Rant 837 / I Thought I Saw. Now I See More.

SUN/MON:

A 5-hr masturbation marathon from 9am to 2.30pm, with a short warm-up at around 6.50am to 7.15am before going on a 2-hr meth break.

I'm impressed.

He's right, y'know?















There was a point where I thought if the political leaders of Singapore take a pay cut, it might make them more popular.

Then I realized it would just fuel the hatred.

The supporters would think they're just trying to please the opposition supporters.

The opposition supporters would say they are desperate for votes, that they have finally admitted that they are undeserving of the high pay in the first place, and they should return a large portion of their salaries from previous years too.

Cutting their own pay down to what is considered "normal" in most countries would be worse than keeping mum about it.


Not that I agree totally with our current leaders, but I guess it's just normal to want to stay with the familiar.

For example, everybody knows it's nonsense that their policies are for the good of the people. That's not the whole truth. That's never the whole truth.

Their policies have always been beneficial to both the people and themselves. They always try to go for the win-win solutions, despite the fact that these are less effective for the people than those that don't benefit themselves.

Whether that's a good or bad thing, I don't really know because it's so subjective. For a country as a whole, yea that's a good thing. For the needy specifically, no way.














Whoa! The CEO of S&P is going to step down and be replaced by the CEO of Citibank on the 12th of September!

Officially he said it has nothing to do with his company's lowering of the credit rating of the US, though I can't help but notice the timing is way too much of a coincidence.









TUE:



I've heard that Wendy's burgers aren't that great, but I don't fully agree.

The beef patties are definitely better than Mac's but slightly inferior to BK's. If we look at the price, I should probably compare it with just BK.

Was at Holland V today for work and passed by the Wendy's there, so I thought I should get some burgers for lunch today and breakfast tomorrow.

I like their 3/4 pounder burger. Maybe it's because I like pickles because their pickles were more sour than those used by Mac and BK.

The shrimp burger was also pretty good. Can't compare with BK because it doesn't have this.

The fish burger was average.

The grilled chicken burger was nothing spectacular either.

Also ordered a spicy chicken burger but I haven't tried that yet.

As for the fries, nothing special. It had some potato skin but I'm not about to discuss the health issues regarding potato skin when it's french fries that we're talking about.

And no, I didn't eat everything, but I did ask those who ate them for comments.










We survived another night in Die2Nite. Lost 3 people the night we completed All-or-Nothing and wiped out our bank (but not before we saved most of the important stuff in our homes) and then 5 more last night.

The main thing that saved us was the new game rule that only a portion of the town gets attacked no matter how many zombies enter the town as long as there are over 20 residents in their homes.

Better players have died while I survived. I feel kinda sorry.

I didn't even get terrorised last night, ie not a single zombie came to my House.

For tonight, there are 2000 zombies coming while we have about 980 excluding temporary defenses and 29 of us to build and scavenge for materials (we lost everything in All-or-Nothing).

Yep, we're screwed. Tonight will likely be the final night we're staying indoors.

Before I forget, I was wrong about All-or-Nothing. It's a permanent structure.












Maru is a cat that's able to rest in any cardboard box. Nothing can stop it from sleeping in a box.












I like the first half of the video, especially the first minion's death at around 1:00, but the boss was not as cool as I expected. Also, some of the acting/effects were bad, although I should probably cut them some slack for not being professional actors/directors.

The music's nice here, but I don't like the original piece. While I listened to it (embedded below), one word surfaced over and over again in my mind: overdone.

Too many effects or whatever they're called.



EDIT: I don't dislike it anymore after a day. I guess watching Dubstep Guns made me expect something quite different.
















I'm tempted to use part of the instrumental version for my ringtone.

Rant 836 / Shopping At DealExtreme

Recently bought a few more items from DealExtreme.


1) A male-to-male HDMI cable
2) A (most likely fake) leather casing for my Nokia N8
3) 2 pairs of disposable anaglyphic 3D glasses


Ok, I don't actually know whether it's cheaper than what I'd be able to find at Sim Lim Square, but I'm too lazy to hunt down all these.

The HDMI cable costs US$4.67, the leather casing costs US$2.91 and the glasses cost US$1.14. So even if they're more expensive than what I can locally, I don't believe the difference can exceed a single dollar per item.

The leather casing for my phone is necessary because I realized that I cannot keep my phone inside my pocket without fogging up the camera if I walk a lot. That casing would protect the screen when I put it inside my bag.

Btw all the links for DealExtreme above contain my referral ID. It benefits me if anyone registers a DX account via these links and buys stuff there. I'm not in need of money, but neither will it it harm anyone to use those links.

Just mentioning this because it seems some people see it as dishonesty when a referral link is used in place of a normal URL.

