of Australia ...said the government needs to consider whether it is prudent to construct a drainage system to mitigate the effects of a once-in-25-years occurrence by raising the design parameters to accommodate a 50 or 100 years flood, or accept the consequences of the event once every 25 years.

In general, the less likelihood of the event occurring, the higher the costs of the system, he said.

But didn't our Minister say that he does not expect the weather to improve in the future?

"Personally, I think our weather has changed. I'm actually psychologically prepared for it to get worse."

Did the "authorities" get the hint?










Completed Dead Money. Never found out why the reason behind the Cloud's existence. Apparently it doesn't exist.

Strange. Something like poison gas don't get ignored during the construction process. Too bad they didn't develop that part of the story further, so that's one loose end they never tied up.

And the Vault's full of gold bars. Weighs 35 units each and has a value of over 10k. That gives it a value of over 200 per unit weight, making it one of the most valuable item in the whole expansion.

Unfortunately I only managed to carry 2 out. My max capacity is only 230 and there are weapons and items that are more valuable than that. Furthermore, they are not easy to sell. With only about 45 points in Barter, most merchants have to pay me over 8k caps per bar. Few NPCs have this kind of money.

Worst of all, I can't go back to Sierra Madre after I complete it unless I use console commands. Oh well. 16k caps is still a lot of money. Splurged most of my money after that on an Anti-Materiel Rifle and 2 upgrades on my stats at the Clinic.

...

Now to move on to Honest Hearts.

Rant 790 / Blood For The Water God!

Tried Dead Money, currently at the part where I have all 3 companions and I need to go to the different locations to open Sierra Madre.

Had some bad experience that's completely my fault. For some reason I had somehow missed searching a single desk on the second floor of the medical centre. Just that one desk!

And you know what? That's the very desk that contains the key to the basement!

That usually isn't a major problem since they always allow 2 ways to enter an area that players must go to.

Problem is, my Lockpick skill, at 55, was 20 points short.

To make matters worse, there is no way I can return to mainland to complete some other quests to gain the necessary level.

Since I was only about 160 experience points short of hitting the next level and under the assumption that for some reason the developers had somehow omitted an alternate method, I decided to go explore the map and kill some monsters for it.

I cleared the map, checked every corner multiple times and even discovered that the radroaches were the only thing that respawn in the Villa.

But no, I never got to the next level.

In the end, I gave up and googled for an answer before I resort to using console commands to unlock it.

Apparently I was not the only person who couldn't pick the lock, but I was the only person to have searched the entire second floor and still missed it.

/facepalm



Dead Money is easy on Normal Mode. On Hardcore, the HP is slowly drained so it's much harder. Furthermore, sleeping is not possible, hence the only ways to recover health are to eat and use stimpaks. The catch is that caps are not valid currencies except for a few NPCs (only found one so far) and the Sierra Madre chips don't grow on trees.

I believe they tried to make it a zombie game in the horror genre (instead of a thriller like L4D coz it's not scary) but with a Pipboy and plenty of Stimpak, I have no reason to be scared by anything.

Yea sure it's dark everywhere, the enemies moan and drag their feet, but something is still missing.

I think there needs to be more blood stains everywhere. That would have been positively creepy.

...


Now in the casino. A little hard to get to Sierra Madre but definitely not impossible. Almost ran out of ammo for 2 guns but I had specialized in melee anyway.

Apparently, Pre-war Money is usable inside! Yay! I saved up so much thinking it's the next best thing to caps, which don't seem to exist in Dead Money. Now I have plenty of it to buy the Sierra Madre Chips with.

Guns don't seem to be useful where I am now but I believe the Ghost People outside are going to bash their way into the casino at some point in the future. I think I heard some banging noise as I passed the locked main entrance just now.








Now I'm being told to buy some fashion magazines to read.

I'm also browsing through pages and pages of coats and jackets from around the world. I think if I keep staring at the jackets (and incidentally, the models) long enough, I'll eventually be able to acquire a bit of taste. I'm not even talking about "good taste"; just "taste" would be cool.








Microsoft accidentally announces Halo 4 too early. E3's coming, so everyone's certain that was supposed to be their big surprise for that major event.

I wonder if it's really an accident or if there's a reason behind this action that I do not see.










Fantastic weather yesterday. Rained so much Tanglin Mall was flooded. It was so bad there was a small waterfall from the first floor to the basement.

