Alternatives tech

I've probably mentioned this before, but we all should just go out and take a look at alternative browsers and search engine. One I would like to promote would be Opera, coming in 3rd as one of the top browsers, just right behind Firefox and champion Internet Explorer.

Opera is pretty fast, and has a pretty uncluttered interface. Of course, that might be because I haven't customized it as much as I did with my Firefox, which only now I noticed I gave a dark black theme: NASA Night Launch theme. Apart from that, if you want a little history, Opera was one of the first to revolutionize the browsing industry with tabbed browsing and mouse gestures. If you don't know what mouse gestures are, they're basically shortcuts for basic [or complex] browser actions like Back, Forward, Minimize, Open New Tab, etc. Also Opera has a tendency to not be supported as much as Firefox does. Firefox, being Open Source, gets this huge collection of user made plugins that make life much easier [and more stupid, if you ask me, about those social networking plugins]. Some plugins for Firefox i recommend, though completely not in context, are Del.icio.us bookmarks, mouse gestures, download manager, and session manager. Another bad thing, Opera does not check spelling. I find that feature invaluable especially for people who try to be extravagous with their vocabulary but aren't. =D Yes, spelling mistake, i know.

There's alternative search engines too. If you're using Firefox, do take note that Firefox's default search goes to Google, powering Google's search. Google also finances 80% of Mozilla Foundation's costs. So much for independant open source eh? So go and change that search box setting now!

There's Ask.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com. Honestly, I think their search hinting technology is really awesome. Ask.com is a tad too fanciful though. MSN.com doesn't return very helpful results. Yahoo.com works great out of the lot, as expected from the second top search engine of the world. Although, I would say I have grown a tad too accustomed to formulating search queries that automatically narrow Google's giant search results. If I were to argue for Google, I'll say Google has taught me how to get straight to the point, to ask the most pertinent questions and take note of the key words of each topic. That and patience. The patience to go through Google's search. It's a good and bad thing, really. It's either you be shoddy or you be really thorough with your search terms.

I think it's really important for there to exist alternatives, at least, in the computing world. [This is in no way a reference to the political climate of Singapore =D] I mean, I'm almost forced to use Firefox, because most of the content exists there. But this kinds of encourages complacency. And worst of all, some Firefox users would begin to assume an air of superiority over the other browsers, sometimes even quoting incorrect facts that make Firefox "own". This blind group mentality of Firefox = open source = must be good, it sorts of strips away individuality, which, for some weird reason, I find it essential to maintain on the Web. o.0 On the other hand, we're all just stupid people wasting our lives away on all the social networking crap, thinking we're all so special but we're not.

Sorry, for some reason, my tone has been somewhat aggresive in nature.

And this really ought to have been posted at the tech blog instead...

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

Japanese!

In my never-ending pursuit for more stuff to learn, I decided to take up Japanese. =D Got myself a DIY Japanese book that's written in Chinese. Taiwanese Chinese, which is, well, 繁体字. I took a Chinese version instead of an English version 'cause Japanese is very much like Chinese. Plus, I can skip most of the Kanji parts which would be omitted in a Chinese version since Kanji's basically Chinese characters, with the same meaning, but different pronunciations. I think the Japanese learn Kanji by memorising them. As they do with Hiragana and Katakana. There's no link or image behind the characters unlike the Chinese characters do. Then again, with over 100,000 Chinese characters, we had to have some image to memorise them all. Plus we have all sorts of complex non-image versions as well, just think 璧 or 懂. Not much relation with 辟 and 董. Unlike 火，烧，灼，烤。 [On second thought, there isn't much similarity either, is there?]

Just started today after translating all the weird Chinese headings by referencing an English-Jap website. Like how was I supposed to know that 平扳名清 is Hiragana. =X Well, got about 15 Hiraganas down now,　あ、い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ、さ、し、す、せ、そ。 It's easy typing and reading them, but doing that without remembering the row and column those characters belong in is hard. 'cause I don't think you're actually supposed to learn a language by regurgitating the exact replica of a table of characters. And I'm not just learning Romanji; I want to be able to read and write Jap too.

It's simply amazing how I've actually managed to learn English and Chinese. I mean, to be able to actually listen, speak, and write these two languages fluently is just nothing short of extraordinary that I can't even begin to imagine how we've done it.

