The next time some clueless angmoh asks you which part of Japan/China Singapore is in, politely inform him that Singapore is an independent country that’s nowhere near Japan OR China, and has never been.
Then ask him where he’s from.
“I’m American!” he will likely proclaim proudly.
Furrow your brow. Hem and haw and look puzzled. Scratch your chin, cock your head and pretend to be deep in perplexed thought. Then ask,
“America? Which part of the United Kingdom is that?”
and because my Adium refuses to connect: here’s the zombie article I was telling Puppy about this afternoon - 5 Scientific Reasons A Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen.
It’s all the fault of comicker Tim I-don’t-know-what-his-last-name is, of webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del fame (ah, poor PC users, when wilt thou see the light of day? Verily, the greatness of Jobs shines forth, kneel and accept enlightenment in your lives). Now that I have easy access to a PS3 console *beams brightly at Puppy* and since I have purchased and bribed my way into using said console with a new DualShock controller and two games, any news posts on worthy PS3 games quite quickly catch my eye.
And so when Tim posted this gushing game review about Uncharted, I promptly went and salivated on Puppy and said we have got to get this game oh please oh please oh yes *spasm* yes! And being the warm, loving gamer boyfriend that he is, he gamely (see what I did there? See the pun? The Pan!) paid for half of the game (thereby purchasing and bribing his way into attempting to beat me at said game as well. I say attempt. He may well have a different story, but surely you will dismiss his laughable claims that he’s actually better at the game than I am. Pffft. ‘Girl gamer’, my ass).
Uncharted is an amazing game. I’ve never played Tomb Raider, but I’m pretty sure Uncharted (even though it lacks abnormally distended mammaries, or perhaps because of this lack) beats it pants hands down. I’ll unwillingly admit that it took me awhile to get used to the platforming and controls but it’ll likely be instinctive for most people familiar with the console. Having played mostly Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy and Katamari Damacy on the PlayStation, I’m used to the leisure and slow pace of turn-based combat. Which meant that when I got into my first gunfight in Uncharted, I screamed a lot like a girl and died countless times shot wildly in the air for awhile before learning to breathe slowly while kicking Puppy in the leg for laughing at me. Hmph. The real-time combat is bloody addictive. After getting used to the fast pace, I’ve actually started to enjoy the adrenaline rush. How good it feels to take a pixelled enemy out with a carefully placed head shot!
The storyline is captivating - hook, line and sinker, which is the key for ensuring that I stick with a game. Nate Drake, the protagonist in the game, is also rather dashing, with a close resemblance to Harry Kewell; the girly heroine, Elena, is real kickass, and I bet Puppy wouldn’t dare call her a girl gamer to her face. Double Hmph. You only get to control Drake though. He’s a real monkey, what with ropes to climb and ledges to dangle from and vines to swing across. His snarky “You gotta be kidding me!” emerges often as wave after wave of faceless shooters swarm out to attack - it gets me every time, because I’m often screaming the same thing, exhausted after countless rounds of careful shooting are wasted at the last minute by some idiot with an Uzi.
The most fun bit so far has been an energetic car chase. Elena drives a jeep hectically through a jungle, narrowly avoiding bits of cliff along the way, while you operate a mounted turret out the backseat to bomb jeeps and bikes racing after you. The graphics are amazing - the rendered water glistens and reflects back at you, palm fronds wave in the breeze. The voice acting is spot on and realistic as hell, with everything shot with motion capture.
The only gripe I have so far is that the SixAxis controllers don’t seem to be utilized for their full value. The whole point of the SixAxis motion sensor feature is the ability to sense both rotational orientation and translational acceleration along all three dimensional axes. However (maybe due to Sony’s late announcement of the inclusion of this feature in their controllers) this isn’t really integrated into the game, except for once where you open a wheel-lock door by rotating the controller, and to maintain balance when you walk across logs. Too arbitrary, like they put those in at the last minute, trying to find places in the game they could actually use the feature, but didn’t really care too much about doing so.
Anyhoo, that’s an issue I have with Lego Star Wars too, so it’s not really a problem; just that I feel it could be integrated more into the game for a fuller experience.
