Monday, February 22, 2010
Run Barefoot
Run barefoot, damnit! Even the mainstream media has got wind of this. Though I must add that the picture they provided of a runner is the wrong way to run.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Singapore Has Easy Coordinates
Random fact: Singapore's official coordinates are roughly (1.283333, 103.833333). Now that's an easy number to remember.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Chinese New Year Apathy?
Some time ago, long long time ago, someone made a comment that as one got older, the feelings that one gets during Chinese New Year will slowly turn towards that of general apathy. At that point in time, I was skeptical about that perspective, thinking that it was just a cynical viewpoint of someone who probably disliked the quasi-friendliness that entailed when one was going around visiting relatives as a part of the tradition.
Little did I know that as I grew older, the sense of apathy is just overwhelming.
It's not like there was something fundamentally wrong with my relatives; it's just that it has been so long since I met them, that all I did when I visited them was to say a few auspicious words, and then vegetate in front of the television while my parents conversed with my aunts and uncles. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing, but it most definitely isn't a good thing either. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, and the child-like naïveté has almost been fully purged out of my system, replacing it with cold laconic wit (except I'm probably more verbose than laconic), causing me to have a general jaded viewpoint on the whole ``visit all my relatives'' thing associated with the traditions of Chinese New Year. But I suppose I digress.
Anyway, sleep beckons. I have been pretty much sleep-deprived and overloaded with caffeine for the last three weeks---having an extended weekend means that I can finally trade in some time to get some wonderful sleep once more. And of course, tomorrow comes once again.
Little did I know that as I grew older, the sense of apathy is just overwhelming.
It's not like there was something fundamentally wrong with my relatives; it's just that it has been so long since I met them, that all I did when I visited them was to say a few auspicious words, and then vegetate in front of the television while my parents conversed with my aunts and uncles. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing, but it most definitely isn't a good thing either. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, and the child-like naïveté has almost been fully purged out of my system, replacing it with cold laconic wit (except I'm probably more verbose than laconic), causing me to have a general jaded viewpoint on the whole ``visit all my relatives'' thing associated with the traditions of Chinese New Year. But I suppose I digress.
Anyway, sleep beckons. I have been pretty much sleep-deprived and overloaded with caffeine for the last three weeks---having an extended weekend means that I can finally trade in some time to get some wonderful sleep once more. And of course, tomorrow comes once again.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Down Under
Each time I hear this on the radio, a smile breaks out on my face---it is just that fun! That said, Men At Work were sued successfully for plagiarising ``Kookaburra''. Without looking at the associated article, can you find where the plagiarising seemingly occurred? (Vg'f va gur syhgr evss. Gurl gbbx gur svefg gjb yvarf bs gur fbat ``Xbbxnoheen''.)
Monday, February 08, 2010
[PROTOTYPE]
So not too long ago (less than three or four days back, actually) I finally convinced myself to put up the cash to purchase [PROTOTYPE] off Steam after hearing from Mo that it was an interesting game that was kinda like DMC4 but with differing mechanics. Apart from a small snafu involving DirectX 9.0c on Elysie's Windows XP 64-bit edition, the installation wasn't too bad, and soon enough I had the game up and running.
What I wasn't prepared for was the epic levels of win the game entailed. Imagine GTA III, but with epic attack powers (kicking a flying helicopter to destruction), epic moves (wall-sprinting up the skyscraper to glide across Central Park), and epic battles (slamming the ground with a hard enough force that makes everything surrounding the protagonist fly up and take damage). In short, it is GTA III on steroids, and I'm not even sure if steroids are strong enough to produce the effect that I am seeing through the game. The sand-box feature of the game suits the purposes well, as it allows one to sometimes forget about the story missions and just roam around the city finding things to do, like infiltrating enemy bases, perform crazy stunts, or just go round killing things. Unlike GTA III, the only penalty for being overly violent is to have the military and/or mutants hunt you down, which is only a mild trifle if you have sufficient skill and powers to fight back or even dodge away. And the vehicles you can ride are insane---no civilian vehicles are ridable, but all manner of military hardware is available for your consumption.
