The Abandonwagon

Every night when I sleep in the comfort of my warm, soft, and on nights when I feel particularly lonely, a little bit damp, pullout bed, I stare at the ceiling wondering about how long I can possibly keep putting things into to the massive cupboard on my left before it decides to publicly remind me of what it had in it, mostly old worksheets collected over the years that I've simply been too lazy to throw out. The worrying is often compounded by the fact that the cupboard is located on my right and a few metres up, which isn't so much of a problem if it stays a few metres up, but further assessments of the structural integrity of wood have forced me to dart quickly to the side everytime I open the cupboard.

The strange thing is that even though these old worksheets pose a potential threat to my ability to impress the citizens of Flatland, I simply don't have the motivation to clear them out, which isn't much of a problem anyway since I'm able to quite easily and conveniently rationalize that they are there for the purposes of book-keeping, and that the administration of the school might one day call upon me to resubmit work for exhibition and demonstration purposes, thus allowing me to contribute to the fullest to any Green Week events and so on. But the truth is, I've never had any reason to touch any of the old worksheets that still sit grumpily in the top of the cupboard while investing in the acquisition of exotic fungi. It's been years since I've even looked through any of the documents that I put up there. But the thing is, all these worksheets are the (unwanted) results of late night toiling and contributions to the coffee business, and it just seems terribly wasteful to allocate them into the black void of the rubbish chute. I just want to keep them for absolutely no reason.

Now let's just assume for the sake of linking this to the topic I'm about to discuss that someone wants my old worksheets for reference purposes. Ignoring the obvious integrity violations that come with that, let's just say that I refuse to give it to them on the grounds that they are my worksheets and I have the right to not give it to them. They might argue that I'm simply not using them anymore, so why not let them have it?

And let's just assume, for the sake of the argument that I haven't even told you about here, that someone else had already photocopied my worksheets in the past, and for the reason that I wouldn't give anyone else my worksheets, started making copies of that worksheet and distributing it to those who wanted it. I might get very angry, and possibly make that person stand in front of my cupboard of worksheets while I open it. Here's the question: Is that really fair?

Alright, alright. All that was a rather flimsy and clumsy buildup to the topic of Abandonware, but I just wanted to be able to mention my worksheets. But on to the actual topic of Abandonware.

Abandonware is basically the business (not really, actually) of taking old games or software that aren't being sold anymore and distributing them for free o'er the mossy swamp that is the Internet, and this is usually done by everyone except the companies responsible for the creation of the released software/games. The rationale behind the whole process of distributing old software (which is not actually legal, despite common belief) that isn't being sold anymore is that since the company or companies that created these pieces of old software aren't selling them anymore, and aren't making any sort of profit from them, then surely it stands to reason to simply allow the general public to use the aforementioned software for free, since it simply isn't of any use to these companies anymore.

The creators of the software have responded to this by saying they didn't say that anyone could do that yet, and that while the old software may be old it's still theirs, and that if anyone were to distribute it for free it would be them. Very few software developers actually release old games for free anyway, and so the general public have taken matters into their own hands and simply started distributing old software by themselves anyway, which the creators have labelled as piracy since they didn't have permission to do so. The whole debate then degenerates in the same way that most alcohol based marriages do, with both parties going off into their respective haunts and doing what they were doing, while muttering about how the other party can't see reason. Meanwhile the children are left sobbing in their rooms, or blasting heavy metal.

And the whole thing really is understandable (dropping the analogy). While I take the relatively pubescent stance that Abandonware distributed by third parties without the permission of its creators is still illegal regardless of how much your teeth shine and your love for the American Dream, because the decision of whether to release the old software in question still lies with the software's creators. The problem here is that more often than not, the begging of the public for such software is often met with results of the Oliver Twist variety, and since the software isn't being produced anymore and isn't available on store shelves (or even bins, for that matter), those who want it don't even have the option of purchasing the software. In this case, there is simply no way of obtaining the old software, even if you are willing to pay for it.

And at this point the owners of old software have two options: They can either release the old software for free download and be bathed in rose petals and confetti and never have to worry about fall injuries because of the good amount of people constantly following them around ready to perform a trust fall catch, or they can do what Valve has done for years now, which is distribute their old software online.

Not for free, of course, seeing as how that's the alternative and the point of an alternative is to not be the same as the non- alternative (which is actually an alternative to the alternative anyway, but heigh-ho). But online distribution gets rid of the unfeasibility of having to reproduce old software for distribution via stores, and so provides people with the option of obtaining that old software legally and for a small profit, assuming that the owners of old software charge much less than they originally did, which seems reasonable considering the software's abundance of medical problems by this point.

And Valve have done this amazingly well with Steam (No, I don't get any sort of commission for this. The correct ethical question should in fact be: Why not?). All their games, from the very first Half Life, are available for online purchase and download via Steam, and they also seem to have grasped the concept of making old software very affordable, as seen by their move of making the original Half Life (released in 1998) cost under five US dollars, which makes sense. Valve still gets profit from their old software and the consumers (It seems I've turned American by the end of this article) have the option of purchasing the old software for an affordable price.

And this does several things to the argument that old software should be released for free. Once old software is made available for purchase via online distribution, the argument that old software no longer earn their developers any profit is given good slap on the head, as is the argument that they are no longer available for purchase. From that point, it's up to the owners of the software whether they want to release it for free, but at least the dream of being able to obtain the software is made thoroughly obsolete, and can be replaced by dreams more appealing and affordable.

The only problem that would arise from this solution is what arises from all good ideas (I've yet to patent it as a result of my unbearable humility). That is, once someone does it, just about everyone does it. While that might not be a problem for all ideas, the problem here is that Valve distributes their software by way of Steam, an online client, that must be installed on the user's computer and you have to make an account for it before you start digging around and the whole process is actually quite an ordeal from my previous experiences. The thing is that if every software company were to start doing this, how many clients would you have to install on your computer before you run out of space for the actual software?

So what solutions might there be to this? A single, new, universal client that can access each company's "marketplace", or services like Direct2Drive that pride themselves on online distribution for all sorts of media? What will the online marketplace look like once many companies, not just software or game developers, jump onto the bandwagon? Will their jumping on shift the cart forward by way of momentum or will they break it? Who knows? Meanwhile, all we can do is sit and reminisce about the old software and games that we miss so dearly.

Of Jetpacks and Skis

Being the sort of person that the mass media point to every once in a while while on the topic of violent games and go "He's what we're talking about!", a few days ago I was looking for something to soothe, or rather cater to, the savage beast within me, and so started hunting for first person shooter demos that would dispense the necessary amount of adrenaline to satisfy the fix that I so badly needed. And after a bit of hunting I rediscovered the Tribes Vengeance demos.

Also being the sort of person that people point to and say "He's what we're talking about!" while on the topic of nerds, I promptly started reading about the Tribes series as a whole after playing through and thoroughly finishing the two single player demos. And it was then that I discovered that according to the collective wisdom of Wikipedia that fans of the original Tribes games considered themselves to be playing the only true 3D first person shooter.

Also being the sort of person that can be entertained for a good amount of time by a Word Processor, this got me thinking about subject that I just spent an entire paragraph talking about earlier. But just so I don't alienate everyone else that isn't essentially a scholar when it comes to the Tribes series, I should probably just give a quick introduction to it (That was probably a bit of a stretch, really. I'm really not well versed in the Tribes mythos so I should probably stop talking like I am one.)

While there's a colossal amount of galactic history behind the Tribes series, all you have to know is this. There are jetpacks. These jetpacks are attached to people and this makes the aforementioned people fly. The aforementioned people, also aforementioned twice before, now having the aforementioned jetpacks attached to their aforementioned backs, decide that, quite logically, the thing to do would be to shoot other people with similar jetpacks while flying around (both of the groups of aforementioned people are doing so) while stealing the flags of the other group of aforemntioned people. But grammatical purity aside, the point of the Tribes series is team based objective driven games that also introduce one very important element: mobility.

Everyone in the game has a jetpack and, from Tribes 2 onwards, a set of skis that can be magically summoned to their feet by the touch of a button, though the characters in game don't seem to have to do anything at all, so we can only assume that the skis are in fact clairvoyant, and both are used to traverse massive, sprawling environments that usually consist of many very conveniently smooth hills and mountains. Jetpacks allow the player to gain altitude, while the skis allow players to take advantage of their gravitational potential energy by skiing down hills once they have ascended to the necessary altitude.