For PS3 owners (aren’t we just so cool?) who might be interested, here’s the opening clip of the game (no spoilers, I assure you; however please don’t go read the Uncharted Wiki page like I accidentally did :( Much spoiler action, waily waily waily!). Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Fine. I admit it. I am a Girl Gamer. Puppy is obviously much better at the game than I am. And he also got me through some of the shoot-em-up parts that I just couldn’t bring myself to slog through for the fifth time. :D
Macworld debuted with Steve Jobs delivering much of the expected at Keynote (though without the ‘one last thing’ that has reduced many an Apple geek to wriggly paroxysms of delight over the years).
The biggest things that I’m really excited about are online movie rentals, Time Capsule, and of course, the MacBook Air.
Movie Rentals
“What’s the deal? Here’s the deal. Launch with over 1000 films by the end of February. 30 days after DVD release (that, I guarantee, was the barganing chip with the studios). Watch them anywhere: Macs, PCs, iPods and iPhone. You can watch in less than 30 seconds once rented (if you have a modern connection). 30 days to start watching it, and after you start, you have 24 hours to finish watching it. You can actually transfer to another device in the middle of watching, transfer it to your iPod before the flight (that’s going to be pretty killer for users). Renting a library title costs $2.99, new release is $3.99. Pretty reasonable: on par with the kind of stuff you’ll see from traditional rentals.”
This gets to impact us even though Singapore doesn’t work with the iTunes Music Store *shakes fist* because Joel gets codes from our well-placed friend in the USA. Woo!
Time Capsule
“Jobs talks about Time Machine: You wish you didn’t need that wire for connecting your Time Machine drive. And today we’ve got one— Time Capsule, a backup appliance. It’s a full AirPort Extreme base station and a hard drive. 802.11n networking and a server grade hard drive. All the ports of an APE. So now you can backup your notebook, or all the Macs in your house, wirelessly to one Time Capsule. “Really wonderful.” It’s going to sell in two versions: 500GB drive (whoops, he said “megabyte”) and one with 1TB. 500GB model goes for $299 and 1TB goes for $499. “Very aggressive prices. We want people backing up their content.” It’s going to ship in February, the “perfect companion product to Time Machine.””
This is awesome. I hated that I couldn’t utilize my Time Machine because 1) haven’t got the wherewithal to splash out on a portable hard drive and 2) don’t really want to have to plug one in all the bloody time anyway. Puppy says the hourly updates are a tad annoying and slow down things a bit; and my USB ports are way too in demand already anyway. And now yay! Wireless backup! On an Apple router! *wriggles in a paroxysm of delight*
MacBook Air
“It is crazy thin, and silver. It’s got a camera in there too, I notice. Fullsize keyboard in black, fullsize display. Time to explore in more detail. Edges are more rounded, reminiscent the old iBook display. Fullsize, 13.3” widescreen display. “Gorgeous.” LED-backlit display saves power, gives bright display, instant-on the minute you open it. There’s a built-in iSight camera, and a fullsize MacBook-style black keyboard. “Perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And it’s got a backlit keyboard with an ambient light sensor (previously a MacBook Pro-only feature). Multi-touch gesture support on the trackpad.”
I love the design, not too excited about the name, and less excited about the guts of the MacBook Air. What gives? It’s slower than my brand new MacBook. I’d be paying for something prettier, but not much better. Then again half the battle’s won with the eye on aesthetics; I know I’m usually the one who goes “Who cares? It’s PRETTY!” when explaining my electronics choices to others. But I suppose the novelty factor of pulling your laptop out of a manila envelope won’t soon wear off.
I can imagine Daddy throwing himself across the MacBook Air sobbing loudly and drooling, while giggling maniacally and stroking it and saying “MINE, MINE!”
Teehee.
Anyhow, what gives with The Straits Times’ Digital Life mini-newspaper? It comes out on Tuesday mornings, poised at the perfect timing for some Macworld speculation. With excitement I flip through Digital Life expecting, at the very least, a column of enthusiastic bubbling about The Mac Event Of The Year.
Nothing.
