I might have underprepared for this trip to Seoul. All I got was a jacket. No scarf, no socks, no anything else. The plan was to wear that jacket plus polo shirt with my usual socks and leather shoes.
Temperatures are at freezing point a little early this year. From what I've read, it shouldn't hit 0 degrees Celsius in early December, but the numbers don't lie.
I'll just go like this and trust in my innate ability to overheat easily. At worst, I'll just buy some stuff there for myself. I'm going shopping anyway.
The iPhone rental is about the same as the modem rental, and the iPhone 4 can be used as a WiFi hotspot, so I think I'll get an iPhone instead.
Moreover, if I don't use 3G, it's only 3k wons a day. Perfect for the final day.
I really should make it a point to leave the day before I travel as empty as possible. I keep running a list of things to bring through my head all day and worrying if I would miss something. This is kind of stressful, seriously. I can't concentrate on anything.
Getting the hang of Planetside 2. The game is still mostly a mess because it's close to impossible to coordinate an army of random people. Still, there are times when it's achieved and the results are fantastic.
I think it just needs a large group of people to get the ball rolling, maybe a 40-man clan or something, and the rest will go where the action is.
Since I usually play continuously for hours at one go, I sometimes stay long enough to become the squad leader after the last one leaves. For the first few times, I had no idea what to do, so I did nothing.
Now I think I have to communicate more, like saying where the enemies are focusing on and such, so that if I end up being the squad leader, I can just do roughly the same thing except with stronger words.
Another thing is that I now know how to create mobile spawn points for the team. Fun. Instead of simply telling everyone where they should go, I just try to bring the Sunderer there and deploy it. It's expensive and I sometimes get spotted by enemy aircrafts, but I think I simply need to be more alert about my surroundings, like always moving behind at least one friendly tank.
Bringing a Sunderer alone seems to be extremely dangerous even in friendly territories.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Rant 1083 / Choking On Liquor Is Not Funny.
So Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, wants to organize a Martian colonization effort.
While I feel that a lot of what he says are possible, one point stands out that I really have to disagree with.
Colonization, IMO, takes a lot of physical work. Even with the aid of machines, physical strength is an excellent backup plan. Take for example, Antarctica. Scientists there have to go through regular physical examination and must be physically fit. And that's just a place that is a few hours away from the nearest civilization and has no transport only for a half a year annually.
Mars, in contrast, is months away from Earth. In addition, he does not plan to employ reusable spacecrafts in the initial phase of the colonization process. That means if shit hits the fan, everyone there is going to die.
The last time humans colonized a "new world", hundreds (or maybe thousands, I can't remember exactly) of people who believed themselves well-prepared starved to death.
What I'm getting at is that the first people to go there cannot possibly consist of rich middle-aged men. That's a new planet, not a resort. The new frontier is not going to be an easy place to live in. Yes they will need smart people, but mostly they're going to need strong, tough men. They won't need that many decision-makers, but they will need plenty of people to execute the decisions they make.
The first pioneers should be largely the hands-on people, not millionaires. Construction workers, technicians and etc. The smarter ones, of course. They're also going to need to be able to cover one another's job whenever the need arises.
Maybe instead of buying tickets for themselves, those wealthy people should "invest" in tickets for these pioneers.
So I cleared up some stuff in my office when I installed the printer. At first, I only wanted to find the power outlet for the old fax machine so that I could replace the plug with the MFC's.
Then when I found it, I had dug through so much old stuff I just couldn't stand leaving them as they were. That's why I spent much of that day sifting through them.
Everything was so dusty, the dustballs were longer than my fingers.
Worse still, the old carpet that covers only my part of the office was so ancient it was coming apart in such a way that whatever holds all the threads together was crumbling into a yellow powder.
I have no idea what it was but I really hope it was not asbestos.
Anyway, all I could find was a broom so I swept everything away as well as I could and threw the dust into the same bag as the carpet and dumped them all at the dustbin at the lift lobby.
There was so much dust I decided it would be a really good idea to cover my nose and mouth with a towel halfway through the day. Not that it was really effective but it was better than nothing.
I keep several clean towels in a bag there for those times when I do the heavy work.
Despite the towel, my throat and windpipe are still irritated right now.
Hence yesterday, I asked my staff if we had a vacuum cleaner. I didn't expect there to be one but I had to ask, just in case. Otherwise, the plan was to get a cheap one.
Turns out there was one and it was the same heavy-duty model as the one we have at home. Clearly, my mum bought two of those when she was looking for one that could suck away the water that was leaking from the air-conditioner back then.
Also bought a box of masks that had this wire on the upper edge to shape around the nose.
Today, I went back, put on a mask, and vacuumed as much of the entire workplace as I could. Some parts I couldn't reach but I did what I could.
The whole place desperately needed it. As I uncovered more areas to check for dust, I began to believe nobody ever did any vacuuming at all since they moved here in around 2003.
Even the walls were dusty; it was just incredible how everyone could stand it all these years.
Took over 3 hours to vacuum the place but the higher stuff like the curtains and the top of them I had to leave alone. Same with all the corners I couldn't reach and didn't feel like moving boxes to get to them.
I do not want to know what is in the paper bag within the machine now and I really don't feel like changing it at all. I'll just it... gather dust there.
Now the office is still dusty compared to my home but at least dustballs aren't normal anymore. The next step would be to wipe everything with a damp rag but I'm too lazy for that.
But while I was cleaning the place, I realized I had forgot to pay my staff last month (I'm old-fashioned and use real cheques). As I was writing the cheques, I checked the date and noticed that I had remembered the wrong date for my Korea trip next week.
I wasn't leaving on Tuesday; I was leaving on Monday!
Oh shit!
By then it was 3pm. Banks and money-changers mostly don't open this late on Saturdays.
Banks don't open on Sundays either. With some googling, I also learnt that the exchange rates at Arcade were not very good on weekends. Since most of them close for the weekend, I suppose the ones who were still working would take advantage of anyone who has to change money on a weekend.
If these people weren't in need of this urgently, they would have waited for Monday, wouldn't they?
Thus my conclusion that I might as well change it at the airport. I'll buy stuff using my card (yea I know there's a 2% transaction fee) and get some wons in cash for tips or train tickets.
Since I have no idea which airport is better, I'll withdraw S$2000 and change half at each airport. This will not only even out any disadvantage I might get but will also show me which side has the better rates.
I've already checked the opening hours and Changi Airport's are open 24/7 while Incheon Airport's are mostly closed at 9pm except for Hana, which closes at 11pm.
Good enough.
The other thing I planned to prepare but forgot was the portable modem. Upon checking the SK website, I recalled that I had to reserve it 3 days in advance.
Since it was 2 days away, I had to check to see if I still could get it. Apparently, I could, but I would not get the 50% discount... but I'm not sure if that discount was even applicable for the modem.
It won't be expensive at all. The rate is just 8000 wons a day, which is around S$10, and the deposit is just 200k wons for the flatter version, around $60.
It would have been much more worthwhile if this was a group trip, since the modems could handle up to 10 devices, but there's also the 500MB limit to consider.