Don't hate me for liking freebies because I know you do too :)

















It is indeed a strange phenomenon that zebras have yet to be domesticated even though we've domesticated horses for so long. Zebras and horses look so alike, yet they must be very different.












Did you know that North Korea has a Youtube channel? I had this bookmarked a long time ago but never mentioned this here until now. It doesn't have much, just some propaganda videos from the DPRK.











Trying Aika SEA because some friends are playing it.
 
Lots of names are different from what I can remember from my days in the Aika US open beta. For example, boars are called "Max" in Aika SEA.

Don't ask me why.

Another difference is that Riflemen are Snipers here. Strangely, the word "sniper" is censored.

It too completely baffles me that they are censoring an innocuous word that is also the name of one of the classes.

Also got 2 prans after a bit of farming at lvl 10, a Water pran named "Genitalwarts" and a Fire pran named "Syphilis". Initially, I wanted to name my Water pran "Genitalherpes" but it kept saying I have invalid symbols inside. I guess that's Aika's way of telling me that the name's already taken. Tried "Oralherpes" too, same result.

But apparently Water prans are useless for Warriors, so my guild may eventually ask me to get rid of my Genitalwarts.

Oh well, at least I'll still have Syphilis.












It's day 11 in my town in Die2Nite and things are going to be very bad very soon.

We're barely able to handle tonights attack consisting of 844-875 zombies with our 784 defence points just six hours away from tonight's attack.

Then again, we're just 7APs away from completing the Saniflow Macerator which adds 50 defence points, boosting the total to 834 points. Still 10 short of the bare minimum.

Last night we were 3 points short but no one died, fortunately.

As for town points, which determine our place in the official rankings, we're second at 379, 4 points below the champions.

Damn. We were first in the beginning but we were quite unlucky in our hunt for the Searchtower blueprint, causing us to drop to second place several days ago.

Still, the top town may also be screwed tomorrow, according to rumours. Their homes are mostly Tents and Hovels (there's a structure that adds extra defence points for each House, the level 4 home upgrade) and they can barely handle tonight's attack.

Moreoever, they do not have the All-or-nothing blueprint that we have as our final resort, which adds 1 defence points for every item in our bank. It's a temporary defence which will wipe out everything there overnight.

We're currently discussing if we should spread out our defensive objects in our homes or let them all get consumed in the All-or-nothing.

Tomorrow, we'll be having an insane spike in the zombie attack with an estimation of 1650 to 1975 zombies. There's no way we can double our defences without resorting to All-or-nothing.

Nevertheless, it won't be over. At worst, we'll get out and begin the camping in Chaos mode, which is initiated when everyone staying in town at night is killed by the attack.

Rant 835 / Overwhelming Underperformance

Oh wow I must have been lucky that I didn't end up like that when I finished Shivering Isles.












http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/borders-closes-flagship-store-wheelock-163750813.html

The Borders att Wheelock was closed because, officially, due to a late rental payment.

My bullshit sense is tingling. Pretty hard.

It's been there since I was a kid, so obviously a late payment should not harm their business relationship.

So my conclusion is that this is merely an excuse. Something else is happening there. Maybe the landlord wants more rent but was unable to get it from Borders due to various reasons. This would make a legal reason to kick Borders out and get a store that's willing to pay a lot more for the huge space, or multiple smaller stores.

More likely the latter is a plan.













GABE! You've got to make these toys! Like NOW!












Back during the '97 financial crisis, I didn't understand what was happening. More specifically, where did all the money go?

They can't just disappear, right?

I did ask my friends but nobody gave me a satisfactory answer. The adults, I couldn't expect an answer that I could comprehend from them.

Now I understand.

Money can really just disappear.

What I didn't know was that circulating everywhere in the global economy is a whole load of imaginary money.

One economic theory which I've mentioned long ago explains that when a bank loans money that was deposited into a savings account, the money exists in both the hands of the borrower and the bank since a savings account comes with a guarantee that the account owner can withdraw his money at any time.

The moment the bank lends a person the same $2000 that another had deposited, $4000 now exists in the economy even though only $2000 were ever issued by the country's central bank.

I guess the same could apply in all situation where a person pays a debt after a period of time, whether through loans or credits or trade contracts. It would be as if the money is already in the debtor's hands and still in that person's hands at the same time.

In other words, the economy is based on trust and faith. If the depositor didn't have faith in the bank, he'd not have deposited his money there. The bank then wouldn't have the $2000 to lend someone else in the first place.

If lots of people stop trusting the bank and stop depositing, the bank will not have all that money to lend. Worse if they all started withdrawing their savings.

This looks just like a religion, doesn't it?

It works only because people believe in it.

And that is the cause of economic troubles. People just stop trusting others and just hang onto whatever money they have.

Money seems to disappear only because people no longer produce imaginary money to spend.