This, as you really shouldn't be imagining instead of actually doing so, is immensely fun. About half the fun (correct to about as many decimal points as is really needed) comes from traversing terrain, while the other half can be attributed to everything else. In other words, without jetpacks and skis, an incredibly bizarre combination that has never really been brought together in anything else other than in conversations that end in "that would be awesome" before this series, Tribes simply wouldn't be Tribes. It might still be called Tribes, but there would be a lot less jetpacks and skis, which really isn't the point of the game that would have existed. Never mind, forget that. The point is, the jetpacks and skis contribute a lot to the fun.

And seeing as how hardly any other games have really truly adknowledged the y-axis in game environments at all, one (I'm assuming that this is the current population of people reading this, sadly inclusive of me) has to conceded, at least to a certain degree, that the bold proclaimation made by Tribes fans is somewhat justified. While just about every game that comes out these days (Specifically which isn't really important, since the phrase "these days" seems to be completely acceptable even though the actual amount of days that is meant isn't specified at all. People just seem to understand what you mean and nod their heads in agreement.) don't really focus on vertical movement as much as Tribes did, despite the fact that a good amount of y-axis' are available for use. The 3D aspect of most games seems to be limited to where you aim, but the sensation of being able to move up and down has pretty much just been limited to jumping, usually to a meagre height that would warrant exasperation from the protagonist of Narbacular Drop. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop) The technology of 3D environments seems to have taken a somewhat passive role in actual gameplay.

Which raises the topic of technology and gameplay. Why aren't technological advances, such as the physics engines of today's games, being more heavily implemented into gameplay? While the common expectation that something must move the moment it is hit in a game exists, this doesn't seem to have much of an effect in gameplay, other than the fact that it simply feels unusual and morally incorrect if a cardboard box refuses to yield a shower of bullets that would otherwise invoke a good and healthy amount of screaming from any enemy. It seems to be a practice that is done in game development simply to establish the fact that the game in question is clearly a next-gen game. But what if this technology was implemented into gameplay as a core element?

Portal, for instance, that probably doesn't need anymore polish from me on its critically acclaimed nails than it already has, took advantage of 3D environments and physics as a core part of its gameplay. Momentum, velocity, perspective were all elements of a brilliant game that could only have been done on an 3D engine with proper physics. Call of Duty 4 is another, with a proprietary physics engine with bullet penetration physics and a lot of other things that sound very impressive built into the game, that had an actual impact in gameplay. Cover was no longer something that you could simply loungue behind for very long because of its tendency to disappear after a while.

Physics engines are taking on a the role of an Edwardian chimney sweeper, poor and unnoticed and simply begging for more. We've all spoken of the fabled cone headshot incident in Halo 3 in hushed voices, something that wouldn't have been possible without today's physics engines, and while Bungie, in its intellectual torpor, hasn't had the good sense to take advantage of that IP, why not someone else? A game that implemented launching grabbing and tossing things at people would be very welcome at this point, and the fun derived from using the Gravity Gun from Half Life 2 is a testament to that. Physics engines are there to be made of use of, and we can't possibly pass by our duty to do so, can we?

Liebraries

Hello there

I like libraries. I like them a lot. I like the feeling of being in a place where everyone simply wants to be left alone to drown in whatever novels or textbooks that they happen to be reading, and will react with great adversity the moment they are disturbed in the very slightest because they know that the majority of people in the building are on their side. I like the idea of a place that is put aside for the sole purpose of being able to be left alone, something that I'm not able to find even in my own room at times, so it's nice to be able to sit down and write completely pointless articles on Wordpad (my previous flame used to be Notepad, but we fell out of with each other after I realized that she gave absolutely no regard towards formatting). So I go to libraries a lot, but not, as one would expect, for the sake of the actual resources and books. Goodness no, I find all of that on the Internet. I come here simply because I like the atmosphere's wetness, probably due to the fountain on the ground floor of the library that has no doubt been exhaled and inhaled thoroughly by countless other people who also come here for the atmosphere.

And there do seem to be a lot of people who don't actually come to the libraries for the books. Many of the people sitting at the tables next to the very bright windows that outshine whatever might be on your computer's screen thus making the tables the exact place that you shouldn't sit if you're going to use a laptop, which is also where all the powerpoints are which makes the tables an okay-ish sort of place to use your laptops, have, not suprisingly at all by this point, laptops with them. They are also open and they (the people) seem to be using them a lot.

Maybe they're here because of the environment or for something else, perhaps the free wi-fi. In any case, they don't actually seem to be here for what libraries exist for: books.

The wonderful and late Douglas Adams wrote an article about this that I found in the Salmon of Doubt (which by the way, Gan, you should read once you emerge from the beneath the waves of programming that you seem to be diving into a lot lately). He basically wrote about how some things have features or components added to them that essentially make something else in those things redundant, and thus need to be removed. For instance, advertisments in magazines. Now that many magazines are online, advertisments no longer need to take up more space than the actual articles in the magazines because of links, which only need to be so large to get your attention, and can lead you to an entirely new page with plenty of detailed information about whatever the ad is about. The idea that advertisments need to be intrusive is removed. Online magazines also remove a lot of dead wood from magazines. Some things become redundant along the way, and should be removed.

But we still see magazines that you can actually hold in your hand. Papery ones as well. Which is puzzling seeing as how almost all of us possess some sort of device capable of accessing the internet. But it really isn't as puzzling as it sounds. Magazines still have the advantage of not running out battery, seeing as how they don't have any battery. People still favour the convenience of being able to take out a magazine and read without having to connect to a wireless hotspot, type in the URL of the magazine and so on and so forth. And in actual fact, we've really just subsitutted dead wood for burning already dead things that have become fossil fuels. We haven't actually removed anything overall.

I've got nowhere to go with this, really. Anything random comments on the tagboard, please.

No one can hear you screen.

Here's a thought about the matter of touchscreens. They're not all that omniscient when it comes to input. You may argue that they're incredibly versatile and that their function is only limited to whatever they are programmed to do, and while this sounds very good on paper (something else that is a lot more user friendly), it really doesn't translate all that well onto an actual device, in terms of one thing: precision. Two things actually, but we'll get to them later.

Some might argue that what we're talking about here is in fact accuracy, but they should stop talking now because what I'm really talking about here is precision, quite ironically the more accurate term here.

First, let me just say that touchscreens are still a wonderful idea. Those that argue for its versatility are indeed, in some sense, right. Touchscreens can be incredibly handy in some cases, especially when you want to target something all the way on the other end of the screen on a handheld device, which would be laborious with something like a button cursor, to the point where you find yourself completely uninterested with what you were going to select by the time you get to it. In this case, touchscreens allow for quick and wide access.

Touchscreens also allow for gestures, which takes the pressure of the poor, miniscule screens that most handheld have to hold a ridiculous amount of buttons on them, and so freeing up the screen for more interesting things like epileptic backgrounds. Gestures also allow for more intuitive control. In the case of the iPhone, a rebel in more ways than one, including the area of proper capitalization, to scroll over lists you simply swab your finger across the screen to drag the list down, thus scrolling. It's very intuitive and those using the iPhone for the first time will probably figure it out quickly.

Touchscreens also remove the staggering limitation of how many buttons a small device can hold before it means that you no longer have the option of not accidentally activating your camera when you don't want to. On a touchscreen, you can simply classify buttons into panels, and swap to the set of buttons that you want to use. This means that the functionality of the device is only dependant on how lazy the developers are, which is something that has yet to be worked around.

So if touchscreens improve the range of functions a device has, as well as allow for intuitive control, then why all the fuss, and why the terrible pain in both my thumbs as I type this out on my tiny Tungsten C keyboard. What is wrong with touchscreens?

The problem with touchscreens can be explored using the analogy of... You know, never mind. The problem is that touchscreens lack two things: precision and feedback.

Touchscreens, while incredibly versatile, can also be terribly frustrating. As a Palm user I can testify to this (Listen Apple people, I'll get to you soon. You just wait for a second). A lot of frustration comes from selecting things on lists. Lists cram many little items together, and it's quite often that I can't seem to select what I want to select, and the reason for this is that my fingertip, being the mystical alpine dwelling creature that I am, often covers two items on the list at a time, this means that I usually end up selecting the wrong item.

Sometimes I try to change so that my Palm will still love me, and use the very tip of my finger to target more precisely, but this doesn't seem to work very well, usually because the screen seems to ignore this completely half the time (That phrase is slightly confusing. I apologize), and not respond at all. Even using the stylus yields the same results sometimes.