There are also cheaper options but those need Windows OS, like the Wibro modem that costs only 5000 wons a day and has no data limit. The only catch for that was that it was only usable in Seoul.
Anyways, I feel prepared despite still not knowing a word of Korean. Hopefully I'm not overestimating myself but just in case, I've included a Korean keyboard in my iPad. It's just a few days of shopping anyway and I no longer plan to buy from the wholesalers this time.
Planetside 2 is significantly more fun after the beta. I guess everyone had stopped playing back then since the beta was ending when I first joined.
It's fun when there are lots of people, but that's not constantly happening.
When we're outnumbered, it's not fun at all.
Chose to play the Vanu Sovererignty without knowing the difference between the 3 factions. With that kind of graphics, I thought it was low budget enough to have 3 similar factions using different colours.
Turns out I was wrong. While the Terran Republic had the most ammo capacity and the fastest vehicles and the New Conglomerate had the toughest armour and strongest weapons, the Vanu had agility and infantry weapons with no recoil.
Like in real life, bullets in the game have a trajectory. Not the VS. The catch is that the power reduces a lot over long distances, so it's pointless to snipe from too far away.
TBH I don't feel that the VS is strong as a faction. Sure, the Magrider's awesome but that's about it. In contrast, TR Mosquitoes pretty much rapes everything. Although it's fragile, its speed makes it really hard to hit and its missiles are so OP.
Meanwhile for Natural Selection 2, the horrendous onos nerf made the Singaporean servers even harder to play on as the Kharaa. Now that we need three hives for the Khamander to drop onos eggs, onoses are so rare these days. Most of the time, the games don't even last long enough for me to get the 75 res to become an onos.
The better Singaporean players appear to prefer Marines most of the time, so this nerf does not improve the situation at all.
While I feel that a lot of what he says are possible, one point stands out that I really have to disagree with.
"The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip," he said, comparing the purchase to buying a house in California.
Colonization, IMO, takes a lot of physical work. Even with the aid of machines, physical strength is an excellent backup plan. Take for example, Antarctica. Scientists there have to go through regular physical examination and must be physically fit. And that's just a place that is a few hours away from the nearest civilization and has no transport only for a half a year annually.
Mars, in contrast, is months away from Earth. In addition, he does not plan to employ reusable spacecrafts in the initial phase of the colonization process. That means if shit hits the fan, everyone there is going to die.
The last time humans colonized a "new world", hundreds (or maybe thousands, I can't remember exactly) of people who believed themselves well-prepared starved to death.
What I'm getting at is that the first people to go there cannot possibly consist of rich middle-aged men. That's a new planet, not a resort. The new frontier is not going to be an easy place to live in. Yes they will need smart people, but mostly they're going to need strong, tough men. They won't need that many decision-makers, but they will need plenty of people to execute the decisions they make.
The first pioneers should be largely the hands-on people, not millionaires. Construction workers, technicians and etc. The smarter ones, of course. They're also going to need to be able to cover one another's job whenever the need arises.
Maybe instead of buying tickets for themselves, those wealthy people should "invest" in tickets for these pioneers.
So I cleared up some stuff in my office when I installed the printer. At first, I only wanted to find the power outlet for the old fax machine so that I could replace the plug with the MFC's.
Then when I found it, I had dug through so much old stuff I just couldn't stand leaving them as they were. That's why I spent much of that day sifting through them.
Everything was so dusty, the dustballs were longer than my fingers.
Worse still, the old carpet that covers only my part of the office was so ancient it was coming apart in such a way that whatever holds all the threads together was crumbling into a yellow powder.
I have no idea what it was but I really hope it was not asbestos.
Anyway, all I could find was a broom so I swept everything away as well as I could and threw the dust into the same bag as the carpet and dumped them all at the dustbin at the lift lobby.
There was so much dust I decided it would be a really good idea to cover my nose and mouth with a towel halfway through the day. Not that it was really effective but it was better than nothing.
I keep several clean towels in a bag there for those times when I do the heavy work.
Despite the towel, my throat and windpipe are still irritated right now.
Hence yesterday, I asked my staff if we had a vacuum cleaner. I didn't expect there to be one but I had to ask, just in case. Otherwise, the plan was to get a cheap one.
Turns out there was one and it was the same heavy-duty model as the one we have at home. Clearly, my mum bought two of those when she was looking for one that could suck away the water that was leaking from the air-conditioner back then.
Also bought a box of masks that had this wire on the upper edge to shape around the nose.
Today, I went back, put on a mask, and vacuumed as much of the entire workplace as I could. Some parts I couldn't reach but I did what I could.
The whole place desperately needed it. As I uncovered more areas to check for dust, I began to believe nobody ever did any vacuuming at all since they moved here in around 2003.
Even the walls were dusty; it was just incredible how everyone could stand it all these years.
Took over 3 hours to vacuum the place but the higher stuff like the curtains and the top of them I had to leave alone. Same with all the corners I couldn't reach and didn't feel like moving boxes to get to them.
I do not want to know what is in the paper bag within the machine now and I really don't feel like changing it at all. I'll just it... gather dust there.
Now the office is still dusty compared to my home but at least dustballs aren't normal anymore. The next step would be to wipe everything with a damp rag but I'm too lazy for that.
But while I was cleaning the place, I realized I had forgot to pay my staff last month (I'm old-fashioned and use real cheques). As I was writing the cheques, I checked the date and noticed that I had remembered the wrong date for my Korea trip next week.
I wasn't leaving on Tuesday; I was leaving on Monday!
Oh shit!
By then it was 3pm. Banks and money-changers mostly don't open this late on Saturdays.
Banks don't open on Sundays either. With some googling, I also learnt that the exchange rates at Arcade were not very good on weekends. Since most of them close for the weekend, I suppose the ones who were still working would take advantage of anyone who has to change money on a weekend.
If these people weren't in need of this urgently, they would have waited for Monday, wouldn't they?
Thus my conclusion that I might as well change it at the airport. I'll buy stuff using my card (yea I know there's a 2% transaction fee) and get some wons in cash for tips or train tickets.
Since I have no idea which airport is better, I'll withdraw S$2000 and change half at each airport. This will not only even out any disadvantage I might get but will also show me which side has the better rates.
I've already checked the opening hours and Changi Airport's are open 24/7 while Incheon Airport's are mostly closed at 9pm except for Hana, which closes at 11pm.
Good enough.
The other thing I planned to prepare but forgot was the portable modem. Upon checking the SK website, I recalled that I had to reserve it 3 days in advance.
Since it was 2 days away, I had to check to see if I still could get it. Apparently, I could, but I would not get the 50% discount... but I'm not sure if that discount was even applicable for the modem.
It won't be expensive at all. The rate is just 8000 wons a day, which is around S$10, and the deposit is just 200k wons for the flatter version, around $60.
It would have been much more worthwhile if this was a group trip, since the modems could handle up to 10 devices, but there's also the 500MB limit to consider.
There are also cheaper options but those need Windows OS, like the Wibro modem that costs only 5000 wons a day and has no data limit. The only catch for that was that it was only usable in Seoul.