It was never about all the things people talk about; it has always been and always will be about confidence in the economy.

It doesn't actually matter whether a country is heavily in debt.

It only matters whether everyone trusts everyone else to pay up on time.

I believe that is actually the crux of the whole story.

And it paints such a strange picture compared to the one I'm used to.

Like the current depression, if it is one. Money didn't disappear. All money that was printed and minted is still there but people just aren't spending or borrowing anymore for fear that they won't be getting more money for whatever reasons.












Ok, I've adapted to the camera of Fable 3 somewhat and I just discovered the first major bug: the dog's pathfinding AI.

It's horrid as fuck.

I have no idea why it has to loop around absolutely nothing on the dirt path, or get stuck behind a circular pillar.

If the dog was just an eyecandy I wouldn't mind, but I have to rely on the dog to find treasures that I miss or buried items that a human cannot detect.

Another thing is how long it takes to raise the relationship level with everyone to earn Seals, a currency used for buying abilities and certain game features. I don't like how I have to hold buttons and watch the entire animation over 9000 times for each place just to make friends with everyone.

Who makes friends through purely making heroic poses and whistling random tunes anyway?

More importantly, who the heck doesn't get creeped out by some dude who just jumps in front of you out of nowhere and start shaking your hands as if you're some long lost buddy of his?


As for the camera issue, it's solved. Apparently I could solve it by turning off VSync and mouse smoothing. Now my guy just simply takes time to turn, but it's not a serious problem.

Still there is that slight issue of the camera turning to where the guy is facing when I'm making him move sideways. What I mean is that when I want to look to the right without having him to stop moving, I turn my camera 90 degrees to the right and make him move 90 degrees left of my camera's direction.

When I do that, the camera would try to face his direction instead of stay in mine, making me move my mouse to the right constantly just to hold it still.

I dislike that.











Watched a few games of DotA 2 on Steam. It's a remake of DotA with most, if not all, of the original DotA heroes and abilities. Just new graphics, animations and probably some tweaks that the developers probably wanted to do but couldn't on Warcraft 3.

Nice and should probably attract a lot of DotA players.

And it better be free, although I'm not going to bet on that.

F2P with item shop is probably the best way to get Asian players to try it and get the thousands of players over from Garena. "Thousands" just from the Singapore Rooms alone.












I feel like buying mooncakes from two well-known shops at Chinatown: Tai Tong (大同) and Da Zhong Guo (大中国)。

My mum said Tai Tong sells Teochew mooncakes which won't suit my tastes, but I just feel like trying them just to see what makes them different.

Usually in the past we just buy from the shops in my neighbourhood because I only started liking mooncakes last year. My father was the only person who liked mooncakes before that, so those were bought mainly as offerings.

Anyway, I'm planning to buy them about 5 days before the Mid-autumn Festival on the 12th of September. Since long queues are expected, I'll go during the afternoon of a weekday. That's why I'm not going to ask any of my friends to go with me. I'm probably the only person who's able to get out during that time of the week.

Furthermore, there's a shop at People's Park Complex nearby which sells our goods where the buyer isn't aware of who I am, so I'll probably just walk in and take a look.











If you somehow amazingly noticed that my blogs are getting longer, it's because I'm more bored than before.

That, in turn, is because I've decided to stop browsing the EDMW forum for good.

It's kinda like the SG version of 4chan /b/, except infinitely milder and owned by our state media, SPH.

My reason is simple: the seemingly free speech has been polluted by people hell-bent in persuading netizens to support opposition parties.

Sad.

It's now apparent to me that there are people who dedicate themselves to smearing the image of our authorities in any way available to them, to the point where they are digging up 30-year-old news reports to try to ruin the reputation of the presidential candidates.

C'mon, think about it. If you've made a huge mistake 30 years ago, obviously you have to be smarter than that by now, especially if you were intelligent enough to become a political leader in the first place.

Yet there are people who are convincing others that if they vote for one of them, he's going to be as bad as the news report proved he was.

Worse is that there are people who seemed to believe the illogic. It is sad that there are so many who want to believe that others are always dumber than they are. I said they "want" because it is a universal truth that people will always see what they want to see.

That is just example of how these trolls create an illusion of a problem out of what is actually nothing.

Based on my observations, there are people who are really getting trolled and brainwashed by the online propaganda that is not necessarily completely true or false.

Or perhaps, the trolls aren't really trolling.

Whatever the case, there are now xenophobic Singaporeans who hate our political leaders no matter what they do.

That didn't use to be normal. Everyone used to be so nice to us back when we first came to Singapore even though we barely spoke any English and were very bad at Mandarin. My bro and I even used to play with the local kids at our block and some others.

It is a sad state of affairs, something I hope Singaporeans will recover from.

But they won't if they keep listening to the biased words of the trolls.

