ice

Miniature Painting

2006-12-20T19:22:00.000+08:00

Another set of pictures... turns out close range focusing on my camera isn't too hot... focus on the backpack, and the arms and legs are blur... focus on the arms, and the body is blur.. probably something to do with the depth of field.. any suggestions?

Maybe I'm Back

2006-12-19T20:55:00.000+08:00

I used to be a shutterbug. I stopped taking pictures for awhile - for some reason. Maybe I lost the habit of bringing my camera around - the big heavy bulky thing that it is.

This is the only good picture I've taken all year. Or at least, I like it a lot myself. I was supposed to frame it on the right with the Tram pole sign - and leave the Stop number and Route number more visible, but space and angle considerations beat me. The focus was originally on the chill, foggy night, the ghostly lit skeleton of a tree glowing quietly in the darkness, but now it seems the picture is more about this particular Stop - somewhere, for many of us, we've spent the best years of our life, loved and lost and lost some more. And then, like the turn of the seasons, we move on. There's always this longing to rewind the clock, to do things again, except that you're afraid that it will turn out the same again.

Would we do it all over again, if we knew it would end up like this?

Microsoft(R) Firefox

2006-11-12T15:05:00.000+08:00

Microsoft(R) Firefox | We've Made it Better

So true >_<

The video is pretty cool though.

Grid Wars 2

2006-09-13T00:26:00.000+08:00

Link for description and download

Grid Wars is quite a marvel of a game, clocking in at merely 3 megabytes - complete with retro graphics and sound effects.

It's an age old concept and game style - you control an amazingly agile spaceship, and armed with a puny antimatter cannon, you have to dodge and destroy the seemingly endless hordes of neon coloured geometric shapes thrown at you.

This game is absolutely chaotic, but the key to playing it is seeing the patterns in the chaos. Each type of "enemy" on the screen has their own subtle behaviour patterns -> the cyan diamonds will move directly towards you, the green squares will actively avoid your attacks, the red interceptors have a frontal shield which repels your attacks, the tiny dark blue seeker circles move at high speed towards you while ignoring gravity wells. There are ways of dealing with each type of enemy, but the trick is surviving when a whole bunch of different shapes are closing in on you. There are literally dozens of different colored shapes to learn to handle in the game.

The real twist that this game has, is the implementation of black holes. They are a random spawn, like the enemy shapes rushing towards you, but they exert a gravity well around them drawing in everything (including you!) while repelling your antimatter attacks. As it swallows more enemies, the gravity field grows more intense, evidenced by the increasing distortion on the grid background and the higher pitched humming the black hole generates. If a black hole hits critical mass it detonates, sending a hail of deadly sharpnel towards you. The black hole gravity field and mass can be diminished by firing your antimatter cannon directly at it, (to counteract the repelling effect of the gravity field on your cannon you must sometimes position yourself dangerously close to the black hole)

Destroying a black hole with your cannon yields points based on how many enemies it has swallowed, on an exponential scale -> a black hole that has swallowed many enemies can be worth a lot of points, however those points are "locked" in the black hole and you risk losing all those points if the black hole implodes or you perish before destroying it.

The black holes are essentially the terrain upon which the game is played -> the gravity field can be a blessing and a curse, shielding you and simplifying your defensive solutions against an insurmountable rush of enemies, yet hindering your movement and sometimes slowing your movement when you need to get away quickly, and sometimes rapidly reaching critical mass when you are not in any position to get near it to pacify it. The game would be close to impossible to play at higher difficulties without black holes shaping the terrain -> a mass of 50 squares approaching you from all directions is impossible to dodge or destroy, however with a scattering of black holes many squares will be deflected and swallowed leaving clear paths of movement.

Playing this game does feel like farming : you are shepherding masses of enemies into the black holes and keeping their size under control, zipping to and fro between different black holes, deciding when one has gotten too dangerous and "harvesting" it for points.

Well enough of ranting =p Great and simple game. Highest score so far is 700,000-ish on Hard difficulty. (found the lower difficulty settings too slow to try playing).

hunters ^_^

2006-08-10T03:19:00.000+08:00

I have been dabbling in some PvP with my hunter... they're an amazing class to play, even with relatively inferior gear I am regularly topping the charts.

Highlight of tonight in AV - met an opposing faction warrior on his mount, I waved to him, and he dismounted and swapped to Battle Stance. Aha... lay freezing trap, fire off a shot at him and take a few steps back, he charges, and bang he's frozen 10 yards before he reaches me.

I hop skip away to 41 yards, then fire off in quick succession an aimed shot, concussive shot, autoshot, multishot, autoshot, watch him swap to Zerker stance, limp forward, then use Intercept. He foolishly uses his rage to Whirlwind instead of Hamstring - I retaliate with scattershot, dazing him for a few seconds, flip backwards back out to 10 yards, amd multishot + autoshot again.

He quickly closes the distance, and I feign death and reset another freezing trap, just before he reaches me bam he's frozen again. I run back out to 10 yards, arcane shot + autoshot and he's dead.

I didn't even have my pet around =p

it all makes a twisted kind of sense

2006-08-02T02:16:00.000+08:00

The tentative attempt at a 48 hour ceasefire - was announced by the Americans - but the very vast majority of the Israeli public was of the opinion that there should be no ceasefire - and then the Israeli Defense Minister comes out and immediately says he has no plans for a ceasefire and vows to expand the scope of the war. If the majority of the people want it, well that's democracy for you.

Fifty civilians, the majority of them children, are killed in an airstrike on Qana, drawing international condemnation against Israel. Strictly speaking, Israel did nothing wrong -> Qana is a hotspot for rocket launches into Israel, and according to them, it is the Hezbollah who have commited the war crime. Targeting military equipment and installations and then getting civilians killed in the process isn't a war crime - using civilians as shields to protect military equipment is. Yet when this happens, opposition towards the Israelis deepen while sympathy for Lebanon increases. Great strategy.

Hezbollah and Hamas both declare their ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel as a state. This is war, and it will not end until one side is completely eradicated or loses the will to fight. Nobody wants to lose.

Ultimately everything comes down to how much it costs. Israel could send in teams of ground troops to do house to house searches to destroy and disarm rocket sites instead of sending in precision bombs to do it from the safety of the air. House to house searches however would put many Israeli soldiers in danger. But of course, the lives of Israeli soldiers are more valuable than the lives of Lebanese civilians, so bombing is the logical strategy for them. Whereas for the Hezbollah, the Lebanese civilians are less valuable than their political goals so they are used as human shields.

Everyone believes they are right.

It all makes a twisted kind of sense.

Interested if somewhat farfetched

2006-07-16T10:08:00.000+08:00

perspective on the escalation of the Isreali conflicts - that they are trying to establish an undisputable link between Iran and terrorism (support of the Hezbollah movement) so they can legitamately (hmm) preemptively strike and destroy nuclear weapons research / production sites in Iran. Considering they have done this before, by striking and crippling Iraq's nuclear weapons programme in 1981, it's not such a far fetched idea. Ironically, the attack in 1981 was to be a joint effort with Iran who was at the time at war with Iraq.

/read from various newsfeeds and opinion reels online

Oddly fun

2006-06-22T12:07:00.000+08:00

World of Warcraft : did a 5 man Scholomance run with 3 rogues (all combat spec), 1 paladin (holy spec), and myself (protection spec warrior). Maybe I'm just amused because all 3 rogues were, in fact, girls. Or that, anyone who has ever played this game would know this group setup is illogical and funny. =p

More fun probably because we've all known each other for a long time, and have full confidence in each others skills - we're all near the best that our classes can be, skill and equipment wise, and also that we're doing Scholomance not for gear but for fun. (Scholo drops ceased to have any relevance to us about 5 months ago).

Eh I know what's fun about it, it's watching 3 combat specced rogues with epic gear burn down mobs and bosses in mere seconds.

Dark Reading - Host security - Social Engineering, the USB Way - Security

2006-06-11T17:51:00.000+08:00

Social Engineering and computer security

An interesting take on an innovative way to compromise a secure network from the inside. Basically, plant infected USB thumbdrives around the facility you want to compromis. Wait for employees to discover these "lost" thumbdrives. Rely on them to plug them into their computer out of curiosity, infecting their computers with a trojan that collects and emails out password data.

Written by VA and founder of a network security company.

Snippet from comments

- Yes, disabling autorun helps mitigate some risk. However, users are probably going click on just about anything with an intriguing file name so this is not a complete strategy.
- USB and firewire specifications are fundamentally flawed, allowing direct memory access which enables execution of code without user action or autorun.

this is what happens

2006-06-06T16:34:00.000+08:00

in a country with the "gold standard" of gun control law.

-~-

In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted £5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.

-~-

I did read about the case as it happened, back in 1999. It was quite an issue, I recall. I did not know the outcome of the case, but now I do.

Am I the only one who sees a gross miscarriage of justice? How can the citizens of that country (UK) stand by and allow such a thing to happen?

Why aren't there mass protests to set him free? Can anyone who lived in the UK in 1999 help answer that question?

Possessing the means of self protection is dangerous, but completely giving up the right to do so and leaving it in the hands of the police isn't much better or smarter. The police aren't there 24 hours a day to hold your hand, and in the end, you can only rely on yourself. Think about it, it's not like the police are going to be there when you get robbed - the robber will just bide his time and wait for another day.

Gun Control

2006-06-04T22:03:00.000+08:00

"A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned."
BBC News, 2001

Some interesting debate on this subject, triggered by a comment I saw posted online. Basically the view advocating gun ownership goes as such.

Crime, is an inherently risky profession. Take for example mugging (which I have been a victim of). If on average 5% of citizens carry a gun and are willing to use deadly force in self defense, statistically a mugger will only go for a few months before either being killed or becoming a murderer and hunted by the state. Plainly put, mugging and violent crime does not pay when your victims can fight back.

Disarming the population by not allowing them to own guns, turns mugging from a risky, dangerous act into harvesting.

-~-

A common situation : it's a dark, lonely footpath. You suddenly notice several people coming along from the other direction. You have 3 seconds before they reach you. Automatically you step far off the pathway to give yourself a larger clearance : to your dismay, they leave the path as well and walk briskly towards you.

You freeze. Now for sure you know they have hostile intentions. In one second, they will be close enough that you cannot use your gun.

If you draw your gun and shout a warning for them not to come nearer, the hesitation before shooting would be enough for them to easily overpower and disarm you, being outnumbered, even if one of their number is shot.

If you draw the gun and instantly fire on them, well... that would be kind of difficult when it turns out they were going to ask for directions.

If you choose not to fire, they overpower you at close range. They steal everything, find a gun, maybe kill you with it.

-~-

Or even in what I experienced : 4 vs 1, cornered in on all sides with no way to escape. They basically overpowered me, restrained me and took a few swings at me then pushed me to the ground, took what they wanted, and ran. No visible weapons I noticed, except wooden club. Maybe they had weapons in case I decided to resist.

I doubt shooting them in the back as they ran away would have been very justifiable, much as I would have liked to. Shooting before they overpowered me wouldn't have been justifiable, either. There is absolutely no way having a weapon would have helped me.

-~-

But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is, those criminals would not be alive to rob other people. Maybe their deaths would have deterred every other criminal friend they had from commiting crime, if they knew that more and more, civillians are prepared to retaliate, even if they go to jail themselves.

It's surprisingly difficult to conclusively say which situation is better. On one hand we could have a society where there are civillians armed and prepared to defend themselves, so the assumption is that 90% of criminals are deterred from commiting crime in the first place. On the other hand we could have a completely disarmed society where mugging becomes "harvesting" - no one gets hurt, the criminals just pick up the wallets and everyone goes their seperate ways.