But many this is simply due to incompetence on the part of Palm. Maybe another company, such as Apple, the democracy crowned king of the touchscreen after the release of the iPhone, will do better?

In order to avoid stoning by all those that can afford iPhones, (Quite honestly, that makes this quite safe, but they may drop the price, so you never know.) I should preface the Inquisition by saying that there are slight improvements. The iPhone's screen buttons are bigger, as is its screen, thus compensating for user belligerence, and gestures do remove the frustration of trying to target those tiny scroll bar buttons. But there still exist problems.

Behind the safety of my anti-tank obstacles I must say this: the keyboard has induced high levels of frustration, ad subsequently, hair loss. The problem with the iPhone's keyboard is not the disregard of capitalization, but rather the same problem that my Palm has with lists. The iPhone's keyboard is simply too small for fast text input. While it does seem like it's a lot larger than it should be, it really isn't. When using Dom's iPhone for reasons that will not be covered here, I constantly ended up reaching for the backspace, only to end up pressing the P. Precision just isn't with touchscreen keyboards, and is especially irritating when you're trying to input lots of text.

The problem here isn't the touchscreen, really. It's the users, specifically the users' fat, myopic thumbs. Human thumbs are simply that big, and this is unfortunate because they're not going to change anytime soon, unless Aldous Huxley is to believed. Users simply have thumbs that are that large, and while they are the cause of the problem, the user remains quite significant when it comes to any device, and unfortunately, developers haven't figured out how to remove the user, and thus remove the problem.

But precision isn't the only problem when it comes to touchscreen input.
If you take a look at a hardware keyboard on a handheld device, the keys are usually much smaller than that of a touchscreen keyboard's, but for some reason they remain easier to use. Why?

The thing that hardware keyboards have that touchscreen keyboards don't is feedback. Whenever you push a button on a hard keyboard, you can feel the button, and this benefits the user in two areas. It informs you that you have pushed the button, through a next hearty click, and it also means that you know precisely how much force you need to press it. Touchscreen keyboards are fairly ambiguous when it comes to this, because there simply isn't any communication between the two. One is never quite sure how hard one should press to "press" a touchscreen button, and it can be distressing when you press too lightly and end up not pushing it at all, or press too hard and end up inadvertently declaring war on your touchscreen, that declares that it is no longer "your" touchscreen, but an individual touchscreen with its own rights and freedom. Hardware keyboards don't present this problem because of force feedback: you know that you have pushed the button when it clicks.

Another thing that helps when using hard keyboards is that you're always able to feel the buttons. In the event that your fingers or thumbs tread into the terrible void of the region in between two keys, you can feel it and correct that. Touchscreen keyboards, on the other hand, don't give you that because keys and the borders between keys all feel the same. As such, you're never quite sure whether you're trying to press two buttons at once.

And these problems themselves have a problem because they can't be solved. A touchscreen will always remain flat, and simply can't deliver the sensation of touch feedback, for letting you know that you've pushed a button or for letting you know the position of your thumbs or fingers. Hardware keyboards have been doing this for years, maybe unintentionally.

And quite honestly I don't think touchscreens will ever overcome these problems. They may become more sensitive and so on, but the human thumb will always remain stubbornly fat, and we humans, not to be outdone by our thumbs, will always require force feedback when pushing buttons. Touchscreens work for certain things, but there comes certain point where some features are beyond it, simply because of the way users are. Sometimes the tendency to rely only on a touchscreen for input can end up limiting the functionality of a device. Developers, like good ol' Steve, shouldn't be afraid to add a few hard buttons to their devices if it will make input more user friendly and efficient.

Developers have to take this into account. Technology and devices may become more sophisticated and so on, but we users won't change. We like our hard buttons.

And so I must let my poor tiny Tungsten C's hard keyboard rest, and I leave you with an obligatory Bow Chicka Bow Wow.

I would like to point out that all of the above, except for the text with the bad posture here, was typed out using a tiny, hard button keyboard on a Tungsten C. The buttons are truly tiny, smaller than the buttons on most mobile phones. Also, one thousand and four hundred words, my fabulosos.

Max Rayne

Today I went on a random hike.

It was an interesting departure from the usual slog of spending a dark afternoon sitting in front of a computer writing a blog entry, or liberating Omaha Beach of the usual American capitalist scum. I say dark afternoon because it's not actually rainy or stormy of any sort, but rather the kind that threatens that it will be rainy or stormy in a while if you don't start taking it seriously, and eventually does break down into a small sobbing fit in the form of an irritating sort of drizzle.

But enough about the rain, because I"ve genuinely had enough of that rubbish.

After waking up at 12 in the afternoon and feeling very disappointed with myself I left my completely desolate dwelling for lunch at Jurong Point, and rather wantonly declared to myself (on the way there, on a road that was quite populated at the time, much to my embarassment) that I would take a completely meaningless hike from Lakeside MRT to Chinese Garden, for the pure gusto of it.

Halfway through my lunch the rather unstable and angsty sky decided to advise me against this, by dropping me a hint or two in the form of more than two rain clouds that proceeded to blot out any hope of my afternoon's plans.

I decided to give the sky a very mortal and electronegative finger, and proceed with my plans for the day anyway.

I took a very nonchalant and depressed ride from Boon Lay to Lakeside, and by this time the sky was already on the verge of suicide, which was quite uncomfortable for me since I was about to step out in full view of it. After alighting I wandered around the MRT station nonchalantly for a few minutes or so, shamelessly procrastinating like an equally suicidal sky about whether or not I should step into the already prominent drizzle and go ahead with the hike or not.

After a while, my interest in the station's architecture eventually fizzled out from nothing to slightly more nothing, and I stepped out into the rain under the comfort of my shaky, equally suicidal umbrella.

Trudging through what was light rain for a while felt a bit stupid at first. At this point, most people would start getting thoughts like "I'm feeling quite stupid right now", or "I could be on an MRT right now." Although it's important to note that most people don't do this sort of thing to begin with, and thus don't get any of these thoughts to begin with. Although after a while the feelings of stupidity gave way to true stupidity, and I marched through the rain for a good distance.

During this trek I experienced different things.

One of them was getting wet. This is strictly not recommended for anyone, unless you happen to be appropriately dressed for this. In the event that you are appropriately dressed for getting wet, however, you probably aren't appropriately dressed by any other standards. In other words, never walk in the open in the rain, even if you have an umbrella, for long distances without shelter.

But it was through this rain that halfway through my trek, I started to feel incredibly lonely, and maybe even a bit stranded. When my entire left side was pelted by liqueous rounds of water all I thought at that point was "I should probably turn back", but then realized with dismay that I was already halfway through, and turning back would mean an equal distance to an MRT station that carrying on would. I felt incredibly stranded at this point, feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere, or rather in the middle of two places that would each be considered somewhere. It was a very strange, disconcerting void.

And at this point I also had a few thoughts about MRT stations. They seem to be safe points of sort, checkpoints that make us feel like we're connected to the rest of the country when we're next to them or in them. There's this strange sense of relief that I get whenever I see an MRT station when I think I might be lost, knowing that that building can take me wherever I need to go. Without an MRT station, one (and quite literally one, because I might be the only one that feels this way) feels lost, having strayed away from a safe point.

And this made me think about LRT stations, branching out from MRT stations into the further away regions. The whole layout of an MRT map seems a bit like a very confused, multi directional tree, that you must play 50 cents each time to climb. Admitedly, it's a rather large tree, so I suppose it's fine.

Speaking of trees, I got quite a nice picture of a tree on the way, using my phone's camera that kicked and screamed as a put it in full exposure of the rain.



The camera is now in the process of recuperation.

So after a long trek through the unforgiving and angsty rain, I found myself wet and exhausted under the slightly less unforgiving shelter of Chinese Garden MRT station. I had half a mind to go off wandering into the depths of Chinese Garden, but then realized that I was only a few stops away from pneumonia, and postponed that for the day.

I should probably do this again.

MRT Walks

Well, it's been quite some time since my last entry, and in the time in between my last entry this one, I've thought about a few things.

The first thought was that I should probably take sometime to stop and think about things for a second. I'm not quite sure why this thought arose, but it just did, and that's all that matters, I suppose.

The second thought was that Wordpad is in fact a lot better and user friendly that Notepad, so why do I even bother with the latter? After all, it takes care of all that formatting nonsense when I copy over text from Notepad into Word, but I probably won't be doing any of that from now on, so let's just move on.