Anyways, I feel prepared despite still not knowing a word of Korean. Hopefully I'm not overestimating myself but just in case, I've included a Korean keyboard in my iPad. It's just a few days of shopping anyway and I no longer plan to buy from the wholesalers this time.
Planetside 2 is significantly more fun after the beta. I guess everyone had stopped playing back then since the beta was ending when I first joined.
It's fun when there are lots of people, but that's not constantly happening.
When we're outnumbered, it's not fun at all.
Chose to play the Vanu Sovererignty without knowing the difference between the 3 factions. With that kind of graphics, I thought it was low budget enough to have 3 similar factions using different colours.
Turns out I was wrong. While the Terran Republic had the most ammo capacity and the fastest vehicles and the New Conglomerate had the toughest armour and strongest weapons, the Vanu had agility and infantry weapons with no recoil.
Like in real life, bullets in the game have a trajectory. Not the VS. The catch is that the power reduces a lot over long distances, so it's pointless to snipe from too far away.
TBH I don't feel that the VS is strong as a faction. Sure, the Magrider's awesome but that's about it. In contrast, TR Mosquitoes pretty much rapes everything. Although it's fragile, its speed makes it really hard to hit and its missiles are so OP.
Meanwhile for Natural Selection 2, the horrendous onos nerf made the Singaporean servers even harder to play on as the Kharaa. Now that we need three hives for the Khamander to drop onos eggs, onoses are so rare these days. Most of the time, the games don't even last long enough for me to get the 75 res to become an onos.
The better Singaporean players appear to prefer Marines most of the time, so this nerf does not improve the situation at all.
Monday, 26 November 2012
Rant 1082 / Not Enough Pants
I actually forgot about getting earphones until I got the printer. The plan was to find the printer booths, ask for quotes and then get some earphones before actually buying the printer.
Then when I found the two booths selling Brother printers, I realized the brochures were exactly the same. I went straight to the conclusion that there was no difference which booth I bought from, so I asked the second booth, Harvey Norman, if I could switch the free speakers for another set of NTUC vouchers.
The MFC 7860 came with a set of $20 NTUC vouchers and a pair of X-Mini speakers supposedly worth $76, but neither my bro nor I have any need for crappy speakers like those.
The first person I asked, the girl who had handed me the brochure, told me that some of the promoters were looking to buy those speakers, but were only willing to pay $20.
In terms of value, that was what I had asked for. $20 cash instead of vouchers. But I had more than 1 set in mind even though I asked for only 1 set. It was just for probing for the possibility.
So she led me to another promoter and whispered something to him, which made me believe that the ones who gave out brochures weren't the same ones who did the sales. Anyway, I asked him exactly the same question and he told me that exchanges weren't allowed.
However, if I could give him the speakers, he would give me 10% off. I didn't expect that and $35 was much closer to the 2 sets of vouchers I wanted. So I said yes immediately.
He also threw in 2 reams of Xerox A4 paper which were of better quality than the ones we use in the office.
Not a bad deal overall.
After payment, I thought to find out if I got scammed. It wasn't important because I already got a better deal than I expected to get. Hence I asked him if 10% was the most he could have given me, adding that surely he could have given more, like 20%.
But he said no, this was the most he was allowed to give to help clear certain models on the last day. I guess this printer was selling more poorly than I thought it would.
Yet it also implies that if I had pushed harder, he might have given me the 10% anyway plus a little more from himself or other promoters for the speakers.
Regardless, it was already done and I was satisfied with the discount.
Metro 2033 is performing quite amazingly TBH. It's been 2 years since its release and it's still getting a place in the top 20 on the top seller list on Steam. It's true that the discount has been at 75% for a long time now, at least a year I think, but most other indie games would have gone further by now.
Now I know what PC fax means. I had thought this function was pretty redundant and I had spent some time trying to find a cheaper printer without this function.
It was only just now that I learnt I could use this function to turn my new office fax machine into a remote printer.
Woot!
Basically, this function allows me to fax documents from a PC to the fax machine. It's really no different from saying it's a remote printing function except this uses the telephone line instead.
Supposedly, this would mean that I'll have to connect a phone line to my PC, but the Internet is full of wonders, and I found websites that can replace it for free.
Some have ads but some, like this gotfreefax.com, merely limits the user to 2 free faxes a day and 3 pages per fax, ie 6 pages a day.
I AM FINE WITH THAT!
This is so frigging awesome.
EDIT: It appears that those sites I had found were only for US and Canada. So now I can only find one site, freepopfax.com, that works for SG. Not sure about the kind of ads it will include so I'm testing it tonight.
Then when I found the two booths selling Brother printers, I realized the brochures were exactly the same. I went straight to the conclusion that there was no difference which booth I bought from, so I asked the second booth, Harvey Norman, if I could switch the free speakers for another set of NTUC vouchers.
The MFC 7860 came with a set of $20 NTUC vouchers and a pair of X-Mini speakers supposedly worth $76, but neither my bro nor I have any need for crappy speakers like those.
The first person I asked, the girl who had handed me the brochure, told me that some of the promoters were looking to buy those speakers, but were only willing to pay $20.
In terms of value, that was what I had asked for. $20 cash instead of vouchers. But I had more than 1 set in mind even though I asked for only 1 set. It was just for probing for the possibility.
So she led me to another promoter and whispered something to him, which made me believe that the ones who gave out brochures weren't the same ones who did the sales. Anyway, I asked him exactly the same question and he told me that exchanges weren't allowed.
However, if I could give him the speakers, he would give me 10% off. I didn't expect that and $35 was much closer to the 2 sets of vouchers I wanted. So I said yes immediately.
He also threw in 2 reams of Xerox A4 paper which were of better quality than the ones we use in the office.
Not a bad deal overall.
After payment, I thought to find out if I got scammed. It wasn't important because I already got a better deal than I expected to get. Hence I asked him if 10% was the most he could have given me, adding that surely he could have given more, like 20%.
But he said no, this was the most he was allowed to give to help clear certain models on the last day. I guess this printer was selling more poorly than I thought it would.
Yet it also implies that if I had pushed harder, he might have given me the 10% anyway plus a little more from himself or other promoters for the speakers.
Regardless, it was already done and I was satisfied with the discount.
Metro 2033 is performing quite amazingly TBH. It's been 2 years since its release and it's still getting a place in the top 20 on the top seller list on Steam. It's true that the discount has been at 75% for a long time now, at least a year I think, but most other indie games would have gone further by now.
Now I know what PC fax means. I had thought this function was pretty redundant and I had spent some time trying to find a cheaper printer without this function.
It was only just now that I learnt I could use this function to turn my new office fax machine into a remote printer.
Woot!
Basically, this function allows me to fax documents from a PC to the fax machine. It's really no different from saying it's a remote printing function except this uses the telephone line instead.
Supposedly, this would mean that I'll have to connect a phone line to my PC, but the Internet is full of wonders, and I found websites that can replace it for free.
Some have ads but some, like this gotfreefax.com, merely limits the user to 2 free faxes a day and 3 pages per fax, ie 6 pages a day.
I AM FINE WITH THAT!
