I'm moving there. I feel that Blogger is not keeping up with the times, and that its functionality is very limited.
Updates stopped for this blog. Last post 20 August 2013.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
20 December 2009. That is the day my Ferrari Laptop died. Let's observe a minute of silence.......
Ok.
I was planning on having fun playing Team Fortress 2 on that day. I only played it for about an hour or two the day before, and I wanted to play it even more on 20 December so that I could enjoy as much of it as possible. Valve was offering TF2 for free play during that time. Unfortunately, after playing for about 30 minutes on that day, the laptop just blacked out. I was going to snipe someone then, and I just went, "wtf". The laptop blacking out isn't something that hasn't happened before, so I wasn't too worried. However, try as I might, pressing the power button didn't seem to do anything. I turned off and on the main power supply. Nothing. Then I looked at the battery adaptor. The light on it was blinking faintly. I plugged out the wire connection to the laptop, and the light lit up perfectly. I have no idea what happened, but my Dad didn't want to repair the laptop anymore because its just a waste of money.
So, now I have a new computer. I think I did say previously that I didn't want a new computer that early, since I can't really take advantage of getting a Directx11 card. I did get Windows 7 though. Also, my computer is going to gain 2 years of age without me using it very often. Sigh.
Anyway, here are the specifications for the computer:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @2.66GHz
RAM: 3072MB DDR3
Hard Drive: 736GB Total
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 1024MB
Sound Card: Realtek High Definition Audio
It isn't anything amazing, but its only SGD$1399 and it works fine. Google "Acer Aspire M5800" and you'll see its a budget power-pc. However, it has already been giving me problems. Just early this morning, the computer just became slower and slower, and then suddenly, it hanged. Next thing I knew, I saw a blue screen of death. I still have no idea what happened, but its fine now. Later in the night, while playing Battleforge, I was alt-tabbing frequently because I was either waiting for people to load (I'm finally waiting for others, ha!), or waiting for people to join. When I alt-tabbed back to the game, the screen just started flickering between my desktop and a black screen. The only way to stop it was to put my computer in sleep mode by using the button on the keyboard, waking it up, then closing the game without maximizing the game. It started when I saw a notification from Windows that the Geforce drivers had stopped responding, and that it has recovered. I seriously wonder why there are so little Radeon cards in premade computers. They're cheaper and provide the same or better performance.
Peektures!
posted @ 12:30 am
0 comments
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
WoW update. I've got my priest to 4106 gearscore, and my shaman is around 3950. I'm starting to get a little sick of my shaman, and to be honest, I do prefer my priest. Haha, I've been always talking about how the shaman is my favourite class and all, but in the very end, I like my priest more. I do think that I can PvP better with my shaman, but I've never been a PvP person. So, what really made the priest a better option for me is the fact that I don't have to drop totems in a raid every 5 minutes, I don't have to bother with crap like Heroism/Bloodust (funny, I just realised Horde gets sated while Alliance gets exhausted. Stupid Horde favour.), I don't have to keep Flame Shock up so that I can use Lava Burst properly (though 7-8k critical hits are cool), and I don't have to refresh Water Shield whenever its gone. All I have to do on my priest is keep people alive, and that is not as hard as it sounds to be. Or maybe its just easier for me. Besides, I enjoy the prestige that a priest can enjoy, being the premier healing class that can do all types of healing very well. So, its back to my priest. My shaman can be my money making character.I've just booked a date for my basic theory test for driving. Seems like learning to drive is going to be a pretty long and slow process, and I have no idea how its going to work out with NS in the way. Oh well, I guess I'll just see how things goes when the time comes.