Nothing? I can’t quite believe it. I flip through once more. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Friggin’ Digital Life. I honestly cannot understand how they decided that Macworld was of no interest to their consumers. What is this? Bloody PC Magazine?
Argh I have reposted this three times because my stupid blog had some stupid thing enabled and asdadjhlsdfjhlasdjfhals!
But yes.
I AM SPREEING FOR GELASKINS!
Is this not pretty?? I am buying it for my future Macbook (er, when Dad gives me his Macbook in January because office is buying him a new one :D). They’re selling it at the iShop in Cineleisure too, but when I went to check prices, they cost a whopping $79.00 there. I can get them for US$29.90 from the website; even with the shipping charges added, I can get one for about S$52.50, because it’s buy three get one free!
So help me out here and add on to my order. iPod skin for you? Macbook skin? PC laptop skin? I have one of these on my iPod Nano right now - actually I have two skins, but I’ve been using the same one since July because it’s just too pretty. Denise gifted me the other (she’s the one who introduced me to this nifty pretty site) for my birthday. This is what she gave me! So pretty!
So if you’d like to join the spree, email me with your order (laptop size/iPod model, design name, and corresponding URL) asap. Good for Christmas gifts too! Spree will stay open till I get three more confirmed orders.
Woo! Though I won’t get full bonus, probably - only started on the Government’s payroll in June.
Good performers to get more in March 2008
IT looks like 2007 will be a bumper year, financially, for Singapore’s 60,000 civil servants. They will get a year-end Annual Variable Component (AVC) of one month and a Non-Pensionable Annual Allowance (NPAA) - also known as the 13th month or annual wage supplement - of one month, in December. In addition, eligible civil servants will be paid the newly-introduced Growth Bonus in March 2008. Payable in times of exceptional economic performance, this bonus varies in amount depending on individual performance and aims to strengthen the link between performance and pay.
Good performers will receive 0.5 months of Growth Bonus, and better performers will receive more, up to 0.8 months. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said the economy has performed better than anticipated this year. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has forecast that the Singapore economy is expected to grow by 7.5 to 8 per cent this year. The unemployment rate has fallen from 2.7 per cent last year to 1.7 per cent, with a record high of 171,500 jobs created in the first nine months of 2007.
In July this year, the Government paid civil servants a mid-year AVC of 0.5 month and a one-off payment of $220, in line with the call by the National Wages Council for employers to help low wage workers.
The total variable payment for 2007 is 2.5 months plus $220, not including the Growth Bonus. With the Growth Bonus, the total payment for a good performer will be three months plus $220 for 2007, compared to 2.7 months plus $220 in 2006.
From , “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. Terribly funny and distracting during Lit class. Here’re some of the more appealing ones :D
I like this one because I’m always doing this - sizing up how easily zombies can get in, ever since watching Sean of the Dead. I figure if I’m in hall, I’m hiding out in the toilet, because there’s running water and a number lock on the door. Safe.
In honor of the new Neil Gaiman movie coming out, I just went to look up ‘Beowulf’ in Wikipedia and to my vast amusement shock and horror, I found this:
I love the father-in-law’s response - “I didn’t think the American authorities were that stupid. But apparently they are.”
Zing!
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A man in Sweden who was angry with his daughter’s husband has been charged with libel for telling the FBI that the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda, Swedish media reported on Friday.
The man, who admitted sending the email, said he did not think the US authorities would be stupid enough to believe him.
The 40-year-old son-in-law and his wife were in the process of divorcing when the husband had to travel to the United States for business.
The wife didn’t want him to travel since she was sick and wanted him to help care for their children, regional daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet said without disclosing the couple’s names.
When the husband refused to stay home, his father-in-law wrote an email to the FBI saying the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda in Sweden and that he was travelling to the US to meet his contacts.
He provided information on the flight number and date of arrival in the US.
The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe, the paper said.
The FBI contacted Swedish intelligence agency Saepo, which discovered that the email tipping off the FBI had been sent from the father-in-law’s computer.
The father-in-law has been charged with aggravated libel.
He has admitted sending the email, but said he didn’t think “the authorities were so stupid that they would believe anything. But apparently they are.”
He said he “couldn’t help the US authorities’ paranoid reaction”.