This is so frigging awesome.
EDIT: It appears that those sites I had found were only for US and Canada. So now I can only find one site, freepopfax.com, that works for SG. Not sure about the kind of ads it will include so I'm testing it tonight.
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Rant 1081 / Zombies And Printers
I guess the zombie genre is an easy one for writers. For some writers, they deal with difficult characters by killing them off. Not getting rid of them somehow seems pretty difficult to me provided there's no magic in the story. There are many ways to removing characters but killing is:
1) dramatic
2) perfect for tying up any related lose ends
3) able to give closure to the reader so that he won't have any lingering doubts after the story ends
The zombie genre gives writers this choice at any given moment, even when things are perfectly safe.
For games, this has an additional benefit.
The thing with options in a game is that it causes the story to grow branches. If I pick A, the story goes this way. If B, that way. More choices, more branches. Eventually you're going to get an entire tree. Imagine how many difference scenarios the voice actors would have to go through and how much more animation the developers would have to create.
By killing off characters, the writer ensures that the branches do not continue to split till they get out of control. Whenever it's going to get messy, they snip off a character to keep things neat.
That, I feel, was exactly what happened the Walking Dead game I just finished. After reading the synopsis on Wikipedia (full of spoilers), I realized (slightly to my disappointment) that all roads led to Rome. The difference is in how they went.
But anyways, I probably should have waited till Season 2 is out before playing it. There's something of a cliffhanger in the end and I don't like cliffhangers.
This game won excellent reviews and awards for each of the 5 episodes, so getting it for just 50% off was a very good deal IMO. Anyway, the Steam discount is back to 25% for the rest of this sale, so it's going to get that (or maybe 66%, because I don't see it hitting 75% this year at all) again only in the Christmas sale.
Home was a nice distraction from the lingering thoughts about the Walking Dead game.
Supposed to be horror and it kept me tense all the way. I stopped bracing whenever I opened doors after a while. I guess it takes more than simple atmosphere to keep a player that tense.
The next time I play, it's not going to feel like a horror game anymore.
Anyways, short game, nicely made, very much worth the US$1.01 I spent on it. 66% off wasn't ok for a game I wasn't really looking out for but it didn't make sense for me to wait till it hits 75%. The difference of 9% would only have been US$0.27.
Planning to get a printer that can handle fax, scan, copy and print from my iPad and most brochures and people recommended the Brother MFC 7860, which also does PC fax, an unnecessary function for me.
Then I found that the MFC 7360 could do all of those functions at S$100 less.
The difference is that it requires third-party apps to print from the tablet.
So I tried and managed to get Cortado Workplace working... except everything I printed was extremely small. Words were tiny and images were shrunk.
No way to get it working properly.
I could probably use my old Acer laptop as a proxy somehow easily but I didn't want to rely on it at all. The motherboard's battery is already screwed so who knows when it's going to die.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend the extra $100.
I initially wanted an inkjet like my home's. Well, before that I wanted a printer to replace my home's so that I could use the older printer for work.
Then I learnt that laser printers cost less in the long run due to cheaper toner vs expensive ink.
To reduce the cost, I settled for monochrome - colour would have needed another $100. I didn't need colour anyway since I now show images through my iPad. All I needed was really a fax machine that I could occasionally print stuff through from my tablet.
Still, $350 for this is going to be a major expense for my business. I have doubts but my old fax machine is in need of repair. I have only a vague idea how to get someone to repair it and I don't want to have to hunt down the paper and ink when they finally run out. I heard they were expensive and I know they aren't easy to find.
Might as well get the MFC, a machine I'm more comfortable with. Plus it comes with 3 years onsite warranty and 2 more limited carry-in.
I could have also got this machine for about $150 less on Amazon but that lacked the warranty. Somehow I feel safer with lots of that when it comes to machines for my work.
1) dramatic
2) perfect for tying up any related lose ends
3) able to give closure to the reader so that he won't have any lingering doubts after the story ends
The zombie genre gives writers this choice at any given moment, even when things are perfectly safe.
For games, this has an additional benefit.
The thing with options in a game is that it causes the story to grow branches. If I pick A, the story goes this way. If B, that way. More choices, more branches. Eventually you're going to get an entire tree. Imagine how many difference scenarios the voice actors would have to go through and how much more animation the developers would have to create.
By killing off characters, the writer ensures that the branches do not continue to split till they get out of control. Whenever it's going to get messy, they snip off a character to keep things neat.
That, I feel, was exactly what happened the Walking Dead game I just finished. After reading the synopsis on Wikipedia (full of spoilers), I realized (slightly to my disappointment) that all roads led to Rome. The difference is in how they went.
But anyways, I probably should have waited till Season 2 is out before playing it. There's something of a cliffhanger in the end and I don't like cliffhangers.
This game won excellent reviews and awards for each of the 5 episodes, so getting it for just 50% off was a very good deal IMO. Anyway, the Steam discount is back to 25% for the rest of this sale, so it's going to get that (or maybe 66%, because I don't see it hitting 75% this year at all) again only in the Christmas sale.
Home was a nice distraction from the lingering thoughts about the Walking Dead game.
Supposed to be horror and it kept me tense all the way. I stopped bracing whenever I opened doors after a while. I guess it takes more than simple atmosphere to keep a player that tense.
The next time I play, it's not going to feel like a horror game anymore.
Anyways, short game, nicely made, very much worth the US$1.01 I spent on it. 66% off wasn't ok for a game I wasn't really looking out for but it didn't make sense for me to wait till it hits 75%. The difference of 9% would only have been US$0.27.
Planning to get a printer that can handle fax, scan, copy and print from my iPad and most brochures and people recommended the Brother MFC 7860, which also does PC fax, an unnecessary function for me.
Then I found that the MFC 7360 could do all of those functions at S$100 less.
The difference is that it requires third-party apps to print from the tablet.
So I tried and managed to get Cortado Workplace working... except everything I printed was extremely small. Words were tiny and images were shrunk.
No way to get it working properly.
I could probably use my old Acer laptop as a proxy somehow easily but I didn't want to rely on it at all. The motherboard's battery is already screwed so who knows when it's going to die.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend the extra $100.
I initially wanted an inkjet like my home's. Well, before that I wanted a printer to replace my home's so that I could use the older printer for work.
Then I learnt that laser printers cost less in the long run due to cheaper toner vs expensive ink.
To reduce the cost, I settled for monochrome - colour would have needed another $100. I didn't need colour anyway since I now show images through my iPad. All I needed was really a fax machine that I could occasionally print stuff through from my tablet.
Still, $350 for this is going to be a major expense for my business. I have doubts but my old fax machine is in need of repair. I have only a vague idea how to get someone to repair it and I don't want to have to hunt down the paper and ink when they finally run out. I heard they were expensive and I know they aren't easy to find.
Might as well get the MFC, a machine I'm more comfortable with. Plus it comes with 3 years onsite warranty and 2 more limited carry-in.
I could have also got this machine for about $150 less on Amazon but that lacked the warranty. Somehow I feel safer with lots of that when it comes to machines for my work.