Sex Advice From . . . Role-Players

2006-06-02T11:17:00.000+08:00

Nerve.com - Sex Advice From . . . Role-Players by John Constantine

Linked off an RP forum, pretty funny + interesting article. And well, it's Nerve =p

(so yeah, geeky cosplyers do get some, hehe)

Excerpt

What characters and costumes should never be brought into sex?
Anything with a lot of armor or spikes.

Well duh!

How do two people who are friends make the jump to sleeping together?
That's complicated. I really feel that there's a window in the friendship when that's possible. If you know someone for, say, more than a year, you kind of missed that gap. Around the three-month mark, try to move things in that direction. If it hasn't worked around nine months, you have to ease off.

Hmm. Sounds about right =p

More on Left Behind

2006-06-01T12:19:00.000+08:00

One of the interesting liberal christian viewpoint posts by Fred Clark on the Left Behind series. Good take on things, and he's got a lot more on the index page.

Excerpt

-~-

"What must I do to be saved?" the young ruler asked Jesus.

"Sell all you have and give it to the poor, then come, follow me," Jesus replied.

L&J's reply is quite different. They're not alone in this -- I've heard thousands of evangelistic sermons, but I've never heard an evangelist answer the young man's question the way Jesus did. Evangelists don't like Jesus' answer because they're intent on asking the same question the young man asked, and the whole point of Jesus' answer is that it's the wrong question. If your concern is with yourself and securing salvation for yourself, you're going to ask the wrong questions.

-~-

*edit* and a from cute quote going This unrecognizable, heterodox puree includes chunks of John's apocalypse, mixed together willy-nilly with the stranger bits of Daniel, Ezekiel and the minor prophets and slices of St. Paul's meditations on death and Christ's warnings of judgment. It also includes lots of other things, like numerology, an aversion to historical context and whole passages apparently taken from the AD&D Monster Manual.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

2006-06-01T02:16:00.000+08:00

GameSpy: Left Behind: Eternal Forces Preview

It was a post on Mefi which got me started on this, but it did look interesting. The linked article was sensationalist of course. "You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state"

Well forget the religious angle on it, the gameplay mechanic is a fresh idea and the plotline intriguing enough. I only wish I had thought of it first. =p

The end of Eternity

2006-05-31T00:13:00.000+08:00

"The end of Eternity" is one of those rogue Asimov novels that don't fit within his Foundation / Robots universe.

Ignoring all the plot devices, the background tells a tale of an elite organization which continually alters reality with time travel devices, tasking themselves with the job of pre-emptively preventing suffering and unhappiness.

They ultimately cause the demise of humanity, since their actions delayed the development of interstellar travel.

People happy -> no incentive to move or expand their horizons. The invention of many new technologies were prevented, because they were inevitably misused and caused more suffering than happiness, and thus deemed undesirable. Any deviation from the norm suppressed -> evolution of mankind was halted for thousands of years.

Asimov has this way of presenting his facts and theories in a "matter of fact" way which goes a long way to convincing you that there's no reason they couldn't be true.

Well it was a cute idea. =p But I'm all for increasing happiness and reducing suffering, thank you very much =p

the other side of the fence

2006-05-27T13:17:00.000+08:00

Carbon dioxide: They call it a pollutant. We call it Life.

That's the latest ad tagline of an environmental think tank called CEI funded by, surprise, the oil industry.

This is their response to Time magazine's "Special Report" on Global Warming.

I thought the points they made were interesting and valid, but I doubt many people will bother to read through it. =p Their stance in general is that the hype about the dangers of Global Warming is unsubstantiated, fuelled through sensationalism in articles from supposedly reputable publications like Time =p

cool =p

2006-05-23T19:07:00.000+08:00

Found posted by an anonymous user, I had a few laughs =p

(yes, anonymous never forgives =p)

-~-

I'm sick and tired of all this America bashing. We OWN the fucking world. We're the only super power left, which means we're the rulers. Don't like it, go move to Mars or turn your shitty little country into a super power. Oh yeah, that's right. You CAN'T!

Yeah there's wars and shit, but that's only because you won't get into line. If everyone would just accept it the entire world could be living like the USA under a Pax Americana. Look at Japan and Canada. They gave in and accepted American superiority. They got to keep the elements of their culture they liked and filled in the rest with American culture. They do what they're told and they live happy prosperous lives. Every other country in the world could have it just as good if they'd do the same thing.

You cause shit with us, don't fall into line, we spank you with bombs. Do what we want and EVERYONE wins. Why is that so fucking hard for the rest of you to get through your dumb-fucking heads? America doesn't hate you. America doesn't WANT to bomb you. But if you get in America's way, if you make yourselves into problems and start hating on America, what the fuck are we supposed to do? If it wasn't for America you wouldn't even have an internet to bitch about us on.

Seriously, I'm getting sick of all this anti-America bosnian bullshit. We can all get along if we all DO WHAT WE'RE TOLD!

So here goes nothing.

2006-05-08T01:50:00.000+08:00

We move on: people come and go: I loved every one of you, in my own inadequate way, both too little and too much at the same time.

Signing off.

Points of Authority

2006-05-05T23:29:00.000+08:00

The Crystal Method remix was never released commercially, only available as part of a fan club membership perk. Their remix of it is faster, edgier, more chaotic, uses a lot of synth and distortion. I like it, but I'm sure most people won't =p

The first verse has always held a strange appeal to me : evokes feelings of the hardcore competitive gaming clique : the need to prove your worth, pull your weight, or you're out.

Forfeit the game
Before somebody else
Takes you out of the frame
Puts your name to shame
Cover up your face
You can't run the race
The pace is too fast
You just won't last

edit: the remix of this same some from Reanimation by Jay Gordon (and the accompanying music video) is also worthy of a mention, quite enjoyable stuff =p

mystery of happiness

2006-05-04T17:48:00.000+08:00

In response to Xany.

Being perpetually happy necessarily involves some level of self delusion, overestimation of abilities, letting go of some issues which you should have tackled, and rushing headlong into certain situations which could bear more careful thought.

It's within the realm of possibility that perpetually unhappy people actually might have a better life, make less mistakes, and are better organized, but too bad they might not enjoy it as much.

AQ opening event

2006-05-03T03:01:00.000+08:00

Lots and lots of video lag =p

What real damage mitigation looks like in WoW =p

2006-05-03T02:32:00.000+08:00

deadzors

2006-04-22T15:00:00.000+08:00

One of my hard drives just died.

It was the oldest one, it's more than 5 years old.

Due to the nature of how my computer is set up and the idiocy of the windows boot system, once I turn off my computer I will not be able to turn it on again.

(Old OS used to reside in D: and when I upgraded my computer the OS was rendered unusable -> so I installed a new copy of Windows in a new hard drive in order to access the data off D: -> but on bootup, the computer insists on checking D: first and then only going to the real boot drive)

So yeah, I'm sort of prepared for most contingencies. Some data is backed up. But 40 gigs of data is reasonably large amount. And in 5 years, you can only wonder at the kind of detritus that's accumulated there.

Uh oh. I think I lost my copy of Stepmania and all 10 anime / ddr music packs.

reverse sexual imprinting

2006-04-22T02:09:00.000+08:00

Westermarck effect. Was doing a bit of thinking about who we find attractive.

Then something more disturbing : GSA also makes an interesting read. Especially the irrelevant, but amusing Star Wars and Koi Kaze references.

Makes you wonder though. Everyone in the world is distantly related, somehow. People are fond of saying opposites attract. But more often than not it's people of the same feather who get together...

-~-

Followed up some links from Wiki, found some studies.

Study on children raised in Kirya Yedidim, an Isreal kibbutz - children from different families raised together at this facility from a young age : in the hope that they would grow up to marry each other.

Quote: Not only did they shower, sleep and run around naked together and explore each other's bodies, as they approached puberty they began openly to play sex games, including intimate kissing, fondling.

Quote: In a second phase of the study, when these children had grown up, it emerged that not only had no marriages taken place between any of the sabras from Kiryat Yedidim, and three other kibbutzim, but neither was there a single reported incident of sexual intercourse.

Sorry but I laughed at the, uhm failure =p

Another study, done on practices in China - a certain type of arranged marriage where the bride was sent away as a child to be raised alongside her future husband - was also a failure much in the same way that the Isreal kibbutz attempts were.

Quote: "If she came at three or younger, the sexual aversion and rate of marriage breakdown was very high. After five or six, there wasn't much difference between married couples who met at 16. There is some factor in developmental psychology during the first three years of life that seems critical in determining sexual attraction, but we don't know yet what this factor is."

Such a young age obviously hints towards physiological / psyschological effects rather than a social stigma : it's unconscious, and something you can't control anyway. It also seems targeted solely at a particular person : not a set of personality traits. IE you are turned off by the idea of getting together with a sibling, but if you met someone who fits enough criteria (remember GSA) it would be ok.

This effect being targeted solely at a particular person might hint at pheromone imprinting?

*gosh it's late, i should sleep*

the meaning of it all

2006-04-21T12:53:00.000+08:00

I finally got a sleight of hand routine right... starts by pulling a bunch of playing cards out of thin air, letting them flutter to the floor in a cascade of cards, then showing both sides of my palm to the audience (look, no tricks, empty palms, nothing on the back either!) then proceeding to pull a few more cards out of thin air =p

Such satisfaction =) This has pretty good visual impact, and is not too harsh on the angles. Surprisingly, needs strong fingers to pull it off, so I'll have to keep in practice.

-~-

My heart feels fluttery, like there are butterflies in my stomach. I've always associated that feeling with lack of delta sleep.

I'm paraphrasing a friend here. Males should never say stuff like this to females : "Oh let me show you my [insert pointy object here]". Doesn't matter if you actually do have a pointy object you wish to show them, it will invariably be taken the wrong way and result in awkward silences =p (the object in question, was a popsicle, which made it all the worse)

-~-

Would you do something self destructive if it made you happy? That is the question at the core of all addictions. At what price happiness and pleasure, and what criteria determines the difference between a healthy social hobby and an unhealthy addiction? I suppose one is selfish and one isn't : but there are always cases which blur the line.

All emotions are by their nature, relative. Consider a non-addictive mood heightener. It's non addictive, but by its very nature, due to the relativity of emotions, not taking it would result you feeling more down than the norm you are used to.

Would you embrace a religion that delivered happiness every day, but resulted in virtually no change in the actual quality of life you led? Would you take a pill that, had no side effects, except it made you happier for the next 24 hours?

So many people have said "why can't I be happy" without really understanding what happiness is.

I've always taken pleasure in constructive activities. I'm always determined to achieve something or master a skill.

That's why I've never of my own volition watched television or movies. Passive activities, see (what an oxymoron). But instead my favourite hobbies were writing and learning how to code in various computer languages, or painting, or drawing, or playing computer games. There is a sense of achievement, of building on previous experiences and watching your own improvement.

It's the same way you write stories. Every scene has to have meaning : some purpose, for it being there, driving the story forward or driving a point home. There was a section in a novel writing course - how to write effective sex scenes - that particularly emphasized this point. If you're going to write a sex scene, it has to be a pivotal and vital moment in the character development, it has to push the story forward, it has to force your characters to make decisions about themselves. I don't think any of us are in the soft core novel industry where gratitutous and pointless sex scenes are the norm =p

But even so. From my point of view, after I have watched a television show, I get a feeling of "so what? could have done something more useful". But if you judge everything in life so harshly by that criteria, you might as well not do anything at all. My own reasons for playing games - to excel at them and defeat others - are pretty trivial as well in the large scheme of things - though I want to argue, not as trivial as my reasons for watching an episode of Friends (err, for the sheer mindless pleasure of it?)

