Bumper sticker

I think I used the wrong term, what I am talking about is the stuff people usually stick to the rear window of their cars. Usually it would be a witty statement like “I may be slow but I’m ahead of you”. Some of them are religious – I don’t really mind too much because I’m blind to religion. One of the most tiresome bumper sticker I see is “baby on board”. I know, I know… People are proud to have a baby and decide to make sure everyone knows they have one. Seriously besides that is there any point? Would it make other people drive with caution when approaching the vehicle? Maybe? To me I think the sticker is kinda retarded. Why? After sometime that bumper sticker definitely is going to be removed – babies don’t stay babies forever as far as I am concerned. In addition to that, it would be daft to assume that every single time that vehicle is on the road a baby will be on it. 

I digress. I was supposed to rant about a different bumper sticker that I saw. A witty bumper sticker I once saw stated, “If you think the car’s cute, wait till you see the driver!” I have no complaints about this. It is witty, and makes me want to see the driver. However on one fine day I saw a car with a bumper sticker stating, “WOW! This car is cool! Wait till you see the driver!” I am strangely amused at this befuddling daft bumper sticker. It assumes that we find the car cool, it does not use an “if”, it just assumes we do. Putting words into our mouths. I find myself disgusted with the pure lack of wit and originality of the bumper sticker. Come on – there’s a perfectly witty bumper sticker, why did you have to copy it and modify it only to fail to improve and instead destroy the witty concept. 

Bumper sticker aside, I would say that the owner of the car would be a dull person who tries to be unique but fails. Instead it gives the following implication to the owner, “The driver thinks you think his car is cool and think he’s cool too! Only he’s too arrogant to think that you don’t think his car is cool!”

Camera Correction

Previously I posted about digital cameras. I have been somewhat misunderstood the concept of a good digital camera.

Here are the main 3 things :

Megapixel

Lense

Sensor

A good cook has good cooking skills. His cooking skills are limited to the quality of his cooking tools and ingredients. Some cooks can cook a larger quantity of food than others.

Replace cook with digital camera, replace cooking skills with sensor, replace cooking tools/ingredients with lense, replace quantity with megapixel.

Some handphone companies tout branded/quality lenses. It is a shame most of the time it is a marketing gimmick as they are usually paired with a mediocore sensor. Many handphones tout a high megapixel rate, but if we relate to the analogy I gave earlier would you prefer to pay for a meal that is large enough to satisfy your hunger? Or pay extra for a large amount of food that is more than you can consume? 

There are other camera components that are important but the 3 most important components are mentioned above.

Last words. 

“Buying a DSLR/SLR does not make you a photographer, it just makes you an owner of a DSLR/SLR” – from some guy in a forum (I will post proper quote and nick/name upon request).

Feminine Plus 1

Today my company welcomes a handful of interns. Preparations for these interns were planned out at least a month beforehand. The office layout was repositioned, old staff (including me) used this opportunity to change our “cubicles”.

New PC’s and laptops were brought in to accomodate the interns. Out of some unknown curse, one of the PC’s was lacking a mouse. There is always a shortage of mice for some reason. Out of some weird management decision, a quick “fix” was to confiscate the mouse for my laptop to replace the missing mouse.

I was not angry nor upset. I happily requested for a new mouse as I felt it was a right for me to use a mouse at my workplace. My request was not rejected. However to my horror, the new mouse came in a packaging that used pink as the forecolour. I lamented on how the mouse was pink in colour. Comforting myself I removed the packaging and found the mouse to be silver with a slight tint of pink. I tried to convince myself it was bronze. It really did look bronze.

Fine. A bronze mouse with white as the secondary colour. No problem. A slight downgrade from black but it’s better than pure pink.

Hooked it up to my laptop. To my horror, mouse had internal red LED lighting, this lighting made the white secondary colour into pink, and the bronze primary colour reflected that colour.

At least it doesn’t appear too pinkish and if I don’t move the mouse the red LED will not be lit….

Sigh, all in all, I still am the only person to use a “pink” mouse in the office….

What 1 megapixel can do

Previously I wrote on how handphones are becoming increasingly retarded, racing to attain the highest megapixel camera bundled with the phone. The lense actually determines the quality of the photo, not the megapixel. If the lense was a packet of mee, then the megapixel would be the a bowl. If you want to eat quality food, you don’t need a good bowl, you should eat different food. Replacing the mee with spaghetti could be an option. I recently bought a used handphone online, the hearing part (where you put to your ear) is spoilt. I haven’t got to fixing it yet but I could use the loudspeaker or use the handsfree set instead to answer calls. The phone is a 2006 phone and is capable of taking photos at 5 megapixels (8 megapixels can be achieved by interpolation). However I do not want to go “overboard”, instead I took a few pictures using 1 megapixel setting. Here is what it can achieve….