Heh. Consumption---it is a key thing to do in the game itself, as many will say. In short, [PROTOTYPE] is an action fanatic's dream come true, with superhuman powers set in a pseudo-dystopian storyline with great cinematics to back the story up. This is probably among the best purchases I have ever made when it comes to games.
What I wasn't prepared for was the epic levels of win the game entailed. Imagine GTA III, but with epic attack powers (kicking a flying helicopter to destruction), epic moves (wall-sprinting up the skyscraper to glide across Central Park), and epic battles (slamming the ground with a hard enough force that makes everything surrounding the protagonist fly up and take damage). In short, it is GTA III on steroids, and I'm not even sure if steroids are strong enough to produce the effect that I am seeing through the game. The sand-box feature of the game suits the purposes well, as it allows one to sometimes forget about the story missions and just roam around the city finding things to do, like infiltrating enemy bases, perform crazy stunts, or just go round killing things. Unlike GTA III, the only penalty for being overly violent is to have the military and/or mutants hunt you down, which is only a mild trifle if you have sufficient skill and powers to fight back or even dodge away. And the vehicles you can ride are insane---no civilian vehicles are ridable, but all manner of military hardware is available for your consumption.
Heh. Consumption---it is a key thing to do in the game itself, as many will say. In short, [PROTOTYPE] is an action fanatic's dream come true, with superhuman powers set in a pseudo-dystopian storyline with great cinematics to back the story up. This is probably among the best purchases I have ever made when it comes to games.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Left irc.freenode.net
I have officially dropped my thelaptop moniker on irc.freenode.net. Henceforth any appearances of that character has got nothing to do with me anymore.
It has gotten to the point where things were out of hand---the trolls were getting fat, and the people more pretentious than before. It's about time to move on anyway; #cslounge was a crutch anyway, and now that I'm so far away from the place, it matters not whether I'm there or not. Sure, there're probably some fond memories, but it's past the time for memories---I am living in the now. And presently, I'm not there, and I had never been there, so perhaps I needn't be there at all.
No one there will miss me anyway.
It has gotten to the point where things were out of hand---the trolls were getting fat, and the people more pretentious than before. It's about time to move on anyway; #cslounge was a crutch anyway, and now that I'm so far away from the place, it matters not whether I'm there or not. Sure, there're probably some fond memories, but it's past the time for memories---I am living in the now. And presently, I'm not there, and I had never been there, so perhaps I needn't be there at all.
No one there will miss me anyway.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Sinatramania
I think I should try learning how to sound like Sinatra:His voice has a certain masculine yet magnetic quality in it that is the epitome of the Classical Cool. Must... learn... how... to... sing... like... that...
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
February Musings
Hmm. February, a traditional month for pain and anguish. Heh. Maybe not this February---things have changed. Probably. Who knows? So many things have happened over the last week that at times, I'm still a little giddy from the excitement.
I've finally got around to doing yet another round of upgrading of the software components that are running on Elyse. I got rid of the propriety SSH/SFTP tool that was licensed to CMU and installed WinSCP instead. Much cleaner interface, and less monstrosities to deal with, I suppose. I've updated my FL Studio to the latest version while updating Audacity to the beta which is much more recent than the last stable (works fine as far as I can tell). The good thing about this is that now FL Studio can double up as a VSTi plug-in from within Audacity, which further allows the use of Nyquist (the LISP-like programming language in Audacity) to be further combined with the plethora of tools that FL Studio has to offer.
I originally thought of upgrading the Xubuntu install on Elysie to Karmic Koala, but after reading the many problems that occur with machines that sport the nVidia graphics cards after that upgrade, I've decided to give the Koala a miss. Besides, things are working relatively well now and I don't see a need to rock the boat, as compared to my high portable and mostly experimental rig on Edythe-EEE. I might consider upgrading the home computer to Koala since it is using an integrated graphics card, which reduces the issues that can occur with the propriety binary blobs that are needed for the higher end cards. Speaking of which, I probably need to run an update on the Windows XP 64-bit edition partition of Elysie---the last time I ran anything on that was... a very long time ago.
