::Blank::

Blog Moved

2008-02-09T18:19:00.000+08:00

Out of extreme boredom, I preoccupied myself lately with creating a brand new blog - a more professional and personal site. Still haven't gotten around to designing the theme for the blog yet, nor have I planned how the content is gonna be laid out, but, well, the blog part of it is functioning.

Visit it at http://cardinal4.byethost2.com.
Yep. It's the same place as my tech blog. I decided to merge both of them together. The personal blog was getting too mindless, while the tech blog was getting very too ... erm, well I don't like it anyhow.

This blog design was nice while it lasted though - very colourful and anime-ish. I want my new blog to be just as anime-ish. =D

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

Blogging

2008-02-06T08:52:00.000+08:00

Hardly feel like blogging nowadays. Lack of interest, time and content. There isn't much time for introspection. Every thing is just assigned a simple, "I am at wrong, but that was a good lesson; I will try again next time".

When life is moving at a hyper pace, and your physical and mental endurance are stretched, you really don't think of the past, but the present and future. The present is where you suffer, the future is where you hope. The past? For lessons learnt that ought not to be repeated.

On a sidenote, it's pretty interesting how I suddenly hear new tunes and melodies playing in the background of sounds I'm very familiar with. The music sounds so refreshingly crisp, like I had brand new stereo speakers or something. [In fact, I have a mono speaker, since one side spoiled.] The magic of outfield camping and NS life. After days of singing army songs, especially when singing one single song for a 4km route march continously, music is like .... well, music to my ears. I wish I could play my guitar too, but .... the strings broke. The strings keep breaking, even the new ones. Just one week of changing and they broke. I've ran out of back-up strings, so I can't play anything. Sian...

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

Simple pleasures of life

2008-01-12T21:35:00.000+08:00

2 half-days, 1 full day - that's just about how much time i have. Coming back from camp, the one thing i want to do the most is ..... to sleep. That's the prized relaxation i yearn for in a bookout. If I get guard duty and miss a good day's sleep as a result, i'll be really pissed. Just as i got last night, when my hacking cough stopped me from getting my rest. I was like, fuming at midnight, lolz, just pacing around, willing myself to stop coughing.

Sleep, and a good shower. A long, warm shower. And to eat in peace. It's just that being deprived of such things for 5 days in the army, such simple acts suddenly become so desirable. Home never felt so good before.

And very soon, the break will be over, and i'll get back in for another round of training. The training's already starting to plateau, while we haven't. Less suffering, more camaraderie. Of course, there remains some stuff that just keeps upping the difficulty level. But more or less, it's getting easier to cope with. It's kinda amusing to see how much my own attitude regarding NS life has changed in a few short weeks. There has never been a better time to serve NS. =D Other than next year.

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

To do? What?

2007-12-31T12:25:00.000+08:00

I'm very confused lately about exactly what do i want to do with my life. About what i want to do with my time. About what i want to do about opportunities, what i should really pursue.

It's like life is on a standstill. I can't do anything at all! Nothing at all that can have any effect other than just temporary blinding myself out of reality. Life is terrible outside.

I wish i had something to do. Something to watch. I wish I was given a tasklist of things to do, 'cause i feel like i'm drifting aimlessly, wasting away precious time. Arg!!!

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

Book out

2007-12-25T12:00:00.000+08:00

More or less, got about a day and a half to sort things out. To do the stuff that needed doing as a NS man. To relax like an anime otaku. And to just keep track of current events and read the copies of Newsweek that just keeps piling up. I really can't finish it. The copy from a week back, I'm just slightly halfway through it. XD This further justifies the fact that I do not need a further Times subscription, despite its ownage SAF special subscription rate and Britannica super mini encyclopedias that are just so ... bookish, lolz.

I found a Deathly Hallows on my table when I came back. I'd really forgotten how captivating Harry Potter was. I wonder when I'll get around to reading it.