 

A smudge? Actually this is my second take, need to fiddle around for auto focus.

This is my first attempt, don’t tell me you still can’t see what it is..

If you still can’t see it, you need professional help.

Nightshot, hope my neighbours don’t mind their house in the picture – it’s not like it was the focus.

 

Different scenary same location.

Garuga mask, Hornetaur Torso, Plesioth S Gloves, Dark Chrome Belt and Greaves, Sonicbow 3 = High grade earplug + runner

I would say, the phones available in market especially the ones above RM1000 still can’t compare with this 3 year old phone that I bought for RM340.

Phone model? Imobile 902. Imobile is the company that produced the handphone, ironically to take the best pictures you need to be immobile.

All images shown are unmodified and not scaled. 

Re: My love and hate affair with MTG

The original post is here :

http://xcvx.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/my-love-and-hate-affair-with-mtg/

I just got a comment, more of a flame in my opinion. I could have rejected the comment but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Here is his comment.

I will now respond to every argument of this nonsense, mainly because I hate to see such a good game ruined by someone who obviously quit at the ”I’ma n00b and i’m tired of getting owned so instead of admitting other people are better than me i quit” stage.

1) keeping up with standart: you don,t sound like a tournament player. you sound like a timmy, a guy who plays for FUN. why bother with standart? your gaming group won,t play you because your deck isn’t standart? get some real friends, then. I often play a guy who still has his old kamigawa block deck(3 years ago) and I don,t complain.

2) individual card market: the average cost of a deck is around 70 dollars. with that, you get a decent budget deck. If you,re playing against pro players who spend 400-500 dollars on their decks, ask them to lend you a deck, or a playset of rare cards. hell, these players are often awesome and help you improve your existing decks a tenfold with your available(and theirs) common/uncommon card pool. don,t wanna buy boostera? l2draft.

3) Imbalance: in rare occasions, R&D makes mistakes. if they see a card becomes too imbalanced and ruins the format, they ban or restrict it. research «ravager affinity» on google for the most b0rken deck in existence. cards that hate black(as stated in your example) are sideboard tech, or ”hate”. the answer to this is finding black cards that hate white and putting them in a 15 card pile beside your deck. this is called sideboarding(because i assume you are not aware of the practice). when you face that hating deck, swap some white hate(swapping a black knight is awesome against White Weenie). every color in magic has cards hating other cards. they print those cards mainly for tournament play. in Casual, color hating depends on your metagame. more often than not, it’s a liability.

4)first turn win/combos: first turn wins are rare and tend not to happen twice. in the current standart, the best win possible is a turn three win, and even then, with a shoddy combo no one plays because it’s easy to disrupt. there are multiple card that hate on combo decks, too. Extirpate, Jester’s cap, Etc. usually, if a deck wins turn one, it’s not your fault. and even then, some turn one plays are not as desperate as they seemed. a reanimator deck i play against once got an Akroma Angel of Wrath on turn one.(Swamp+Dark Ritual+Entomb+Animate dead). and you know what? I had an untapped island and an Unsummon in my hand. he was the one to concede. Luck is and always was a part of MTG. even the strictest and zaniest control decks can die to a lucky draw. that’s why we play the game. you never know when the tables will turn.

if you could not reach these conclusion by yourself, then I recommend you really do stop playing MTG. Stop being a sore loser and actually LEARN how to play. that, or you could just go back to playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

-Hyuga, magic player since onslaught block

 

That’s it. Time for me to dissect and clarify.

I will now respond to every argument of this nonsense, mainly because I hate to see such a good game ruined by someone who obviously quit at the ”I’ma n00b and i’m tired of getting owned so instead of admitting other people are better than me i quit” stage.