I know this is weird, but I'm wondering if I should go for orientation as a J3. I have no idea what's up with me. I hate orientation, and yet, I'm considering going for orientation. I guess the main difference is that I don't have to be obliged to do what they want me to do if I were a J1. Besides, I do like the campfire part of orientation, and people sneaking up on you and putting crap on you is pretty fun too (doing it to others is fun too). When does school start anyway?
posted @ 4:50 pm
0 comments
Monday, December 28, 2009
This is the hardest story that I've ever toldNo hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I'm wasted
And I'm wastin' every day
I seriously think that I've screwed up my JC life. Yeah yeah, I know that I've made two really really long posts about this already, but I just can't seem to get it off me. I've spent my JC life wanting it to end, wanting to go home each time I'm at school, wanting as little things to do with school as much as possible. In the end, I'm living a life of solitude and boredom, with my social circle in ACJC with at most 30-40 people, with 23 of those from my own class. =(
Anyway, I've got a 4E class chalet tomorrow. That's my secondary school class, and I don't think I want to go. I've never really connected or kept in touch with any of them, and they're not exactly that great too. I think I'll just leave it at that. Its funny don't you think? One paragraph talking about how I wasted away my social life in JC, and the next paragraph talking about me avoiding a good chance to widen my social circle. The difference is, one is a social circle that I've never bothered to discover. The other is a social circle that I've looked at, didn't like it, and stepped out of it. Besides, even if I want to go just to see how things have changed in the past two years, its at the eastern end of the island. I don't think its worth the trouble.
I'm going to make much shorter posts now, but they'll come in more often. This is the tl;dr generation, no one is going to bother reading such long posts unless they're really interested.
posted @ 8:12 pm
0 comments
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas Everyone!
posted @ 12:00 am
0 comments
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
I'm here to rant. Whenever people post something on forums or on video-sharing websites like Youtube, often there will be people who try to criticize the person who posted the original article. Next thing you know, a person replies with "why don't you post yours and lets see if its better?" or something along those lines. That really pisses the hell out of me. You can say its one of my pet peeves.I'm not totally unreasonable about my pet peeve at all. In fact, such a retort to the criticism has absolutely no logic or meaning at all. One does not have to be an expert at something to be able to criticize it. Of course, there are some things that need an expert to be able to provide good criticism. Such things include photography and technical stuff such as building computers and such. When the above reply happens for such areas of work, I'm fine with that. However, it takes anyone with a brain to be able to know that someone looks horrible, or someone plays horrible music, or sings like a hyena. The next thing you know, "can you sing better?" "Why not post a picture of yourself and lets see how you look". I tell you, its annoying as hell.
I think you're trying to be cool and smart, but seriously, you just look like a complete retard with absolutely no logic or reasoning to anyone who realises that such a retort holds absolutely no power or meaning. So, stop it.
posted @ 4:56 pm
0 comments
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Like the new blog skin? I changed it in the wee hours of the morning today (around 12am). I started making it yesterday after dinner (around 7:30pm), and I just stuck myself with Photoshop until I was done with it. Using the HTML coding of the previous skin, I just took the background image from my Twitter, and used it as the main picture. I made the borders all by myself though, and that was really a pain to make. I wanted a zig-zag pattern, so I was asking for trouble anyway. Basically, the borders of the blog has to be made such that they join perfectly together when they are tiled. I made the wooden planks at the corners as well, and I'm pretty pleased with how that turned out to be.Initially, the blog seemed to be a little bright. I'm quite used to having dark blog skins, so this was a rather big change. However, when I woke up today and visited my blog, it didn't seem that bad anymore. I like the orange/black combination too. Red/black is my favourite colour combination, but that's a rather evil-looking combo, and I had enough of evil (Tyrael and Diablo III has been staring at me for months).
I've been playing a lot of WoW for the past few days, and I'm more or less done with raiding with my priest. Ulduar isn't out on MagicWoW yet, so its going to be a while before I raid often again. There's this addon called Gear Score that some idiot has introduced to WoW, and what it does is give a score to each of your equipments, and then calculate the total. Its a quick measurement of the level of gear a person has, and its been used in PUGs very often. Unfortunately its going to make getting into PUGs with a new character much harder. My priest has a gear score of 4000, and the highest I've seen in the server is around 4300 (with the exception of Krylock who has Ulduar gear). I'm pretty sure a gear score of 4000 is enough to get into Ulduar raids in the future. Thus, I'm now leveling my shaman. He's currently level 74, and I'm getting sick of leveling. Leveling is a tiresome and painful process, with a lot of traveling, ganking, and waiting for spawns.