(OK I did watch Friends but I had fun with the company I watched it with and it was indeed a bonding experience so I am still justified =p But otherwise I would not have watched it alone, no way.)

Maybe I'm too calculative. Remember the "Neverending story" where the boy has the power to make wishes come true, but every time he makes a wish he sacrifices one memory? Taking that view on life is depressing -> you sacrifice time of your life in return for happiness, such a harsh trade (look at it this way : each cigarette you smoke costs you 10 minutes off your life expentancy =p but if that's the case it isn't too bad you know - writing this blog just cost me 30 minutes of my life, omg smoking 3 cigarettes)

I'm determined now that studying and working shall make me happy =p

-~-

(and I go on scrabbling at loose straws and tiny grains of sand, watching them slip through my fingers as I search for the meaning of it all, hoping it's still there when it's all over and done.

don't let go...

2006-04-20T13:36:00.000+08:00

I've come to realise a few more things.

Took a long walk home. The rain drenched streets always have a calming effect on me.

The smell of wet pavement.

The sparkle of street lamps, reflections of car lights off the rain slicked aphsalt.

The sharp, fresh wind, clean and unmarred by the city smog, the crystal clarity of the moon and stars. So soon after the rain, so late at night, there is nothing yet to mar the clean night air.

The sound of the wind rustling strongly through the treetops, blowing around me, tugging me this way and that. It rises to a dull roar, cascading down from the sky. But I stand unmoved, alone, in the calm at the eye of the storm.

I was alone. In the truest sense of the word, I realised that what I am now, from my deepest desires to my personality quirks, has been shaped by everything I have experienced before. What I am now is the sum total of my life experiences.

Life is unfair that way.

These words from the HP series come unbidden into my mind : It's not what you are, it's who you choose to be. I want to believe them, but it's all a matter of perspective : no two people will react to the same event the same way : and whether you choose option A or option B it would have been done with the knowledge that either you're seeking to repeat the same experience from the past, or avoid it. It's like the paradox of free will : from some perspectives, all our choices were already forced and preordained before we were born.

I don't want my life to repeat itself : yet I want the security of the things I had before.

I don't want the sad events to repeat themselves but I want see the happy ones again. But sometimes they are part of the same thing.

i'm sure i've mused about this before

2006-04-19T15:18:00.000+08:00

But it came up in last night's conversation. Observe people who are drunk. How do they act different from when they are sober. More people laugh more readily, why. Some act more melancholic, why. Some are quicker to anger, some are withdrawn. Let us exclude cases where people are physically incapacitated due to alcohol intolerance, we are only interested in the mental effects.

Hypothesis : Everyone's "exterior" breaks down when they are drunk and are in less control of their actions.

Therefore : if someone is drunk and their behaviour is not observed to have changed then there are 3 possible conclusions.

a. he has such good self control that he continues putting up his exterior personality
b. he doesn't exercise self control anyway when sober, so there is nothing to change
c. he is only pretending to be drunk

And that's why alcohol is so fascinating to me =p There is a possibility that people may let you know things they don't mean to. There was a girl once who danced with me, when we each had had a fair bit to drink, and I was very amused. =)

For the record my situation is always option c. for some reason =p Since I'm not arrogant enough to claim a. or b.

2006-04-18T20:50:00.000+08:00

trying to remember our last moments together. i wish i could have seen you maybe one last time. rest in peace.

some musings on human behaviour

2006-04-12T01:48:00.000+08:00

Two part post now, first some musings then a story about some online drama I am involved in.

It's misleading, how everything thinks they are right when they argue something. How do you know when you're truly right, when you have a watertight argument?

If there are any holes in your arguments, you will instantly get people jumping down your throat pointing them out. If people cannot find any factual loopholes to get you with, they will resort to making general blanket statements like "grow up" or else try to muddy the issue by bringing outside factors or issues to play.

Makes sense. In real life, it's the government opposition who are the most vocal, and the supporters playing the part of the silent majority. You never post up an issue for public discussion unless you deliberately desire negative responses, because you will almost never get positive responses.

There was a website once that catalogued all the ways you could argue and counter-argue something, but I'll be darned if I can remember what it was.

Quite often doing things wrongly teaches you more than doing things the right way. It might be worthwhile, after stumbling upon how to do things correctly, to deliberately do things wrongly the next time to see how it goes. There's probably just as much to be learned from mistakes as successes, as long as the price you have to pay for doing things the wrong way is within your budget.

----

I have just viciously attacked and hurt someone on an online forum, with so much venom that the forum moderator deleted my thread. I had a valid issue, there was an injustice done to me, and I blew it out of proportion and turned it into a vicious character assasination. The smart thing would have been to play the victim : instead I let loose everything I had on him. Everything I said was absolutely true : no one could rebutt anything I said : and here is the kicker - in the end I wanted the thread deleted, because even I don't believe that anyone deserves to have those things said about them, especially more so because they're all true. If they were false accusations I could just say "they're not true, I'm really sorry I said them, I didnt mean them" but in this case I could not - and so in retrospect, I am really glad the forum moderator deleted my post.

I did it in such a vicious manner that most members had no choice but to censor me for my actions, and the original valid issue was completely lost. But I had achieved my objective.

I don't post without careful forethought. There are ways and ways in which you can force people to do things without seeming to, ways in which you can turn a situation to your advantage.

As an aside - this person considered me his friend, mentor, and senior. The most fatal position to be in, really - he thinks I am his friend, but I don't think of him that way, and I know it.

Of course the best way to truly achieve vengeance is not to leave in disgust, but to stay, suck up to them and prove your loyalty, pretend to be friends until you are close enough to stab them in the back and deal the killing blow. Backing away and declaring you are enemies, pshaw, that's the easy way out, that only stupid and honourable people do. Why quit when you can stay and destroy them from the inside? Surely, they think, a friendship that survives an argument, has some substance and has to be more real than ever?

I had the opportunity to cause division and split within the guild. I only had to push a little further, and then I would have severely weakened the guild with the loss of this member. If the guild leadership had enough guts I think they should have chosen to sacrifice me instead, but I don't think they could do it. But I abandoned that tack, and made a quick turnabout, in order to pursue another agenda that had a slightly higher possibility of benefiting me. I had started with a vicious character attack that had no other objective than destruction - now it was time for something more concrete. The quick turnabout and apology earned me some of my public opinion back.

I know my personal attack polarized the members, forcing some of them to take sides. That's the beginning of how you destroy a guild really : you need the first crack, some perceived unfairness, a difference of opinion, then try to get a complete polarizing of enough members that a split occurs. You have to choose two ideal focuses for the split : my target was ideal, a new person who had just joined, so not many people knew him -> yet he was a genuinely nice guy so those that knew him, would adamantly support him. While I was a senior member, respected for my skill yet had already earned some negative points for saying undiplomatic and controversial things against the leadership. In a sense, the focus isn't only on me vs him -> it's also me vs the leadership, since the leadership had to step in to defend him from my attacks.

The next agenda I am pursuing - which is of personal benefit and interest to me - is essentially a veiled threat with a demand that is couched in entirely reasonable terms, but impossible to fulfil in the light of what I just did.

It would have been reasonable on its own : but coming so soon on the heels of my last personal attack and outburst, giving in to it will condone my vicious behaviour, and even smell of manipulation, since I hinted that since I stopped the pursuit of my previous agenda and switched to this one, they had better fulfil this one.

The ironic part is that the original issue is deadly boring =p Some thing that probably makes absolutely no difference either way, to be perfectly honest. But, goodness me, these debates and attacks and manipulation, so fascinating, and you learn so much about people. And I am desperate to learn : just when you think you have seen everything, you find a new surprise.

So tonight the guild leadership has to read my request and then reject it publicly. There will inevitably be those that support me silently, and while my standing in the guild will not be improved, the standing of the leadership will go down no matter what option they choose. If they inexplicably, decide to honour my demands in the face of the vocal opposition, they're in for a lot of trouble. If they reject my demands, I will continue fight for this issue, and I am an important enough member that my opinion cannot be discounted out of hand. There is only one way to silence me, and that is to remove me entirely, and right at this moment that would be a sacrifice slightly too large for them to make. Though in my opinion I have no doubt at this point they could make that sacrifice and survive. I feel like the bad guy in the movies, which the good guys decide not to kill. =p Where you go, omg why don't they kill him, he's so evil and obviously going to come back and try to take over the world for the second time in the sequel.

Time to plan my next move perhaps. I don't mean ill for the guild : but no matter how this turns out, I think I will have benefitted, if only simply from knowing more about how these people think and react.

Bizarre marketing strategy

2006-04-11T12:12:00.000+08:00

I just ate a pretty good ice cream... it was about 50% ice cream and 50% choc / biscuit crunchy mix.

Then I look at the wrapper to check the brand.

It's called... Golden Gaytime.

Suddenly the ice cream doesn't taste so good.

more observations

2006-04-10T03:13:00.000+08:00

One sat on my right. Lets call her A. Now this one has a cute face, and careful use of blusher, was really effective =p

She had a shawl tied into her hair in a really cool way. Which to my regret I could not identify how it was done. Basically it looked like a band of color in her hair, and tied with a fancy bit hanging off one side of her head, under her long hair. A good long black coat, smart. Unremarkable top, but it wasn't bad, otherwise I would have taken note =p

She's got the moves down close to perfect, as I have seen a precious few times in girls. The slight cant of her head, the sideways glance, through the hair falling softly across her features. She's got an entrancing smile : you can feel the satisfaction coming off her =p

Her sister. Is two years younger. On my left. She's got even prettier facial features, which is saying something. But still, oh so young and childlike. Wonder what she will be like in a few years. But she's not quite there yet, as far as keeping up appearances go. Her hair isn't as well kept, some stray strands here and there, and looking just slightly on the dry side. I didn't think her top suited her very well : pastel type colors with a thin shoulder strap, very body fitting. Oddest of all was the red bra straps. Inexplicable. That's just wrong. She was wearing a bulky pink jacket, further emphasizing her child-like image.

Another girl, lets call her C. Sorry but perhaps you should keep your jacket on, or else not go for strapless tops. Broad shoulders, perhaps from years of swimming : not so attractive, in a culture used to petite and miniature looking female bodies. But everyone has different ideas of what they like, really, so grats on being different. Remarkably cool earrings, a stream of sparkly pretty pink butterflies cascading from her ears, who wouldn't fall in love with that, male or female? =p

Oh and they all had the most amazing handbags. And shoes. But they defy description =p One thing's for sure : they're all rich. Beyond. My. Imagination.

So many observations. No one to tell them to. No one that cares, really. So I blog =p

seriously WTF

2006-04-09T14:24:00.000+08:00

Grabbed from MeFi

Man Jailed for Boy-Sex Stories

IN WHAT is considered a Territory first, a man has been sent to jail for possessing fictional text stories about sex with children.

[snip]

"It should be obvious to any person that material like this is legally and morally wrong and taboo in the Northern Territory and Australia generally," the magistrate said.

Mr Trigg said the danger of the stories was they "create the perception that this might be acceptable."

"There is also the potential that the written word may encourage someone to act out what they've read," he said.

[snip]

Harry Potter slash fiction comes to mind.

So what... there are thousands of novels in which murders takes place... so we should ban those as well and jail the authors and anyone who possess those books?

This feels like something out of 1984. Thoughtcrime from 1984, and Precrime from the Minority Report = )

it's curiously good

2006-04-09T01:00:00.000+08:00

...kissing someone who's just been drinking ice cold vodka lemonade

=p

repost day

2006-04-06T17:05:00.000+08:00

The Leidenfrost Effect is a pretty cool science article I linked two years ago, on a previous blog. It's still a good read, I looked it up again when I saw a semi related post on MeFi.