The third thought, and probably the whole point of this entry, is that MRTs go really fast. I know that's probably been figured out for a long time now but a whole lot of people who didn't really bother to take note of that thought and write it down in blog entries, but that really doesn't matter as of now. What matters is that in the process of thinking that, another thought arose, namely the one a few lines (alright, two) below.

When you're riding an MRT, and you look down at the scenery, that's about all it is, isn't it? Just scenery. Someone could be running past a stationary train with big cardboard cutout sceneries and you'd still think that the train was moving, and all that scenery would be just about as interesting as it would be if you were actually in a moving train, psasing by scenery that was made only partially of cardboard, with those bits being so small that you probably wouldn't notice them. But the point I'm trying to make here is that in all the places that you pass by when riding an MRT, how many places have we actually gone down to look at? I mean, it's one thing to say that you pass by a certain building or tree or environmentalist headquarters everytime you go to work on the train, but how many times have you actually gone down to the environmentalist headquarters while carrying a newly cut down tree?
Not very often. After all, there's simply no way you would pass the technology quota with the cell phone you were carrying, but it doesn't even need to be a environmentalist headquarters building. All I'm saying is this:

Why not get a bunch of people, or maybe even just alone (which is likely to be so in my case), and walk from one MRT station to another? Maybe in between two MRT stations that you pass by every single day while travelling to work, school, maritial obligations etc. Instead of passing by and watching the cardboard trees roll just like everyday, why not actually go down and watch the trees get rolled into cardboard? Why not follow an MRT track and take your time to look around you, inciting Disney musical numbers as you go?

The exams are going to be completely history by next wednesday, and they will be reincarnated into the very uncreative form of more exams, but for now we can sleep knowing that those exams will only come next year. There's going to be quite some time avaliable for this sort of thing (the walking, not the exams), so why not do exactly that. I'm inviting anyone who has the time or inclination (or both), to poke the tagboard or poke me on msn so we can settle a day for this. The walk will probably be from Boon Lay to Chinese Garden, but then I'm not really the leading authority on completely existentialist walks from MRT station to MRT station, so why not suggest your own?

A+rts and Literature


Well, it's been a good two months or so since I've put a post, and I feel obligated by the very existence of my blog to do so again, and then subsequently ignore it for the following two months. In other words, this isn't going to be a habit.

It's been after the never ending wave of literature homework slowly descending upon you like the final row of Space Invaders that you just can't seem to hit no matter what, or the final bit of the Centipede that constantly evades your slow, blundering shots, that I've started to notice that my personal interest in the study of Literature is now a de facto Lemming.

Never before have I experienced such an utter repulsion for anything that has the label of "Literature" on it. And since the text in this blog is highly dependant on my personal whims, today we are going to talk about Dadaism.

But since my personal whims have changed drastically since the last paragraph, I choose instead to start this paragraph on a complete tangent. Does the repeated study of something lessen your appreciation for it? I'm certainly not going to try and combat the likes of Stephen Fry, but it's very hard to deny something like this after you've been studying Literature for four years now, and at about the fourth year, it simply doesn't feel like the fourth anymore.

Maybe it's not because of the repeated study of it. Maybe it's just because I don't like the subjects being taught this semester, and I'm starting to be convinced that that's really the case.

Maybe it really isn't the length of which you study something, but what you're studying that determines how much enthusiasm you have for something, but in the case of literature, I'm not really sure it should be something that should be taught in a class like the Sciences or Mathematics.

A very good example is Wordsworth. During Romanticism class we studied one of his poems titled "Expostulation and Reply", which was basically Wordsworth's justification for not spending more time in the study and slacking off in the deeper recesses of a forest on a rock. In the poem, one of Wordsworth's unnamed friends (whose existence is debatable) questions him on why he wastes his time sitting on a rock and enjoying the fresh forest air and the beautiful chirping melodies of Nature when he could be in a dusty study room reading the Classics under a dim candlelight. Wordsworth then proceeds to answer, "Well, duh."

It was in a overly air conditioned, depressingly light classroom that I received this enlightenment.

We've taken Wordsworth's philosophy and printed it in books, but what we don't realize is that the book has in fact been printed upside down. Sitting in rooms studying is precisely what Wordsworth was against. He wanted people to go out into the woods (or the AYE, in our case) and sit alone and think. So thus we take his advice and study it.

Maybe some things can't be stuffed into a graded cirriculum, simply because it goes against their very Nature (anyone who got that, my sincerest condolences). Some things simply need to be taught for the sake of it, for the enjoyment of the student, not for their potential use in the future.

But I suppose that's not going to happen any time soon. Literature and the Arts are always going to be accessed and graded like just about any other subject. And it's after writing this blog entry that I'm going to have to finish up that analysis of Percy Shelley's poems that I'll get a one grade penalty for if I'm so much as one day late.

Bother Tongue

It is probably in the distinct memory of whoever even bothers believing me these days that I mentioned that a Dark Knight review would be coming up on the site, the only fatal flaw being that at this point of time, I strongly advise disregarding anything I say regarding predictions about what will be coming up on this blog, since chances are high that they probably won't. (Congratulations if you are incredibly confused at this point of time, because you have just, as most people tend to say, "gotten the joke" here. If you aren't just ignore everything you've read previously that's in the bracket, then proceed to curse Samuel at the top of your lungs for putting this notice at the back of the bracketed text. It's probably best I close the brackets before they start becoming too proud of themselves.)

I do, however, have an interesting topic at hand here, which is pretty much what the rest of this entry is about. (Dammit, paragraph 1.) And this here is based on a snippet of a conversation I had with Rashidah. Not so much a snippet, since this was pretty much the entire conversation, but shut up you nit-picking git.

Rashidah: Samuel, do you still take Chinese?
Samuel: *gives a stare that would have disheartened Nelson Mandela* Unforturnately, yes.
R: Oh.
S: I don't want to though. I learn nothing in Chinese.
R: Ya, I also don't want to learn Malay.
S: The only thing I've learnt is why I speak English.
R: *Rashidah's trademark laughter that is untranslatable into text.*

And that alone pretty much makes the rest of this entry compltely redundant, which can be pretty much likened to the trailer of every single Hong Kong film ever made, but I digress (I'm not quite sure what the point of pointing that out is, but I've just realized that if I keep up this bracket nonsense it could cause jealously in the unbracketed majority.)

But the point is, to me, learning Chinese is quite redundant. Or rather, learning Chinese to the degree that we are right now is redundant. And the reason for that is this:

I'm never going to study or work in a country where Chinese is the main language.

I'm simply terrible at Chinese. So much to the point that I can emphatize with any Western masochist that attempts to learn the language. To me learning the language any more simply won't make me any better at it. About 80 percent of the vocabulary I've been taught in the last 10 years I've forgotten, which in the Great Wall of Vocabulary is nothing more than a brick, and I've no desire to tour anymore of the thing.

But here's the thing. If I'm no longer learning anything in Chinese, other than for the sake of passing that final A-level examination, why am I still studying it?

On reflection I need to start asking questions that need to be answered by other people.

But here's one that might require some sort of reader interaction. Why do I need to take that examination? I'm likely to fair horrible in it, and pretty much remain right where I am. Why take it if I'm horrible at it, and let it show up on my resume?

As is the common Asian way, I blame the government, and following the next step of the Asian way, subsequently withdraw that statement for fear of getting my arse dragged to the Asian Court of Law. But it is undeniable that one thing that the Singapore government has stressed in "The Things that make us Singaporean" is that most of us are bilingual, and it's quite unlikely that they're going to drop this stand anytime soon, since this seems to be a great selling point (Human Rights activists, feel free to twitch uncontrollably right here) for graduates when it comes to studying or working overseas.

But what seems to be happening is that the exact same thing is happening in other countries. English, thanks to the explosive prowress of the US, seems to be accepted as the lingua franca in the global community when it comes to international interaction (five times, quickly. go.), and foreign students are no doubt striving to avoid the fate of Chairman Mao as we speak.

Can you then say redundant?

Possibly not. While the international lingua franca might be English, the chances that the local population of any country immediately starts taking up English as its commonly spoken language is simply unlikely. It's the language they've always known and it seems unlikely that they switch to English just because those snobby Hamburger eating undergraduates are doing it.

So I suppose I'm just going to have to finish up the five Chinese writing assignments I have due right now, while I nibble the edge of my BK Tendergrill.