I've also been getting a horrible lag while surfing the internet these days. Basically, page would sometimes load forever, and I would have to stop the loading, and click the link again to get the page loaded. My Youtube loading speeds have also decreased. Sometimes, the pages would come up with a connection timed out just after one or two seconds, hardly enough for a connection to really time out. Its also most likely why I can't get Steam to update. Its annoying, and I have no idea what to do about it.
Prom was on 8 December 2009. I didn't go for it, mainly because hardly anyone in the class went for it as well. If I'm not wrong, only 4/24 people in the class went. Well, at least that's what I'm seeing in the photos uploaded on Facebook. My social circle outside of the class kind of sucks, because Tech Council sucks, and orientation sucks. So that's why I didn't go
posted @ 4:14 pm
0 comments
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Look what I've found.
32 days in a month. Interesting.
posted @ 11:30 pm
0 comments
Monday, December 07, 2009
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Released in October 2009, this was the latest addition of GTA games to the PSP. Many people liked that there is finally another GTA game, after all, who doesn't like playing GTA? However, there are many people who felt that the top-down view wouldn't be as nice to play with when they saw it, and that's understandable, considering the last two GTA games for the PSP were in full 3D third-person view. I myself didn't like it, but when I started playing it, things changed.
You start out as Huang, the son of a leader of the Triad of Liberty City. You learn that your father has been killed, and you are shown a video of you arriving in Liberty City to deliver the family heirloom, only to be ambushed by rival triads. You somehow manage to escape, and you start your first mission at your uncle's place. The heirloom is missing, and the story begins. Power struggles, rats in the triad, drugs, crazy television reporters, blowing stuff up, throwing new drugs at people, and using sonar pulses to find stuff underwater are just a few of the things you get to do. There's definitely a lot more than this.
The biggest change one would obviously notice about this title is the top-down view that the game is played in. No third-person view we're all so familiar with, its back to the roots of the very first GTA. Driving needed a little getting used to at first, and getting a hang with the auto-steering system that aligns your car parallel to the road would help you a lot. Targeting and shooting works well, using one of the shoulder buttons to target, then pressing the trigger button to shoot. There is now a GPS system included, which highlights the road which you should travel on in order to reach your destination. However, the GPS system doesn't always show the best or fastest route, since it has made me drive unnecessary roads before. Here's an example. Imagine a square. I could have simply traveled along one length of the square to get from one corner to the next, but the GPS system made me drive the long way around, across the three other lengths to reach the adjacent corner.
Getting into vehicles also allows you to listen to music, and I was rather disappointed to find out that all they had were music tracks. Having played four other GTA titles before this, I really enjoyed the radio stations featuring talk shows and stuff, as they usually are really funny and nonsensical. The music was also rather bland, with most of the songs with no lyrics at all. The rather limited number of songs also resulted in you needing to listen to the same thing over and over again. This actually caused me to turn off the radio, especially near the end of the game.
The game also features drugs, and you can trade drugs with traders found all over the area. You can decide to keep them in your stash, or sell it for a profit. Occasionally, your PDA will inform you of a desperate buyer or seller, who will offer drugs for a much lower price, or buy them at a very high price. This made earning money a lot less of a pain. The usual vigilante, ambulance and taxi jobs were also present, as well as a few additions such as working in a tattoo parlour, gambling on the lottery, and rampage levels.
The Nintendo DS version of Chinatown Wars featured many actions that you could do with the stylus pen. In the PSP version, most of these were done with the analog stick, as well as both the shoulder buttons. Some of the more interesting actions included putting together a sniper rifle, and hot-wiring a car.
Escaping from the police is also different now. No longer are there stars left around to acquire to reduce your wanted level, and spray-and-paint services are much harder to come by. There are less of those found around the city, and you can't use it if there are cops near you. Instead, the most efficient way to reduce your wanted level is to cause the police cars to be destroyed. However, there is a catch. You can't use any sort of weaponry to destroy them. You either have to ram into them hard enough, or cause them to crash into something to destroy themselves. This made the whole wanted level thing a less risky business, since its much easier to get out of being wanted.