If only the science we studied in class was as engaging as this, eh.

phew

2006-04-06T11:39:00.000+08:00

The presentation went okay : I accidentally stumbled upon the correct resolution to the case study even though none of us knew where we were heading.

It was very awkward. What my lecturer said is very true : it's disconcerting being given a study of a company in severe financial difficulty, and attempting to craft a presentation together for potential investors to convince them to put up more money into this venture, or trying to attempt negotiations with their creditors to buy a litle more time before the company goes insolvent.

a relaxed state of high alertness?

2006-04-04T11:41:00.000+08:00

I realised just how much I miss proper competitive gaming.

The thrill of knowing how good you are, as your eyes quickly scan the barrage of images and information scrolling across the screen, the Vent chatter coming thick and fast though your headset. The thrill of wanting to dominate and humiliate the opponent. The thrill of knowing there is a living breathing thinking mind behind the actions of your enemy, that can be predicted and manipulated.

Times like this my mind crosses a boundary. Hypersensitivity. Being balanced on a knife's edge. A relaxed state of high alertness. If you're too relaxed your response times drop. If you're too tense, your response times also drop - and you might react to false stimuli that you're not supposed to. Hence the slight shakes and twitches in my hands - it's like a tightly wound spring ready to pounce, yet I cannot afford to hold it together with tension or I risk holding it back when I need the quick response.

World of Warcraft is too slow paced for me. Never felt the need to ramp up my reaction and mental processing times, not even once. You only need to do so when facing human opponents, when split second reaction time matters : when you have to change tactics multiple times in a single fight, when you get the "oh shit" feeling of finding out the enemy team already knows how to counter your strategy.

I am very seriously considering quitting. >_<

first impressions

2006-04-03T00:37:00.000+08:00

First impressions count for a lot I guess. Everything about her outfit felt very deliberate and careful. (by the way, ash, this post is for you : I know you like stuff like this =p)

I am lucky, in retrospect, that I was semi dressed up as well : good quality material shirt and pants, with a reasonably smart looking jacket. The shirt was made of the kind of thin shimmery material that causes your skin to tingle, and is pretty cool to look at. I need a more formal jacket at some point though.

Well, this isn't about me. She was wearing a strapless white top, modestly covered with an ordinary looking brown jacket. Matched her shoes, now those looked really cool. Can't really explain, they were a unique design that I had never seen before. Jeans skirt, long wood themed beaded earrings. Her long black hair looked great - you know, luscious not oily, just healthy, with a good bounce to it. And layered just the way I like it too =p And she had a pair of shades pushed up above her forehead to complete the look.

She carries herself well, speaks with a maturity beyond her age. I compliment her lip gloss, and she gets thrown off completely. It suits her : with her fair complexion, she was using mild shiny silver glitter gloss. Not many girls can pull that off effectively : it's one of my favourite colors. A more experienced or older girl would have hid her surprise and smoothly taken the compliment. Ah well, my fault there, will keep in mind for the future. We chat about the common topics : lack of potential guys at her all female boarding house, shopping in the city, family, residential options. She pulls out her tube and brushes on another layer of lip gloss after she finishes her ice cream.

Eating the ice cream calls attention to the fact that she could probably stand to lose a few pounds. Maybe the difference is more obvious, since I haven't seen her for 4 years now. Perhaps we're all too used to the stereotype of painfully thin Asian girls.

She slyly asks me to take her clubbing, and I dance around the question, turning it elsewhere. One telling point I pick up : she tells me her relationships with guys never last long. Because she gets tired of them and tells them to leave her alone =p They all bore her eventually, she says. My ears prick up.

That's exactly the cousin I know.

( hah, gotcha =p )

We've known each other forever, but I never really bothered getting to know to her properly, since we lived worlds apart. Our paths in life are pretty much chosen by our parents, and her parents chose a vastly different life for her. I could never imagine being able to relate to her.

But now, perhaps, things are different. We've both grown up, and, in this place thousands of miles from home, living away from our parents, we finally have enough things in common that we can start being friends.

Wired 14.04: Geekonomics

2006-04-02T02:24:00.000+08:00

Comment which I have to agree with :

In this way, the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.
link

I sit and observe. I don't have the desire for leadership. But from where I stand, I can more clearly see the mistakes made. And I hope to learn from them. And I know that if I were to be put into that position, I'd be able to do a pretty damn good job of it. I've made my share of friends and enemies, but I've nonetheless gained their respect.

random plug

2006-03-30T15:24:00.000+08:00

Very funny post by pfctdayelise, about a tourism ad spoof in Australia, I loved it =p

The Spider of Doom

2006-03-30T10:25:00.000+08:00

The Spider of Doom is a pretty funny story. It's conceivable.. barely... the way you go "omg how could anyone be so stupid?". =p

quote: It's also worth noting the website presumed authentication if it could not find a cookie saying that the user is not logged in. Genius.

is everyone the same

2006-03-28T01:21:00.000+08:00

I haven't met anyone new for awhile, then this week I meet half a dozen people. Maybe I'm too quick to categorize and stereotype. But everytime I met one of them, I mentally fleshed them out with my preconceived notions and assumptions, filing them away into their cubby holes of how they fit into society.

Girl from Botswana. (check. the same contradictory loner yet friendly behaviour as i've seen several times) Mainland chinese girl (check, the accented english, the contradictory enthusiasm and shyness). Pakistani guy. (check, the pride, force of character, the desire to be liked, the cologne).

But what's this? Ash has interesting friends. =p Perhaps more on them next time, if I get to meet them again.

FF-AC soundtrack

2006-03-26T15:33:00.000+08:00

Thanks to a friend from college I got a listen at this.

It's a very disjointed soundtrack, mostly instrumental, and I believe anyone who has "not" watched the movie will completely not understand this soundtrack. A lot of random tracks in there which I would not have put in, some of them sounding like mere ambient background sound rather than proper arrangements.

Of course there are some gems. There are a few piano solo pieces, which are as good as any of the compositions coming from an FF series. Character themes, and in particular the Tifa battle scene song is quite mind boggling. = )

There's a fair amount of J-Rock compositions. Some are obviously meant to be listened to in sequence, as they were played in the movie. Chase of Highway is a hard driving rock beat, with a repeating guiter riff that verges on being repetetive, but imo saved by the overall excellence of the composition. =p The frenetic pace continues on into their edgy and manic rendition of Jenova, done mostly in the minor key - then a vaguely chaotic yet harmonic guitar lead emerges at the end, transitioning to a major key. Gives a very nice imagery, like suddenly hearing a clear voice cutting through the babble of a hundred lesser voices. Ends on a resounding chord, fades, then transitions into the iconic song, "one winged angel : sephiroth".

This song is best described as a rock song with full orchestral and choir backup. Turns out very rich sounding, it's quite amazing actually that it doesn't sound muddied with so much at the composer's fingertips. There's still a clearness and clarity to it, and the interesting chorus of sounds is very memorable. Compare this to some of Yuki Kajiura's compositions which tend to at times get over-heavy, like a painter splashing on too much paint on a painting, so that listening to it becomes heavy and burdensome. Very convincing ending to this song.

The track immediately after this is the resolution to this series of songs, "cloud smiles". A clean, clear and simple theme, orchetral, a nice contrast and resolution to the rock themes earlier. Forgive me if I am wrong, it's been awhile since I've sat through one of these performances, but I think the lead is played by a clarinet.

free will and other ramblings

2006-03-25T11:21:00.000+08:00

I had a strange dream. Waking up from one of these is like rushing to the surface after being drowned, bursting upwards and outwards gasping for air.

I blame the alcohol (it's the easiest thing to blame for all the world's ills). I had a few glasses of remarkably good white wine, which I really enjoyed.

I rather suspect the quality of my speech, or my voice inflection changes when I have been drinking. No one has yet told me this, so I don't know if I am just imagining things. This is the problem with subjective reality.

For example, in a dream : do you actually have free will, or do you just think you have free will? Are you responsible for your actions while you are asleep? Does the fact you are willing to commit a cold blooded murder of your rival in real life while asleep indicate your true feelings and intentions, or are they like watching movies you truly have no control over?

I know for sure we are likely to dream about the things and people we obsess about the most. And for dreams about people we know, they probably act in character, exactly how we expect them to act.

So perhaps a more revealing feature of dreams is not what YOU do, but rather how other people act towards you.

So in this dream I am walking past the train station, and I meet an old friend I hadn't seen or thought about in years, and she gives me a hug. Simple everyday actions are infused with feelings in dreams : and this hug tasted of desperation.

hmmm

2006-03-21T01:15:00.000+08:00

Yet another article on this topic, The Science Of Sexual Orientation by CBS.

(yes i also went to school with sparkly nail polish once or twice =p but telling anymore than that goes into TMI territory, and not anything I can tell anyone ever, at least not at this point I think, ehe)

Listening to a pair of old CDs - by Passion Worship Band. Till this day I don't know who they are, or what they are -> it's not a band, not a person, but more of a movement perhaps. I have no idea who sang or performed the songs - they are live recordings - but some of them are truly entrancing.

This is the Passion One Day Live CD. Recording and packaging what is essentially a single day worship conference just feels wrong and smacks of commercialization, but I guess if you were there, it would serve as a keepsake or memory of the event. And for those who weren't, it allows a small glimpse into what it was, I guess.

I love the singer who sang the cover one pure and holy passion. She is what Passion is. Never could find out who she was.

omg

2006-03-20T04:39:00.000+08:00

just discovered that Cassandra Claire has updated with Draco Veritas chapter 17a since... well, awhile back. I swear she takes 4 months per chapter or something. Such a slow pace o_o but I do rather like the story she's taken us on.

Draco x Ginny please kthx =p

Sometimes

2006-03-19T22:14:00.000+08:00

You wonder whether someone has changed, or whether it's you that's changed. Everything in life is relative, after all.

don't let go

2006-03-17T12:27:00.000+08:00

will you forgive me if i feel this way? : coz we just met : tell me that's ok

Time to change this I think = )

2006-03-14T22:41:00.000+08:00

Reached the cap for armour physical damage reduction when maintanking Chromaggus. He hits really hard. = )

Epic Geared

2006-03-13T11:57:00.000+08:00

So many WoW epics =p Muahaha.

Armour:
Helm of Wrath
Dark Iron Helm
Eshkanders Collar
Medallion of Steadfast Might
Amulet of the Darkmoon
Puissant Cape
Green Dragonskin Cape
Breastplate of Might
Dragonbone Wristguards
Gauntlets of Might
Belt of Might
Flamewaker Leggings
Sabatons of Wrath
Onyxia Blood Talisman

Weapons
Thunderstrike
Obsidian Edged Blade
Quel Serrar
Deathbringer
Eshkanders Right Claw
Eshkanders Left Claw
Heartstriker

Why I have so many weapons -> they keep dropping in the instances and no one wants them! And to be honest, I actually do use all them, situationally. I was one of the three maintanks on Broodlord Lashlayer, one of the Draconid bosses in BWL. I had around 9100hp and 400 defense fully buffed, which is necessary since he has an insanely strong Mortal Strike attack... it hit one of our less geared tanks for 7500 damage, and he died instantly =p Especially since the Mortal Strike debuff reduces healing effects by 50% for the next 4 seconds, so it's difficult for healers to save you.

are you afraid

2006-03-11T14:20:00.000+08:00

What are you afraid of?

My friend tells me a story. This is a guy who works out in a gym, takes personal defense classes, and he is a very driven and fearless person, focused to the point of obsession. And he has a lot of anger in him. A mugger accosts him at night with a knife - he breaks the mugger's elbow and knee then calls the police. Then he comes back, and tells me some things which I cannot repeat here, and then asks whether I think he is insane.

