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.

Rant 787 / If I Leave The Title Space Blank, Would It Matter?

Johnson is the name of the skull and a slang for the male genital.













This is so funny, at one point I was beginning to get worried I might suffocate from laughing so hard.

(Queef = vaginal flatulence)







I survived for 25 days! Died last night from DEHYDRATION instead of a zombie attack.

325 points. If I had been killed by zombies while hiding, I'd have survived for 26 days and raised my score further, but I wasn't aware of this till after I died. I'm not sure if it was possible anyway. Would the system handle my Dehydrated status first or the zombie attack?

The 3 nights outside taught me a lot.

First, the staff does work. The icon for it looked like a tiny stick so I'd never expected it to kill anything, but it did... twice.

Second, since we can only search those special zones once per day, I should follow the others as they clear the way to these tiles to take advantage of their work and to make sure it's depleted before the path gets infested again the next day.

Third, having "decent" chances of survival is actually very good. However, the fact that the best we can get is 90%, it still means that if we stay outside, it better be worth the 1-in-10 probability of death.









While I was eating this loaf of bread (the big oval-shaped sort, not the sliced kind) I noticed it cost $0.60. Generally speaking I don't look at prices when I buy plain and obviously cheap stuff like this.

So it occured to me that this bread is cheaper than cooked rice. Obviously it's not the same as comparing with raw rice since I'd have to compare raw rice with flour, salt and yeast.

But anyway, for $0.60 I'd definitely not get rice of the same volume. Maybe they may hit the same weight (therefore making them equal) but when it comes to eating by itself, I prefer bread to rice. I don't know. Both are fragrant in their own ways but I'm able to appreciate the flavour of the bread more than that of rice.

Which brings me to the actual story. I noticed that it wasn't made using yeast, yet it was cheap. This didn't seem right because yeast can be reused, ie with a mother dough. It's something I'd once considered making but never bothered because I didn't bake often enough.

A mother dough is basically a piece of dough that's already filled with active yeast. A baker could tear a part of it or just dump the whole thing (depending on volume) into his dough instead of adding new yeast, and later he could just tear out a piece of this new dough to keep as a mother dough. This way, a baker could theoretically have a perpetual source of yeast and permanently save on the cost of that ingredient.

If so, shouldn't bread made with yeast be cheaper than those made with baking soda? These are the only 2 things I'm aware of that can make those bubbles in dough, and baking soda does not reproduce itself.

At this low price, obviously the baker wanted to keep the budget to the minimal. Therefore shouldn't he have used yeast instead?

After some googling, I learnt that bakers today do not use mother dough. Instead, they now add new yeast or soda directly into their dough to make bread. My guess is this allows them to better control the quality and quantity of the yeast in the mass-produced bread, if they use yeast at all. Moreoever, who knows what evolution and natural genetic mutations might do to the yeast in the long run?

This makes sense. Yeast, despite its ability to reproduce, is more expensive than baking soda for some reason.

But it sucks. Bread made with yeast has a nice aroma while bread made with baking soda is almost completely devoid of smell and taste.

If you don't know what yeast smells or tastes like, buy a packet and open it. The smell should be familiar to you immediately. At least it was for me.

Hence plain bread made with yeast aren't really "plain", but yeast-flavoured.











Witcher 2. Sex scenes and cleavage everywhere. Hopefully the trend doesn't spread, or it would be like the sexualization of Japanese animes in recent decades.

I don't recognize too many side characters. I should have played Witcher 1 again but the game wasn't good enough for me to endure another run of it. Fortunately recogizing those people wasn't important for my understanding of the plot, so it's not important.

Very nice game. Love the level designs.

Main thing that bugs me is the length of time it takes for the menu to open after I hit Esc. I do it often in order to save and quicksaving isn't useful because it overwrites itself. Very annoying sometimes when it takes like 30s to open.