The graphics and sounds were really smooth and slick, and gameplay was fluid and lifelike. Driving across the beautifully lighted bridges at night at high speeds is a sight to remember. Hardly is there any sort of lag or waiting time, though I'd really wish that the in-between screens while navigating the PDA could be removed somehow. I doubt anything is even being loaded - its just there to make the PDA feel real. Toll gates are also a little buggy. Drive slowly through the toll gates, and you get a $5 toll, and continue your journey. Drive fast through it, and you get a 1-star wanted level. However, there were many times where I did drive through very slowly, but still got a wanted level. It may have been because I slowed down very abruptly, causing the game not to understand that I was actually moving slowly.
The cut scenes were pretty well-done, featuring pictures of speech between people. However, all this speech are just found at the bottom of the screen to be read, and I wish that they did voice them out. Its just a personal gripe, since the game is still great without the voice.
Overall, this game has a solid storyline which flows out perfectly, giving you many other things to do while you're not at it. Mini-games, drugs and taking down cops just make things even better. The few small problems such as crappy music may annoy you a little, but that's not going to make the game bad. Such problems are forgivable considering its on a handheld, and its a whole lot of fun anyway.
GTA: Chinatown Wars Trailer (1:09)
Graphics: 9.0
Sound: 8.5
Gameplay: 9.0
Lasting appeal: 8.5 (I didn't test out multiplayer)
Overall: 9.3
posted @ 6:01 pm
0 comments
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Funny feelings. That's the title of this post. These funny feelings that I'm talking about is most likely not what you're thinking about. Then what funny feelings am I having, you may ask? Lets read on.I feel like continuing my JC life next year. Like going back to school, studying like a retard - the hardest I've studied in all 12 years, and having fun. Yes, fun.
I know I've made a lot of posts in the past that have really damned my school to the bone, and you'll find them if you search hard enough (I've taken the direct links off, and turned some of them into drafts, I find them kind of gross now). For some reason, I want the JC experience to continue. I've been living my two years, eagerly waiting for the life I'm living now to arrive. Now that its really here, I find that it kind of sucks. I'm bored, and I've foreseen my life for the next three months to be a repetitive cycle of waking up, breakfast, newspapers, daily websites (Facebook, Kotaku, etc.), lunch, more websites, gym (blame NS), bathe, dinner, gaming/watch House, sleep, repeat. Other than the possible occasional events, is what I just said going to be how I live my next three months of my life? If yes, then just enlist me earlier. I'm serious about that. Possible occasional events may include watching one or two movies with some people, and that's only going to make up one or two days of those three months. Another event is to get my driving license. My Mom said that I'll learn driving even before I thought about it, so that would be cool.
Now that I've explained the future, its time to explain the past.
When I entered ACJC, it started on an sour note with the really gross orientation. I just hate orientations, don't ask why. Then I went to 1SB2, where it was generally quite good. In fact, it was so good it was scary. Maybe it was because everyone was new and didn't really show their darker sides yet. I decided I hated Economics, and switched it to Geography. That put me in 1SB3. By the way, I'll be making a few confessions here, like House says, everybody lies, a.k.a. everyone has secrets. I saw one orientation group mate, and I didn't like that fact. I didn't really make myself as a friendly or happy person during the orientation period, and I didn't want anything to do with orientation. Besides, on first sight, you'd think he's some sort of uncouth gangster. I didn't like that. Anyway, he turned out to be a great guy. Previous posts. - These are original posts of my life then, pertaining to each paragraph.
Then I realised that there are a lot of foreigners in my class. During the lecture period of orientation, I sat beside a few China people and got really annoyed by their accent. There were 5 people with that accent in my class. Things seemed to be really going downhill. My form teacher came in, and he seemed like the really fun sort of guy. He was. But that gave him a lot of problems as a teacher, and it made things horrible for all of us. Isn't there anything that went well?
Pre-Fun-O-Rama was annoying, because we all had to stay back to make a racetrack for the car game. It was impressive in the end, but not very functional or fun to play with. It was pretty hard to even complete the track. Fun-O-Rama came, but I found it pretty crappy. I won lots of stuff, thanks to me spending $150 on drinks and games. I guess a carnival is one of those things you shouldn't do alone. Previous Posts.