Time passes so fast outside. It feels so hurried. But at the same time, i still managed to finish what i managed to do and some more. So i guess it's not really that short a break after all.

Against all my expectations, I managed to remain relatively Pes B-ish. I had the notion that I will be below par because of my close brush with Pes C, but unexpectedly I was feeling great. Nothing whatsoever. The only major problem I had was a day-long flu. Almost wanted to report sick, but I endured on, and it got much better now. Hurray for zero-sick record for the first week!

It's looking good. Though I really should have passed that NAPFA earlier, 'cause I could for my IPPT even after 2 weeks of inactivity before NS...

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

Wasted

2007-12-10T23:07:00.000+08:00

3 weeks may seem like a really long period, but it can all disappear really quickly. I wasted most of it away.. Perhaps about 7 days of it were actually worth it. The pre-prom, the prom, cls outing, and the amazing tie purchase adventure that ended up being a COD2 game session cum chi chess. =D And some miscellaneous days where the total pigging out on entertainment and gaming was justified, 'cause it's a holiday and all.

But beyond that, the rest were totally wasted. Nothing was done... what i planned to do wasn't done... I gamed so much that it wasn't even fun anymore... I was just frantically trying to find something else to do, something that didn't really need any brains to do. Also didn't do some things that i should have - that i'm going to regret for quite some time.

Someone asked if i had a life goal. I was caught off guard on that one, since i had none. It'd never come to my mind before. I have principles, morals, project goals, but not life goals.

I guess ... I'd never really thought about life beyond school. School has always been such a wonderful thing. Work's manageable; even if you fail at it, there's always backup ;) There's plenty of time for leisure stuff, even in the midst of examinations. You can do what you want, pursue hobbies, i dun noe, lead the life of retirement, except that you're at the wrong age and time. There's plenty of social interaction, of a group of friends whom you work, play and chat together, and people that you recognise around. Familiar buildings, static environment, linear pathways, fixed routines. Everything is so predictable that you can just breeze through it and focus on the things that really matter to you. I say that cause I always plan too much about anything and everything. In my case, random is hell, that is, if the consequences are significant.

Well, no life goals. But it sucks that i can't follow the rest of my goals half the time. I wanted to be productive, to do something that matters, and not just gaming. Gaming is for fun, for thrills. Like anything is going to come out of gaming. I wanted to program, to learn, to do something that i can reuse in the future. Something that doesn't necessarily have to be utilitarian but is uniquely mine. Which is basically what web design/game programming is about. Producing neat stuff out of nothing. Kinda like wood-craft/moulding/DIY construction/culinary except that you don't need any materials at all. Just your brain, bit of creativity, and a computer.

4 more days and i'll have to start remembering new names and faces again.. I should write up a list somewhere to mark the things i oughta do, before and after enlistment. =0

Konjiki no Gash!!! is ending!!! The King's been decided; there was never a doubt who would win. Now, just some loose ends to tie up and the manga will end. Haiz...

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

MMORPGs

2007-11-28T00:06:00.000+08:00

I hate MMORPGs. For their unfair biasness. In MMORPGs, there is no skill. There is no intelligence. There is just mindless grinding. The one who plays the most is the most powerful. And again, is there any meaning to that power? That power does not grant one any advantage over any other person except the monsters.

ZOMG, I'm like lvl 100, and i can defeat Crimson Balrog!!!!
Erm... so what?? You're just pressing the attack key over and over again. Nothing special. And doesn't show that you're any more better than I am. Just that you've wasted a lot a lot of time on the game.

Hard work and toil bear fruit in the long run. Not in MMORPGs. There is no fruit. There is only an endless foray for nirvana, for pwnage, but there is none. That level does not prove any worth at all.

Yes, there is the fun of discovering new lands, of a new combat system, of strange monsters and such. But the game wasn't built to be about discovery, no matter how much the developers say otherwise. It's about level grinding. Repetitive hand motions that quickly escalate to psychotic levels.