Why learn Japanese, is probably the most pressing question here. It's cool to be tri-lingual, even though Japanese is already mastered by quite a significant portion of the world's teenage population [who are actively involved in fansubbing anime and manga]. Plus, I think it's more appropriate that I learn Japanese than say, French or Malay, since I'm exposed to Japanese media a quarter of my free time. And it's the perfect language for Chinese speakers. =D We have an advantage over the European language speakers.

Of course, it would be hardly right [for lack of a better word], that I learn Japanese but yet neglect my other languages. I mean, I probably fail horribly at SATs, judging by the fact that I'd taken a look at Huang Lu's SAT book once and at the grammar section, felt that all those supposedly wrong MCQ choices were sentences I would have written. And still would have. Nyah, I probably made tons of grammar mistakes above already, even though I wrote them as linguistically correct as I could. And Chinese, I miss Chinese. Haven't written a single Chinese character in ages. That leaky cauldron of 汉字 is held in place by 88.3 FM that I listen to on the car, and the Chinese TV and newspaper that I read. All Chinese. English is for the Internet use only.

So ... I decided, to complement my efforts in Jap, I'm gonna just flip to a random page in the Chinese dictionary everyday, and find out all the definitions of every new word, phrase. And pick up some English grammar book from the NLB to read.

Which by now I realise, going NS early is quite a nice thing. Got a few months before Uni to work on my own skills, get up-to-date with all the new tech developments, go out [to the Internet] and program all the stuff I'd always wanted to do, man, it's so cool...

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

Deviantart

Did you know the Voice Actor for Shana in Shakugan no Shana is the same as that for Tio in Konjiki no Gash Bell? Both red-hair, assertive, chibi characters.

Anyway, new DeviantArt!

::KnGB:: Hmmmm by ~Cardinal4 on deviantART

I'm surprised how this worked out. Everything just fell into place nicely. I tried doing a replica piece out of my memory, but none of it matches the smooth lineart and form of this piece. Multiple coincidences that just define this as .. a miracle. For me, that is.

For this piece, it was real fun painting it. Fun was something I hadn't experienced for a long time when drawing. Maybe it's because, usually, I'll have a mental image of how I want the painting to turn out. But I always fail to realise that vision, that idealistic painting, so it always is very depressing doing any artwork. In this case, I was just doodling that particularly kawaii expression. It'd looked rather kawaii, with a very tasteful finger, so I decided, why not finish it? So I finished the torso and body and background, then starting painting it. So, it was all impromptu work. No expectations, nothing. Just drawing whatever floats my boat. In this case, the first thing i thought of was, this was quite a stylish, fashion/modern pose, which kinda looks like that Bleach fanart I saw a while back.

Bleach by *Makotron on deviantART
I know it hardly looks like it, but remember I was just crapping around

Ah, Shakugan no Shana was pretty nice. The storyline is completely filled with romance and love struggles, which would have been irritating, but it isn't, somehow. The visuals are awesome; I love the effects when an unrestricted spell is used - that rotating magic seal thingy. The storyline doesn't have a lot of holes, and is surprisingly unique after you got over the fact that it feels, looks, but is NOT a Bleach copycat. Bleach stinks with its horrid plot anyway. "Bankai is a level that can only be attained in noble families, once per generation" or something like that. Woots, how come everyone we've met can do Bankai now?

It felt great to be able to do Physics MCQ easily. Well, not necessarily get it all correct, but it feels good to look at the answer and go, Oh, chey.
Well, that's just Physics, the only subject that i've been mugging for the entire holiday. =D And not even H3 Phy. Yet.

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

Holidays... wait .. Study Break

I'm treating this 1 month study break as I would my post-A levels holidays. And as I would my retirement. And like my post/pre-prelim. What's up with me? I'm whiling time away doing leisure stuff.

A brief check of my daily activities: Breakfast, computer, discovery channel, computer, lunch, computer, studying, exercising, computer, dinner, channel 8, computer, sleep. I roughly contribute less than 10% of the time I'm awake studying. Less than an hour. Sure, it can get longer than an hour, but interspersed with long mindless strolls around the house. Learning Japanese or even Unix sounded more interesting than staring at the Post-Prelim Marking Scheme.