I wonder how escalators handle floods. Maybe they have drains around the motors below. I don't know.

But it was really cool last night and this morning. Too bad it's getting warm again now at 12am.

Now the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources is saying "sometimes despite our best efforts, we cannot win".

At least he didn't give us that "once every 50 years" bullshit like they did last year. It most definitely hasn't been anywhere close to half a century since the last one.

Still, that does not absolve him of this failure. We get monsoon rain every year since antiquity. A very similar flood occured just last year and possibly more had happened in previous years (but I can't recall and I'm too lazy to search for those archived reports).

Do we have to wait till someone dies before they do something about it?

Major flood at one of the most important commercial district in Singapore - similar flood was not prevented on the same month this year.

Some kid drowns in a flooded drain - PUB builds fences next to that drain within 24 hours.

I think the answer is obvious:

A human sacrifice is needed so that our water god can be appeased.

Blood for the Water God!

:3



So now we're asked to mark on a map where floods are occuring.

On one hand, I guess it's not too much to ask for us to do it.

On the other hand, why is this even necessary??? I mean, seriously, we've been getting floods every year, though sometimes they're just minor ones. But how can the authorities still not know where the flood-prone regions are?!?

Shit, this is just an island, man! How many areas can there be??




Even the businesses aren't happy. The executive director of the Orchard Road Business Association actually made a sarcastic comment expressing displeasure at their failure to prevent this flood.

"It's kind of like an anniversary for us. It happened last year on June 16, almost (around) the same time"

People are usually a lot nicer on the news in Singapore.

Rant 789 / Not Expecting Much From Duke Nukem Forever

So cavemen stayed at their birth places more often than cavewomen.

But I'm more curious about how they survived in caves at night.

I mean, anyone who has ever tried to sleep in a room with their doors and windows closed would know how fast the place can warm up.

In a cave, there would be one opening. It could be large or it could be small for safety reasons. Would make sense, wouldn't it? Using rocks or boulders to block the entrance would provide a small measure of security.

But even if the cave was open, it would be warm. unless the cave was shallow.

In the case that it's deep, wind would generally not go far inside.

Furthermore, night in those days have to start at dusk. No electric lights, no candles. This means they would have been stuck inside their stuffy caves for 12 hours or so every day.

Or maybe they would burn firewood outside in order to stay up longer, but that's going to warm up the air more.

Are we humans supposed to be able to sleep in a hot place?

Coz I sure lost that ability.











Not so confident about my current town. Less organized, laxer rules. Even though we begin with about as much water as my last town, they're apparently going to decide on letting scavengers drink everyday.

I'm not saying it's a very bad idea since my last town had enough to last 23 days and we only had our pump at level 3 out of 5, but it could be. I can't confirm because I have yet to do the math.


No rules or guides or anything. Members had to ask what the water rationing plan was.

But we have plenty of experienced people here and everyone is much more active. That should offset the above differences. Hopefully.














Been watching Waking the Dead. Like most British TV series I've seen, they're short. This one only had 4 episodes per season, each episode split into 2 equal parts of an hour each.

At 2 hours per story, it's no wonder the quality of the mysteries is far superior than American stuff.

On the other hand, they are much less intense. Too many scenes of getting out of cars, walking around, waiting for people, etc. Yea building up the atmosphere, whatever.

I guess due to the shortness of the American episodes, they have to be quick about everything. The pace is much faster and the characters are much more impatient about everything.

But the three episodes in Waking the Dead that I've seen so far have successfully misled me. I have yet to successfully guess the real culprit before the first parts end. Plenty of good twists in this series.

And old people. Old people everywhere.








Maybe I've been on shitty Alicafe for too many days because now Gold Roast Kopi-O tastes good to me.

Or maybe it's actually good? Nah. It's the official Singapore Police Force (SPF) coffee :P

Kidding. It's a joke in some Singaporean forums.

Here, the term used to represent "getting arrested" is "lim kopi", which means "drink coffee". Some time ago, the SPF sponsored something together with another 2 companies, one of which was Gold Roast, so that at one point the logos of the 3 were placed side by side in the centre of the TV screen.

Now the joke is that SPF's kopi is from Gold Roast.

But it's a good substitute until I can drag myself up in the morning to buy fresh grounded coffee at the wet market. Damn stall closes around noon or something.