It is a good game I did not say it was not. You’re calling me a noob? Call me what you want. Name calling is childish, the fact that you throw an “insult” at someone you don’t know proves how immature you are. I got owned? Well you can’t win without losing, and if you never lose you never truely win. Heck, I once won the first prize (multiple winners) during the Invasion block pre-release tourney many years ago. On top of that I participated in a full fledged tournament using a pure blue none rare deck. I failed to gain enough wins to continue on – I only won 4 matches that day, but it was exhilarating. I bested 1-2 yavimaya fires decks and some other blue decks. The funniest thing that happened during gameplay was against a blue player who used a spell (I forgot the name) to search my deck for any creature and put it into play under his control. It was obvious how frustrated he got seeing all my creatures were very basic, he settled for a stinging barrier – which i “confiscated” back the very next turn. Maybe perhaps you may be right about the part saying I never admitted other people were better than me. That was because I thought I did not need to actually say it because no matter where you are or what you do – there will always be someone better. If it makes you “happy” then I shall now provide it in the following statement.

There are many talented people who have skills that far exceed mine, I respect them for their expertise.

Done.

1) keeping up with standart: you don,t sound like a tournament player. you sound like a timmy, a guy who plays for FUN. why bother with standart? your gaming group won,t play you because your deck isn’t standart? get some real friends, then. I often play a guy who still has his old kamigawa block deck(3 years ago) and I don,t complain.

I don’t sound like a tournament guy? Read what I wrote before this. I could get some “real friends” to play with, only it takes too much time and effort to travel to meet these new friends. If you’re playing with a guy who used kamigawa block, I used to play with someone who was from pre-fifth generation era. Heck, I started on 6 ed. Actually I don’t really see anything to argue about on this note. You are blessed to have a group of friends who play with you, either that or you actually are willing to spend resources to meet them. I am not. I would need to travel half an hour to an hour by car to get to a popular mtg gathering spot. Frankly it’s too much of a hassle. A hobby is something that I do in my free time to enjoy. I have other hobbies besides mtg, such as gaming which is much more convenient for me.

2) individual card market: the average cost of a deck is around 70 dollars. with that, you get a decent budget deck. If you,re playing against pro players who spend 400-500 dollars on their decks, ask them to lend you a deck, or a playset of rare cards. hell, these players are often awesome and help you improve your existing decks a tenfold with your available(and theirs) common/uncommon card pool. don,t wanna buy boostera? l2draft.

Your point is? I’m not really sure, but I’ve beaten good decks before (in tournaments and amongst friends) using makeshift decks with no rares. I could use rares but I wanted to challenge myself. Drafting? Learnt and did it. Many years ago. My point is mtg is an expensive hobby, you are just helping me prove my point. Players are awesome and helpful – I agree with that.

3) Imbalance: in rare occasions, R&D makes mistakes. if they see a card becomes too imbalanced and ruins the format, they ban or restrict it. research «ravager affinity» on google for the most b0rken deck in existence. cards that hate black(as stated in your example) are sideboard tech, or ”hate”. the answer to this is finding black cards that hate white and putting them in a 15 card pile beside your deck. this is called sideboarding(because i assume you are not aware of the practice). when you face that hating deck, swap some white hate(swapping a black knight is awesome against White Weenie). every color in magic has cards hating other cards. they print those cards mainly for tournament play. in Casual, color hating depends on your metagame. more often than not, it’s a liability.

I am well aware of side boarding, I have been to tournaments before. You assume too much, which makes much of an ass out of “u” to me. I find the concept of people having to swap out cards to anti-each other in between rounds as ridiculous. Might as well have each player reveal their deck and sideboard before their match and have them go all out at each other after they have sideboarded necessarily. I will admit, I’m too lazy to sideboard. In fact the tourney I participated in, I used no sideboard. I naturally lost matches courtesy of boils. I won’t be a sore loser and say I lost because of that. I knew the risks of not sideboarding and using an all blue deck and I lost. I also lost to control decks. I have never stared at any player in spite nor have I hated their gamestyle. Whenever I finish a game regardless of outcome, I will shake the opponents hand if they are willing. GG. Good game. I just dislike the fact that some cards are better than others. Simple example is elven archer vs sabretooth tiger (might be the wrong name), both have first strike and are 2/1. Elvish archer costs cheaper to play. First strike and creatures having high power with low life is red’s specialty if I’m not mistaken. Elvish archer outperforms  sabretooth tiger in many ways, it even can benefit from lords and tribal effects. A question I would pose is, why are there so many “lousy” cards available in mtg? I know some cards that appear lousy can actually shine with the right combination of cards/situation but seriously there are a lot of lousy cards. I used the word “hate” with the intention of writing in a way that non-mtg players would understand. The concept is simple. “Hating” cards perform what they do best but that is all they can do, as you have mentioned they can be a liability, which is why there is such a thing called sideboarding. I just don’t like the concept of “hating” cards, which normally forces the need of sideboarding.