So why am I playing MapleStory?

I just have to do something. Anything. I'm just rotting away without a goal or passion for anything at all! Something fun to do. Or at least mildly entertaining. Something that can occupy my mind.

I want to believe that post-A levels is a very fun period to enjoy and relax in. But i'm not relaxed or having fun at all! I'm so stressed up, don't know what to do with my time. But i can't just do anything, it must be something fun and worthwhile, something that i can look back and not regret having wasted away. I tried to get COD4, what i imagine would be an exhilarating sniping and submachine-gunning experience. Of roaming around on a deserted landscape watching for heads peeking around windows, bushes, doorways.

But I couldn't find the game. It's out of stock. =|

Battlefield 2142 is a game of skill, unlike MMORPGs. But it's a truly tiring game. You feel drained after three or more rounds, even less if the game is intense. Sometimes things don't work out quite right either: there's an imbalance of pro and noob players on different teams or that BF 2142 has that titan glitching bug that completely throws the game off-track.

Sims... the game just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.

Tiberium Wars I hate the unit mass producing and sometimes impregnable uber base defenses [Storm Columns and the Tower of NOD].

Need for Speed: Underground 2 for having raced enough crap cars around the city too many times. I would love to find NFS: Most Wanted at the library's game section though; they have police pursuits there. I haven't raced a Ferrari or a Lamborghini in NFS of late.

This is turning out to be a terrible post-exam period.

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

Console...

2007-11-24T22:54:00.000+08:00

Times like this, I wished I had a XBox 360. 'Cause that has to be one of the most interesting anime games ever and the best Naruto game yet! It's more adventure than fighting game, but the visuals are awesome. Fighting seems pretty static [aka taijutsu close combat] but it makes up for that with pretty unique combo move executions. It's not just activate combo and watch. Most of the time, it's an active combo, so you'll enter a mini-game state where you'll have to be fast to be able to actually land a hit and not waste your chakra usage. Ubisoft really does make good games, no matter if it's fps mercenary action, team co-op, or anime franchise games. Now, if only Avatar: Burning Earth was done by Ubisoft as well.. some of the game play is very sad and non-dynamic.

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

21 days

2007-11-23T23:20:00.000+08:00

A levels are over!!!! The last paper, H3, was rather depressing. The school was so completely empty, before and after the paper.

Day after Phy P1 MCQ, i was pretty pumped up to mug H3 like siao. Day before H3, I was very very stressed at not being able to finish on time. On the day itself, I was so irate and tired; the ppl who designed the syllabus seemed to live on an entirely different planet. We were using equations we've never seen before to derive another new equation, and in the syllabus guidelines, they say "Recall and use it to derive ". Recall!?!?!!? Like, crazy. I just felt like giving up. H3 H3 less worth than a H1 but so much more tougher.

Well in the end I still tried my best.

Now i can start throwing away all the stuff that i don't need. Gwah, i so hate Chem! 5 whole stacks of Chem notes, all attempts to achieve Chem enlightenment. When i threw them out, i was like, yay!!!! I released ~10^-11 J of gravitational potential energy!!!

At first I thought ending the A's wouldn't be much fun at all - still pretty much everyday life just like always. But it's different. Way different. Now i can do more of everything else!!! No more doing stuff and feeling regrets over neglecting work!!! No more guilty conscious!!! And i managed to get back to programming too! Programming felt like a chore, a really unproductive and meaningless chore during the mugging days. Now, I can just let my mind wander over the schematics of the programming API without worrying about forgetting some formulas or chemical equations in return.

Originally i thought of getting COD 4 to kick off celebrations, but after a while i thought it was really silly, i mean, unproductive game! Plus, the store had no more stocks left.