Rant 786 / Inclined To Get A Netbook Instead Of A Tablet

I did not die last night in Die2Nite.

However, I do not have water. In addition, every night I remain outside lowers my chances of survival. It's one of the factors.

Yesterday it said my chances were "decent". Today, "largely satisfactory".

My fast food restaurant is now a tiny oasis in the sea of zombies. Here, check this out:

So it's not the most infested of all, but I'm the only guy in this quadrant. Most of the others are up at the northwest, where signs of civilization are plainly visible on the map.

I'm pretty sure the other guys hoarded a bit more water than I did since I was one of the last to log on yesterday, so I don't believe I'll be surviving the longest.










Encountered a few bugs in Witcher 2. Nothing that would ruin my day but bugs nevertheless.

Crashed twice. Good thing they were quick and I saved often. Sometimes when games crash, they take forever to return to Windows.

Another bug was at the part in Chapter 1 where I went with a certain elf (trying to avoid spoilers here) to meet the kingslayer. At the point where I was supposed to meet the elf, Roche was somehow there too, and openly hostile to the elf.

The problem was that the elf was immune to his blade, probably due to the nature of the bug. Hence he was dancing around us with his sword while we walked together. It was strangely funny. Roche wasn't even supposed to appear there!

A more annoying bug would be the lootable objects that somehow couldn't be looted because they were bugged.

Finally, this game is kinda like a hentai dating sim. Say the right things, get sex. Right here in Chapter One I have already found 3 sex scenes.

Worse is the fact that they were unnecessary to the plot. They were just gratituous nude/sex scenes that probably were meant to improve sales.










Today I saw that the latest bags of pants were labelled "克色". I thought maybe it was short for "巧克力色", but then I opened one bag and found black pants inside.

"克" and "黑" have exactly the same Cantonese pronunciation.

It kinda amused me.

I have no idea why I'm blogging about this.









Oh shit. So heavy cellphone usage can damage our brains.

The researchers observed that 50 minutes' worth of cellphone use causes a 7-percent increase in brain metabolism in the region closest to the cellphone antenna.

But why do I have such a bad memory even without using the phone often?

Do I give that little of a fuck to everything?

Whatever.










Witcher 2 kept me up all night. The Kayran boss fight was HARD. Not to mention the game wasn't very clear on where I'm supposed to go once it begins using its 1337 aimbot to lob boulders at me.

Was kinda annoyed but fortunately I could hit Esc, then Alt-Tab to use my google-fu.

5am now. Was surprised when I saw that it was 4am, then forgot about it.

I was going to sleep but it was already 4.50am, so I thought I'd stay up for 20mins or so to see what happens after tonight's attack on Die2Nite.










So the new minister in charge of public housing is going to make a change. Instead of building to order (BTO), as in construction begins only when 70% of the orders are fulfilled, they're going to build it before that happens.

Whatever he's saying, I'm very sure it's not just because of the spreading frustration among potential homeowners.

The main reason, IMHO, is because it's so obvious there is great demand for those flats and due to the rate of economic growth currently and in the foreseeable future, this demand is going to be sustained for a long time.

I am curious about two things though.

First, why didn't the previous guy do it in the first place? Was he that averse to risks? Or did he hold a different opinion as to why the prices are rising (eg foreign speculators)?

Second, if the BTO policy was that efficient, why did buyers of new flats have to go through the balloting process, which clearly implies a backlog (of potential buyers who couldn't get a flat)?

I mean, when 70% of the flats have been confirmed sold, the construction would begin. If there was a backlog, wouldn't the people who couldn't get their flats before immediately fill up the other 30%? If there was NO backlog, why would they need to pick people randomly via balloting?

I'm missing something here.








Nothing special happened in Die2Nite. I'm not likely to die (my chances are "largely satisfactory") but I'm thirsty. Only one thing can save me now - finding water from the Fast Food Restaurant tomorrow. Highly unlikely but theoretically possible. I can only explore it once per day and I only found another piece of food today, so tomorrow is my last chance.