Yes, biased. Just like how our local media phrases their words to suit their purposes, so are these trolls on the internet.

News reports are supposed to be objective, and our state media is mostly that, except it loves to omit tiny parts of the truth and subtly manipulate the phrasing of their words.

Yet the ones on the internet are worse. Seriously, they just openly inject their personal opinions into the reports and mention things that are almost unrelated and would incite unhappiness.

For example, any news report regarding an incident with a non-citizen will always include a mention of how our government is inviting lots of foreigners into the country every year.

The latter serves no purpose but incite unrest.

Freedom of speech is a respectable ideal, but like someone I met once said, it's a whole different story when the right is abused.

Creating problems out of non-problems is tantamount to an abuse of this right. So is the exaggeration of minor issues.

And inciting unrest where the people are generally content?

Call me paranoid, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these trolls aren't even Singaporeans.

What good would significant unrest in Singapore do for other countries?

Lots of things, but that's a box I'm not going to open.

Rant 834 / Bipolar Market

ROFL! Abercrombie & Fitch is going to pay one of the guys in the MTV reality show Jersey Shore to NOT wear its products.

We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image.

This is so frickin hilarious.

How bad do you have to be to get paid to stop being associated with a brand?

And to make things even more embarassing for him, Abercrombie & Fitch isn't exactly known for its clean image.

Abercrombie & Fitch is also no stranger to controversy. The all-American retailer has come under fire in the past for a range of topics ranging from negative stereotyping to sexually explicit material and employment practices.

It's kinda like a soul so evil even Satan wants it out of Hell.













Been trying out Fable 3. I know, old game, but I just never got around to trying it.

Now that I have, I can't say I'm impressed.

Granted, it's got a nice system, bug-free so far and good good graphics for its age, but if there's anything I should complain about, it's the camera.

I am annoyed by how the camera persistently resists my controls. I don't want to face wherever my character is facing! I want to scan my surroundings often without having to turn my guy around.

Other than that, pretty nice game.














The economy is scary.

I expected a straight freefall days ago. I was wrong.

When I saw the headlines on Reuters last night (morning in the US), I thought I'd see the fall today. I was wrong again.

It's strange. It just keeps falling and rising.












My mailbox was particularly full on Tuesday and it was not due to the usual junk mail.

My cards and several of the samples I registered for on Facebook came on the same day!

From the 2 pink bottles, clockwise:

- Sunsilk Silky Smooth & Manageable Nourishing Conditioner (Co-Creations, Yuko Yamashita) and Shampoo 30ml each

- Presidential Elections 2011 polling card, reverse side shown

- 250 name cards from VistaPrint that arrived 2 weeks early, name card's reverse side shown, plus a shiny new metal card holder that I'm not using after I realized that the shiny polished surface is easily blurred by my fingerprints (currently using the one I got as a gift from Lingnan University's Toastmasters Club).

- Mentholatum Acnes Sealing Jell (tube) and Mentholatum Acnes Medicated Creamy Wash (packet)

- Hado Labo Super Hyaluronic Acid (SHA) hydrating face lotion, ie moisturizer with a bloody fancy name

- Bio-essence Bird's Nest Nutri-Collagen & Whitening Advancer

I'm sorry for everyone who's been circumsized. You'll never have a minty-smelling, acne-free, baby-smooth, wrinkle-free foreskin like I'm going to have.

And screw everyone who protests my use of skincare products on my nether region.

Oh right, and not to mention my silky smooth and manageable ass hair.

According to the printed description, the shampoo and conditioner will give "optimal coverage of hair fibre, to align every inch of  hair strand, for smooth and manageable (ass) hair".

Awesome!










I'm concerned with my lack of taste. Not only in my sense of humour but also in my work. Honestly speaking it is likely that I will not being doing winter wear for long when I take over.

I don't know if this is something that can be learnt. It just takes more than an ability to spot patterns in everything.

The main reason I blogged before about a design that was going to be used was because it was like one in a million. Every single design that I thought was at least decent has been rejected so far, except for that particular jacket and one other.

Therefore if I rely on my own eyes, I'm quite possibly going to be screwed.

I could hire someone to do this for me. Money can buy anything, even taste. The problem is that I know nobody with such an ability whom I can trust. After all, it is entirely possible whoever I hire will just set up his/her own business after a while.











The election is coming. Our next President will be chosen on the 27th this month.

I don't actually care who I'm voting for because there is nothing to indicate that he does anymore beyond what we can see, which is nothing.

But I will be voting.

I know it is illegal to say who I'm voting for, but I'll leave a little hint here: I'm voting for Mr Tan.

I know this joke's old and stale and has been retold all over Singapore several million times, but I don't care.













Y'know, I've never really understood why airships never got popular.

Maybe it's too slow, or maybe people are scared that if something punctures the balloons, there won't be anything they can do about it.