Well, i'm still gonna get it tomorrow anyways at Funan. (EDIT: Scrap that, 20 days and counting, it's not worth getting it) =P Battlefield 2142 is getting a bit repetitive. Running around the map securing control points, but what can 1 little infantry do against an army of APCs, tanks, gunships and mechs?? And being a commander got a bit tiring sometimes. People don't really listen to the commander. And worse still, it's pretty embarrassing when later on it becomes apparent that the commander isn't really that good, but he's commandering everyone around??!

21 days. Pretty rushed. And it makes me wonder why I'm learning Japanese when I'm probably going to forget all of it in 2 years. Halfway there though; i can pronounce Hiragana now; i just don't know what I'm pronouncing.

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

Shattering

2007-11-18T22:24:00.000+08:00

There existed a post here that shouldn't have existed. Blogs are such a tempting invitation to be egoistic, overly depressing, mercilessly critical and logically incoherent.

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

牛仔很忙

2007-11-13T11:50:00.000+08:00

Looking through the Jay Chou cds I bought, and looking at the Wikipedia track listing, i just realised that i had a really weird MTV special of 霍元甲, when there wasn't such a track in the first place.

No wonder Ｉwas wondering where the heck were the MTVs in the newer tracks 依然范特西 and 牛仔很忙. The 霍元甲 track was some special track that was actually 11月的萧邦 plus additional track 霍元甲.

Hm... there's a DVD track called 滿城盡帶黃金甲 or 不能說的祕密 too, i wonder if that's where the MTVs are.

牛仔很忙 is pretty nice, but it sounds quite weird at first. I don't believe there's a Wild West Chinese song before, or anything that was even remotely similar. The lyrics are ... in one way, kinda self-depreciating (something about riding a donkey instead of a horse), but it's meant to be interpreted in the comical way.

Update: 青色的陶瓷 sounds quite Chinese, similar to 菊花台, but the chorus is quite catchy in its own way.

When i first heard 阳光宅男, i thought, that's rock, like Simple Plan or something. Then his voice was like ... country. And it sounds so much like something 5566 or boy bands would sing. But it's nice. Very catchy. A very obvious chorus, and i just love the electric guitar here.

甜甜的's intro is so cheery, instant fave. Though it isn't the most catchy tune around , but it's just so light-hearted, so it's in.

The others are not mentioned because they're not worth mentioning, yet. It's a bit disappointing i guess, imo. I got 9 faves out of the 霍元甲 track, 5 faves out of the 依然范特西 track, and only 3 faves currently out of the 牛仔很忙 track. But I tend to backtrack and try to listen to them again, so ... hm, the number might increase.

On the whole, the track [or at least the songs I've faved] give off a very unique feel, not exotic as do 夜曲 or 七里香 do, but it's good in that it borrows styles from over all genres, and is thus very refreshing to listen to. Variety.

Final updated conclusion:
霍元甲 > 牛仔很忙 > 依然范特西
阳光宅男 > 甜甜的 > 牛仔很忙 > 青色的陶瓷

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

Site popularity

2007-11-11T21:09:00.001+08:00

According to Google Analytics from the Great Big Evil Uncaring Google Corporation, this blog gets the same amount of hits, as do my other site regarding ODE and C#.

Let's see,
this one here is about random, incoherent ramblings that, for a long time, fail to make any kind of mentally stimulating arguments or suggestions.

The other one talks about ODE.NET, C#, as well as using ODE.NET in Irrlicht NET CP. It comes in on Yahoo's top 5 rankings for ODE.NET tutorials. On Google, well, it's about on the 4th results page.

But surprisingly, more people come here, looking for stuff like, Timcampy [from D.Gray Man], Battlefield 2142 no-cd cracks, and H2 Physics notes.

I'm just kinda upset that no one's really caring about ODE.NET, or game physics programming on C#, or for ODE in Irrlicht, or that I spent a few weeks looking hard at ODE's syntax, and sprucing up programming tutorials in a newbie friendly style.

=(

Don't they know that game programming is the number one way to get rid of competition, by engaging swaths of youth and distracting them from productive activities??