4)first turn win/combos: first turn wins are rare and tend not to happen twice. in the current standart, the best win possible is a turn three win, and even then, with a shoddy combo no one plays because it’s easy to disrupt. there are multiple card that hate on combo decks, too. Extirpate, Jester’s cap, Etc. usually, if a deck wins turn one, it’s not your fault. and even then, some turn one plays are not as desperate as they seemed. a reanimator deck i play against once got an Akroma Angel of Wrath on turn one.(Swamp+Dark Ritual+Entomb+Animate dead). and you know what? I had an untapped island and an Unsummon in my hand. he was the one to concede. Luck is and always was a part of MTG. even the strictest and zaniest control decks can die to a lucky draw. that’s why we play the game. you never know when the tables will turn.

I know that mtg is a game of skill and luck, but once too much luck is involved, I rather push my mtg cards that are worth a small fortune to the side and play blackjack insted.

if you could not reach these conclusion by yourself, then I recommend you really do stop playing MTG. Stop being a sore loser and actually LEARN how to play. that, or you could just go back to playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

I know all the things you have mentioned long before I even stopped playing. You do not need to recommend me anything. I was simply stating the reason why I stopped playing, in the end I ended up being called a “noob” and a “sore loser” by some random quick to assume and quick to insult bloke online. 

I should have wrote this as my blogpost instead :

MTG is a nice game which I enjoyed playing, however I find it difficult to allocate time and effort to fuel this hobby of mine. In addition to that as time passed I lost my interest for the game, instead I found myself interested in other things. Thus, I have stopped playing mtg.

The fact is I didn’t write that, and now I am defending my point of views. You have your views. Your points are valid. I respect that. However I don’t respect you for your immature namecalling and childish assumptions.  You asked me to LEARN how to play? I’ve already done that. What can I suggest for you? LEARN how to spell please. You assume I play Hello Kitty, hah. I laugh at you. 

Sigh. I sigh because I actually replied to the comment when I could have just let it slide. At least it makes a good blog post.

New layout

Been doing some “spring cleaning” on my blog. Changed the template and took a lesson from Pei Wun’s blog http://wunkey.wordpress.com/

I deleted a whole bunch of posts (no more XCBMs), and reduced my categories drastically as well as categorize each post for easy filtering (Just like Pei Wun’s).

Might put up new pages if the need arise. So far so good…

Kamen Rider

Kamen rider or masked rider (Kamen is masked in Japanese I presume), is a TV series of people (not necessarily pure humans) who can transformed into a costumed hero. A masked hero…. Who rides a motorbike, hence the name masked rider. Mask riders are normally referred to as Kamen riders probably because it sounds more bombastic or because that is their original name in Japan. Besides the mask and the bike, another common trait is the transformation. Individuals who transform into a mask rider would normally initialize the transformation by using a fancy belt, then they would do some fancy pose before saying “Henshin” (change in Japanese I presume). All riders have a signature “finishing move”, with the “Jumping Kick” as the most commonly used finisher.

There are many kamen riders and the “older” generation kamen riders (more or less pre-year 2000 kamen riders) are commonly known as classic kamen riders. These classic kamen riders normally (but not necessarily) derive their superhuman powers from a grasshopper which explains why most of the finishers are kicks.

Currently the most current kamen rider is kamen rider Decade. Decade is the 10th non classic series series and the producers decided to make Decade as unique as possible to mark this accomplishment.

What’s so different about Decade? A lot…

1. The story involves all 9 other kamen riders from the series before him.
2. Decade is supposedly prophesied as a destroyer who must destroy all the other 9 kamen riders to save his world.
3. Some kamen riders have alternate forms granting them special abilities. Decade doesn’t inherently have different forms, instead he can transform into any of the 9 kamen riders and hence use any form he likes.
4. He travels to different worlds (each of the 9 kamen riders live on different worlds).
5. So far (episode 7) he does not even have his own motorbike. Technically he doesn’t qualify to be known as a “rider” because of this, unless bicycles are counted.
6. He can actually morph order riders into a weird “final form”. Imagine transformers, now imagine a kamen rider transforming. Disturbing thought.
7. One of the reasons I like decade is because the character is the most easy going/happy go lucky kamen rider – ever. Even when he is “responsible” for the fate of 10 worlds (1 world is his own), he seems quite relaxed about it.
8. The most “shocking” fact about kamen rider Decade is that he is the first “Pink” male gendered kamen rider.