Rant 1080 / The Walking Dead Is Not Exactly A Game.
These commercials aren't new but I still find them hilarious.
SC2 for US$20 on Black Friday. Holy crap!
The other day, it came to my mind that I should consume those boxes of sliced ginseng from my relatives given to us when my mother was sick. This wasn't not the first time I thought about it but it was the first time I also thought that even if I am not going to use them, I should at least keep them in the fridge after checking for mould.
The boxes aren't sealed. Despite being Canadian ginseng, for some reason, the seller doesn't have the class to keep them in sealed boxes. Instead, they're just 2 plastic sides that are kept together with tape.
When I took them out, there was no mould.
Instead, the first box had a several weevils, as if it was rice that had been left exposed for a month. I see them all the time because I buy 10kg bags of rice and can't finish them soon enough.
My first response was to want to throw the box away. Then came the price of ginseng in my head. That made me recall that weevils and their eggs are not toxic nor dangerous to consume at all. I simply rinse my rice to get ride of them and still eat the rice anyway.
I googled this just to check, since the ginseng may not be cooked as thoroughly as rice, and confirmed it.
The second box had a pretty bad infestation.
Now they're both wrapped in a plastic bag and kept in the fridge. The cold should stop them from breeding. When I want any, I pick out a few slices and rinse them when necessary.
Next time, I'll need to to think about the boxes of chicken essence. These things were meant for my late mother so I can't simply re-gift them.
Feels good to have my external hard disk back. I'm kinda paranoid about backups because I've lost files that were important to me before.
Those experiences taught me two things:
1) I can really do without them TBH
2) I should back up my backups just to avoid the initial wave of sadness over the loss.
Hence my two external hard disks. Both are WD My Book Essential but one is older and doesn't have the auto-backup function. The other does but I'm not sure how it works so I'm manually copying those important files over.
The Walking Dead was at 50% off on Steam so I had to get it. Made sure it was US$12.50 for all five episodes before I bought the season pass.
Short, but great.
It's nothing like any other zombie games. Instead, it's more of an interactive movie. Combat is minimal and only involves clicking on the zombies. Mainly, this is about making choices, some of which were difficult.
The difficulty of the decisions is shown at the end of the episode when it tells me how many percents of other players made the same choices as I did, and 3 of them were close to 50%. Everyone's pretty divided on those issues, like whether the gun should be "lent" to someone who was bitten.
Reading it in comics and novels can be quite different from actually choosing it in the game, seriously.
Overall, very dramatic and very engrossing. This game needs to be played in one sitting though, or at least each episode.
Now, time for the next episode...
...
Episode 2 was more clear cut and had fewer painful choices to make. It was obvious according to the stats that most of the decisions were easy. However, that doesn't mean I'm choosing the same as the majority on everything.
In fact, for a lot of those decisions where it's almost 50/50, I tend to be on the minority side. Strange.
...
Episode 3 was more painful because of mostly just one part.
By now, I can confirm that combat is extremely easy in this game. The focus is on it being an interactive story and not really a game. Heck, I'd seriously categorize it as an interactive animated show rather than a game. There is no competition, there is minimal challenge and there is no score to keep.
Why would I call it a game at all?
Anyways, I'll just post the last screen of the episode with the spoilers covered up. Anyone who plays the game will know what this screen is and what I've done while those who don't gets to see what I've been talking about.
See? 4 of the 5 major decisions in this episodes has had everyone divided almost evenly, meaning these were difficult choices. Actually I didn't find the last choice painful but I guess people were too stuck with what they were taught from young to listen to logic. One was fit, the other was injured - the choice was very straightforward to me.
...
Episode 4 was sad. I'd love to finish the final episode now but it's 12am already.
But this game doesn't seem to be heading for a good ending :(
Monday, 19 November 2012
Rant 1079 / WD RMA Successful!
IPT killed my mood since I woke up this morning.
It's been so long since I had to worry about this that I'm just not used to it again.
Getting it settled felt awesome but it doesn't happen often.
It's not just the thought of having to go all the way to the camp just to exercise that irks me but the also the likelihood that I'll have to attend all 18 sessions this year including 8 sessions of RT.
Last year things were easy because circumstances caused constant weight loss for months. This year, my weight has so far stayed at the exact same number despite my diet changes and increased fitness level.
It feels unlikely that I will be able to lose enough weight within the next 5.5 months. If I'm right, I need to lose 6kgs by May. That's 6kgs in 5.5 months, slightly faster than the rate I had last year.
Rum and coke.
When I got this bottle of Cruzan Aged Rum, a dark rum, I had the mistaken impression that it was good for sipping like my cognac.
Nope. Sucks balls compared to cognac (hence the price of $45 online vs the $250 of the Remy Martin XO at the airport's duty-free shops).
With some Coke, however, it became a lot better.
Cuba Libre. No wonder it's one of the most popular classic cocktails in the world.
According to some google results, I should get Cruzan Single Malt instead if I wanted a rum for sipping. But it's not available at this online store I was buying from.
But still, it's not bad for a liquor at this price level.
Went to Ikea and bought 2 rugs and a bath mat.
And some candles and a lamp.
Left the big candle on the cab or maybe it dropped out while I was trying to fit the rugs into the trunk :(
Oh well, it was only $3.90 anyway.
Pretty good deals, those candles at Ikea. I mean the unscented ones of course. The scented ones smell like crap, figuratively speaking.
Needed a rug because for some reason, my chair has begun to scrape off the top layer of my wooden floor.
My floorboards are planks that consist of this hard paper(?) layer covering the actual duller wood. This top layer is starting to come off bit by bit due to my chair.
Thus I thought a rug would stop this and simultaneously make my floor look better by covering up that scar.
Those 2 rugs and a bath mat already cost me about $125 so I thought I'd add a bit more to hit $150 and get the Ikea membership.
The first lamp I wanted cost $40 but it was sold out, so I picked the next best one that cost $20. Needed a little more to hit $150 so I got some candles too.
...
Holy crap! This beige Vate lamp is fantastic. When I spent like 15 minutes at the lighting section, I was really simply looking for a table lamp that suits the general woody rustic feel of my home and a low price.
Initially, I found a nice one but it cost $40 and the colour I wanted was out of stock.
So I looked around longer and settled for this Vate that looks like a lantern. Slightly too "classical" if you know what I mean, but it was only about half the price of the first or less.
Picked beige to suit the woody look of my home, plus a pair of 7W bulbs.
I didn't think it would have such a nice warm glow that I'm seeing now with my ceiling light off. Can't post a decent photo of it even though I wanted to because cameras either make it look too dark or too bright. I probably need more distance so that the glow doesn't affect the focus too much but my room isn't big enough.
The beige bath mat is great too. Probably because I have never used a bath mat before.
Previously, I have only used door mats and old towels for this purpose, so I didn't expect the luxurious softness under my feet until I used it. It's better than a carpet because it feels slightly elastic.
As for the rug, it does not blend in with my wooden floor as much as I had hoped for. Too modern and too much blue. Still, it's practical. Now I just need to find out what I should do if I drop food or liquid onto it, since I eat here.