My Question Mark key isn't working well...

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

Book Store

2007-11-04T22:40:00.000+08:00

My dad purchased 本草纲目 at the bookstore[s] near Bras Basah todae... which was originally only supposed to be a trip to the National Library..

Did you know it's not just grass and herbs inside there? They got bugs, fishes, birds, amphibians, and animals [tiger, deer, antelope, cow...] inside that book too.. Nyah, I dunno if it's the original version, but i think not, otherwise that title 李时珍 thought up of would be so contradictory, lolz. Must be an adapted version. But then.... if it's an adapted modern version.... why the heck are there endangered animals inside?!?!?

Ah, but maybe it's only Singapore TCM shops that don't [mostly] stock endangered stuff.. they have this little stick-in ad that says they don't stock on endangered animal parts, kinda like the visa post-it add that says "we support visa/american express".

I would have gotten a book myself if i wasn't studying. =( There was a Jap-Chi-Eng dictionary...

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

Alternatives tech

2007-10-30T22:07:00.000+08:00

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!

2007-10-27T20:46:00.000+08:00

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

2007-10-23T16:21:00.000+08:00

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 deviant ART

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 deviant ART
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

2007-10-16T21:46:00.000+08:00

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.

2007-10-11T21:20:00.000+08:00

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 deviant ART

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

2007-10-05T14:18:00.000+08:00

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

2007-10-04T07:55:00.001+08:00

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.

宝贝父女兵

2007-09-18T18:08:00.000+08:00

It's a nice show. I'm not good with actor names, but I like the actor who played King Kong. He hadn't been on air as a major character in a long time, much less as the male lead. It seems the show was made for him, as he fit the role of a father-gangster perfectly.

One of the most memorable and hilarious segments was the lackey duo. One of them was a real-life kungfu master, forgot his name too. The part about them abducting the 'Chairman' 's daughter was hilarious.

"我们要的赎金是50万."
The thin guy signals five, five.
"啊... 啊, 是5.. 500万."
Smacks head.
"我们稍后会通知你如何把钱交给我们."
Hangs up.
"笨蛋! 我说的是5万啦! 500万这么高的赎金, 他们不报警才奇怪!"
"哎呀! 那..那你要我做么, 打回去说有discount啊?!"

ahaha, not word for word, but lolz, it was v.funny..

Okay, bad things about the show.

It stretches your imagination and belief near the end. Am I to expect a gangster head [Big Head Hong] will just have 1 single lackey [Peter Lim]? And the part about kowtowing to Weird Granny. The gangster obviously outnumber the good guys. The bad guys could have just attacked the good guys and disposed of them for good. And the digicam too. Doesn't make any sense at all.... And the final scene. Anyone can just walk away from a crime scene just like that?!

And the story... it's supposed to be about father and daughter. Instead, the last 2 episodes, supposedly the epic, the climax, was about the couple. Please, why does every local Chi drama have to be about couples!!!! Just take the current 6 o'clock and 7 o'clock Ch 8 drama for eg. The main theme is about at least 3 young couples!! What's the matter, out of storylines????!!!!

Okay, so ignore that fact that the storyline digressed at the end. But what about the other few characters that were introduced?! The bun seller Coconut and co, at first I thought they were filler. Then as the story progressed I thought, hm, they were a nice break from talking too much about the gangster side. But at the end, they were just completely left out! They were filler! And the rich sibling pair, also filler! WTH, I'm sure you can just skip into the future and ignore the fact that your father and stepmother just had a car crash, found out they were gangsters, that your stepmum is your girlfriend's mother, and the lives of every other secondary character in the series.

As bad as the ending was, it was still a nice show. Somehow I always hate the endings. They will have some amazing crisis and stuff near the end, that's like, completely out-of-context and stuff.