Most likely, high inertia. It would probably take forever to accelerate and decelerate.

Logically speaking, they have to be so much cheaper to run, mainly because they don't need high speeds to create lift.

All each ship needs to move is a couple of fans aka propellors. If the airport is full, the airship can just stay still in the air and not waste fuel just to keep it in the sky. Furthermore, it makes life easier for the air traffic controllers.

Even in the above video, it's mentioned that the new ships can just stay up there (2000ft) for as long as 3 weeks.

You could practically have a floating hotel.

Hmm... a flying hotel sounds like a really luxurious idea.

I wonder why nobody is doing it.

Maybe you can't enjoy outdoor activities at those altitudes. Low air pressure and strong UV radiation.

Yea, I guess it would be kinda boring.












So the Aircool people came over to clean our air conditioners. For $45 ($15 per unit), they cleaned all of them plus the part that is located outside the window (condenser?) and sucked out the water from the pipes with a heavy duty vacuum cleaner similar to the one we have.

But there was a problem.

Because we haven't had the units serviced for about 1.5-2 years, two of our units were in extremely bad conditions and the 3rd was almost as bad. So the technician convinced us to have a "complete overhaul" (that's what was written on the receipt anyway) for a slightly discounted price of $150 per unit (U.P. $180) and we agreed to an overhaul for the two units.

This "complete overhaul" meant they removed the entire unit and cleaned it in our bathroom plus chemical servicing and etc.

End result?

I didn't know my A/C was this strong. It's been so long, I don't even remember how powerful it was supposed to be.

On the whole, we only had a $15 discount for the two units assuming they were honest. The complete overhaul definitely includes everything that was supposed to be included in the "normal maintenance" that the vouchers were for. In total, we paid $165 for the servicing for each of the two units.

So it wasn't worth it.

Even the first result I get on Google offered a similar service called "Chemical Overhaul" for $150 U.P. and another result offered $130 for the same if I have it for 2 units.

Oh well, I didn't know, but now I do.











So US$360M of the Americans' tax money actually went to the very people they were fighting in the Middle East.

Compared to the thirty-one billion USD "in active contracts" that the US government has signed with various contractors for all kinds of work there, that's nothing.

Except, logically speaking, guns are cheap.

Think about it. Most of the parts in a rifle are large. They don't need complex machines or special environments to create the way electronics do.

Furthermore, militants in the Middle East can very easily buy their weapons from Eastern Europe.

Therefore, US$360M can translate into quite a lot of weapons over there.

Ergo, the US is funding the war in a way that it's not supposed to be doing.

Now, was it deliberate?










Kudos to the Scotland Yard for their impressive work in catching the people involved in the recent riots. Over a thousand have been charged among the 1733 arrests made so far.

It's been what, about a week or two now? According to Wikipedia, the last day of the riots was the 11th and today is the 19th.

That's eight days so far, so they're averaging over 200 arrests per day with 500 officers working on this.

The coffee industry in the UK must be making a fortune.

Rant 833 / Magazine Plant Pot

A girl called her mum while she was being eaten alive by a bear and its three cubs.

Olga Moskalyova, 19, gave an horrific hour-long running commentary on her own death in three separate calls as the wild animals killed her.


Her mother Tatiana said that at first thought she was joking. “But then I heard the real horror and pain in Olga’s voice, and the sounds of a bear growling and chewing.”

She died for an hour and her mum had to listen to her slow, painful death on the phone.

I don't know how much time it would take to turn this particular tragedy into comedy.

“Mum, it’s not hurting anymore. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything, I love you so much.”

Real Madrid vs 109 kids. The 12 guys won.












Didn't I have like 3 followers for this blog like earlier this year?

I'm surprised that it has 6 now. The things in this blog aren't even always completely accurate, which I only realize some time after I publish them, and I usually don't bother to change them.

This is interesting. Perhaps I can do something like that with my old National Geographic magazines. I have about 2 years' worth of those that I never got around to removing.

Just got to cut a hole and put in a layer of waterproof material and I'll get a nice pot like that.

Maybe I'll use the old plastic files I used to use.











How is the jerky motion of a bird's head efficient?

It moves rapidly and stops suddenly.

The inertia would be pretty strong in both cases, right?

Anybody who has tried shaking his/head vigorously would understand what I mean.

Two things.

First, the inertia of the head. How does it accelerate and decelerate so quickly? Is the mass that low compared to the strength of the neck muscles?

Second, why don't their brains hurt when they move their heads at those speeds? If it did hurt they wouldn't be doing it, right?

It's the same with other animals like squirrels and many reptiles.

And it has to be quite different from how our eyelids work simply because our eyelids are practically just pieces of skin.