At worst, there's always the dry cleaner nearby.
Went to SAFRA to pick up my Ocean Health stuff on a Saturday only to learn that I should have called in advance so that they could prepare the bag for me at the reception counter. In addition, the office was closed on weekends so I couldn't get it on the spot.
Derp.
At least I could get the Choice vouchers ($92 for $100 worth per set, 2 sets per member) which ran out soon after I got there at 10.30am. They counted the number of sets of vouchers and asked everyone in the queue how many they were getting. Lots of them were bringing their parents and children together, all of whom probably have Dependents' Memberships, so they got 2 sets per person.
So they had to tell the people queueing after like 6-7 people behind me that there was no stock for them.
Took a whole hour before I got mine despite a rather short queue.
And this was the first day the vouchers were available this month, not to mention the counter opens at 9am.
In other words, those vouchers run out in less than 2 hours.
Then on the cab I thought since I was going to go again in the coming week to get my fish oil, and it didn't seem like a good idea to have full hands when I'm at the crowded Philips Carnival Sale, I decided to go to Timberland the next time I go to SAFRA instead.
That was halfway through the trip from SAFRA to Centrepoint, and fortunately I had planned my way so that Centrepoint was between Mount Faber SAFRA and Toa Payoh, just a little more eastward.
And fortunately I changed my mind then, because two irons needed a hand, so I could barely get my wallet out to pay for them even without the shirts I would have bought at Timberland.
Even luckier was that I found 4 tees my size in a stack of old clothes. I haven't completely cleared my home of my mother's stuff, so today after I got home I somehow felt like clearing out that stack of clothing before taking my shower.
That's when I find those clothes that I could wear. Must have been those excess ones that I never needed (I used to wear whichever shirt was on top) and eventually forgot about. Since the stack was in some dark corner, the shirts are still in perfect condition except pretty dusty.
That also reminded me that since a number of my shirts are from Giordano, I should be looking there instead of Timberland for new clothes. True that those polo shirts faded after a year but they must be cheap.
Thus I discovered that Giordano is having a big sale at IMM, a "relocation sale"! It was "probably" end on the 3rd of December.
Holy crap! I must go! Forget Timberland!
Should have checked Giordano long ago.
...
Went there on today (Monday).
$15 per polo shirt. Picked 4 immediately. Fortunately for me there were still a few XXLs around for the more popular colours like black. I think I got the last black XXL but there could be more hidden under the wagons for all I know.
I wanted to hit $100 to get the membership but my bro didn't need anything so I could only get $60.
Membership here would be really practical because their shirts fade within 2 years of constant wearing.
It's ok. I might pick more when there's a Christmas sale or something. The cashier told me I only needed to hit the $100 within 2 months, so I have up till January to do it. Nothing to worry about.
Hush Puppy was also having a sale. Apparently half the IMM was having a relocation sale, so it made me go through the whole mall.
The 2-piece packs of men's boxers and the 3-piece packs were all sold out by the time I got there, but I managed to find like 10 packets of 1-piece packs of my size. $8.90 a pack though, compared to the $13.90 for the 2-piece packs. Not exactly the best deal TBH but it's still not expensive for something of this quality.
The cherry on top of this good shopping trip is that, I realized when I saw a promotion poster on my way to the taxi stand, IMM is under Capitamalls - these receipts are going to give me points in the Capitastar programme!
Best gf evah!
But in her defense, I must agree with the "experts" that it was partly his fault for spoiling her and compromising everything that he is for her sake, and partly her parents' fault for not teaching her basic courtesy.
This guy had no backbone and her parents sucked at parenting big time.
Also, he is one of the shallowest men I have ever seen.
Just realized that I should be going to Dongdaemun instead of Myeongdong. Before, I didn't manage to find out where I should go to find wholesalers. I just did last night by accident.
Derp.
Fortunately for me, Dongdaemun is only a short train ride away from Myeongdong, and my hotel is close to a SMRT station.
I slightly worry over my ignorance of the Korean language but I've read that English signage is common in the downtown area. At worst I can call my hotel's front desk if I really need help with directions.
Even more worrying is how I'll be able to buy anything without knowing Korean when I am at the wholesalers.
Hence I'm thinking over the whole process of making wholesale orders face to face and listing down everything that I need. Next, I'll prepare all the factors so that minimal talk is required.
Won't be cheap, the things that I may buy, since it's Korea and I'll probably be a very ineffective haggler.
Also read that food delivery is common in Korea. I just need to find out the pronunciation of various common dishes, like bibimbap, then ask the hotel how I should pronounce my address, and I can order food to my room the way I did in Shanghai.
As for the possibility of the restaurant asking me if I want to add this or that to my order, I plan to end my order with "Hangook-mal mot haeyo." I'm sure it's going to be like ordering fish soup in Singapore without stating whether I want the fried or fresh fish, so it will be fine. At worst, the food doesn't come in an hour and I make another call. It's not like the hotel is going to charge me for domestic calls.
Apparently it's cheap because they return to their customers' addresses to take their reusable eating utensils back, so I have to try.
This took so long I actually forgot all about it.
It's the replacement Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB I sent for RMA! It had stopped booting after I switched it off without ejecting it first.
Looks brand new. And I didn't even return the cables, so now I've a USB3.0 cable for free.
Maybe it's their way of saying "Sorry you broke our product", or maybe I'm just not trying to make sense here.
It's been so long since I had to worry about this that I'm just not used to it again.
Getting it settled felt awesome but it doesn't happen often.
It's not just the thought of having to go all the way to the camp just to exercise that irks me but the also the likelihood that I'll have to attend all 18 sessions this year including 8 sessions of RT.
Last year things were easy because circumstances caused constant weight loss for months. This year, my weight has so far stayed at the exact same number despite my diet changes and increased fitness level.
It feels unlikely that I will be able to lose enough weight within the next 5.5 months. If I'm right, I need to lose 6kgs by May. That's 6kgs in 5.5 months, slightly faster than the rate I had last year.
Rum and coke.
When I got this bottle of Cruzan Aged Rum, a dark rum, I had the mistaken impression that it was good for sipping like my cognac.
Nope. Sucks balls compared to cognac (hence the price of $45 online vs the $250 of the Remy Martin XO at the airport's duty-free shops).
With some Coke, however, it became a lot better.
Cuba Libre. No wonder it's one of the most popular classic cocktails in the world.
According to some google results, I should get Cruzan Single Malt instead if I wanted a rum for sipping. But it's not available at this online store I was buying from.
But still, it's not bad for a liquor at this price level.
Went to Ikea and bought 2 rugs and a bath mat.
And some candles and a lamp.
Left the big candle on the cab or maybe it dropped out while I was trying to fit the rugs into the trunk :(
Oh well, it was only $3.90 anyway.
Pretty good deals, those candles at Ikea. I mean the unscented ones of course. The scented ones smell like crap, figuratively speaking.
Needed a rug because for some reason, my chair has begun to scrape off the top layer of my wooden floor.
My floorboards are planks that consist of this hard paper(?) layer covering the actual duller wood. This top layer is starting to come off bit by bit due to my chair.