The Sound of Violence

The speculative probability of me actually going to see a movie
on Friday, specifically The Dark Knight, and thus rendering my use of the phrase "a movie" grammatically incorrect (the correct phrase being "the movie"), leaves me with the equally speculative possibility of actually having something to write about within the
last month or so, putting me below even the most shameless magazines.

But the interesting thing is that not only are the usual rabid fanboys (more grammatically correct to refer to them as a single entity as of now) of comic books watching this movie, but there have been signs that a good percentage of the audience may in fact be members of the human race.

The Dark Knight is apparently more than just a comic book movie, putting it somewhat at the level of being analogous to Bioshock, the wonderful game/philosophyfest, with the difference of Bioshock being the dumbed down successor to System Shock, whereas The Dark Knight, being the latest installment in an army of already existing Batman films, only serves to further lengthen arguments concerning evolution.

So while I personally promise the a review of the movie after I finally get to live through the greatness that is The Dark Knight, I might attempt to persuade someone else possessing what is known as an actual social life to review the movie as well, thus leaving us with two different kinds of absolutely gushingly positive reviews to work with, as opposed to just one.

The Quiz of the Dragon

There comes a time at some point of time in time where a misanthrope like myself has no outings of any sort to speak of on his blog, so he takes to filling up 100 question quizzes that happen to be on the blogs of other people like Kylie, who strangely enough aren't misanthropes that have no outings to speak of. So just for the sake of consuming pixels on the screen of you, the reader, let me just say that before you start reading my answers to this quiz, it really doesn't seem like the kind of quiz catered to misanthropes like myself.

So here you are: (And the 100 question quiz along with it)

001. What's the connection between you and the last person that
called you? - Utter enemies.

002. Do you ever turn your cell phone off? - I turn off a lot of
things, but hardly my cell phone.

003. What happened at 10.00am today? - I was in bed, so a lot of
things happened.

004. When did you last cry? - When my computer couldn't run
Battlefield 2.

005. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter? -
Those awesome crackers made by some local biscuit company whose
name I can't remember, and most probably never will.

006. What do you want in your life right now? - Possibly an
attachment to some awesome professor.

007. Do you carry an umbrella when it rains, or just put up your
hood? - I'm not usually carrying an umbrella when it rains, and
I've never associated myself with any of them.

008. What's your favorite thing to have on your bed? - After I've
got a job, a stable income and whatnot, I'm thinking of getting a
comforter.

009. What bottom are you wearing now? - Track pants. Because
they're inexplicably nice.

010. Whats the nicest text in your inbox say? - "Your viva for
the module "Vectors in 2 and 3 Dimensions" will be on the 19th of
June".

011. Do you tend to make a relationships complicated? - Well, I
don't make relationships.

012. Are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone? - Well
technically, no.

013. What was the last movie you caught? - Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I thought it was fairly epic, but a
bit cliched.

014. What are you proud of? - My epic humility, but mostly my
hair.

015. What does the oldest text message in your inbox say?" - It's
a discount alert from Tecman.

016. What was the last song you sang out loud? - The Scientist by
Coldplay

017. Do you have any nicknames? What are they? - Yes, actually. A
lot of people call me Samuel.

018. What does your last received text message say? - ??? I"m
invited? Don't think I will be going though... from Leroy, about
the blogger circle. Speaking of which-

019. What time did you go to bed last night? - Last night? Well,
about 1.00.

020. Are you currently happy? Well, I had dinner.

021. Who gives you best advice? That's a good one.

022. Do you eat whipped cream straight from the can? - But is a
fetus really a human being?

023. Who did you talk on the phone with last night? - I think it
was Shudder. I don't know.

024. Is anything bugging you right now? - What question is this?
24? Well, yes.

025. What/Who was the last thing/person to make you laugh? -
The second episode of RVB Reconstruction.

026. Do you wear toe socks? - I do wear socks.

027. Who was the last person you missed a call from? - Shudder

028. Have you ever had your heart broken? - Squashed, maybe.

029. What annoys you most in a person? - Refer to question 1.
Presumptous ignorance.

030. Do you have a crush on anyone? - That does not compute.

031. Have you ever done cocaine? - Well, I don't remmeber doing
it.

032. What is the colour of your room? Green.

033. Would you kill someone you hate for a billion dollars? The
last time I checked billion dollars wasn't enough to bail you out
of the murder sentence.

034. Do you believed in the saying "talk is cheap"? Absolutely
not. It's completely free.

035. Who was the last person to lay in your bed? Sadly, me.

036. Who was the last person to hug you? - I'm going to be
getting a lot of emails from this, but I think it was a long
distance hug from Darryl.

037. Did anyone see the last person you kissed? - Did anyone see
the last person I kissed? I honestly don't remember.

038. Do you have a life? Thinking of getting one soon.

039. Have you ever thought someone died, when they really didn't?
- Nelson Mandela.

040. What is the reason behind your profile song? - If you're
talking about Eyes of the Tiger, then simply because I admire the
guy who sang it, seeing as how it's completely impossible to do
so .

041. Who was the last person you saw in your dream? Jar Jar
Binks. Or the coroner.

042. Last time you smiled? Reading Kylie's answers to this quiz.

043. Have you changed this year? To the dismay of the residents
of my previous set, yes.

044. What are you listening to right now? The sound of crickets
outside my flat.

045. Are you talking to someone when you doing this? No.

046. Do you walk with your eyes open or closed? Generally a good
idea to keep them open.

047. Is there a quote you live by? I pity da foo, I suppose.

048. Do you want someone you can't have? Anything I can't have, I
most possibly don't want, so no.

049. Have you ever played an instrument? A recorder. And a
harmonica. It was most tragic.

050. What was the worst idea you've had in this week? Cycling
with a black T-shirt on.

051. What were you doing last night at 11.00pm? Saving the human
race.

052. Are you happy with your love life right now? It's generally
non-existant, so yes.

053. What song describes your love life? Blow me Away by Breaking
Benjamin.

054. Does the person know that you like him/her? - Are you
listening to yourself?

055. Who always makes you laugh? Mostly Stephen Fry.

056. Do you speak any other language other than English? - A bit
of chinese, and several dialects of 1337.

57. Are you blond? - But what IS blond?

058. What your middle name? - The Tormentor. Or at least, I wish
it was.

059. What are you doing tomorrow? Going to church, coming back,
and then being bored for the rest of the day.

060. What do you think you are like? A plastic apple. Looks
promising but quite empty.

061. Who will you choose to die with? The nearest estate agent.

062.Where have you been today? Right here.

063. What game do you play often? Too much Halo.

064. Who are you missing right now? Anyone who's as bored as I
am.

065. If you've to choose between friends & love, who will you
choose? - I don't.

066. What are you doing right now? Doing this quiz.

067. Which primary school are you from? Juying Primary, some
completely unheard school with a building composed of the
groggriest colors since the 1970s.

068. Name 3 colours that you like. Jet Black, Shiny Porsche
White, And Quicksilver.

069. What emotion do you like to show? Completely apathy.

070. What is life to you? An episode of Oprah. Usually quite
boring and never as good as it used to be.

071. If you have something troubling you, what will you do?
Proceed to intellectually bitch to the nearest person.

072. Who did you last chat with in msn today? Abbeh. About
perspective and a Master Chief cosplayer, and subsequently her
split personalities.

073. Who do you admire the most? Unfortunately anything I start
to admire usually degenerates into some form of envy, so I really
can't name anyone here.

074. Which month are you born in? - In my opinion, October.

075. How are you feeling right now? Bored enough to be doing this
quiz.

076. What is the time now? 6:25pm.

077. Where are you now? - In a stuffy bedroom in a flat in
Singapore, though I honestly would rather be somewhere in the
Pacific, seeing as how something dramatic happens there every
summer.

078. What colour did you use to dye hair? White, though I later
found out that it was in fact completely ordinary shampoo.

079. Why are you doing this test? I do believe I answered that.

080. What do you do when you're moody? Complain aloud till I fall
asleep. Also happens to be what I do when I need to fall asleep.

081. At which age you wish to get married? Not so much when I
"wish to" than when it might actually happen, and I can't say for
sure.

082. Who is more important to you? A lover or friends? Strangely
enough, my attention tends to go to the ones who are more
existent, so I would say friends.

083. Do you think you have enough confidence? Possibly.

084. Who is the person you trust the most? What's it to you?

086. If you can have a dream come true, what would it be? I'd
like to be a film director and script writer, actually. In doing
so I hope to completely demolish local tv.

