Temporarily Out

I have too much on my mind lately and it is just not felt right for me to just ignore this blog. So I am shutting it down …. temporarily. I won’t write here in the future, I will write with Evernote instead.

May I have the strength to open it again in the future 🙂

Billions stolen in online robbery…. repeat: online game robbery

Another amazing article! I read it and I feel that I am in a game world already. Back to three or four years ago this still can be stuffs happening in game. But now it is happening in reality.

I wonder if this means that you can generate lots of money out of nowhere.

Note dear reader, that I do feel sympathy for the victims of the crime, and I hope they can catch the criminal and put some good justice upon him. And I am in no way supporting any crime (geez I shudder just to think of it). But to think that this kind of crime is not possible to only several years ago, I just keep wondering on how fast our world is changing.

And I thougt it was just me

This excellent article from NY Times explains our, say, inappropriate thoughts, which emerge at the worst of times. Please don’t tell me that you never have one, dear reader. It is part of our brain mechanism, and a good exercise for you (to control them, mind you).

Mastering one’s impulses is important for us to be able to work and function properly in society. The article says that adults spend considerable effort inhibiting these perverse impulse, as much as doing the supposed correct actions.

China postpones controversial Web filter… and I am not surprised

You know, one thing that keeps me wondering so much is the lofty goal of governments around the world to control what its citizens can get from the Internet. It is simply a giant task, and often the result just begs to be ridiculed.

Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck

Yes, I am easily amazed by things. This is one of them. I wonder how it feels to stand on the glass balcony and see the city below you.

“The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building’s 103rd floor Skydeck. Their transparent walls, floor and ceiling leave visitors with the impression they’re floating over the city.”

Trying Ubuntu

Well I may be a little late to try Linux, but someone wise has said it: Better late than never.

I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 (code name Jaunty Jackalope) which I downloaded here and I must say I like what I get. It’s clean-interfaced, fast, and gets the basic job done. And it’s free (and committed to be just that in the future).

I also happen to read the philosophy of Ubuntu as explained here. It’s great actually (from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1999):

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Yes, if only everyone else in the world share the same view.

Now that I have two operating system, which one should I use? Old question. Exactly the same, maybe several years ago, still being asked today.

Fallout 3

So I think it is time to write my own opinion of Fallout 3.

Fallout 3

I don’t think I will write what an awesome game Fallout 3 is. Many people have already agreed on this, even those who speculated before that Bethesda would botch this great RPG license and make it just like Oblivion with guns. Fallout 3 turns out to be one of the best RPG of the year, and probably ever. Great graphics, VATS system, interesting missions, nuclear wasteland beautifully realized, and downloadable contents which enhances the original game experience. It can easily makes you forget real life. Really, that awesome.

But I will not write that. Instead I will write my concern about the game which may seem funny to you. The game is just too realistic and too beautiful to portray its game world, which is a nuclear wasteland.

This is no doubt a personal opinion (hey this is my blog, I get to say what I want). But consider this dear reader: have you ever been in a nuclear wasteland? Chances are you are just as old as me or maybe younger, so the answer would be a sound no. Now picture these two pictures and compare:

Fallout 3 portray of wasteland

Hiroshima dome, the real nuclear wasteland

Granted, Bethesda has successfully portrays nuclear wasteland and is also quite accurate about it. But here is the thing: I would spend countless hours traveling inside the world in the first picture by foot, shooting monsters and stuff. But I will get the heavens out of the world in the second picture on first occasion (or just as a general principle). The first picture is somewhat interesting; the second picture throbs with heartache and pain and suffering. Maybe it’s only the color? I just don’t think so. There is something in the second picture there that defies explanation. All you can see in the second picture are about lost hopes and broken dreams ….

So Fallout 3, being one of my favorite games this year and ahead (probably ever), is a game with beautifully rendered world where I would pray hard that I would never have to visit or be in, forever. Let’s hold on to that, dear reader.

(Oh and do buy the game. I did, and I assure you that you will not regret it if you do.)

On Creative Writing

Now that my current latest hobby involves typing lots and lots of words (but not necessarily resulting in a good article), I scour the Internet like a sailor trying to find some land and find out about this link about creative writing.

Here is the rundown of things:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

It’s Kurt Vonnegut style of writing. I am not a fan of Kurt Vonnegut novels (not yet, perhaps), and I only skim the front chapters of his famous novel Slaughterhouse Five. Reading it for me was and still is quite a work.

I can agree of all of those points, except, to no surprise, no. 6. Be a sadist to your main character? I cannot do that, perhaps of sentimental reason. But I have been reading some great novels and most of them follow this rule obediently. So perhaps I have to (once I have something in my mind to write, that is).

… The Most Expensive Foods

I just read an article from HowStuffWorks on the most expensive foods, and I cannot help but comment. I have a say in these things, don’t I? I say, “My God, these guys are out of their mind!”

Check out the #1 on the list. A fruitcake. With diamonds encrusted on it. It took six months to design it and a month to create it, and it was sold at $1.6 million. The fact that it is designed by a Japanese team of chefs makes the information somewhat self-explanatory (such as this video can show you):

I know it’s not very relevant to the subject, but I think the craziness level is equal to both cases…

Terminator Again

So everybody has been quite anxious and excited and all from waiting for the movie Terminator Salvation. Here is the trailer from YouTube:

But I also find this quite hilarious article from Cracked.com which reasons that you should not take the new blockbuster too seriously.

Time machine is something that is beyond human comprehension. I have read some in the Michael Chricton’s Timeline. A good reading to you, dear reader, you should all read it.