I have been mugged before. I will admit that I only pretended to put up a fight. It was three of them against me. In retrospect, I would be just as afraid of hurting them, as of being hurt myself. If I had injured any of them, I would be forever afraid that his gang will take revenge on me, and I would walk with that fear every night for a very long time. You never know how long a person's determination can last, even if he has to let it burn throughout his time in prison. This relates very well to the philosophy in Enders game : you never commit to a fight, unless you know you can win so completely that your enemy will never be able to take vengeance on you. Which usually means killing them. And all their friends. And all their friend's friends.

Violence is clearly the action of last resort, no matter how justified you are. It took me many years to understand this. We always cheer for the vigilantes, the ones who fight back, those to beat the odds, give the bad guys what they deserve. Remember the case, where a mugger beat up a woman and broke several bones in her face, then took her possessions and got into his car. She struggled to her feet, walked up to the car and pulled out her gun and shot him dead before he could drive off. It's cold blooded murder, but her actions don't shock the majority of us, and in fact you will find most of us silently nodding our heads and agreeing, yes, he got what he deserved, good on her.

Well, I can walk past the spot I was mugged now, without any traces of fear or panic. It's just a few hundred meters away from where I live right now.

Vaelastrasz : Red Dragonflight

2006-03-02T10:22:00.000+08:00

Vaelastrasz downed last night. An incredibly fun and technically demanding fight. Your team has to output about 1.3 million points of damage into him within 3 to 4 minutes otherwise you lose. Just a rundown of his abilities - he casts a magic effect on players, killing one every 25 seconds roughly (you cannot save them) frequentily targeting the maintank... he cannot be taunted, so you need to place secondary tanks high up the aggro list to take over... his fire breath AOE does 4500 fire damage to a large area... frequent fire nova with 120 yard range for 1500 damage... physical attack for 2000 damage on plate wearer, 3500 on leather, and god knows how much damage on cloth wearers... hmm, and he cleaves, works like chainlightining -> it jumps from player to player, killing entire groups at once. His burning flames debuff is something like 5000+ damage every 3 seconds while it's active on you. Very cool fight.

And Xany scored the highest damage output on this boss on our kill attempt, 460dps, or a little over 110,000 damage inside of 4 minutes. The chat conversation after that was amusing, since she's new to the guild, by my invitation, using a crap green weapon, and she's already proving her worth (and the worth of all my player recommendations too =p). Chat went something along the lines of "all you other rogues, you're fired". Go girl, hehe =p

I like to fancy myself as the warrior that has the highest damage mitigation, but shall be for the healers to decide =p

Gloria Estefan : Heaven's What I Feel.

2006-02-28T23:48:00.000+08:00

Only one other person in this world, would know what this song really means to me.

So let me say for real: Heaven is what I feel when I’m with you

2006-02-27T01:06:00.000+08:00

My current music obsession is with Plumb. It's basically just Tiffany Arbuckle singing a variety of interesting songs, with very contrasting styles within the same albums. Her voice and lyrics are strangely compelling, depressing but also bringing a strange sense of healing and peace. My favourite tracks would be Damaged, Here With Me, CandyCoatedWaterDrops, Phobic, Late Great Planet Earth.

CandyCoatedWaterDrops

What is this
Mass confusion
This crazy way we're living
This emptiness we're passing out
Like candycoatedwaterdrops
I'm spilling out my thoughts
You're spilling out your guts

And I can't help but stop and think that

If the world stopped spinning,
If the end was beginning,
Would you even notice, if I wasn't there?
If the world stopped spinning around

All that's worth dying for, is already dead
An empty religion, you've learned to accept
When nothing means everything, your daily routine
You go through the motions, like a helpless machine

When the answers to everything
Are right in your hands,
You lose your conviction
But you can't help standing,
On the one thing that held you
For so many years
You ask for forgiveness
And hold back the tears

--

Damaged

Dreaming comes so easily
Cause it's all that I've known
True love is a fairytale
I'm damaged, so how would I know?

I'm scared and I'm alone
I'm ashamed and I need for you to know

I didn't say all the things that I wanted to say
And you can't take back what you've taken away
Cause I feel you, I feel you near me
I didn't say all the things that I wanted to say
And you can't take back what you've taken away
Cause I feel you, I feel you near me

Healing comes so painfully
And it chills to the bone
Will anyone get close to me
I'm damaged, as I'm sure you know

There's mending for my soul
An ending to this fear
Forgiveness for a man who was stronger
I was just a little girl
but I can't go back

truly amazing

2006-02-26T03:19:00.000+08:00

Chris Bliss.

Just omg. No description I can give will do justice to how good this video is. Chriss Bliss just does a juggling act choreographed to a song, but omg! The movements are so perfectly matched to the music, and the level of juggling skill he displays is just boggling. (I've watched this about 5 times so far, never get bored of it).

Life is

2006-02-23T01:11:00.000+08:00

about solving one mess after another. Sometimes I feel like I live a charmed life : or maybe a cursed life, depending on which way you look at things.

What do you call someone who narrowly escapes being killed in a car accident? Insanely lucky, or unlucky?

Internet is for Porn - Google Video

2006-02-21T02:54:00.000+08:00

Internet is for Porn

(song by Avenue Q -> video clip from wow)

= )

The green dragonflight

2006-02-19T04:10:00.000+08:00

Peace is but a fleeting dream... let the Nightmare reign!

Prettiest dragon in the game I think, this is Taerar, one of the 4 dragons from the Emerald Dream. Formerly part of Ysera's green dragonflight, some of her dragons have become corrupted by some mysterious force within the Emerald Dream, and have come through the portals to terrorize the citizens of the world. =p

The dragons always yell when they engage in combat, and everyone in the zone can hear them... inevitably you get people complaining in general chat, omg who is the noob who is annoying the dragon! until they realise we have a full raidgroup of epic geared level players ready to take it down =p Cool to be one of the top guilds in a new server.

I have better equipment right now. I get stares whenever I stand outside the bank in IF. =p

In other news... iPlay apparently did publish the pvp strategy article I wrote for Guild Wars. Now, if only I could get a copy of it... =p

Such is the price of curiousity =p

2006-02-08T00:34:00.000+08:00

Why hello there.

I like how many of the bosses in WoW are "technical" encounters, defeated through tactics rather than by brute force. What is cool is trying different tactics, and seeing which ones work. Many encounters require that every single player know exactly what to do, and execute their job.

Seeing 8 healers ready to spam their heals on me as I tank Azuregos makes me feel like a God.

I think it took us several attempts to down Azuregos (pictured above) for the first time with a full team of 40 players. Now we can comfortably do it with around 25 members, without a single casualty, since everyone knows their job, we have so much redundancy. Killing Azuregos is a 20 minute long encounter, a matter of outlasting her and dealing slow steady damage. Everything must run like clockwork -> in these sorts of encounters, a single mistake by a single person can get everyone killed, each person must know their job and execute it precisely. And your "job" in these encounters will be vastly different to your normal duties when playing WoW. For example sometimes Priests are expected to DPS, and are told to heal as little as possible. In some encounters, Warriors are supposed to fire their ranged weapons, and not use their melee weapons. In some encounters, Mages don't fire a single offensive spell, but only use their Decursing spells. Some encounters a Paladins might be asked to be an OOC combat rezzer, just hang around 'outside' the combat zone so they can ressurect players who die. The level of creativity that players have to resort to in making such technical encounters easier is just amazing.

On the other end of the spectrum there are brute force encounters, which are also alot of fun. There's Lord Kazzak, a demon boss which "must" be defeated within 3 minutes, or else he goes into an "ultimate" state and kills everyone. Also doable with around 25 players, but of course it's faster and easier with 40. It's fun once in a while to unleash the full damage potential of your character without having to hold back.

The other type of brute force encounter would be something like Ragnaros. There is a lot of fire damage in this encounter, and melee characters often have to swim through lava to navigate the area. The key to winning? Stock up on large quantities of Greater Fire Protection potions, and obtain the best fire resistance buff by getting your priests to mind-control the spellbinders in Blackrock Spire before the fight... and the fight goes really smoothly as long as everyone stacks on as much fire resistance as they can. I have more than 300 Fire Resist for this fight, and our Main Tank has more then 400.

And some encounters, are obviously a mixture of both, like the Onyxia encounter. Large amounts of fire damage, which must be negated, and lots of AOE fear, which must also be protected against. Yet this is also technically demanding : aggro control is important, everyone has to have a really good grasp of how much threat they're generating, because this boss in particular is immune to taunts from the MT : a single mistake at any point in this 25 minute encounter potentially exposes the raid to a 3600 damage AOE fire attack (sometimes up to 4000 even 5000), which is almost surely fatal to the entire raid.

At the moment, I have 5 epics and have more than half my dkp remaining to be spent, but that's not really the point, the best thing is watching how we get better and work together in defeating the ever trickier encounters in the game.

World of Fellowship of the Ringcraft

2006-02-07T01:54:00.000+08:00

World of Fellowship of the Ringcraft is a series of stills from LOTR that only players of World of Warcraft would understand =p This is a really clever view of LOTR from a WoW point of view.

i would be. frail.

2006-01-25T02:51:00.000+08:00

Exposed beyond the shadows
You take the cup from me
Your dirt removes my blindness
Your pain becomes my peace

JoC.

random quote off a forum

2006-01-22T13:40:00.000+08:00

People make lawyer jokes because they are disgusted with themselves. Lawyers offer only two services, really: conflict resolution, and interpretation of legislation which these days is written mostly in plain english. Seeing a lawyer is an admission that, as a person, you've failed at one of these tasks.

This is in the context of litigation. Of course there are exceptions - in cases of uneven power, for example a person vs a company. Or when you're dealing with a truly insane person, for whatever reason, but in that likelihood that person should already be in a mental institution =p

The OP then uses this as an analogy to why people dislike speculators.

The nature of speculation is to apply greater financial resources, combined with a certain degree of risk, to essentially make money at the expense of others without adding value to the economy.

- and goes on to explain that resentment towards speculators is based on the fact that someone is getting rich doing things which any person can do, if he was dedicated enough. the fact that it's "easy money" and seems to be created out nothing is what fuels the resentment, making it somehow immoral.

This deals somewhat with the ethics of speculation. The basic premise is that you buy low sell high. One way you could argue is that nothing of value is being created - the item being bought and sold is essentially the same before and after, and yet there are costs to be paid for each transaction, so essentially speculators add nothing to an economy and in fact are just a drain and waste of resources.

The other way you can argue it is - none of the transactions were forced : both parties at each step of transaction definitely feel that they are getting "value" out of it.

In a sense the more transactions there are in an economy, the higher the total wealth the society has. Lets give a hypothetical example, a farmer plants wheat and sells it to a baker for 100 dollars. The wheat is obviously worth less than 100 dollars to the farmer, and more than 100 dollars to the baker, so "value" is created. With the 100 dollars he has the farmer buys a television. To the farmer the television is worth more than 100 dollars - to the television seller, it's worth less than 100 dollars.

With each transaction you could argue that value is indeed being created, just by the goods changing hands, because the goods are valued differently according to each person's judgement.

2006-01-17T19:11:00.000+08:00

Just... lol. Not accurate, but still =p

2006-01-13T12:02:00.000+08:00

Epic mounts rule. Best use of 800g ever, mostly financed through enchanting. Picture taken at the Loch Modan dam.

2006-01-13T11:47:00.000+08:00

Someone got hexed and turned into a frog. And then died.

2006-01-13T11:42:00.000+08:00

A Tauren warrior on a gnomish mechanostrider...

2006-01-13T11:41:00.000+08:00

Gotta love their sense of humor. The one ring indeed =p And it's actually fished up from a river... very rare though. I want one.