087. What is your goal for this year? Redeem my atrocious grade,
as well as my previous attempts to redeem my atrocious grade.

088. Do you believe in eternal love? Well, I'm Christian.

089. What feeling do you love most? That smug moment after
hinting a relationship between two people, while both proceed to
give you the "I would strangle you if given the chance look while
being extremely embarassed at the same time.

090. Do you really think its Global Warming now? I'm in
Singapore, so that question really doesn't mean anything.

091. What feeling do you hate the most? Mind-numbing boredom,
easily quenched by doing 100 question quizzes.

092. Do you cherish every single friendship of yours? Mostly.

093. Do you believe in God? - Refer to question 88.

094. Who cares for you the most? - Refer to question 93.

095. What do you think is the most important thing in your life?
Refer to question 94.

096. What'll you bring when you fight? - A Mjolnir Mark V powered
exoskeleton, and a DV Camera.

097. What have you regretted doing in your whole life? Nothing as
of yet, but I'm suspecting that might change.

098. What would you feel when everyone no longer cares for you?
I'd feel quite pissed, I suppose.

099. What if your stead two-timed you? If? I'm also quite
suspicious of the use of the term "stead".

100. Love with a guarantee of heartbreak , or never to be loved
at all? There's not much disappointment to be had from something
that you've never had, so I'm thinking the latter.

Every now and then I find that reading through the countless textbooks that currently define the space of my cupboard seems rather pointless, and that learning all this completely incoherent and completely unrelated information doesn't seem to have any purpose, following the trend of things that are completely incoherent and unrelated.

So every once in a while I find myself striving to make use of the completely incoherent and unrelated information piled up inside my brain and threatening to tear my skull a new skylight (the first one orignating sometime during Primary school, where I was under the impression that Yoda spoke the truth about size).

So having gone for a rather eventful and amusing mafeya meeting at the Botanic Gardens, I'd like to ask if anyone reading this is (assumingly, if you are reading this, then there's really no need to ask, now is there?) bored out of their skylight infested skulls, that if you would like to join me in starting a project on something. I'm not sure what, but something intellectual. Maybe building a trebuchet, or writing a movie script, or just making a video based on our efforts to build a trebuchet or write a movie script. Whatever your current sitaution might be, feel free to scrawl all over the tagboard to your right.

Operation Get Shudder the Hell out of There

Twas a fine Saturday evening when Shudder knocked on my MSN window spouting profanities and singing ballads of needing to get out of the house. (Proof that once again I need to rework my definition of "profanities".) He beseeched that I find a way to get him out of the house, then decided to spoil the whole puzzle for me by promptly suggesting that a mafia gathering or blogger circle in school would be most appropriate (it should be noted that if you are shocked at the idea of a mafia gathering in school being appropriate, then you either don't know me, visited this blog by accident, or both).

So in keeping with the "No Child left behind" policy, I've decided to call for another blogger circle on this Monday, June 09. Anyone interested in this operation, feel free to decorate the tagboard with an elaborate mosaic of punctuation, or simply say that you're interested.

Lolz in Translation

At this point of time, it probably isn’t worth mentioning that I give no sort of regard to copyright law whatsoever, but seeing as how I’ve just started this article and have absolutely no idea how many words I can possibly crank out like a broken record, it’s my firm belief that I should just play safe and throw in a couple (it can be seen from this that my definition of couple has led to the possibility of the family line either ending here, or branching in all directions) of words here.

Abbeh has already written something along the lines of this topic, but I’m still going to write about it, so if you don’t like it, then feel free to stick your fingers in your eyes and pretend I’m writing about something else.

Before that though I should probably say that this article’s topic was a result of the mini blogger’s circle that we held on Thursday (in fact, it wasn’t so much held as passed around like some sort of diabolical potato), and it being the first blogger’s circle, there really isn’t much to compare it to so I suppose we can’t even call it mini. But the main point is that it achieved it’s purpose in giving me something to write about. And while the Daily Refusal pretty much remains in limbo, I should probably add that it might take on the form of a new blog, so keep your hopes (and suspicious) up.

It wasn’t long after we all got together at the canteen and started randomly drifting into two groups, consisting of Me and Abbeh in the first, and the other consisting of everyone else. Shudder was sort of a drifter, and if there’s one way to describe his involvement in the discussion, then I’d have to say that he was doing a cross stitch.

Abbeh brought up the topic of everyone’s favorite cake firing, portal eating fun-fest, Portal. Kylie, strongly believing that such a topic alienated everyone that wasn’t completely obsessed with Portal (No, I know, someone needs to help her), gathered her brethren and started another discussion. At this point of time me and Abbeh pretty much slogged out on an article that she found (shut up), which can be seen here:

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Portal_is_a_feminist_masterpiece_great_read

Trying to make my article feel like two articles instead of one has already been tried and pretty much failed, so allow me to summarize the article in the following way:

1. Portal is feminist.
2. The portal gun is analogous to vagoo.
3. GlaDOS is a maternal figure.
4. The Cube is a paternal figure, which is later incinerated.
5. Ergo ergo ergo, QED, W5, Portal hates 49 percent of the world’s population.

All the allegories drawn in that article were pretty much viable, save for number 4. While I would have accepted the analogy of the Cube being representative of emotional burden or emotion itself, I never thought of the Cube as a father figure (and I refuse to acknowledge that floozy of a pyramid) to begin with, and still can’t. And while it is true that all the other allegories drawn are less masculine in nature than the other elements you see in other first person shooters, and give it a more female friendly atmosphere, if you take away the allegory of the Cube, you pretty much tone down or entirely remove the element of feminism.

It’s at this point of time where the topic of over-interpretation comes in.

One just can’t help but feel that the author of that article is just trying too hard to get that interpretation out of Portal, despite the fact that Valve might be half composed of curly mustaches with matching berets, with bodies to go along with them.

In other words, how far can one go before in his (take that, Portal) interpretations before they can be considered “too far”?

Some might suggest that the point where the interpretations are no longer of the author’s intentions might be a limit, but then you have works like those in visual arts, where the works don’t have a definite interpretation, and are just left there for the sake of making you think (once in a long while).

So does this mean that any work can be used as a basis for any argument, provided that the one using it can provide proper justifications for such a link? And I believe that given enough backflips and literary spasms, a link can be made between the most distant of things, such as children and childhood, or holidays and enjoyment. Given enough effort, such links can be made.

Probably not. While such links can be made, the limit to which these links are believable would be dependant on the audience.

But to a certain extent, such as in milder examples, like the article above, certain stretches can be made, and while I do find that disagreeable, it really all matters on how much I find it believable, and that pretty much varies from person to person.

So not having enough motivation to link this to the topic of peer pressure and the power of the majority, let’s just end this article here, and go back to whatever it was that we were doing, be it writing another article or making fun of the opposite gender.

Writer's Blog

It's been quite a while ever since my last entry touched upon anything in detail that would shame Blu-Ray, so I've decided to do that once again. This post will most possibly be concerned with the Blogger circle. Most probably having blogged more about the blogger circle than during the actual damn thing, in this entry I hope to discuss and meander about a few key issues and concerns with the event.

The blogger circle was put together when Cancy and I started discussing about the inadequecies of our school's Journalism club, and their ability to publish 2006's yearbook and the year 2007 (punctually, of course). And having decided on the fact that there wasn't any interesting material to read within the school compounds (save for the library, but we're specifically talking about quiet places here). So I suggested something along the lines of a self-written, community based paper, and decided to dub it "The Daily Refusal", mostly because it was a catchphrase, but also mostly because of fun, laughter, peace and joy.

The blogger circle eventually came into the picture (albeit somewhat disorientated) and the idea of it started meandering around until we invited more people, and then finally decided on actually having the event. And while I do admit we may have gotten our priorities a bit mixed up, variety is always important, as is the reason why I never intend to go into medical practice.

The idea mostly sprung from countless random yet intellectual conversations about homework, work, and everything else. The common sentiment was that these conversations were mostly wasted, since we all we had from them was lots of fun, and that being of no practical use whatsoever, decided to put these conversations into tangible and incriminating form.

The only remaining minor details include how the circle will actually be conducted.

The strange thing about doing things in general is that its usually most difficult when you're conciously trying your best to carry them out. This means that actually getting the usual ramblings so easily avaliable to us is actually going to be harder than a titanium gobstopper during the actual event.