FYI, I managed to make more headway on Prelim stuff than learning Japanese semantics or even getting past the first chapter of Unix though. That's good.

For some reason, I'm trying to learn Japanese. Just for fun. Vocab is the biggest stumbling block, as well as the fact that not all Jap text are in Romanji [the hanyu pinyin version Japanese, as compared with Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji (Chinese)]. What, am I expected to carry out a list of Katakana-Romanji and Hiragana-Romanji transcripts? I hope not.

ODE .NET 0.9 just released. I'll be able to get back to translating the C++ ODE tutorials into C# ODE tutorials, yay! The one I'm planning to work on is the car joint hinges demo. I bet it's gonna be really cool to figure that one out. Suspension system with damping and Hooke's Law. Pivots, axles, socket joints. =D It's like playing with Lego except you got unlimited supplies.

Mythbusters is getting not so interesting. There were some stuff that didn't need testing, some stuff that were tested wrongly. But it's still interesting to watch. The next one, a special Snow episode, is gonna be nice. Can't wait for it.

Battlefield 2142 jammed/lagged on me... There's no anime to watch.... Sianz!

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

Timcampy! Again.

I've made another Timcampy! Except this time it's not traditional art. Not sketch, not paint. It's 3D!

Yay, my first textured and rigged 3D model! Timcampy was the easiest anime character I could think up of. And I was right. It was a pretty straight-forward mesh; a very lovely entry to the world of Blender modeling.

The lighting sucks, i know. But, I intended this to be a game model, not a photo-realistic or cel-shaded model/render. For this reason I tried to keep the polycount low to about 1400. Still too high - someone made a very beautiful human model using only 2000+ polygons.


::D.Gray Man:: Timcampy by ~Cardinal4 on deviantART

In case you didn't know, in the first pose I had Timcampy do a random wing-raise pose. The second is him zooming forward. I haven't had him animated because ... animation is a chore. I'll have to pose him for every shot. And I'm not even sure in the first place how wings are supposed to move; not a ornithologist.

And I was just dreaming that CMPB had somehow forgotten about me. Ya right, just got it today.

I guess I'm just apprehensive about a new environment, like a new school or a new class. Remembering people is gonna be hard when they're all bald...
And that ... this 2 years, precious 2 years... A lot of opportunities will be missed.. seishun, and ... hm, not much.

At least everyone has to go, not like Malaysia's system which is simplified random sampling if I'm not wrong [or at least, almost]. If I had been one of the 'chosen ones', ... i don't know, it'll be really frustrating and depressing.

Wonder what would I do when I get back during the weekend breaks? [That little island offshore, so no chance of booking out during weekdays, if that is even possible?] Maybe I'll be watching anime and catching up on manga. And .. do some programming I guess. And mind the fishes. And Battlefield 2142. Though would i tire of war games...?

bzzzz.... I should have started training earlier... Like ... when I started failing them! Now then I start training. For PTP. For what ah? Dun noe leh. Maybe the fact that, on NS.org, they say ah "PTP ppl not really unfit. Just got some guai lan station fail." Ah. So basically those guys can roughly pass 2.4km. Which i hadn't been able to.

Well at least graduation night is before enlistment date. =D Wouldn't want that $80++ to be wasted, heh.

Oh yeah, D.Gray Man's new opening song is damn DDR!!!! And so spoilerific, it almost revealed the entire storyline up to the current chapter!!! Well, not exactly all though.

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

H2 Physics notes

Just for the fun of it, I decided to release the Physics summary notes that I made, revision 2. It's missing the Laser/Semiconductor chapter, since it's so choke-full of band-theory and stuff, i couldn't possibly summarise anything out of a complete theoretical chapter.

Download it here

Not hosted on my web since i didn't want to clutter up my webspace, but still hosted on an awesome filehoster, MediaFire. Way better than those other hosters which require a Premium membership. It's all because of Singapore's proxy servers... "you've exceeded the allocated slots for your country/no concurrent downloads".

Physics revision should be done here. To other subjects, onward!

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.

Battlefield 2142

Battlefield 2142 is probably the best game yet for me. It features instant, hard-core action, with team cooperation as squads, with a common goal. Think mindless FPS shooters except with a clear note to strategy and prioritising targets.