10/90 principle

2006-01-04T00:45:00.000+08:00

Not even sure if there's such a thing.

An interesting idea which always turns up everywhere it seems. Do you spend time / effort preparing for the 90% of the time when things go right, or the 10% of the time when things go wrong?

Both sides can be argued of course. For example say you have a farm, and there's a 90% chance of good weather on any given year, and 10% chance of bad weather. Is the majority of your equipment going to focused on getting the most you can out of a year of good weather, or focused on salvaging what you can of a year of bad weather?

Say a hospital, is the majority of your equipment and staff going to be dedicated towards enchancing the comfort and care to the 90% of patients who come in with treatable problems, or are you going to dedicate the majority of your equipment and staff towards the 10% of patients that come in critically injured and probably going to die anyway?

Argument 1 : you should prepare for the 90% scenario, otherwise you're just spending time on the 10% situations that you cannot salvage anyway. Argument 2 : you should prepare for the worst case scenario since in the best case scenario you are going to do fine anyway no matter what.

There is always the temptation to play to your strengths, improve them further, and rely on them more and more. That's the 90% scenario.

Yet spending too much time on the 10% cases might even lead to a self fulfilling prophesy : not being fully prepared to take advantage of a "good" outcome might cause it to change into a "bad" outcome, in which you have to take the emergency measures which you have so carefully prepared for. To see what I mean, just look at the two examples above.

or

2005-12-25T14:04:00.000+08:00

or : he could have refused to give it to her : or she could have rejected the gift, because after all, ignorance is bliss.

so don't let go

2005-12-24T19:16:00.000+08:00

"I would give it to you freely, but this gift is also laced with poison."

"How so?"

"Within this box is the most beautiful rose you could possibly imagine. Just looking at it will fill your heart with happiness. Yet it will die three days hence."

"Where's the poison?"

"There is no poison in it. But from then on, no other flower will ever bring you happiness again. Instead they will bring you longing for what you once had and lost."

She pursed her lips, considering.

"They say it is better to have once loved and lost. What is happiness if there is no sadness? Give me the flower : I must have it, breathe in its scent, fondle its petals, and then mourn its passing for the rest of my life."

World of Warcraft

2005-12-07T07:07:00.000+08:00

Cool game. I am glad I chose to play a Warrior, instead of a Druid.

Taking a break from Guild Wars is good - while being a good game and all, it was incredibly intense. Fighting against top ranked teams is exciting for sure. But sometimes I just want to get together with some friends and enjoy a game or two. I have no idea when Guild Wars stopped being fun. Perhaps when there stopped being things to achieve : Guild Wars is definitely not about yourself, it's about the team. Your performance is trivial (a single player out of eight) and there is little to no chance of personal glory. Few will notice if you do well or do badly, but your team will suffer if you suck. Teamspirit. If that dies, then there's nothing left.

Guild Wars is all about skill being more important than hours played. World of Warcraft is almost purely about number of hours played. In WoW you know that if you put in X amount of time into it, you will get something out of it. Some money, some items, factions, etc. In Guild Wars, you can be an instant star if you're good, but if you suck, you're in a tough spot. Depends which one is your cup of tea I guess.

Playing a Warrior is exciting business. Warriors will usually have to direct and lead groups, and from a position of highly limited visibility and awareness as well.

First time playing a Warrior was rough : I was taking a side tank / support / DPS role instead of being maintank and leader. But now I'm usually the one to start parties : I am getting better : more compliments on play are coming in from random strangers, and I am building up a large list of contacts. Many people think I've been playing level 60 warriors on other servers =p

My inspiration for playing a Warrior : watching an experienced Warrior play for us once, with over a year of experienced, and then I fully realised what you can achieve. I abandoned my Druid and started a Warrior instead. I don't want to be support - I want to lead, whether to doom or to victory. As a Warrior class I will be absorbing about 80% or more of the total incoming damage, and very frequently I am rated highest on outgoing damage as well, so it never gets boring.

It is such a pleasure playing with a team of players that knows what they're doing, what they can achieve, and they do it without needing to be told. It is even better playing under a leader who knows what YOU can achieve - how best to use your abilities. I feel it is a nod or acknowledgement to each player if I personally use them at least once in the game : calling upon each player for some special contribution, and then complimenting each and every one of them at the end. Even if I don't need them, I'll try to find a way to use their abilities just to make them feel useful. Hah, this is sounds worse than it is. But calling upon someone to perform some task exposes their abilities, and allows them to show the group how good they really are are, and also gives me a chance to observe their skill. I am very familiar with the feeling of being a good player, and making a significant but invisible contribution to the team without any acknowledgement.

That being said I'm also pretty harsh on people that suck. But strangely enough only on people I know and care about, and that I will be playing with again. Stranger that suck, I just stay silent, and then never play with them again. I knew a particular Rogue sucked in my group : even though I didn't need to, I asked him to do something for me - stealth in and stun an enemy in a group of 3. It's a really trivial task, that Rogues do on a constant basis but he failed anyway as I expected. Then the whole group now knows he sucks, and people in my group sent me private messages saying so =p

hermione ftw =p

2005-12-06T21:40:00.000+08:00

(minor harry potter movie spoilers below, consider yourself warned. as if there can be any spoilers with the book being out for ages, oh well)

Just watched Harry Potter : The Goblet of Fire. I quite liked it inspite of (or maybe because) I had almost completely forgotten what the book was about =p

It needed more Hermione + Harry for sure =p I thought from the movie it was obvious she likes him... owh... in a rather more than platonic way. Yet in the next book it's Hermione + Ron instead, and Harry + Ginny. Or wait. Harry + Cho. Argh. Memory getting befuddled. That boy does get around =p

And I laughed at the topless Harry bath scene, that one drew quite a reaction from the girls in the cinema. Highly entertaining. He does have, uhm, nevermind =p

Cho isn't as pretty as I thought she should be, neither was Fleur.

And I demand the footage of the Quidditch World Cup, heh.

Still, Hermione wins =p

and then

2005-11-30T10:42:00.000+08:00

There's the interesting question : should leaders dish out harsh words in public and give quiet praise in private - or vice versa. There's always good and bad things to say : just the method, that differs.

Would you rather be publicly criticized and then receive a quiet word of encouragement later, or be publicly praised and then later find out your leader really thought your performance was subpar?

What does it do for the morale of other members of the team to see someone singled out for criticism, or someone singled out for praise? Does public praise sow seeds of jealousy? Does public humiliation sow seeds of fear?

I'm thinking along the lines of harsh words in public and a quiet word of encouragement later is the way to go. Too much resentment arises when a leader singles out someone for praise, and causes division between the group. Animosity, if there is any, is most safely taken on the shoulders of the leader for being too harsh.

Sometimes

2005-11-29T23:33:00.000+08:00

Parents totally misunderstand =p

A totally WTF moment... a friend asked to stay over for a few days and I said ok, and my mom wanted to call me and I explained that I probably wouldn't be in, coz a friend was staying over.

Took my mom a few days to come to the insane conclusion that I was having a relationship with this girl. o_o When she confronted me about it, it took me a full 30 seconds to realise what she was saying.

Argh. This is like being randomly accused of murder of someone you don't even know, that's how far fetched it felt.

( not to say the girl wasn't nice : I will always have a soft spot for her =p )

What's really annoying is that I never realised how little my parents know me. Well. Obviously. They can't know me if I don't tell them who I am : being away from home for so long, what are they to think? How could they even think, even conceive, that I might do something like that?

worst day

2005-11-23T01:07:00.000+08:00

This is the worst day of my life I declared, for dramatic effect.

My friend looked at my quizzically and asked innocently "Was it that bad?"

That kinda stopped me short. She had no idea of course.

And I had two Choices. I could tell her, or not.

I decided not to. And so she doesn't know to this day.

Do decisions made at crucial times define who you become? Sometimes I wonder if by choosing to do something different, i would have set my life down a different path. Succumbing to temptation once, makes it easier the second time.

"Well no, I'm just kidding" I said, with a sheepish grin. And she gave me a piercing look before turning away, unconvinced.

Because by the act of saying it was ok, it made it ok.

Story of the Year

2005-11-23T00:47:00.000+08:00

Have two of their albums right now : Page Avenue, and In the Wake of Determination.

I liked Page Avenue immediately. Track 1 And the Hero Will Drown for me will always be their defining song, since that was the one I heard first. Relentlessly pushing on with lots of energy and tempo. Sometimes you get the feeling that they don't quite know what direction they're taking, but on the whole it works out.

Some of their slightly slower (relatively) songs get it right : memorable lyrics from tracks Dive Right In and Swallow the Knife - So lets make this night, be our best mistake both seem to delve into the theme of suicide.

Ditto for Page Avenue and Sidewalks. Some very catchy phrases here - Page Avenue : the air is never dry, as the city falls asleep, days bleed into the night. and Sidewalks : the bridges are crumpled the water soaks in, to, rocks both talks about reminiscing about the past.

Second album : In the Wake of Determination - I didn't like any of their songs on first listening. More of the same, essentially.

Take me back has a good chorus : "so take me back" and nevermind that they repeated it a zillion times in that song, so what =p Same for Taste the Poison and Stereo. Pay Your Enemy is about being pissed off at someone, and boy he is really pissed off, very angry song.

The bonus track is a huge change of pace : Silent Murder. Just Dan Marsala singing quietly with some minimal guitar backing. Like the image : very evocative.

It’s a silent murder
It’s a grave that sings your song
It’s a quiet failure
It’s the one that makes you strong

We are heading down a long, empty road
We pass lost souls blinded by the cold

Watch the fire burn out
Watch the curtains slowly close
Waiting on the final words your heart already knows

We are heading down a long empty road
We pass lost souls blinded by the cold
By the cold

It’s a silent murder
It’s a grave that sings your song

Sense of humour =p

2005-11-21T21:07:00.000+08:00

A very good answer.

Memory stick issues?

2005-11-20T13:47:00.000+08:00

This application has encountered a critical error:

ERROR #132 (0x85100084) Fatal Exception
Program: I:\World of Warcraft\WoW.exe
Exception: 0xC0000005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION) at 001B:004FF56D

The instruction at "0x004FF56D" referenced memory at "0x00000000".
The memory could not be "written".

---

Not just World of Warcraft. It used to happen with some other games, like Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, and Simcity 4000. Also randomly happens and crashes my firewall utility.

Random errors happen when I attempt to install games as well, "fail to verify file xxx this may be a problem with your hard drive, cd drive or network.

Sigh. No choice but to buy a new stick I guess, and hope for the best. Need more memory anyway, 512mb isn't enough nowadays, I'm actually pushing 90% usage sometimes.

And so my computer isn't online much atm =p

Confessions of an anorexic

2005-11-16T02:36:00.000+08:00

I'm just writing : it's not me with a disorder as you guys should well know. But the topic came into my head randomly.

I try to keep running, just long enough that it hurts, and then some. I slow down, try to keep my composure, keep on walking, face not betraying the pounding in my chest, my inability to catch my breath.

I have been feeling very in tune with my body over the last few months, sharply aware of its needs and wants. I think I can judge how much I need. I eat only when I am hungry, sleep when I am sleepy. Even small portions of food feel so good, even a quick 2 hour nap. I can feel my body demand sugar, or demand carbohydrates. Eating a full meal still leaves me wanting more : it's okay, there's a difference between wanting and needing. I have never enjoyed eating or sleeping so much.

What I want is control. It's about the ability to tell your body what to do, and not the other way around. There's always paradoxes at work. If you're afraid your life is going to spiral out of control, you'll have one of two reactions : either monitor everything down to the last milimetre, or just relinquish control to some higher power. The same neurological disorder gives rise to two very contrasting individuals, the control freak and the laissez faire bum.