I used to think that it's alright to install Windows on different PCs if only one PC is being used at a time. Like in my case, my previous PC can no longer be used due to a ruined processor, hence I'd installed Windows Vista on the new PC using the same disc.

Apparently, this isn't the case. I wonder why it didn't notify me sooner about it.

...


Oh I get it! It's the hard disk it was installed on! I'd only changed the hard disk like half a month ago but didn't really start to use it till a few days back. It didn't matter if the rest of the computer was different or if the hard drive was split up into different drives.

Therefore, Microsoft identifies our PCs by our hard drives.









Played another 2 LoL games on the desktop finally. Lost both.

Now I have to consider the logic that says that I suck at it.

I probably do.

I also recognize the fact that I've been playing differently since I noticed my initial winning streak. For example, I no longer camp in the bushes to regenerate HP during the early game and, instead, spend all my time hitting minions and waiting for the enemies to come close enough.

This, I must admit, does not work when I'm fighting against ranged heroes.











Seriously, don't move when the barber is working on your hair.










I have to agree with this comment:

:(

This trailer was too sad, mainly because it involves a little girl dying.












Holy crap! I didn't know that!

Rant 785 / It's Strange How Croissants Don't Get Mouldy As Quickly As Bread Loaves.

Wed




9 of us died last night. 6 zombies attacked me and were unable to overrun my 6 points' worth of defenses. That was pure luck! If there was just a single zombie more, I'd be dead. Seriously, 2-3 of the other guys died despite having over 10 points of Home Defense.

Tonight will be easy but tomorrow is the end. Tomorrow's estimate is up to 3850 zombies. We have used up all our matches we've been saving up since we arrived to this town for last night's attack and temporary defense structures, as I've said before, won't be giving us the 800 points that we will need.

So this town is ending on the 23rd day. I'll have survived 23 days.

Not enough to beat the top score. According to another guy's calculations, we have to hit day 25 just to be 3 points short, and that's assuming all 35 of us had survived.

Oh well, at least we hit day 23. I've never even gone past day 5 before, as I've said when I first joined this mega-coalition.

...

Yep. It's official. We're screwed tomorrow. Even the core members of the mega-coalition have given up. Our final stand shall not be made in town, but scattered all over the desert.

We will spread out and hide outside after tonight's attack. This way, some of us will survive yet another day to raise the score further.










So the problem with my desktop was my motherboard. Apparently there was some problem with the first batch of Sandy Bridge and they gave it to me. Or maybe I picked it. I don't know. I wasn't aware of this problem. I heard some news mentioning the name but I didn't read them. Bad move. Great hindsight.

It was something about the absence of "P3 Stepping" and that this caused problems with SATA drives.

So they replaced it and now I'm reinstalling everything. Happy happy joy joy.

This is how my day is going to be like:

Install programmes.

I know. Trust me, I've been there... like 3 times in the past few weeks.

So the other guy whom I spoke to yesterday was wrong. It was only the motherboard that was changed.







Installation (after Windows) began at 1.45pm.

...

5.31pm  Finally! No more Windows Updates! And the Firefox Sync worked!











Starhub is about to offer free R-rated movies.

I AM DEFINITELY NOT KIDDING HERE!!

Starhub is offering selected participants one whole month (July, to be more specific) of free trial of R21 Video-on-Demand.

I'm guessing they're trying to test the effectiveness of their safety measures that prevent underaged viewers from accessing it, so if you're signing up, I believe you'll get a better chance if you check "Yes" for the question, " Do you have family members under the age of 21?"


Contrary to what I think you'd believe, I'm not signing up for this trial. The only TV in my home is in the living room.










Thu


The end is nigh in Die2Nite. What we expect to happen to us is exactly what the game's name says.

Die2Nite.