Thus I thought a rug would stop this and simultaneously make my floor look better by covering up that scar.
Those 2 rugs and a bath mat already cost me about $125 so I thought I'd add a bit more to hit $150 and get the Ikea membership.
The first lamp I wanted cost $40 but it was sold out, so I picked the next best one that cost $20. Needed a little more to hit $150 so I got some candles too.
...
Holy crap! This beige Vate lamp is fantastic. When I spent like 15 minutes at the lighting section, I was really simply looking for a table lamp that suits the general woody rustic feel of my home and a low price.
Initially, I found a nice one but it cost $40 and the colour I wanted was out of stock.
So I looked around longer and settled for this Vate that looks like a lantern. Slightly too "classical" if you know what I mean, but it was only about half the price of the first or less.
Picked beige to suit the woody look of my home, plus a pair of 7W bulbs.
I didn't think it would have such a nice warm glow that I'm seeing now with my ceiling light off. Can't post a decent photo of it even though I wanted to because cameras either make it look too dark or too bright. I probably need more distance so that the glow doesn't affect the focus too much but my room isn't big enough.
The beige bath mat is great too. Probably because I have never used a bath mat before.
Previously, I have only used door mats and old towels for this purpose, so I didn't expect the luxurious softness under my feet until I used it. It's better than a carpet because it feels slightly elastic.
As for the rug, it does not blend in with my wooden floor as much as I had hoped for. Too modern and too much blue. Still, it's practical. Now I just need to find out what I should do if I drop food or liquid onto it, since I eat here.
At worst, there's always the dry cleaner nearby.
Went to SAFRA to pick up my Ocean Health stuff on a Saturday only to learn that I should have called in advance so that they could prepare the bag for me at the reception counter. In addition, the office was closed on weekends so I couldn't get it on the spot.
Derp.
At least I could get the Choice vouchers ($92 for $100 worth per set, 2 sets per member) which ran out soon after I got there at 10.30am. They counted the number of sets of vouchers and asked everyone in the queue how many they were getting. Lots of them were bringing their parents and children together, all of whom probably have Dependents' Memberships, so they got 2 sets per person.
So they had to tell the people queueing after like 6-7 people behind me that there was no stock for them.
Took a whole hour before I got mine despite a rather short queue.
And this was the first day the vouchers were available this month, not to mention the counter opens at 9am.
In other words, those vouchers run out in less than 2 hours.
Then on the cab I thought since I was going to go again in the coming week to get my fish oil, and it didn't seem like a good idea to have full hands when I'm at the crowded Philips Carnival Sale, I decided to go to Timberland the next time I go to SAFRA instead.
That was halfway through the trip from SAFRA to Centrepoint, and fortunately I had planned my way so that Centrepoint was between Mount Faber SAFRA and Toa Payoh, just a little more eastward.
And fortunately I changed my mind then, because two irons needed a hand, so I could barely get my wallet out to pay for them even without the shirts I would have bought at Timberland.
Even luckier was that I found 4 tees my size in a stack of old clothes. I haven't completely cleared my home of my mother's stuff, so today after I got home I somehow felt like clearing out that stack of clothing before taking my shower.
That's when I find those clothes that I could wear. Must have been those excess ones that I never needed (I used to wear whichever shirt was on top) and eventually forgot about. Since the stack was in some dark corner, the shirts are still in perfect condition except pretty dusty.
That also reminded me that since a number of my shirts are from Giordano, I should be looking there instead of Timberland for new clothes. True that those polo shirts faded after a year but they must be cheap.
Thus I discovered that Giordano is having a big sale at IMM, a "relocation sale"! It was "probably" end on the 3rd of December.
Holy crap! I must go! Forget Timberland!
Should have checked Giordano long ago.
...
Went there on today (Monday).
$15 per polo shirt. Picked 4 immediately. Fortunately for me there were still a few XXLs around for the more popular colours like black. I think I got the last black XXL but there could be more hidden under the wagons for all I know.
I wanted to hit $100 to get the membership but my bro didn't need anything so I could only get $60.
Membership here would be really practical because their shirts fade within 2 years of constant wearing.
It's ok. I might pick more when there's a Christmas sale or something. The cashier told me I only needed to hit the $100 within 2 months, so I have up till January to do it. Nothing to worry about.
Hush Puppy was also having a sale. Apparently half the IMM was having a relocation sale, so it made me go through the whole mall.
The 2-piece packs of men's boxers and the 3-piece packs were all sold out by the time I got there, but I managed to find like 10 packets of 1-piece packs of my size. $8.90 a pack though, compared to the $13.90 for the 2-piece packs. Not exactly the best deal TBH but it's still not expensive for something of this quality.
The cherry on top of this good shopping trip is that, I realized when I saw a promotion poster on my way to the taxi stand, IMM is under Capitamalls - these receipts are going to give me points in the Capitastar programme!
Best gf evah!
But in her defense, I must agree with the "experts" that it was partly his fault for spoiling her and compromising everything that he is for her sake, and partly her parents' fault for not teaching her basic courtesy.
This guy had no backbone and her parents sucked at parenting big time.
Also, he is one of the shallowest men I have ever seen.
Just realized that I should be going to Dongdaemun instead of Myeongdong. Before, I didn't manage to find out where I should go to find wholesalers. I just did last night by accident.
Derp.
Fortunately for me, Dongdaemun is only a short train ride away from Myeongdong, and my hotel is close to a SMRT station.
I slightly worry over my ignorance of the Korean language but I've read that English signage is common in the downtown area. At worst I can call my hotel's front desk if I really need help with directions.
Even more worrying is how I'll be able to buy anything without knowing Korean when I am at the wholesalers.
Hence I'm thinking over the whole process of making wholesale orders face to face and listing down everything that I need. Next, I'll prepare all the factors so that minimal talk is required.
Won't be cheap, the things that I may buy, since it's Korea and I'll probably be a very ineffective haggler.
Also read that food delivery is common in Korea. I just need to find out the pronunciation of various common dishes, like bibimbap, then ask the hotel how I should pronounce my address, and I can order food to my room the way I did in Shanghai.
As for the possibility of the restaurant asking me if I want to add this or that to my order, I plan to end my order with "Hangook-mal mot haeyo." I'm sure it's going to be like ordering fish soup in Singapore without stating whether I want the fried or fresh fish, so it will be fine. At worst, the food doesn't come in an hour and I make another call. It's not like the hotel is going to charge me for domestic calls.
Apparently it's cheap because they return to their customers' addresses to take their reusable eating utensils back, so I have to try.
This took so long I actually forgot all about it.
It's the replacement Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB I sent for RMA! It had stopped booting after I switched it off without ejecting it first.
Looks brand new. And I didn't even return the cables, so now I've a USB3.0 cable for free.
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Rant 1078 / Lethal Vertical Marathons
Genuine IGN review :3
Surprisingly, Gamespot gave Natural Selection 2 a 6.0 out of 10.
It made me read the review and realized the reviewer was actually full of shit.
First, right in the first paragraph, he's already made a factual mistake: it doesn't cost $30, it costs $25. Is he using the Singapore Dollar or what? Because US$25 is indeed S$30!