The best possible way in which the circle can be conducted would be to simply find a nice place to gather, get food and drinks, then let the conversation slowly flow in as much as the drinks. I'm also sure that we're all appreciative if more than drinks flow into this event, so if anyone recently defied the laws of improbability and casino blacklists, we'd be more than happy to bear the burden with you.

The only problems (aside from all the other problems) with this sort of event is that it tends to peter out after a while, and the partcipants and guests start to float away to attend the more exciting blogger circles in the region of Clementi.

So alternatively, we could just hold the whole event in a podcast sort of style, but that in turn forces those who would rather be talking about something else in the discussion (everyone taking EL4103 reading this is experiencing an emotion known commonly as nostalgia. Everyone else is experiencing an emotion called dread.)

So the final alternative I have to offer is this: (hopefully resulting in four mechanical tentacles being welded to my back)

Have three or four mikes in seperate places, with plenty of food and drink around (because mikes and drinks go together like the characters of everyone's favorite Shakespearean tragedy), and everytime a conversation results in a discussion going on, those involved can then shimmy over to the mike and begin their discussion there, sharing the mike (hopefully simultaneously for the sake of my photo album) and sharing their thoughts. Anyone who wants to join the discussion can then shimmy over and subsequently fight for possession of the mike (or the nearby Lays).

Ideally, such a setup allows anyone to join a discussion when they want to, and also allows multiple discussions to go on at the same time.

Of course, having been expelled from the heights of Olympus, this setup is clearly vulnerable to all sorts of drawbacks and as a subsequent result, needs meatshield.

Tagboard?

The Hypathetical Effect

Everyone in the right state of mind (namely, not in Iowa), would have noticed that the school holidays are here (unless you happen to be a member of a lineage of katana wielding badasses). And while it has been something of anticipation for the last six months or so, it probably still is.

It simply isn't what you would have anticipated it to be. And while that may not be true as of yet, by the laws of induction it should be quite safe to say that from the last nine years of our lives, a trend can be observed. The holidays usually seem to be a lot more thrilling and relieving before the actual thrilling and relieving happens. That is to say, it disappoints.

Strangely enough, such a phenomenon is no longer limited to holidays (as of the 2008 patch). Many other things are usually a lot better and appealing before they're actually avaliable. And while the examinations do come to mind upon first mention of such a thing, it can't be denied that many a time, disappointment should be attributed to not to the object of disappointment (no suprise there), but to the human imagination.

Having such a lengthy amount of time to ferment thoughts of anticipation across the period of time in which one is deprived of the object of anticipation, by the time the object is acquired, the actual experience is terribly dampened by having experienced the... experience about ten times or so mentally.

Now about that blogger circle...

Food for Blog

It's been about six hours or so since I knew the sweet scent of freedom, though the possiblity of being institutionalized is marginally possible, I'm thinking that attempting life in the outside world is still possible as long as I have a second chance.

That said, I believe it's important for all ex-convicts like ourselves to get together and talk about how the world has changed since we last saw it. But no longer having access to old woodland sheds in the middle of the forest, we now have to make do with classy cafes and pristine eateries. Dark times we live in.

There are a few tentative locations for such a meeting.

a. Someone's house, preferably one with a trampoline.

b. A cafe, preferably with coffee that costs more than the caviar at the Ritz.

c. The Ritz.

d. In the event that we can't possible have access to any of these places, we could attempt some sort of pilgrimage through the city, and generally talking about things.

Any suggestions, on the tagboard please.

The Circle of Lies

For those who speculate that the writer of this blog might have turned to self blood liberation and poetry, fear not. He's still as jaded as a old Singaporean pawn shop. But the purpose of this post isn't to discuss the profits of such an establishment or to offer emotional help to those who need it, rather, it's purpose is to call for a blogger circle gathering.

The wonderful BCG (because everyone knows that without an acronym, something couldn't possible last for more than 1 month) is a hypothetical meeting, but we aim to remedy that. It mainly consists of roughly as many bloggers as possible getting together in person (though some online meetings may be held) to talk about stuff. Recent issues, the future, and possibly even clothing sales should the situation get desperate. In other words, it is not a meeting with conversation, but rather a meeting FOR conversation. In other words, come on down here and talk.

No one can possibly imagine my ecstacy at the moment.

And so, I beseech (not since 3 years ago) to all bored bloggers and adolescents to tag my tagboard (although if you are a boring and out of fashion individual then you could simply type in it.) if they're interested in such a potentially pointless meeting. But then again, who believes in this sort of wishful thinking?

Right back Edu

One flaw of the education system is that it assumes the simple child is 100GB thumbdrive. The other flaw of the education system is that it assumes that this harddrive will never crash.

But really, at the end of the day, there is only so much one can learn during their sixteen or more years of sentence, And this is where some interesting points start to rise out of the ground after all three magical jewels have been placed at their respective goddess statues.

Suppose there was a kid that possessed the maximum learning ability of his generation. (I'm afraid that due to privacy reasons I cannot give you Darr- whoops, said too much) Now suppose that his entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of new knowledge, and that all his income comes straight from an unlimited source. His entire life is spent searching for new breakthroughs and so on and so forth. (Except for his PS3 sessions and bus pilgrimages on weekends.) After he dies (shattering the faith of many female high school juniors around the world), he leaves behind all the knowledge, wisdom, and torrents he had discovered. The next generation in turn has its own Darryl work on this knowledge.

So the question is (after many paragraphs of blithering) is this: how long can this cycle go on? And while I could turn you to the Tour de France what I really should be telling you is that the possibility of a point where the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is no longer dependant on how much there currently is, but the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is dependant on... well, one's lifetime. Will there be a time period where one's lifespan is no longer enough time to learn what has been discovered over the past years before one finally gets all the answers anyway? In more other words, when will it be that the human brain cannot accumulate all learnt knowledge before it dies?

So where is this all going? (And while I am tempted to ask for a minute or two and get back to you later, it looks like I'm going to have to do some impromptu) What this might mean is that there might be a point in the future where no more scientific advancements can be made because no one can learn all the knowledge necessary to make those advances before they die (and even Walt Disney won't help us then). Throw in the fact that lifespans have been dropping ever since Adam got his craving for deliciously evil fruits and there really is a reason to fill the basement with dried rations. But there might be a solution.

Using previously accumulated knowledge, if we could somehow extend our own lifespan, more advances could be made. And this is where topics like transhumanism (and the Florida Bar) start popping in.

So while we're all hurrying down to the grocery store to buy the necessary food and ammo, let's just give this topic a little thought.

Tagboard, anyone?

Hol's well that ends hell

Having takne it upon myself at the beginning of every school holiday to contribute to the giant gaping void that is our planet's ozone layer, I've decided to write about the rather controversial topic of controversy.

It would be rather expected if about half my readers (I'm sorry, wrong word there? "my"?. Silly, arrogant little me.) immediately made the planet less unhappy by a negligible amount the moment I mentioned this topic, but this is probably what writers (from this it can be seen that I am really not one individual, but a collective entity composed of thousands of individuals) as "self topic syndrome" or STS, if you're the kind of person who goes through a cardiac arrest and dies if you don't get the opportunity to puzzle people every half a minute or so.

In fact, let's drop all this controversy nonsense and just talk about STS instead.

Many a writer tends to reach a certain point in their lives where they can no longer write anything (or think about anything to write about) the topic that they've been writing about for years. This may range from large smelly pointed hats categorizing young children, or generally insulting things about the physical form of God who came down to wash our sins away so that we may be entered into the kingdom of heaven. And many a writer will then try to write about writing itself.

This usually results in the vain sacrifices of millions of trees around the world for the cause of dissecting the process of sacrifing millions of trees around the world.

But the root of this problem usually comes around from trying to write something for the sake of being different, and this is where Dan Brown needs to start being ashamed of himself. So before I'm silenced let me just say this:

There's really no need to write about something different. What a writer really has to do is... well.. bonus points for the one who guesses this. Very simply, write. Write about what you want people to know, or what you think about something. Many a time have I found my thinking process get cut off by simply thinking "Is this going to be a good one?". If you're currently experiencing that, my advice would be to shut down your computer (or typewriter, depending on how many medical conditions you have at the moment) and go for a cup of coffee (or an IV drip), then come back when you've seen the error of your ways.

The-vice

So after having shamelessly delayed all of my china entries save for the one promising them, I have had no choice but to churn out useless filler entries to appease the general masses (Norwegians not included).