Moreover, Gold Roast is cheap.

Overall, its far superior to Alicafe and Super Coffeemix and if IIRC, they're roughly the same price, in the $5-$6 range.








Hellgate CBT has begun! Problem is that it's ending in another 2 days and the download of the client has been a real pain. It keeps stopping, it can't be minimized and it stays on top of everything.

I think I'll wait for OBT, which the FAQ says should be soon if nothing big happens during CBT.

Can't used the old Hellgate: London game. I bet it's very different in order to have the item mall.








Watched 22 Bullets, aka L'immortel. Nice film, but not as good as other films that starred Jean Reno, eg Leon: The Professional.

And why is he always a hitman?

Rant 788 / Meta Mega

So Cuba is going the same way as China - support Capitalism while insisting that it's still Communist. I guess everyone knows Communism doesn't work in our world where it's frowned upon and any country supporting it gets hit by over 9000 sanctions.

I'm not saying Communism doesn't work, only that it doesn't work here and now.

Castro wants to cut 1 million workers, or 20 percent of the workforce, from government payrolls and needs something for them to do.

I guess that's a good excuse too. 


















Rereading Rama II, Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed. It's still painful to read some parts of it.


In Rama II and Garden of Rama, there are a few thing that ruined the reading experience.


First, the villains in Rama II got away and went on to become successful people. 


Second, the humans in the second book were pretty annoying. In fact, I only barely scanned through the entire half of the book dealing with them just because I didn't want to stop halfway.


But now I think I'll skip the last book. If I'd wanted to read about real problems, I'd pick up a newspaper.

...


Third book feels better than the latter half of the second so far. Man, I've forgotten so much.










Ordered KFC last night but the coleslaw was spoilt. Didn't bother complaining to them. I'll just boycott it from now on. No point saving the few bucks for this kind of risk. What if the next time it's not the coleslaw but something more important? Didn't Yahoo news report that someone get a mouldy burger some weeks ago? 


If I want to go for cheap next time I'll stick with McDelivery.

Hopefully another restaurant with fried chicken will start offering delivery service in my area in the near future, like Arnold's Chicken.










Finished Witcher 2. Initially felt it was shorter than I had expected. A prologue, 3 chapters and an epilogue. Then I thought about it again and found it as long as I could expect from a game made today.

Final boss was the easiest of all. I had 4 vigour, so with Quen, I was able to finish it virtually unhurt. I have no idea what the challenge was supposed to be, especially after the bosses in chapter 1 and 2.


Okay, so I'll admit that the boss in chapter 2 was simple, but it took me some time to realize that. Similarly for chapter 1, except I couldn't figure how to end it on my own.

Epilogue's boss was not even necessary to fight. In fact, I found it pointless to kill him, so I let him go. It's not like he killed anyone important to Geralt.


Awesome game. I like how the plot gets even more interesting now, although I have doubts about whether Witcher 3 is going to fulfil my current expectations. 

And I wonder if my choices are going to affect it.






As for anyone who hasn't completed chapter 2, here's a tip: keep your Nekker Warrior blood, Bullvore brains, Endrega Queen pheromones, and either Rotfiend tongues or Harpy Eggs. Some of these items will turn out to be very useful but unobtainable later in the game.










The cheapest 10.2" tablet on Ebay costs US$170 or about S$210 excluding conversion fees.


I wonder if it's worth it. This is going to be my benchmark when I go to the PC Show.


Of course I'll also take into account the lack of warranty.








Reinstalled Windows 7. Not a totally smooth process but I survived. Looks like the ATI Catalyst needs to be updated badly.
























Be careful what you wish for.



 














This job is not easy. Then again, if it was easy I wouldn't be the one doing it.


















For some reason I was removed from the coalition in Die2Nite. Worse still, I forgot to back up the txt file containing the IRC info when I installed the new Windows just now. It's gone because I decided to format the drive before the install. Thought there was nothing of value that I didn't back up.


Oh well. From what I've seen, most of the people from the town who were also in the coalition are not in town except for a few. I can't see if they're in a coalition. The coalition's spreadsheet has not been updated. 

My guess is that they thought most people had left the game after waiting for so long for us campers to die or they had no way to tell them to come back, so they decided to just regroup with whoever was still active in the IRC channel.


I'll just join another then. My town ended up in the top 15 towns for this season so far, so my resume is pretty decent now.