This rapid movement can't be an efficient use of energy (mainly because they have to spend energy to decelerate IMO), which only means it's evolved to sacrifice efficiency for power, which in this case probably is a necessary trait in preys. Being able to move the head that quick has to be great for scanning their surroundings.

So how are they not getting headaches from the almost instantaneous turning?










Recently bought the Indie Bundle #3 which came together with #2 because I paid slightly over the average, which was about US$4.35 at that time if I remember it correctly.

Never got around to mentioning it because the games inside were, honestly, not particularly memorable.

Got an extra copy of Atom Zombie Smasher but it didn't allow me to gift specific games within the bundles.

From those 2 bundles I got Cogs, VVVVV, And Yet It Moves, Braid, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Hammerfight, Machinarium, Osmos, Revenge of the Titans, Steel Storm: Burning Retribution... and Atom Zombie Smasher.

So for about S$5 I got 10 games. Pretty good deal I'd say.

But... most of them aren't very interesting. A lot of them are puzzle games and I'm really not that into games that require lots of thinking.

My mommy says I am speshul.

On a more serious note, the best game among the eleven is still the one that I already have - Atom Zombie Smasher.

Anyway I haven't tried And Yet It Moves, Revenge of the Titans and Braid yet.

Let me go through the games I have tried one by one.

Cogs is a game in which you move blocks around till your system (could be gears or pipes) is set properly.

VVVVV is kinda like Super Meat Boy, except pixelated and 8-bit.

Crayon Phyics Deluxe is a puzzle game in which you solve puzzles by objects you create simply by drawing them. The moment you let go of the mouse, whatever you have drawn becomes an object, be it a curve line, a square block or a ball.

Hammerfight is an annoying game I dislike in which you control some kind of aircraft to duel AIs controlling similar machines. These aircrafts have only one weapon - a giant chain from which a large piece of rock (or metal) hangs. You attack by swinging the aircraft with your mouse to smash the rock into the enemy. It's like like a flail, except there's no handle.

I dislike it because it took me very long to realize the mouse sensitivity the game gave me in the beginning was crap. I should have used the maximum level instead.

Machinarium is a point-and-click puzzle game similar to the Monkey Island series except it's gloomy and has little conversation.

Osmos is simple. You control a blob that grows in proportion to the smaller blobs you absorb when you touch them. You then avoid blobs bigger than you lest you get absorbed by them, until you grow bigger than them. You accelerate by ejecting your mass in the opposite direction so you need to balance between speed and loss of mass. To add to the difficulty, there are special blobs like one that is repelled by other blobs like a magnet.

Steel Storm is a top-down shooter in which you control some kind of hovercraft to fight other hovercrafts in your quest to save the world or something.

And let's not forget Atom Zombie Smasher. You smash zombies with various weapons, including atomic ones, while evacuating civilians. One thing I like about the game that seems to be added for flavour is the hilarious comics.

All of these would make great games on portable consoles or mobile phone though IMO. I wouldn't mind playing these when I'm bored as hell on the train or bus, but on my desktop, I just have so many better options to choose from.











Gold prices are just rising and rising. It's at the same time both amazing and frightening.











I'm actually finding myself seriously considering adding AdSense into this blog. In addition, if I do add it for the income, I'll also implement all the other widgets associated with other social media.


For:

- At this age, I should probably try to create sources of income in any way I can, and this is practically free money.



Against:

- I feel that seeing ads in a blog makes it less personal and probably less sincere.

- I blog on all kinds of topic, which makes it hard for me to make the ads more relevant for visitors.

- I may get much busier in the future, which will make me blog less, which in turn will definitely reduce the number of people visiting this blog, which will render this pointless.

- I prefer to keep this low profile because I don't want to get reminded by some random new visitor of my mistakes I made like 3 years ago in some rant. Furthermore, getting noticed may somehow remove my anonymity, which allows me to speak freely without fear of consequences.

- This may start an urge in me to maintain the number of visitors, creating pressure. Blogging is not and must never feel like a form of work to me. I stop blogging for a while whenever the latter happens.



The number of reasons don't matter. The strengths do.

I am unable to decide.

I should probably give it a few days.












Notch, the creator of Minecraft, challenges Bethesda to a duel to settle a copyright issue. The matter at hand is that he is developing a new game called "Scrolls" which Bethesda considers an infringement of their trademark of "The Elder Scrolls".

Therefore,

I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors. We select one level, your select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.


If we win, you drop the lawsuit.


If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.

LOL! On the other hand, I don't think their lawyers are going to agree to this, not if they believe a lot of money is at stake here.

I am serious, by the way.

Odd way to do it. Might generate a lot of publicity for both parties though. Maybe Bethesda will take this into consideration.











A girl got raped twice and her school forced her to apologize to her rapist. Now she's finally suing them. Yea, after the second rape. Wow.