Allow me to defend myself, Your Honor, by clarifying that this is due to the advent of the new school year and that most of the time that would have been spent sitting on my bed and sipping apple juice mixed with sprite while mercilessly massaging my keyboard are now spent sitting in a classroom with twenty one other people who would rather be sitting at home on their beds sipping apple juice mixed with sprite and massaging their keyboards. In other words, it's been a productive first month of the new school year.

But every weekend I do get the opportunity to sit down on my bed and pull out my beloved laptop (or Palm, in this case) and catch up on old times, as well as liberate at least forty people of their heads virtually. Of course, most of the time was spent on the latter but now that the recent head pandemic has passed, it now gives us the opportunity to move over to more intellectual entries. (These may include the vague possiblity of Samuel finally producing another entry, but as I said, intellectual discussions please.)

So once again we find ourselves brushing upon the topic of De Thevice, a hypothetical device that boasts the features of all the current portable devices that are relevant to us today, such as the mobile phone (which also happens to be a hybrid device) and the mp3 player and laptop.

But why bring up such a controversial and heretic topic at such a controversial and heretic time?

For those who happen not to own a 360 or Wii (look, it's a fact that we're going to have to face sooner or later, my dear Sony fanboys.), many other devices may have drawn your attention (with the merits of Adobe Photoshop).

Most of them may be hybrid devices, (though it is my strict belief that we should judge them based on their character and not their parentage) such as the PSP, PS3, iphone, and so and so forth and God forbid that Sony every create any thing that doesn't have a name starting with P. Earlier on, a similar attempt to bring two distant devices in holy matrimony ended in a abrupt seperation: The N-gage.

We have yet to see how the iphone performs (hopefully something along the lines of beatboxing), but the PS(P+3) have both failed, or at least not performed as well, in terms of the secondary functions they boasted. In the PS3's case, the features of a home entertainment system (also known locally as the little sister), and in the PSP's case, also an entertainment system, but rather portability instead of resolution ten times higher than anything to be found on the USS Enterprise.

The PS3 failed because of its irrational need for Blu-Ray (still it refuses any help, much to the dismay of its family), a new disc format which capable of holding a lot more than DVDs (in the same fashion where Jean Grey can hold a lot more than the Juggernaut), but because of the already existing popularity of the more masculine DVD (a great apology to all the feminists reading this blog, and a greater enquiry as to why they are reading it). The blu-ray disc also seems to fail in the very area it claims to excel in: resolution. While it may be true that blu-ray holds more than your average RPG character (will the real Link please stand up?), it fails in allowing the human eye to catch up (since the days of being able to project this month's stocks onto a wall using your eyes are still but a dream), since most people agree that there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference in terms of resolution between DVD and blu-ray. So while blu-ray may be superior to DVD technically, in terms of praticality mother still knows best.

And yet despite the failure of such devices, the market moves increasingly towards the siren-like wails of multi function devices. The mobile phone (or comms droid, if you've decided to pop back into the 20th century to get away from all the nukes) you carry in your hand is a testament to this. Chances are if you aren't playing Snake 2, you've got a camera in your phone. Then after failing miserably at level 250, you proceed to enquire of your friend about a multiplayer bluetooth match. Suddenly the mobile phone is an entertainment device as it is a communication device. (Studies have shown that entertainment and communication are not to be confused, especially if you have a diplomat for a buddy.)

So why is it that the multi function mobile phone (or as everyone calls it today, the mobile phone) has thriven like Soviets in a library, and yet devices such as the N-gage have failed despite their very aim being incoporating multiple functions into one device?

Let's take a look at the problems with the N-gage, as well as other issues that might arise with similar devices:

1. The N-gage can be compared to that of progressive creationism. By compromising in both areas of a phone and a gaming device, it proceeded to flip on its transexual arse and die. The screen was taller than it was wide, which was more of a desirable feature in women than electronics, and the dialing pad was impossible to use without both hands. The original N-gage is also well known for glueing tacos to people's heads: instead of putting the screen to your face as you talked, you had to press the side of the N-gage onto your cheeks (hi there!), leading to great distress and a rapid climb in employment of personal pyschiatrists. So what did the N-gage fail in? User friendliness. By trying to stuff too many features into one device than was possible at the time the N-gage compromised on all of them, as well as user input.

2. As demonstrated in Iron Man's fight with the Hulk battery life is terribly important. And since fuel cells and strange aliens from space that supply infinite energy haven't been discovered yet, we require the use of the Lithium Ion/ Lithium Polymer/ Nickel Ion Battery. So far, these work fine in common devices, lasting about three days, in the case of phones, without charging and several hours for laptops. But what we can see from this is that different devices have different power requirements depending on their features. So while it might be possible to play cell-shaded games on the PSP, you might end up getting defeated by the devious "Low Battery" alert than the final boss' desperation move.

3 Fermat is generally known as a very mean person who enjoyed leaving mathematical dilenmas for the rest of the world to disprove/prove/get infuriated by even after his death, so it's no suprise that a single "o" could change anthing, because format is usually one of the problems when it comes to a portable electronic device. To solve the problem of having different formats for the exact same thing, many companies churn out converters, which usually can't be uninstalled or send adware into your computer like Noah sending chupacabras into the top deck of the Ark.

4. One common thing between women and electronics is that size does matter. Bringing your girlfriend to a bowling alley can be very embarassing without the right kind of girlfriend, especially when it turns out that the bowling alley was in fact your new portable cell phone. It's generally a rule that durability is inversely proportional to size, because as more features get crammed into a device, more components are needed and to keep the little bugger in the palm of your hand the components have to be made smaller, and thus more vulnerable to damage. Size may also affect user accessiblity, as seen in the case of small keyboards.

So what are the features to be desired in The Device?

Read everything that has been written since the numbers started. Now rectify those problems.

But as seen from the failure of the N-gage, we probably won't be getting such devices till the advent of the PS5 (or perhaps when Sony stops naming everything with the suffix of P and a numeral).

But there are also problems with the very concept of a multi purpose device covering all your needs.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Many a method has been devised to protect the IT user from various threats and heresies such as viruses and spam. Norton, however, does not provide protection from the actual physical laws of the universe. F=ma still applies, as does the usual law of “they didn’t see me do it”. Losing a mobile phone at this current time can already be a traumatic experience, so losing possession of your future ultimate device essentially erases your presence from the world, till of course you get another one and provided you backed up all your documents and files. Most shops however, have strict policies about serving non existent customers, so recovery may prove to be slightly difficult.
Losing your device would mean losing access to your bank accounts, your contacts, your clearance to the Bat Mobile, and more importantly, the possibility of someone else obtaining them. And while stronger security devices may be implemented to prevent access of another person’s information, humans, in their infinite creativity (in the presence of caffeine) and adaptability, will always find another way to be a thorn in the arse of the human race.

Funtionality

Over the past few days I've been fooling around (or as the British would say, faffing about) with the multimedia functions of my new phone and I'm been, so far, quite impressed with all the features that can be fit into that little Snickers of a device. But at the end of the day, whether you're a high school teacher or a Republican politician that aims to shut down Rockstar Games, you have to admit that a phone's most ability intense feature is that of the games, in other words, 3D Java applications.

The pre loaded games that you get when you first purchase your phone are no doubt that of mediocre quality. Knowing that there was no way in hell (or Singapore) that I would be able to get the greatest possible enjoyment from playing Multiplay Tennis, I proceeded to an old associate of mine which I call www.mobile9.com.

mobile9.com is about as close to mobile content piracy as you can get, though it's not really piracy because no one actually gets the moolah flowing in from uploading content on mobile9.com, so we prefer to refer to it as sharing, something that used to be quite evident until the Boys in Blue came in and cracked dow-

And now that I managed to find some extra rope in my closet (as well as space, in case they kick about), we can get back to mobile9.com. I proceeded to download every single game with good looking screenshots and then uploaded them shamelessly onto my mobile phone like a poacher in Kenya loading up ivory onto his truck. The problem with the games I found was that most of them were clunky. Splinter Cell didn't give me the feel that I did in the PC version and Aero Mission 3D didn't aim properly. I did, however, find V Rally 3D, which led me to another site called www.mobiletoones.com. (Which also leads me to check the condition of the lock on my closet.)

I would just like to say that I do not have the soundtrack "Stairways to Heaven" and that the temptation to play it backwards has long faded away.

I would also like to appeal to those who have a spare computer monitor.

Mobiletoones.com is amazing. Signing up is required but free (what was that first part again?) 3D games are galore and all wonderfully put the monetary system to deep blushing shame.

Which is where we get to Robot Alliance.

Later.