Time went by. I sulked, and got annoyed with what I was learning, but life was still relaxing. I didn't really have to study too hard to get by, and I did average for my promos. My project work (PW) group is made up of a great bunch of people, to the point that I miss working with them. That was possibly my first of the "funny feelings" that I had. It was a rather embarrassing funny feeling, since so many hated PW. I also received a birthday card from the class. Not everyone wrote in it, and most of those who wrote just wanted me to talk more. Its a pretty nice card. Annoying subjects.
We had our first class event in December - a barbecue. It wasn't a very eventful event. All we really did was just barbecue. No games, no play, not much talking. Just a lot of fighting between Ian and Foo. As usual. I got a Christmas card from Janice, the really great class chairman. It was sent by mail, with a candy cane in it. I've never really seen anyone that kind in my life before, other than my Mom. Such kindness starts to give me the other funny feeling you may have been thinking about. Previous posts.
A new year starts, and Valentine's Day quickly arrives. I get cards here and there, some sweets and snacks. I find myself putting more effort into my work, and its taking a toll on me. I find myself playing a lot less, resulting in me being even more annoyed by the whole JC life and school thing. The sports season came, and I go into that phase of getting pissed off by teachers who force me to go cheer for people. IT week came, and helping to organize it was interesting. The rugby finals came, and I had no choice but to go. Watching from the toilet to get the breeze from the fan was a funny experience but overall the whole cheering thing was pretty darn boring. Annoyed with school
Ooh, found the cross country post. Yeah, that was definitely fun. How could I have forgot. Saying "hi" to random people, screaming for Milo and getting caught in a really heavy rain that could have rivaled the flood in November 2009. Previous post.
Then my birthday came again. I expected something, but I definitely didn't expect a slice of cake. The candle and birthday song made things even more special.
More time passed, and there was a small outing before the prelims at Swensen's. All I really remember about it is that we complained a lot about how crappy the breakfast food was, and we poured a lot of maple syrup over everything. Then we were supposed to blame Shaun for some stuff that doesn't even make sense, but that never happened. And I literally teabagged myself (a real teabag if you're dense).
Prelims came and went, our class did well as usual. They moderated my grades to get me my pretty good results, but I wasn't that content because my H2's were bad. The Baccalaureate service came, signaling the last official day of school. I was happy that it ended, because I can finally have my break. Got a lot of souvenirs (gosh I can never spell that word), but I didn't really think about it much. I wanted it to end. Previous post.
The A-levels came and went, and I did it, hardly talking to anyone when I was in school. I came and left, and the breeze in the wind. You don't notice it unless you want it.
Then on 3 December, we had our final class gathering. I went there, and had fun. I went home and I was like, "geez, its all ending now". I'll hardly ever see them again, I'll hardly ever laugh with them, or listen to their crap (which is funny and enjoyable, really). We're all going our separate ways, and the presence of foreigners would amplify that fact. Previous post.
I just typed out two years of my life. I didn't talk about my CCA at all, because it just plain sucked. Nothing to say. Move along. Crappy CCA (2nd half of post).
Comparing these two years of my life with the previous ten years, I've done more in 2 years than in 10 years. My life in those 10 years was basically, go to school, get home, do homework, play, repeat. Which is why I want to go back to a JC life all over again. It might be fear of the future, who knows? We're all afraid of what is to come. What would the army be like? What would university be like? Will there really be office politics when we work? Are we going to be backstabbed to death?
Your JC life. Enjoy it while it lasts. It might possibly be really the best two years of your life, contrary to what I've said in previous posts. It might be tiring and difficult, and you might wish for it to end as soon as possible. But I'm pretty sure that once its over, you'll change your mind.
posted @ 1:06 am
0 comments
Friday, December 04, 2009
I had a class dinner at Janice's house yesterday. As usual, we all had to wait at the MRT for some people for about an hour before we could move on. Sometimes I just wonder why I bother coming on time as well. In fact, I wasn't even on time, since I was about 20 minutes late.Anyway, we reached the house at around 5:30pm, and sat around watching TV for a while. Apparently they watched Friends for about an hour or two. I didn't really watch much of it, since I don't really get the whole Friends thing. Had a steamboat at the same time. There was a "meat" table and a "vegetable" table, since there are vegetarians in the class. Anyway, I planted myself at the meat table, and sat there for like 30 minutes or so, eating sausages, prawns (they had shells on so I didn't really eat much of those), fishballs, chicken, shrimp dumplings and something else I can't remember. And that's all I ate. Lol. There was rice, but I didn't bother taking any of it, since I'm pretty much sick of rice. I didn't eat any veggies too.