Surprisingly, this didn't happen in the Middle East but in the US.

According to the lawsuit, school officials did not even bother to look at the girl’s file, which explains that she is “conflict adverse, behaviorally passive and ‘would forego her own needs and wishes to satisfy the request of others around so she can be accepted.’”  The school has declared that the suit is frivolous and unfounded, but it seems undeniable that the girl was raped at least once by the boy, and on school property no less.

I wonder what their side of the story is like. Was she known as a liar before?












Trolling all SNSD fans.

Rant 832 / The Inbreeding Of Minds

A lot of people don't seem to understand why Singapore wants to buy those dinosaur fossils from the US.

They say spending the $8M for some old bones isn't practical.

Practicality is overrated.

I used to consider myself a practical person, but I'm starting to see that practicality is not exactly a useful trait, but more of a kind of blindness to the immaterial and unquantifiable benefits of things.

For example, is it practical to spend money on ice cream for your child on a regular basis?

Yet it is a good thing because of benefits that aren't truly practical. In fact, it can be more practical to just buy a board game or something that can entertain the kid longer for a lower price.

But can you imagine a childhood without ice cream?

In the developed world, of course.


It is not a waste of time and resources to make someone happy regularly using different methods, yet it is impractical and seeminly inefficient to use methods that are more expensive or time-consuming.

Oh, and that spending of time and resources only works to a certain degree that one must judge for oneself. Beyond that, it is indeed a waste.

Being practical merely means you're less able to appreciate the invisible effects of things, therefore making you focused on the quantifiable and visible ones.











I'm currently also looking for ways to set up an online store.

In addition, I'll keep an eye out for stuff I can sell when I go to China in the near future.

If this works out, life could be simpler than expected.

If not, well, it's as expected.

So far, I'm really interested in Google's online store feature together with its payment system, Google Checkout. It's the kind of interest that sets the heart pumping.

Mainly because it looks so simple. Furthermore, Google +.



I'll then be able to take advantage of what readership I have here by adding the store gadget on this very blog... Nah, better to keep personal stuff separate from money stuff.

As for fees, they merely charge US$0.30 + 2.9% per transaction. That's a pittance compared to what we're paying our buyers now, albeit without the various benefits like the branding and the salespeople.


That is going to be awesome.

If Google + doesn't fail and I find something to sell, that is.

It can't be this easy to make money online... can it?




As for China, I heard Yiwu is a good place to consider, but I don't believe the lower prices, if at all, will offset the significantly higher transport fee I will have to pay.

...


Oh wait... FUUUUUUCK!

The Google Checkout online store is only available for users in the UK and US! Dammit!

...

Maybe Shopify is still the best option. Maybe. 30 bucks a month and 2% of my transactions. Then there's the shipping, the storage and how I'm getting the goods.

I'll probably be able to handle shipping on my own, maybe via SingPost. Storage is already available in our office, and the income will need to cover my plane tickets and hotel stays in China. The hotel stays won't be expensive, probably about $100-150 per trip. My air tickets and taxes will take the bulk of the cost for that part.














Oh wait.. have I posted this before?









The Singapore Government is going to make it harder for employers to hire foreign employees.

Stupid stupid stupid.

Honestly, freedom of speech is going to destroy this country. (Or maybe we're still learning how to not abuse it.)

Idiocy breeds when the masses talk.

I just don't know why intelligence doesn't.

This will only result in short-term gains in exchange for long-term pains.

Now Singaporeans are going to think it's going to be easier for them to get jobs.

Honestly, how many Singaporeans were really retrenched to make way for foreign talents?

Nonsense.

From http://www.mom.gov.sg/statistics-publications/national-labour-market-information/statistics/Pages/unemployment.aspx

"Resident" refers to citizens and PRs.

As you can see, unemployment among Singaporeans has not risen particularly much in the recent decade. In fact it even dropped last year after the spike in 2009.

Sure you can say it's because more employed foreigners gained citizenship during that period, but seriously, do the math and see the complete absence of sense in those words. How many new citizens will need to be added to reduce the unemployment rate by 1.2%?

From http://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/Pages/PressReleasesDetail.aspx?listid=373

Did everyone think prices didn't drop despite the cheaper foreign employees was because the fat capitalist pigs were keeping all the profits?

If they're so smart, why can't they also see how China is jacking up the prices of almost everything in the world?

You think we'd sell our jackets at what may seem to be exorbitant prices because we want the extra $5-10 from each sale regardless of the reduced number of sales caused by the prices?

Don't be stupid. My parents didn't make the business last for over a decade by being morons.

The reason why most hire cheaper foreign workers even though their products do not get cheaper is because the reduced cost of the employees barely offsets the rising costs of the products themselves.

If you dislike working or talking to people whom you can barely understand due to their accents, what makes you think the employers like it?