When I feel pain I tell my body to shut up. That's exactly my response. Pain is a warning signal that something is wrong : it serves its job to inform me, and then I do not need it anymore. It becomes an inconvenience when you hurt and there is nothing you can do about it. There is nothing inherently wrong with pain itself - you are not going to be mortally injured or damaged by a cramping pain in your stomach. But you might need to be do something about it, and curling up protectively around it does nothing.

I call bullshit on how runners claim they feel so good after a big workout. It's probably because feeling normal is "good" in comparison to the punishment you're putting yourself through.

There is a dystopian view of the future where there is a culture of affluent people feeling the need to deprive themselves occasionally and pretend they enjoy it. Oh wait, it's already here.

World of Warcraft

2005-11-12T20:19:00.000+08:00

Between my latest contract work and trying out World of Warcraft there leaves little time for blogging.

Anyway. First impressions of WoW is that, the graphics look a bit substandard, but sacrifices in terms of eye candy had to be made in order to produce an amazingly lifelike gameworld.

The world is for the most part, completely seamless. There are no loading times between zones, you smoothly walk from zone to zone. I played a Tauren, and their race and lands are distinctly American Indian styled, with lots rolling plains, tranquil lakes and many tepee huts in their village. Their biggest city is a marvel : Thunderbluff, a sprawling city in the sky, built atop 4 linked mesas.

Little effects make a big difference : like the time of day mirroring the timezone of the server. Dawn is heralded by a slight lightening of the sky, then a pinkish dawn before a golden orange sunrise.

Sitting in Thunderbluff at night, seeing the moonshine on the pebble walk, turning around and around watching the vast expanse of sky and stars scattered across the heavens... the game has moods, like nothing else every seen before. Late night the town is quiet, when most people are sleeping, and there is a tranquil peacefulness that gives way to the hustle bustle of daytime. (screenshot cropped to 1024x768 since that's as large as Picasa allows, will look into this a bit more)

what's yummy

2005-11-12T20:05:00.000+08:00

Few things are yummier than food served with a rich garlic + butter + cream sauce. Almost anything works, prawns, chicken, fish, etc.

(this was my "instant" f00ding tonight... throw random ingredients into pan, quick fry the garlic and chicken then add to sauce).

Brings to mind the Manhattan Fish Market back home in Malaysia.

taking a break

2005-11-12T15:12:00.000+08:00

I will resume blogging next Tuesday.

(though I may have the urge to randomly come online anyway and post something, you never know).

Parity

2005-11-10T22:49:00.000+08:00

Really interesting concept. It's used in hard drive RAID setups to increase the reliability of the system.

Let's say you have 3 hard drives full of important data. You want to your system to be able to withstand the catastrophic and sudden failure of one hard drive. The first thing that comes to mind is that you need to have realtime backups - 3 more hard drives of the same size, acting as duplicate backups.

Actually, you only need 1 more hard drive to ensure that none of the data on the first 3 drives are lost by a single failure, by this really neat idea called parity.

The simplest way to explain it is as such - all data in hard drives is stored as "bits", either being 0 or 1. For parity to work, all drives should be exactly the same size. Every corresponding bit in each drive is mapped together. What happens is that, the parity drive adds up all the corresponding bits across the other drives and writes a 0 if the total is even, or a 1 if the total is odd in the location where the mapped bit was. A quick example will show this.

location	hdd1	hdd2	hdd3	parity drive
1	0	1	1	0
2	1	1	0	0
3	1	0	0	1
4	0	1	0	1

Parity is recalculated every time the computer writes data to any of the other drives. As you can see, this system is robust enough to withstand any single hard drive failing. If any one of HDD1, HDD2 or HDD3 fails, all you need to do is install a replacement, and the computer can deduce what data was supposed to be there by referring to the parity. Example, HDD1 dies. We know that HDD2 has a 1 bit and HDD3 has a 0 bit in that location, and the parity bit is 0, meaning that the total must be even, therefore HDD1 must have been a 1 bit (if HDD1 had been a 0 bit then the parity would have been 1 instead).

If the parity drive fails then you just put in a new hard drive and let the computer recalculate and write the parity data again.

It's a really neat idea, beautiful in its simplicity. I like it.

i am patient

2005-11-10T00:18:00.000+08:00

I still like this picture, even after so long. And I am no closer to obtaining a high resolution image of the full picture itself (the picture shows her full body with some funky background).

I can wait. I am a patient guy.

I have a sneaky feeling there are more female readers than male readers here. What this means, I have no idea.

There are times like today when absolutely nothing of worth comes through my mind. Tomorrow I have work to do, so then I can mindlessly grind at some data. My mind is numb. I think I talked too much today. Not enough thinking and observing.

There's discussion on some board about relationship advice. The irony of it. Asking a guy who's never had a relationship is a bad idea coz he presumably has no idea what he's talking about. Asking someone who has had several relationships for advice is a bad idea because, well, his ideas apparently didn't work out for him.

So much bad advice out there. Everyone is different. If you understand someone, and you desire to give him what he lacks, become what he needs, isn't that friendship, or is that something more. Isn't it selfish, seeking to make yourself irreplaceable? I can think of half a dozen reason why you would want to get together with someone, all of them sounding borderline psychotic. It's okay, everyone is insane anyway and we might as well indulge ourselves.

My opinion is that people should be honest. But I am still not sure if more people are hurt by lies or by the truth.

And so, I wait.

good advice should be followed

2005-11-08T21:50:00.000+08:00

Sniper: and my advice to you is, never kiss men with large mouths.
Vesper : uhm...

*because, like, if you didn't tell me, i would totally have gone out and unwittingly kissed men with large mouths. but thanks to you i am saved from this calamity*

House

2005-11-08T04:46:00.000+08:00

I am very impressed by House. Medical drama; sure we've seen it before, but not quite like this. I really like the acting, and how the entire series drives forward based around the interactions between the protagonist (Gregory House) and everyone else around him. It's very much a character driven story. The medical bit - it's just fluff really.

Well I've only seen the first season of 22 episodes. House is head of Diagnostics at a teaching hospital, which means his team gets all the mystery patients. I actually like the script writing itself - always leaving us guessing, with some nice twists, and House is wrong just often enough to surprise us. But I'm always more interested in how he deals with his staff than what his patients are sick with.

The series also leaves me feeling rather disturbed. Alot of stuff dealing with ethics - and House is such a bitter man, it's hard not to feel for him. And sometimes, patients die because there is no right decision that you can make, but luckily they didn't do that too often =p

2005-11-07T03:07:00.000+08:00

Sunrise #1 from my balcony : hey I am putting my camera to good use. A whopping 15 seconds exposure time transforms the faint stirrings of dawn into this surreal picture. This is still very early dawn, before the light takes on the more familiar orangey hue of sunrise.

2005-11-07T03:04:00.000+08:00

Sunrise #2 from my balcony : taken at 1/50th of a second exposure time. I was too stingy on the exposure I have to admit. But the moment only comes once, there is no time for experimentation : next time I shall use 1/30th of a second. If there is a next time.

My dog (or not really my dog anymore)

2005-11-07T01:19:00.000+08:00

My cousin picked up a stray puppy from a rubbish dump. Parents refused to let him keep it, and dog somehow ended up with us. My brother named her Scotty so you can blame him for the crappy name =p All about 10 years plus ago. Not really my dog perhaps because I haven't spent much time home for the last 4 years.

She's a Spitz mongrel. I don't know too much about dogs, but Kahani does and her short description of Spitz is as follows - very loyal but highly independant dogs, capable of spending large amounts of time alone and away but always returning. One of the few dogs breeds that values human company above food. (sorry if I paraphrase you wrongly heh).

Well that description is certainly true. Sure she's loyal, but she absolutely loves running off on long walks on her own and then returning at odd hours yet never fails to return. She has a special bark she uses to coax us into opening the gate for her. It's instantly recognizable, different from anything else... man... this dog is training US to do what SHE wants =p She doesn't have a problem being ignored for long periods of time, which some dogs absolutely hate, she's quite happy to amuse herself with anything she can find until we turn up. She's ok if we're in close proximity but ignoring her - that's ok, but if we go outstation for a few days she goes ballistic. Normally by running away to my grandparents place and living there, or any other house that will have her. Love her coloration : mostly black (now dark brown with age) with white socks on each paw, white patch down her muzzle and neck and two eyebrows. Almost like she was painted deliberately that way =p

She's really gentle with us but shows an aversion to young children (?) and still has that killer instinct. Probably from growing up and surviving back in her rubbish dump days. She's fast on the kill, off like a shot and snatches up a cat, and I yell at her no! and she immediately complies and drops it but the cat is already dead and lying limply on the ground with no apparent injury. Died of fright is our usual diagnosis of death but I sometimes suspect it's probably a broken neck.

She just dropped into our life out of nowhere. But I guess I am really fond of her. She knows what we want her to do, and it seems she's weighing the decision in her mind whether to obey or not. Like whether to chase our pet rabbits or not (goodness that took awhile to make her understand that rabbits are not food or toys). Or whether to sneak out or not : I swear she gets a really guilty look when we catch her sneaking, and then when coming back she tries to look aloof and unconcerned as if nothing happened.

Right now she's got some problem with her airway, some obstruction. Tumor? Inoperable. She's old. Not much longer to live anyway : probably not long enough until my next visit home. But I know, really know, she's had a happy time with us, better than with (dare I say) the family that didn't want her or living on the streets. Sometimes, dogs seem more human than people do.

I'm sitting here now closing my eyes and I can imagine what she's like. What she would do if she were sitting at my feet. I heard her on the phone just now. I've always missed her here, but now more so than ever.

*edit* my mom messages me saying, swelling has subsided slightly, no change in breathing though. perhaps it's an abscess, she's on 2 antibiotics if it is, so that one might still work out. *crosses fingers* but you know how i like to prepare for the worst.

Tada : the Monty Hall paradox

2005-11-06T17:53:00.000+08:00

One of the loveliest probability puzzles of all times. Yes I have probably blogged about it before but I shall do so again because it's just so cool. Yes it does have relevance to the Creationism probability argument post below this, so you might want to read that first.

It's a simple game. In fact, it's the American gameshow "Let's make a deal". There are three doors. Randomly arranged behind the doors are 2 goats and a car, each one assigned to one door. If you choose the door with a car you win the car, and if you choose one with a goat you lose and get nothing.

So first, you choose a door without opening it. Here is the twist : after you choose a door, the gameshow host opens one of the remaining two doors and reveals a goat, and asks you if you want to reconsider your decision.

What is the optimal solution to this problem? Either
A. you should always stick with your current decision
B. you should always switch to the last remaining door
C. it doesn't matter what you do at this point

Well you can post what solution you feel is best in the comment box, and I shall give a solution at a later date, and perhaps a more detailed history of this problem. This problem was catapulted into public consciousness in 1990 as a result of Marylin's vos Savant's column in Parade Magazine, where she posted a solution to this problem. (she had the highest IQ in the world according to the Guiness Book of Records). There were hundreds of letters of condemnation against her by mathematics PhD holders from around the world in reaction to her solution. And apparently now this problem is so instrumental in probability teaching that it is entering even High School probability syllabus now -> so I am not sure how many of you have already come across it. I know I've told some of my friends about the Monty Hall problem before, so hush =p

Probability in Creationism arguments

2005-11-06T17:37:00.000+08:00

It's seriously not as intuitive as it seems. High school probability is, but there are some pretty interesting concepts later on. I'm writing this because it's a genuinely interesting topic to me, and I hope most people who read this think so too =p

Instead of talking about the chance of life forming spontaneously (sorry Ash hehe), let's talk about a lottery (since gambling is more my thing). Say there are two ways to win a lottery. One is by cheating, and one is by winning honestly. Winning the lottery honestly has a low probability - only 0.0001%. Let's say I buy a ticket and win the lottery honestly.