I like the fact that they actually employed some real-life hawkers as extras in the show, during the Chun-chun walking through Tiong Bahru Market scene. But.... you DEFINITELY CANNOT walk from Tiong Bahru Market [between Outram and Tiong Bahru MRT] over to Ghim Moh Market [around Buona Vista MRT]. Hm.. well.

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

New DeviantArt!

2007-09-13T12:41:00.000+08:00

This time, it's D.Gray Man.

.:Timcampi:. by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

I cringe at that little red blotch that's supposed to be an explosion.... 'cause Timcampi's running away from an Akuma swarm... which I didn't draw as well... 'cause I tot of the context after I inked the lines...

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

Physics Guide

2007-09-13T00:41:00.000+08:00

Everyone's writing their own Physics Guides... Maybe it's because Chem had one but Physics didn't? Maybe it's because Physics is actually pretty manageable if you got the definitions and formulas nailed down? Maybe it's because we just all love Physics?

Whatever the cause is, it's really nice to see people trying to help each other out by distributing their guides. I have my own Physics guide written yes. But I don't feel like distributing it 'cause I really don't think it's good enough... Though I must say I like my layout better. =D

Looking through the distributed Physics guides [I've seen abt 3 i guess], I realise my own was kinda myopic in a way. I'd left skimpy details in Superposition... a lot of missing stuff. Like now-where do you find anything about path difference, phase difference, or the path difference required for constructive/destructive interference. I got the formula connecting path diff to phase diff though.

I guess I unconsciously excluded what I was afraid of [superposition], and only included stuff I like. Also a lot of stuff I expected myself to figure out intuitively, if not work out myself. Which might be a good or bad thing, depending whether you're rushing or have time to burn.

I do have a Physics guide that few in this world have though! An ODE.NET guide, which is a Physics Simulation Engine for C#!!! =D Yep, that's what I was working on, for the eve of the Prelims thus far. 'course, i did my revision lah! Except Maths. D= died-ed.

ODE = Open Dynamics Engine. Basically you have a geometry. Which is a shape for collision detection. Then you assign it a body. With a mass. That body will give it velocity, position, angular velocity, inertia. You advance the simulation by integrating the forces and momentum with time. Of course, you don't actually integrate! You just call a function. Then you take the values and render an equivalent object in DirectX or OpenGL.

There is not a single ODE.NET guide on the net right now. Mine is the first. =D =D Also there's very few ODE guides, which being the C++ version, you'd think have a lot of materials. But none. So mine is the few ODE tutorials out there too. If you have nothing better to do like me, you can see it here at http://cardinal4.wetpaint.com.

Man, coffee really makes you not wanna sleep. I'm amazed that it's already 1am, after a tiresome Prelim [Maths] paper, and not feeling the slightest fatigue. This is my first time experiencing such late-night energetic-ness. Lolz... only had my first cup of hawker kopi-o xiu dai [no sugar]. My parents' anti-sugar rally hehe.

Anime Ranking:
One Piece
Naruto [Shippudden]
Konjiki no Gash Bell
Full Metal Alchemist
Claymore
D.Gray Man
Bokurano
Death Note

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

9 11 ... Conspiracy?

2007-09-11T19:10:00.000+08:00

It's unbelievable how many people are still inclined to believe 9/11 is a conspiracy by the Bush government. It hardly is. Dude. Osama is a consipiracy... a fictionary character imagined up by the Bush government. Don't you se the seemingly invisibility of Osama.. how he hides? How he has this stereotypical turban and predictable anti-US crusade? It's all a hoax!

To claim it's a hoax is to belittle the American Government [Bush of course is another matter], and the lives of those who perished in the tragic incident. Seriously...

Conspiracies are interesting, but do take it with a heavy pinch of salt, especially if it's a global event, modern global event, and even worse, a modern disastrous global event that involved the lives of many innocent people.

PS: I say modern because technology now has the capability to record detailed incidents and analyse between truth and false.