It's now every man for himself. I've looted one food and one water (out of the final 2) regardless of water schedule since the rules no longer apply, a machete (the second best weapon in the game AFAIK), a water pistol with 3 shots (good for 3 zombies) and, best of all, I've been holding the Trestle I found yesterday.

We didn't need the extra defense anyway.

Now I do. The trestle improves my chances of survival while camping.

I'm at [5,-6], at the furthest known zombie-free structure on the map, cleared yesterday by us scavengers.

I wasn't planning on using the water today but 11 steps out of town gave me the "Thirsty" status and I needed a few more APs to prepare the site. I had to come here because of the building, a Fast Food Restaurant, which improves my chances of survival (level 3 out of 6, aka "decent"). What's the point of having one water for the chance of surviving a third day (if the zombies that arrive on this tile don't ruin my chances first) if my chances for tonight are low?

Also spent the 2 APs for improving my camoflage and "finding a tomb".

This is as good as I can get it to be. Alone, with another piece  of food I found on the way here, holding a machete and a filled water pistol (only had to kill 2 zombies on the way here with the machete), site improved by the trestle and the building and my actions.

I'll most likely survive tonight, but definitely not tomorrow due to thirst.







Tried Witcher 2, currently at Chapter 1, but I'll talk about that later.

Now, Brink.

Coming from Bethesda, I had expected something similar to Fallout 3.

It wasn't.

The elongated faces and and huge noses give it a somewhat cartoonish look despite the textures.

As for the gameplay, I've only played the first mission. The game comes in missions, not one continous stretch.

Immediately I thought of Bad Company 2. It's basically the same system. You have maps with missions and you have 4 classes to choose from. Shoot enemies and complete the missions.

The difference between Campaign and multiplayer is only that in Campaign you play the maps in chronological order.

In short, it's just another ripoff in the genre that's set in the future. Should be fun but I had expected something else because I didn't actually know anything about the game beforehand.





As for Witcher 2, L.A. Noire spoilt me. It raised my standards for animations of the humans. After watching L.A. Noire, Witcher 2's obviously great animations and graphics were just... inferior, sadly.

But only in terms of facial expressions. All other graphics in the game are just plain awesome.

Moreover, it's got lots of nudity, which L.A. Noire didn't.

In fact, I have no idea what the developers of Witcher 2 were aiming for when they decided to add so much more foul language and nudity into this game than its prequel. Seriously, it's as if everyone in Temeria are now sailors or rappers or both.

Oh, and the whores. One hour into the game and I'm at an inn whose basement is a brothel.

As for nudity in general in the game, I can see why everyone is coming to my blog looking for "Witcher 2 sex". Every female in the game seems like to show off whatever cleavage they have constantly (even the elf criminal who was about to be hung), and the graphics (especially if you play on High settings like I do) really improves the appeal.

Best of all, ten minutes into the game and we got to see a close up view of Triss Merigold naked.

Combat. Combat's more interesting now. In the first game, it's all about timing. You just stare at the sword and click at the right time. Now, there are other things to do, like dodging and parrying. Lots of parrying or dodging is necessary in the game, or at least on Normal difficulty. Can't just keep slashing like there's no tomorrow.

Traps, bombs, throwing knives, spells and potions also add to the variety of ways you can fight enemies.










Apparently in China they're using prison labour for farming in MMORPGs.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

I guess this is another way society is adapting to the computer era.

If this could be somehow legalized, it would make a great part-time job. Unfortunately if this is ever legalized, the profit to time and effort ratio would be drastically reduced, probably to the level of those jobs on Mturk.










Oh wow I love this Internet Download Manager!

Ever considered the fact that your bandwidth is far too large to be downloading your crap so slowly?

I used to use Flashget, but IDM is better, from what I've seen so far.

The best feature is probably how it automatically makes Firefox download stuff with it. No longer do I need to copy and paste links; all I do is click on the links and IDM will pop up with all options and stuff.