Then someone from the company comes up to me and says, dude, no way. There's a 0.0001% chance you won honestly, and therefore 99.9999% chance you cheated, so man, we're taking you to court and you're going to get convicted and do some serious time. Argument in court then goes as follows -> chance of winning is 0.0001% therefore my probability of being innocent is 0.0001%

Whoa. Hold your horses. The comparison is clearly illogical, and unfair. We do have other things to take into account - like, the fact that cheaters who win lotteries are more rare than honest winners in the first place.

This is the main reason why the following creationism argument is false : it is argued that there's a 0.0000000001% chance that life formed spontaneously, then therefore there's a 99.9999999999% chance that God created life and therefore the overwhelming evidence is that God created life. It sounds reasonable here, but utterly false in the case of the lottery argument.

This demonstrates an important fact about probability -> it's probably the easiest branch of mathematics to make mistakes in because sometimes it is very counter-intuitive. I think I may have discussed the Monty Hall paradox before on this blog : well I feel like doing so again because it's simply so cool.

I was exposed to it as part of an assignment at university and it took me a week or much arguing and thinking to finally admit I was wrong. Of course I blame this mistake due to me still being in first year -> only in second year maths did we fully cover Bayesian theory =p Excuses aside, luckily I managed to understand it before the due date of the assignment and scored full marks for it =p

So, next post : the Monty Hall Paradox.

Business Opportunities Weblog

2005-11-05T03:59:00.000+08:00

How Much Is My Blog Worth plus accompanying articles are interesting enough to warrant a read =p

Mesmer (GW) and a game mechanic insight

2005-11-05T02:13:00.000+08:00

Visiting the beautiful lands outside Kryta, with my Mesmer. Gorgeous... =p (I mean the scenery, not the chick hehe) Goodness me, playing an interruption Mesmer is really fun once you've gotten good at the game. It's equivalent of playing a blue deck in MTG - it's all about permission and control. The enemy only does what you allow him to when you're around, given you haven't run out of spell and skill interrupts. Watching an opponent get to 80% spell completion before interrupting him, and interrupting his next 3 spells as well gives me a kick all the time...especially when doing it to a human player ^_^

Well for the game mechanic insight I got - Guild Wars tombs has perhaps the best functional gameplay for a 3 team FFA situation.

See the reason why "free for all" combats don't work is that, when there are 3 teams, the most passive team has the advantage. If team A attacks team B, both of them will take casualties and be weakened while team C continues to grow stronger, and eventually enough to wipe out either team A or B (whichever one won). Stronger not just by accumulating resources : also by information, since it can often observe the combat between team A and B. The whole game then becomes a stalemate where everyone is paralyzed and unwilling to commit to combat.

Guild Wars Altar matches are mostly played in a 3 team FFA style and it works very well - it's a 10 minute countdown to the end of the game and the team holding the Altar at the end wins. Holding the Altar grants the holding team morale boosts and ressurections every 2 minutes, which is a large advantage. What happens is that both remaining teams will eventually have to gang up on the holding team, since neither one can kill the holder alone (due to the Altar advantage). And both remaining teams WILL win, since it's 2v1, but the question is how long the holding team can last (hopefully until the end of the countdown?) and even when the holding team is defeated the two teams that were allied will now suddenly become enemies and fight each other for the right to capture the Altar. Being first to capture will give you a difficult fight against 2 teams later on - but being late to capture might have you losing by not being able to kill the holding team fast enough, or not being able to backstab your previous ally effectively enough to prevent their Altar capture attempt.

I am reading a book

2005-11-04T03:00:00.000+08:00

and so I don't have time to write a blog.

I was going to post up a good picture I found last year detailing the various beef cuts you can obtain (Filet Mignon, Sirloin, Rump, etc). Well I was eating steak a fair bit, and testing each cut out, some are more expensive but have different textures / qualities.

Only problem is the picture itself isn't suitable for posting (Araluena knows what it is hehe) and since this is a worksafe blog I am in a bit of dilemma. Which I can't be stuffed solving now. Will do an edit later on tomorrow.

*edit* and so I have decided to post it after all, it's linked here and it's going to be rated as mature content =p For mature audiences only, so Xany that means you're not allowed to view it. (not like it's gonna stop you hehe)

*edit2* yes it was originally a porn picture =p

randomly feeling annoyed

2005-11-03T01:41:00.000+08:00

Today = not good.

Too much thinking. And I was feeling annoyed for no good reason. Well no. Sure, waiting for 45 minutes for dinner might be it but I doubt so, I would normally shrug it off.

I wrote about two pages before realising that I can't possibly post any of it.

This leads on to some other thoughts : how much do you guys tell your best friends? I don't have any particularly close friends, hence most my life's story remains with me alone. I'm thinking right now about something that happened about 5 or 6 years ago. I think I told one person the full story, and that was because she demanded to know =p

What happened is I quite resolutely kept my silence and all our common friends got the story from the other party involved. At most, I said as much as I safely knew was common knowledge.

When something involves several people, the burden of privacy is multiplied rather than being shared out. You can't tell anyone your part of it without involving other people's lives, other people's secrets. This is like the prisoners dilemma : you can save yourself, and doom the other person, or you can both trust naively that you will both act in each others interests.

Someone once told me a long time ago : if your friends are the type to be satisfied without hearing both sides of the story, then they aren't worth having, so you don't have to say anything if you don't want to.

I try to believe that but it's hard. Sometimes you just want to say what you really feel, make excuses and justifications, just to make yourself look better.

Whoever said that I'm the sort of person who doesn't care much about what other people think of him... maybe they mean something else.

-_-

Random mistakes =p

2005-11-01T23:26:00.000+08:00

Just thought I would share a few from my collection, I don't come across them very often. Yes I know they're from ages and ages ago. Still, they're good for a laugh.

"We didn't underestimate them. They were just a lot better than we thought." (Bobby Robson, after playing Cameroon in the 1990 World Cup finals)

"The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical." (Murray Walker — F1 Motor racing Commentator)

"I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat." (Ron Atkinson — Football Coach)

"Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer." (David Acfield)

"One of the reasons Arnie (Arnold Palmer) is playing so well is that, before each tee-shot, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them — Oh my God, what have I just said?"
(US TV commentator)

Happy Halloween from Guild Wars!

2005-11-01T00:27:00.000+08:00

It's amazing how much support the makers of Guild Wars are giving their players. Even more amazing given it is a subscription free game, unlike other MMORPGS like WoW (Blizzard should buck up : oh yeah, most of the original Blizzard developers did leave a year ago to start Arenanet). Frequent updates and lots of expanded content, and plenty of changes on their game based on feedback. Little things like how capes and headgear can now be hidden if you want! This is really how a developer should treat their customers : Arenanet, NcSoft, we love you =p

There was a three day pre Halloween bash in the Guild Wars game : completely redone several cities for the festival with Halloween decorations. = ) This got plenty of players doing synchro dances and just chilling out in town, having drinking parties... well, see pictures... very very cool.

Fuel Air Explosives (and the irony of protection)

2005-10-30T13:35:00.000+08:00

I've known of this class of bomb since I was around 8 : that's how hardcore a military spec fan I was. So indulge me. Also known as thermobaric weapons. But such weapons of mass destruction are very rarely used. Off the top of my head : used by the Russians against Chechnya, by the US against targets in Afghanistan more recently. Perhaps during the first Gulf War.

This bomb kills by overpressure effects, and also incineration. It contains a two stage fuze : first the canister explodes, distributing a mist of highly volatile particles into the air around the target, then the second fuze ignites.

Such flash ignitions occur catastrophically in civilian installations as well. The explosion is far more powerful than usual because of the high degree of pre-mixing of the fuel and oxygen. Milk powder factory explosions (in India) and grain silo explosions (in Canada and America) come to mind, as well as coal dust explosions in mines : anywhere where fine combustible particles are suspended in the air.

But done deliberately in a bomb : well. Upon ignition, overpressure reaches roughly 400 pounds per square inch, with the blastwave travelling at three kilometers per second. After that, the pressure drops far below normal, creating a vacuum and sucking everything back towards the blast zone. The massive overpressure and underpressure effects force unburnt fuel air mixture into every nook and cranny, incinerating everything at a temperature of 3000 degrees.

This effect is further magnified in confined spaces. Hence the use of FAE bombs against buildings, soldiers hiding in basements and caves, crew in non airtight vehicles - anywhere that the extreme high pressure air can force itself into. The more enclosed the area, the more devastating the effects. Ironically the best chance of survival for a soldier is to be standing in the open wearing no body armour (even the enclosed space between the armour you are wearing and your body magnifies the overpressure and acts as a space where the fuel-air mixture will penetrate).

This strange irony is also seen in the case of land mines. A soldier walking around barefoot that steps on a land mine might escape just losing a toe or two. If he's wearing steel jacketed boots it has been known for a land mine to slice off his leg mid calf where the boots end. In this case explosive force follows the path of least resistance, see.

another random girl

2005-10-30T01:17:00.000+08:00

Take a peek at fullsized image first then click on comments for the rest of my post. =p

more on : fight or flight response

2005-10-29T12:17:00.000+08:00

For those still skeptical about the idea that much of our brain's intelligence and cognitive ability comes from our ability to discard information.

Consider the stress "fight or flight" reflex. As our heartrate and adrenaline levels ramp up, among the filters we experience : first we lose peripheral vision (getting just tunnel vision) then our sense of hearing is impaired. We feel reduced or even no pain or discomfort. In fact our brain even stops recording memories of that situation, leading to severely impaired short term memory unless you consciously and deliberately choose to imprint what happened in your mind.

Fine motor control is impaired : but gross motor reflex is enhanced.

So the brain does have limitions on what we can focus on. The fight or flight response can be interpreted as the brain deliberately filtering out information it considers unnecessary. Shuts down some functions (recording of memory) it considers not immediately critical to survival. The benefit : enhanced attention and reflexes, total focus on the threat at hand.

I can attest to these physiological effects firsthand (but that would be another story). No sensation of pain whatsoever. Reduced awareness of sound. Tunnel vision. A host of other effects, but those are physiological not mental so they're not covered here. You could argue that these are just physiological effects that have side effects affecting the brain function : well they are interlinked, but I believe my interpretation is a reasonable one.

I would like this to mean that our brain is in fact extremely limited in what we can focus on : and the definition of focus is the act of discarding unnecessary information.

And yeah : if you are faced with a threatening situation (being mugged) etc be aware that these stress responses WILL occur, there is nothing you can do about it. But try to keep a cool head, commit every detail to memory so you will have an accurate report to give to the police (if you're still alive hehe). The best case outcome for the mugger is to steal your possessions with the minimum of fuss and zero injury (if you're injured, the police will be hunting them down twice as hard and fast for a much increased jailterm).

And don't stress ya =p

ever rejected a hug?

2005-10-28T20:14:00.000+08:00

She's the only person I have ever refused a hug from - and more than once at that. You can tell if someone wants to hug you, the slight shifting of balance, the way she looks at you. It's also possible to signal rejection through body language alone, the way you hold yourself, the non receptive position of your arms. Once was when we touched down at the airport together in front of her family - what her intention was I still do not know. The second time, was in front of another guy that we both knew was desperately after her. Both times obviously desiring to use me to prove a point.

I'm acting cool to her because maybe I'm a little jealous. I want to spite her. You think you're so hot. But I deny you what you want sometimes to remind you that you cannot have everyone.

Man, how calculative am I... I'm just as bad as she is, and I know she is very very bad =p