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

Schools @ Wiki

2007-08-23T22:27:00.001+08:00

It's quite odd to be reading about your schools on Wikipedia. Some of the sections in each page were seemingly written for students or alumni members. [or maybe not. I'm not coherent.] It's kinda a third-person narration, yet you kinda feel and know the unspoken stuff about topics raised inside the Wiki.

It was really odd that RJC goes into a very personal tour of the school facilities, even mentioning the facts about faulty airconditioning system, seemingly disused chat rooms, students mugging after school in the classrooms, a 7-11 store [wow, how soul-stirring that was]. There's also a discussion of the House System and the Council committee. And if my memory isn't faulty, there was even something about "tau pok" previously. Which was a rather confusing concept at first. =)

Most interestingly, the WSM/Derick/PAP MP controversy stuff. She has her very own Wiki page, which is ... really not a good thing. There is nothing like these on HCJC and NJC's Wiki. Of course, having such a small sample size, whatever hypothesis obtained is not representative.

And I kinda like River Valley's Wiki page too. There's an entire few sections dedicated into explaining how "unique" [well it is, that i can't disagree] the uniforms are, and even about future plans for the uniforms. [NO!! I like the old ones. With easily rippable painful metal buttons.]

And a whole list of the 3 Sustained Achievements thingy in Sports, PE, and UG. Which was quite nerve-wrecking i suppose, a few consecutive years of it, all it needs is just one miss, to lose the awards entirely. Hm, but a check of the Wiki, didn't make any mention of any consecutive Sustained Achievements Awards other than in 2001. Which is weird. I could have sworn the banner was updated at least once more, after 2001. And definitely, NCC did certainly get the Gold award for Best Unit Compeition in 2005... Unless it was a requisite for the Girls to get Gold too... Ah, I can't remember, all I know is I didn't get a good clustering at the annual Marksmanship competition or something..., which was included in the Best Unit scoring system somehow. It was pretty last minute stuff; I didn't even know I was selected [or even the top 3 of the Charlie cohort o.0 ] as part of the RV NC team until the day itself.

Why was I wiki-ing schools in the first place? I was trying to find the link for RJC's Maths Department answers for the revision exercises..... ~~The RJC website has some serious issues with linking.... And no, I still haven't found the link yet...~~
Ah... the link was pretty darn obvious. I must have been really sleepy or something.

Oh yeah, check this interesting out-dated review of RJC: http://gssq.entori.net/writings/rjc.htm

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

Full Metal Alchemist: Restored

2007-08-20T18:39:00.000+08:00

:FMA: Restored by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART
I feel that this one might be the best one yet! =D I managed to keep the entire body proportion accurate. The picture has a context. The colouring looks alright, as in, artistically acceptable as a style [and not just doodles].

I tried cel-shading, but that didn't work out. Halfway I did air-brushing. Then tried using cel-shading and blurring with Blue tool and Air Brush. Then I took a look inside my favourited artworks, decided I liked paint-like dabbling the best, so I tried doing that.

I used a brush with slight scattering, 50% flow, 15% hardness, no size/opacity controls. I think I love this style, much like cel-shading but definitely slightly higher quality [kinda]. Truth [the floating guy] didn't turn out to be as clean as i hoped. =(

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

Low poly character.

2007-08-19T21:23:00.000+08:00

Ah. An anime character. T'was a screenshot for a brand new Open Source 3D modeler on the internet. It's really low poly. I could do that. But not really desirable... I would hope for something nicer. Even though that might mean not finishing it. But I would something of high quality. Not just rushing a sub-standard copy. I want something that I can reuse later without recoding/remodeling.

I still can't shake off the mental image of a circling camera zooming in on a character just before a match begins.