Life. That's right, I was mumbling something about that before I got hopelessly side tracked. February is a month of confusion many times, and this year, it's probably not going to be that bad. Most of the things that are causing me severe anguish are at least undergoing some form of amelioration, either through efforts of mine or not. There are things that I have already done, and there are also things where I have little control over, so I suppose there is little need to worry about them. After all, life is short, for how long can we be worrying about things anyway?
I remember that I used to think that I would be a detective when I grew up. That's right, a hard-boiled detective, one who went around looking for clues, sleuthing for ideas on how to solve a crime, learning the art of cryptography to foil the bad spies and other detectives who are trying to muscle in on my jobs. Or a spy, one of those two; it didn't really matter which. There was a certain romantic feel to that line of work, always living on the edge, always doing things that people have little idea is going on, walking about in the shadows, seeing things that people don't see, and best of all, achieving successes that the normal folks would never have thought originated from one. Of course, as time went on, it made less and less sense to be working as a detective nor spy (something about level of danger and the need to be realistic on what my body can and cannot do), but many of the job traits that I loved seemed to manifest themselves as part of my personality. For instance, while I used to like the limelight a lot when I was younger, I tend to shun it in favour of working deep within the shadows and making magic happen. Even today, I still have a tendency to walk in the shadows, avoiding light (both literally and metaphorically), and preferring muchly to work hard in a secluded location than to draw attention to myself for no rhyme nor reason.
Alright, I have no idea what my direction of thought is... it is getting rather late, and I ought to go get some sleep. Till next time, I suppose.
I've finally got around to doing yet another round of upgrading of the software components that are running on Elyse. I got rid of the propriety SSH/SFTP tool that was licensed to CMU and installed WinSCP instead. Much cleaner interface, and less monstrosities to deal with, I suppose. I've updated my FL Studio to the latest version while updating Audacity to the beta which is much more recent than the last stable (works fine as far as I can tell). The good thing about this is that now FL Studio can double up as a VSTi plug-in from within Audacity, which further allows the use of Nyquist (the LISP-like programming language in Audacity) to be further combined with the plethora of tools that FL Studio has to offer.
I originally thought of upgrading the Xubuntu install on Elysie to Karmic Koala, but after reading the many problems that occur with machines that sport the nVidia graphics cards after that upgrade, I've decided to give the Koala a miss. Besides, things are working relatively well now and I don't see a need to rock the boat, as compared to my high portable and mostly experimental rig on Edythe-EEE. I might consider upgrading the home computer to Koala since it is using an integrated graphics card, which reduces the issues that can occur with the propriety binary blobs that are needed for the higher end cards. Speaking of which, I probably need to run an update on the Windows XP 64-bit edition partition of Elysie---the last time I ran anything on that was... a very long time ago.
Life. That's right, I was mumbling something about that before I got hopelessly side tracked. February is a month of confusion many times, and this year, it's probably not going to be that bad. Most of the things that are causing me severe anguish are at least undergoing some form of amelioration, either through efforts of mine or not. There are things that I have already done, and there are also things where I have little control over, so I suppose there is little need to worry about them. After all, life is short, for how long can we be worrying about things anyway?
I remember that I used to think that I would be a detective when I grew up. That's right, a hard-boiled detective, one who went around looking for clues, sleuthing for ideas on how to solve a crime, learning the art of cryptography to foil the bad spies and other detectives who are trying to muscle in on my jobs. Or a spy, one of those two; it didn't really matter which. There was a certain romantic feel to that line of work, always living on the edge, always doing things that people have little idea is going on, walking about in the shadows, seeing things that people don't see, and best of all, achieving successes that the normal folks would never have thought originated from one. Of course, as time went on, it made less and less sense to be working as a detective nor spy (something about level of danger and the need to be realistic on what my body can and cannot do), but many of the job traits that I loved seemed to manifest themselves as part of my personality. For instance, while I used to like the limelight a lot when I was younger, I tend to shun it in favour of working deep within the shadows and making magic happen. Even today, I still have a tendency to walk in the shadows, avoiding light (both literally and metaphorically), and preferring muchly to work hard in a secluded location than to draw attention to myself for no rhyme nor reason.
Alright, I have no idea what my direction of thought is... it is getting rather late, and I ought to go get some sleep. Till next time, I suppose.
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