As for downloading stuff from websites like Rapidshare, I'm still using JDownloader.

Do not go to JDownloader.com. It's a fake website and the file is a virus.










So some guy started a thread in EDMW with a piece of fake news saying an F-16 crashed in Singapore earlier today.

He was arrested.

A netizen reported the incident to the police at 12.20pm.

After confirming that the message was a hoax, the police conducted an investigation and arrested the suspect at about 8pm at his home at Bedok Reservoir Road.

That's a lot of preparation. Probably had to make sure they had done enough to cover their asses incase something goes wrong.

Central Police Division commander Tan Hung Hooi said the police take a serious view of such irresponsible Internet postings that could cause public alarm and will spare no effort to track the perpetrators and take them to task.

I wanted to link that thread here but it was deleted. No surprise there.







EDIT: WHY ARE THE LINKS IN THIS POST GREEN?!?

Rant 784 / Zombie Physiology

Toys these days...










Great. Just called Bell and they told me I can collect my PC tomorrow. I have no idea why they couldn't inform me earlier so that I could collect before tomorrow, like today!

Still, if they have really fixed it, I'm not going to complain much.

Moreover, I think it's free of charge. Well, it should. The computer is only 4 months old, except for the hard drive which is only a week old, and they already had to replace the motherboard and hard drive.









Yoot Tower is easier than I thought. The moment I got hotels, I could actually beat the game already! Offices somehow don't work so well because they tend to avoid high traffic areas which are inevitable when you need an express elevator and multiple supplementary elevators.

Hotels, on the other hand, aren't that hard to organize. The catch is the occasional pest infestation that pops up quite randomly.

I could easily just create one giant tower spanning the entire width of the map and fill it with hotel rooms, front desks and cleaners' rooms. Oh and security too.

And that's it! I can easily just let it run all by itself while I do other stuff, only returning once in a while to check for pests, click "OK" on popup messages and add more rooms.

It would be boring though.

If only someone would make a more complicated version.









As expected, they built most of the temporary defenses up while we scavengers went out to work. It's easier to list things that aren't built, so here goes:

- Piston Lock
- Water Turret
- Primitive Catapult
- Guerilla Tactics
- Lure
- Barricades

Yes we're desperate enough to even spend 20 of our final water rations on Waterminefield for the 75 defense points. 17 water rations left. Though we now only have 32 people remaining due to accidents, having only slightly more than a day's worth of water rations is a cause for alarm.

This means we're going to need to vote for Water Pump tomorrow. Fortunately it's only at lvl 1 out of 5, so water is not a real emergency.

We are so desperate for defenses, the above are unbuilt only because we lack the materials for them, mainly Nuts and Bolts.

Heck, we've even been told to upgrade our homes to House now. This will probably be the highest level of upgrade we'll be allowed to get because the next upgrade will require an Old Door, which isn't worth it. An Old Door in the Bank gives us 8 defense points currently, but the upgrade will only give the town a single additional defense point.

Of course there are further upgrade levels that will eventually give the town 20 defense points but we don't have enough concrete for those.

If we survive today's major spike, it's going to be easy tomorrow because the estimate is between 2275 and 2500.

2922 points, 2972 to 3219 zombies. Things aren't looking good.

Hopefully it won't hit 3200 zombies tonight. I'm guessing we'll end up with only about 2950 defense points, so at 3200 there will be 250 zombies entering the town. With 32 of us, that's an average of 8 zombies each.

Unfortunately the number of zombies attacking each of us is going to be random, so 8 will only be the median number. At that point, the Home Defense points will work their magic. At the moment I have 6 points, so there is more than 50% chance that they will overcome my defenses and kill me.

If we have 3100 zombies coming tonight, that's 150 coming in, or about 5 per person. I have a slightly higher chance of surviving then.











Things to do tomorrow:

- Bring back my PC.
- Reinstall everything.