For all the talk about how the PAP wants to prevent populist politics, this move sure proves that wrong.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't blame them.

I blame the spreading idiocy.

It almost feels like some kind of inbreeding of minds.

And now that employers are going to have to spend more on employees, guess what the masses are going to whine about harder.

Rant 831 / Because Sniping While Freefalling Is Standard Practice

So Facebook advertisements are age-specfic.

No wonder I don't see ads when I log on to FB.

Being a centenarian is awesome.











http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1146785/1/.html

I like the ideas. Cutting welfare handouts and subsidized housing for the rioters should be implemented ASAP. No point in helping those who are taking the aid for granted.

Even dogs don't bite the hand that feeds them.

It's so sad. Even the well-educated and supposedly upstanding members of society were among the rioters.

More than 1,200 people were arrested during the unrest. One London looter, 24-year-old Natasha Reid, turned herself into police because she could not sleep for guilt after stealing a television, according to her defence lawyer. 

In another case, Chelsea Ives, 18, one of thousands of people enrolled as "ambassadors" to help visitors to the 2012 Olympics, was identified by her mother who saw her on television after allegedly throwing bricks at a police car. Ives denied charges of burglary and violent disorder.

Courts have sat through the night to process those accused of crimes ranging from assault to stealing a bottle of water.

Offenders include a millionaire's daughter, a charity worker and a journalism student, though most are unemployed young men.

I guess the British have been spoilt too much.

Anyway, I've never understood why it's alright to be a complete douchebag when you're young even if you become a great person when you're older.

What's the logic?

You were an ass. Period.

Youth doesn't make it alright to be stupid enough steal and hurt others. Plenty of people around the world aren't like that.












Whoa! I didn't know Facebook has all the numbers in my phone!

Shiiiiiiiiiit....

Removed it just now.

Apparently if FB has your number, it syncs with your list of Contacts and downloads all the phone numbers.

Solution:

Account, Edit Friends, Contacts.

On the right there is a link that you can use to deny their right to record all these data.

I don't care if I'm the only one who can see this list. If the list is in FB's servers, it's where it's not supposed to be.













I think I screwed up my namecards. When enlarged, the card was the right colour, but I now believe the colour of the logo darkened when shrunk to the proper size for printing.

On the positive side, it's going to be delivered way earlier than expected - by Monday - for some reason they did not explain.

Who cares?

I'm getting express service for free!

But if the colour is wrong, the cards will be used to build pyramids when I'm bored.

And I'll have to spend a lot more to get new cards.

Despite the 50% discount I'm being offered, it's still much less than the 67% discount I used initially, plus since the $25 was wasted, the total cost of the new cards, if I order them, will really cost me 50% and $25.

I'll have no choice but to treat this $25 as the price of the lesson.

Although, hopefully I won't need to.












The second layer of superglue on my earphone didn't work. The glue got stretched so thin it got torn when I touched it.

The third layer seems to be working though. Removed the second layer as much as I could but tore a bit of the hook's plastic off accidentally.

The new layer is much thicker and hence much uglier. I wanted to keep it as smooth as possible but that was proven to be impossible.

It's still stretching but after 24 hours, I'm beginning to think either enough pressure has been released or this layer is thick enough.

I never thought about it this way. I've heard that bodybuilders' bodies aren't really good for work, but I've never compared them with those guys who are actually strong.

So it's really just for looks.













WHAAAAAAT?!?

DID I JUST SEE WHAT I THINK I SAW?!?

Did he just leap out of his plane, snipe a dude from the sky beyond the range of that giant mounted gun, and somehow land right back on top of his plane's seat?






My mind just exploded from the awesomeness of this video.

He was like "I'm tired of killing enemy planes with my plane," so he leaps out with his bazooka, blasts the enemy to smithereens and conveniently lands back onto his seat.

And you thought the Terminator was cool?














Electronic tattoo that can monitor your body's status?

Sounds epic.

A team of US scientists led by John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, has developed an “electronic tattoo” that could make a huge difference in monitoring patients’ heart and brain. The tiny electronic sensor can be attached to skin like a temporary tattoo; it can bend, stretch and wrinkle and not break, says the BBC. The skin-like circuits could replace bulky equipment like wires, cables, monitors, pads coated with sticky gel, are much more comfortable to wear and “give the wearer complete freedom of movement,” says Science Daily.

What’s more, the tiny electronic sensors can be placed on the throat and are able to recognize differences in words such as up, down, left, right, go and stop. Researchers were able to use them to control a simple computer game but someone with muscular or neurological disorders, such as ALS, could potentially wear one of them circuits and use them to interface with computers.

Does this mean I won't need to go for body checkups anymore in the future?

And people with certain conditions that require constant monitoring like hypertension or diabetes will most likely find this very... annoying. And useful, yes.