Players form into two teams, the PAC and the EU, and battle it out using one of 4 kits: the Engineer, the Sniper, the Support, or the Assault. The beginner player will start off with basic weaponry, and unlock further gadgets and weapons with more playing.

The Engineer has repair capabilities, but also as anti-vehicle weapons. Its unlocks feature the vehicle motion mine, the anti-aircraft missile launcher, the armour piercing high-caliber cannon and a bomb-defuser.

The Sniper has recon and special forces skills. He can choose to place AntiPersonnelMines, explosives [demo packs], equip himself with a scope stabilizer and a zoom scope, or get stealth capabilities which allow him to become *slightly* invisible.

The Support provides Ammo and has heavy machine guns. He can deploy stationary sentry guns, or get an anti-bullet shield to place in front of himself.

The Assault heals... and heals. Assault doesn't have much firepower, but his weapons are slightly lighter than others, so i guess he runs faster. But Assault can heal people, as well as revive dead teammates, which means on a noob server, most ppl will spam Assault.

Conquest mode isn't all that different from the previous Battlefields. You go around the map, capturing control points by standing near it, and once captured, provides a spawn point for your team. In fact it's a bit worst since, with the Battle Walkers around, it's near impossible to survive as an infantry. In most conquest maps, if you're an infantry and you see a vehicle other than that little humvee, scam instantly, and revive dead teammates who try to take on that monster. If that monster is still surviving when you're dead, get the Engineer kit and blow it apart. Somehow. But the Commander's orbital strike still is the most efficient in taking out these heavy targets.

Titan mode is the best mode [and only other] mode where Battlefield 2124 shines. You spawn on a Titan, which is a giant floating ship. The Titan has a transport plane and a attack helicopter. You have six launch pods from which to launch yourself off the Titan. By capturing missile silos around the map, the missiles will damage the enemy Titan's shield. Once the shields are down, you can board the Titan to destroy its 4 consoles and a nuclear reactor, destroying the Titan and winning the game. Alternatively, you could just wait for the missiles to destroy the enemy Titan's hull itself.

Titan mode is just great.... The missile silos launch at regular intervals, so you need to wait it out at a silo that you've captured. It wouldn't be much of a use if you captured a silo, then let it be captured by the enemy before it even launches a single missile towards the enemy Titan.

Moreover, once the shields are down, you can choose 1 of 3 options to continue the game. Either protect your own Titan from the enemies who are boarding your Titan, or board the enemy Titan to destroy its consoles, or go to the ground and help capture more silos.

In the Titan, the battle gets more intense. You'll be inside the enemy's spawn point itself: The Titan. Although it'll take a while for them to transverse from their spawn control point over to your boarding area, or inside the Titan inside [30 seconds], it's frightful when you board the Titan yourself without backup. There are many places to hide. Since it's the enemy's Titan, they can hide behind forcefield doors which only they can walk through. Moreover, the corridors to the console are ... well a corridor. It's really intense there, especially if there are a few enemies staking out there with sentry guns, ammo kits, health kits, anti-bullet shields, and frag grenades. Even more moreover, the consoles themselves require either two Demo Packs from the Sniper, 2 Rockets from the Engineer, or just simply continous blasting with your ordinary submachine guns. A Support member is definitely needed here for topping up your ammo.


The kits themselves can be picked up and swapped. If a teammate dies, you can swap your kit to an Assault kit, and if he has unlocked the defibrillator, revive him. Or you could check the kits of the enemies. Sometimes they've unlocked really powerful stuff, and cool, you can swap to that kit and use it. Of course, there's that bit of unfamiliarity with that kit, so you might actually perform worse off. But that kit swapping could be good when you've unlocked those weapons, but are not using that kit.

Eg. I'm an Engineer and Assault user. Both kits are unlocked to their max. But I'm either using the Engineer or the Assault. Sometimes choosing one over the other is a roll of the dice. So I won't mind getting back my other kit by swapping with a dead player's.

Anyway, Battlefield 2142 rocks like crazy. Though I miss Battlefield 2 a bit, and still feel that it is one of the best modern-setting games ever, even though it's kinda old already.

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.