Second, steep learning curve. You can easily just stick with the marines who cannot possibly be hard to master - you just play a sci-fi version of CS!
Moreover, if this game is getting a low score for being too difficult, what about Starcraft and Starcraft 2?
9.1 and 9.5 respectively.
Wut?
So now Gamespot is saying that SC2 is a much easier game than NS2?
Wut?
But he did have a point: the graphics are getting a little old. That's unfortunately due to the fact that this game was made entirely by a few guys compared to the entire studios employed by large established game developers.
In fact, half the game, including the Spark engine it uses, was made by just 2-3 guys. It was only later when they resorted to selling the unfinished game as a beta version that they got the money to hire a few more people and rent an office.
Can't be helped.
As for other reviews, Gamespot seems to be the only site that gives such a low score to the game. Everyone else is giving it at least an 8 out of 10.
EDIT: Gamespot has just removed the review.
Dohohoho!
Deadlight was short and easy. Interesting. The ending twist was not exactly mindblowing. But nice game.
Mechwarrior has an online game. It's like CS with mechs.
In beta right now, looks interesting but only 4 maps. I'll wait.
The khakis from Qoo10 arrived.
Though the packaging was trashy literally, the pants are actually much better than expected.
To clarify, the seller used black trash bags to wrap the pants. Maybe they weren't trash bags but they were black, thin and plastic - pretty much the definition of trash bags.
The pants are 100% cotton and not 99% or 97% like the ones from JShopper. Not sure how different this makes them and after trying them once, I can't tell.
These are khakis, so they are as baggy as the pants I used to wear in the past.
More comfortable but also the least formal of all long pants. I'll wear them on days when I'm only going to the office and nowhere else.
Extremely crude but hilarious. Accent sounds Teochew.
Towns is on Steam!
Strange because Steam usually only allows the sale of games that are at least near-completion, ie open beta.
Towns currently doesn't feel like it's anywhere close to completion. Maybe the devs have a surprise in store but I don't know.
I'm not saying it's not fun - it's probably my third favourite single-player game I have after the Mass Effect trilogy and two new Fallout games - but it's still lacking in a number of games, including polish.
Planetside 2 has an awesome concept - planetary war. It's big like Tribes but without the skiing and much bigger maps.
Instead of simply having individual large maps, in Planetside 2 they are merged to form whole continents on planets.
The basic concept is just capturing specific points in order to capture the maps. Capturing all the maps means capturing the continent.
It's a huge FPS.
With 3 factions, this goal is much harder than it seems.
Problem is that it's so big everyone seems to be lost on the faction I played in. There is absolutely no direction by anyone and no tutorial. I don't even know what the symbols on the minimap mean!
The worst thing is that there is zero communication. Nobody is saying anything nor do I know if there is a faction chat channel in the first place.
Maybe it's too big. That's what I think the issue is anyway. Everyone is spread out too much and the only people who knows what they're doing can only be in two or maybe even just one of the factions.
Because obviously, none of them were in mine when I played.
So my iron blew a fuse.
I heard a pop from outside my room and my PC went dark.
So I looked around and saw that my motherboard's LED light was gone too.
When I got out, the housekeeper had stopped ironing and was giving me a puzzled look.
It was weird because the light in the living room was still on.
Took out the ladder and climbed up to the fuse box. Sure enough, one was down.
I flipped the switch and said it was ok.
Turned out I was wrong. The moment she hit the switch of the iron's outlet, sparks flew out together with the familiar pop sound.
She screamed and I stared.
Holy shit!
In the end, we agreed that it was the iron and she should finish the ironing next week. I'm so glad I still have one pair of brand new chinos that I forgot to dump into the washing machine, so I have enough to last the rest of the week.
Better still, the Philips Carnival Sale is on this weekend. What perfect timing!
Saturday's going to be a busy day. Not only do I have to go there, I'll also have to visit SAFRA to collect my fish oil that I ordered previously and buy the NTUC Fairprice vouchers.
And I was also considering visiting a Timberland store to get some polo tees to hit $250 for the Green Class VIP. Maybe, maybe not. Probably will, because the shirts and the fish oil won't be heavy, and the fish oil will fit in my bag.
2 short sleeve polos for $99 and 2 cotton tees for $59! I'll probably get 4 polos and 2 tees, although I'm not very interested in the tees. I still have a few that aren't faded and I don't really wear them anymore. Too casual for work on workdays. I'll see what they have that I need.
I'll need to look at the map to see in which order I should visit these three. The Carnival Sale is definitely going to be the third because the iron is bulky.
My impression of a metropolis (or whatever they call their largest cities) of the future is simply a single structure.
I feel that this is just the most space-efficient way to place everything together.
Although this won't happen in our cities in this century or the next due obvious reasons, I believe eventually, some new developing country will try to build a new capital (or another city, but a capital seems more likely) that way.
Gone will be our current public transport systems. With an entire city indoor, we could use moving walkways on every level. Instead of driving cars, which statistically kill more people today both directly (accidents) and indirectly (air pollution) than any single disease, people will be using moving walkways (aka travelators, horizontal escalators etc etc), or maybe a version with seats on them.
A moving walkway with seats would have to be far longer than what we have today in order to both justify the need for seats and to allow passengers to have time to walk slowly to the seats.
I mean, obviously a very long travelator is going to be moving pretty damn fast too, so it's going to be hard to walk against the wind.
This would also mean that there may be slower travelators that people have to take before walking over to these long ones so that they can safely overcome the initial inertia.
It would be kind of like the sort described in Isaac Asimov's Robot series, with several differences of course.
Or they could enclose these long travelators in a tube to minimise air resistance by smoothing the air flow.
Just like there are private cars today, so there will be something similar when travelators become the primary mode of public transport.
But I can't make a guess that I feel any confidence in. The thing about inventions is that they often occur by accident. There is just no logical way to predict what is going to be the next technological revolution. For all I know, anti-gravity could be just a century away.
I wonder if I should get Don't Starve. Looks interesting when I watch my bro play it.
But I'm not sure if I need another of this sort of game. I'm already playing the heck out of Towns and I have no need for more. Maybe I'll get it through some indie bundle shit or maybe I'll just get it in the coming Steam Christmas Sale.
Towns remains a great game for multi-tasking. I'm just playing it while doing other stuff. Took some time to get it that way (by building a vertical trap marathon) but it's working out fine currently.
Hinders movement a lot, even caused a few townies to starve, but it's worth the risks. Not only does it give my townies time to get to the chokepoint, it also kills off any small seiges without needing a single soldier.
My 5 levels of Hell. Currently incomplete due to my being too lazy to farm mushrooms for poison bottles. The lowest level is blocked by the wall but the entrance is visible on the bottom left corner. That's also next to the entrance to the underground levels so that if the heroes get chased by monsters, they would have the traps to help them.
I plan to expand this by building a larger complex and relocating the scaffolds. I'll also need a way to store food nearby so that hungry townies can get fed without having to go through the maze.
EDIT: This maze wasn't really working perfectly because I hadn't covered the side with a wall.
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