Yep, that's going to occupy me for one whole day.

Fortunately Firefox 4 has this Sync function which I believe will allow me to transfer all the bookmarks to the desktop. This set of bookmarks is actually an older version of the one in the older desktop which was transferred to the new desktop, so it's like a skeleton of it, plus I added some more in the last few days.





THEN BRINK AND WITCHER 2!!!  RAWR!!

Rant 783 / The General Consensus Among The People I've Asked Is That I Don't Look Like A Local

After we were done with the Big Rebuild, apparently we no longer have anything more to build except upgrade our homes to Shacks. Other things we can do are to scavenge for Defensive Objects and convert logs and scrap metals.

Which means things are about to get really interesting.

We currently have 2356 defense points. Tonight's estimate is between 2298 and 2461. Though we're 105 points short, we'll get an additional 49 points from the 4th level Upgradeable Wall that we will get tonight plus a bit more from the residents' newly built Shacks. At worst, they could also get some temporary defenses up.

Tomorrow is going to be very tricky. The estimate is between 2950 and 3225. In other words, we'll be needing an additional 750 points or so. The next and final upgrade on the Upgradeable Wall will only provide us with an additional 61 points.

All the temporary defenses will only add an extra 210 points.

If we build all the other structures that aren't worth their materials, including those that require water (Water Turrets and Water Minefield), it will only add 175 points on top of the above.

I have a very bad feeling about this.














Best scene begins at 0:45.











I have seen blind people before, both in real life and on various media, but I've never had to interact with one.

Which was why it got kinda awkward when I encountered this blind receptionist at this office where I had to drop off some documents.

When I got to the lobby, I just told her which department the papers were for, placed it on top of the counter and waited for her to slide it to herself. When she placed her hand in the receiving pose (like how you shape your hand when someone is handing papers or money to you) and didn't move, I looked at her and waited.

I was puzzled about why she just sat there looking down and waited for me to put it into her hand. Was she that busy with just her right hand?

It took me about two seconds to realize that the reason she wasn't looking at me was not because her small eyes were looking downward, but because she was blind and had her eyes closed.

Immediately my knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Oh," before I could stifle it, and I quickly placed the papers between her finger and thumb.

Then for reasons I still do not comprehend, she apologized.

Does being blind offend people or something? That would be so sad.

Anyway I wonder what the other receptionist was thinking and whether she was looking at us the whole time. I wasn't looking at her and she appeared busy when I entered.











Good. The pageviews are dropping. I was getting uncomfortable with the sudden attention. Who knows what is bringing all the traffic?

Down to 429 yesterday. I expect it to go below 350 today, then eventually back to 100-150.












Oh hey, there's an Indian restaurant that's offering delivery service to my area!

Khansama. I've never tried it before but it looks interesting. Free delivery for orders above S$50. Not very hard judging from the inflated prices on the menu.

Then again, it might be worth the price.

I don't know. I don't recall the prices from the Indian restaurants opposite of Beauty World. The other one I've tried recently is the one at the basement of Sim Lim Square where the briyani goes for $5.

The rice at the latter was much inferior to the former.

But for Khansama, just the plain briyani rice alone goes for $5.50 and the chicken briyani is priced at $9.50.

The most interesting thing about this brand is that they're offering weekday buffet lunch at $9.90 at the outlets near my home.

But it's only for weekdays :(

...

According to some people who have tried the buffet before, it has a very tiny selection. Basically it's just rice, naan, a few vegetable dishes and one or two meats. My guess is it's just something to get people to order from the ala carte menu.

The ala carte menu apparently is pretty good, eg the butter chicken. One of them also tried the Sikandari Raan which is "whole leg of lamb marinated in yogurt , spices and fresh lime juice and baked in charcoal oven for two hours" and said it was good, but it had to be pre-ordered.










Not playing LoL till I get my desktop back and they haven't called back yet. I'll call them after my last paper tomorrow.