Anyway, there was this hamster who seemed too fat to even fit through the tunnels of its cage, but it managed to do so, somehow. After dinner we sat around the TV watching more stuff, and while channel surfing, we landed on some channel between 21-29 (can't remember) that was showing a clip of Modern Warfare 2. That didn't last long, and we went to some soccer channel. After a while some girls starting making noises, and we were back to Friends. Ugggh.
Alright I just realised I start each paragraph with "anyway". Err, after some time, a bunch of people started to play Monopoly, and the preview channel was showing Kung Fu Panda. Since I didn't watch that before, and Monopoly is a rather silly game if you compare it to other board games out there, I decided to watch Kung Fu Panda. Its a pretty funny movie, definitely worth watching. Much better than movies like New Moon who some people say its so bad that its funny. Well, maybe such a disastrous movie is worth watching as well, since you don't get to see such movies often. "Its so bad that its funny"? Sounds interesting if you ask me.
I left shortly after the movie, but not before watching Shaun play with his butane ball or whatever ball that is. Anyway, its a ball of cloth soaked in butane, which he then lights it up. Its pretty cool, since you can actually throw it around and juggle it, making it look like you're holding a fireball.
Pretty uneventful for a last gathering, if you ask me.
I think I should have stayed over, but since I felt like staying over only while I was there, I didn't bring anything along with me, so I wasn't prepared to stay over. The guys wanted to go play L4D2, most likely did it the next day. Noooo.
posted @ 5:19 pm
0 comments
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Well, the A's are officially over. Somehow, that feeling of euphoria one should have when such an examination is over, didn't really come to me. I have hardly anything to do until the 4th of March, and really, sometimes I sit around, wondering what I'm going to do with my life.Sure, I've got my games to play, but honestly speaking, they're all getting a little old and boring. I tried going back to the games that I used to have a lot of fun in, such as Rakion, Runes of Magic, as well as Neosteam. Rakion and Neosteam are now both dying games, and while its not impossible to play and have fun, the games just feel a little bit too empty, and sometimes there aren't enough people to play with. Runes of Magic is a great game, and its thriving. However, I can't seem to get immersed in it. It just feels very broken and unpolished, and I don't like any of the classes in the game.
I did find one game that I'm currently playing now, and that's Dragonica Online. Its a free to play MMORPG, and what made me stick with it is its special gameplay. Instead of using your mouse and pressing the usual numbers to use skills, this game plays like some sort of an action platformer. One close example of how this game is played is Little Fighter 2. You move around with your arrow keys, and you use the keys on the left side of the keyboard to use various skills, which may or may not allow you to perform combo attacks, depending on your class. You can even use your PS3 or Xbox 360 controllers to play the game. Apart from the way the game is played, the questing system is very similar to Guild Wars, minus the henchmen. There are main quests, which are instanced mission maps. However, these mission maps do not contain the sophistry of Guild Wars, since they are usually made of straight paths, requiring you to eliminate all the monsters in the map before you can proceed to the next map, eventually leading to a final boss who you have to defeat. Its unique, but without a henchman system, its going to lead to problems when the population and levels don't accommodate certain players.
Also, I've completed playing Assassin's Creed on the PSP. Its pretty interesting, since you get to do all the stealth kills and all, as well as jumping across roofs and scaffolds. The AI and controls need to be improved, since the controls can really piss you off at times, and the AI makes fighting a little too easy. I'm playing Little Big Planet (LBP) now, and its surprisingly fun. When I first saw LBP, I always wondered, what's so fun about a usual Mario-like platformer? Well, its not your usual Mario-like platformer. You get to solve puzzles, use switches, jetpacks, ride on magic carpets, and possibly a lot of other stuff I haven't found out yet.
posted @ 4:35 pm
0 comments