All in all, I like the series a lot. The pink colour a problem to me, only i dislike his mask and torso design. It’s kinda fugly.

Dragonball evolution

Spoiler alert! Don’t read if you don’t want to know about it!

Short summary: It sucks.

Why?

1. It’s only one and a half hour (it’s also a good point as I lost interest in the way beginning).
2. It doesn’t have the manga feel. It doesn’t feel authentic.
3. Picollo is a great evil who was imprisoned 2000 years ago. Goku managed to defeat him, a superior being, with a single Kamehameha which he had just learnt how to use a day or 2 ago.
3. Goku actually goes to high school – on a bike.
4. The story runs everywhere starting from Goku training, Goku falling in love, Goku’s grandfather dies, Goku looks for master Roshi to train under but fails to find him, tries to find all the dragonballs instead, instead finding Master Roshi by pure luck, looks for the dragonballs while training, gives up training and dragonball hunting as Piccolo’s minion steals them.
5. Goku starts with an “air” version of kamehameha which is a super weak super basic version.
6. Usually for some reason, Japanese people manage to capture manga in their live action series. Western people have a lot more to learn.

I’m too lazy to list out anymore. Just stay away from it. If you want to see how closely it resembles the comic, just compare Goku’s hair. That should satisfy your curiosity.

I am slow

Have you ever noticed how people talk slowly, with a low tone to people who are slow? It also applies to people who are not mentally developed well or small kids or the plain unintelligent.

So why do I say I am slow?

Yesterday I went to MidValley with Ying Min, Vincent and Kevin. Just as luck would have it, there was an “education” fair. Education fairs are fun for me, it makes me feel young when people approach me with brochures for diploma level courses. I was approached by one particular cute girl there.

To be completely honest, I don’t really remember what she said exactly so it might vary from this.

She held up 2 brochures in towards me. I looked at her.
She slowly said, “Please take a brochure……..”
I lifted my hand up towards the brochures.
She slowly said, “Yes, please take one brochure….”
So I took a brochure from her hand and looked at her.
She nodded in a nonchalant but pleased manner and said,
“Goooooooooooooooooooood………..”
I turned my gaze to the left at Ying Min. We burst out in laughter but I’m not really sure if it’s supposed to be funny but found it funny anyway.

Since it was the most “outstanding” event that happened to me there I’m giving that institution some free publicity here. The brochure is of Medic Ed – http://www.mediced.com.my/
me diced!
I guess Sue San would want to apply to this institution since it lists 101010101010tistry (Ask her about it, I’m lazy to explain) as a course there.

No More Heroes

The title of this post is also the title of a top Wii game, however that is not what I am writing about today. I will be writing about “Heroes” the series.

Probably I might spoil the plot for those who haven’t watched it ***SPOILER WARNING*** This post probably may or may not contain spoilers for Heroes. Do not continue reading if you want to remain ignorant of the plot.

Heroes is a series I found myself liking profoundly. The setting of the series that in a “normal” world, “normal” human beings gains “super” powers. It is more down to earth compared to other “superhero” series/movies I have watched.

This series has recently completed it’s third season (at time of writing), and a possibility for a fourth season is heavily hinted at the end of season 3.

I love a good story, but everything good should come to an end. Like butter to bread, if spread too thinly the taste is lost.

Why should it end at season 3? In season 1 we were introduced to Sylar a serial murderer, who murders people with powers to gain their powers, enhancing his murderous murdering powers. At the end of season 1, Sylar disappeared when he was presumed dead, a hidden and more dangerous enemy was heavily hinted.

Season 2 introduced Adam, the immortal. Supposedly the great evil mastermind. Nope it wasn’t him. The patriarch of the Petrelli’s (may be mis pelt) who was supposedly dead is. In season 3 Adam’s immortal powers were stolen by the Petrelli guy, which caused him to decay and die on the spot. The Petrelli guy is killed by Sylar and Sylar is in turned killed by the cheerleader.

At the end of season 3, it hinted that season 4 would most likely be about the humans going against the super powered. Prejudiced and feared, blablabla.

Just like that I lost interest. I felt there was no more reason for me to watch any more “Heroes”. The series has already ended to me. All the loose ends have been tied. Having a season 4 would be like having a fourth book for Lord of the Rings.