And I removed the jukebox. I found myself shutting off my speakers everytime I preview my blog edits. Which is pretty funny if you think about it. So I took it off. I had earlier rationalized that the only other way to get other people to love the same song/anime as i do, would be to make it into a game. Then people will have to download the game, and sit through the awesome music and video from the show, and see how awesome the characters are. That was pretty silly. But yup, no better way to get someone to watch an anime by packaging it as a game. =D

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

New Website

2007-08-18T23:53:00.000+08:00

Well no. No new website. Still the same thing.
I just had a really compulsive need to change my web address so that I can put on some really stylish blog designs.

Stylish? How stylish exactly? Check this demo page out, it'll rock your socks right off: http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=4360

Wonderful wonderful page layouts. WordPress is truly one of the best places to find free awesomely designed page designs. And to top it off, it's even plug-and-play!

This post would have been on a new blog. But during the registration process for a new webpage [free webhosts everywhere, problem is finding one which you trust], i realise... blogspot has its benefits too.

Well being an informal blog, it rocks to be able to change your web address on a whim.
And informal as it is, isn't registering a new subdomain kinda too much of a hassle? Even if it is for awesome page designs?
Plus I have a formal blog to maintain, and i can put on awesome web designs there too, just for the novelity of it all.

Conclusion? It's too darn freaking late and I'm not in the mood to do anything so I rationalize my laziness by coming up with silly excuses about why not to make a new informal blog for attaching awesome page layouts. But I really DO NOT need a new blog.... Breadcrumbs all over the net, i'm sure.

PS: I still can't stare enough at those layout themes... I can only marvel at the intricate DHTML/AJAX coding that made it all possible... o.0

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

Claymore

2007-08-12T21:07:00.000+08:00

Claymore is a wonderful anime. I would like to think that it far surpasses any of the other animes that I've watched, and that includes Bleach, Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist, D.Gray Man and One Piece.

Claymore surpasses not because it beats the other above animes at what they do. In fact, Claymore is in its own unique category.
Firstly, it is not a shounen anime.
Right, if it's not a shounen anime, that must mean ecchi right? No. Claymore does not focus on it.
Thirdly, it does not have ... comedy! That's not a bad thing [Read Below].

Claymore is a dark fantasy show set in medieval times. There exists two races, Humans and Yomas. Yomas are monsters. Just thing about an ogre/goblin. They are slightly sentient, flesh-eating monsters.
Claymores are female warriors, who's duties are to eliminate these monsters. They are a human/Yoma hybrid, a human implanted with the blood of a Yoma [i suspect by a grafting/transplant process]. These warriors' weapons are Claymores, giantic heavy swords, hence their name. However the Claymores don't actually have a name. They belong to a nameless dark organization that gives orders to Claymores, punishes villages that had hired them but didn't pay.

Claymore does not bore the viewers with lengthy explanations about skill, techniques, and new monsters [unlike Naruto]. Claymore does not involve long periods of staring at each other [Naruto, Bleach], or pre-fight talking [Bleach]. Claymore, despite being a fighting show, does not attempt to force characters into extremely odd storylines that just involve them fighting, suddenly increasing their power levels, nor have extremely gaping plotholes left in them [Bleach]. Claymore is NOT a happy ending show, it's dark. Darker than D.Gray Man, and of course, more gory, since D.Gray Man is not in the least gory.

Expect to be confused slightly by characters that look quite alike. It happens, especially when there are lots of Claymores getting killed, and when they're all females. Expect to be faced with Not-Safe-For-Work scenes involving partial nudity, and lots of sliced up limbs [though they can regenerate].

In Claymore, the main character, Clare, does not talk much. So you are saved the agony of egoistic behaviour patterns or excessively worrying about comrades or saving a particular someone. [D.Gray Man's Allen and Naruto/Gaara] However, if that seems a bit cold, it's not. Background stories are dealt with appropriately. Fighting scenes are well-done, despite it being all done with only swords, which is fantastic in a way.

There are NO FILLERS. IT ADHERES COMPLETELY TO THE STORYLINE. It does not detract from the storyline at all, from episode 1 to 19. That means 19 episodes of back-to-back action-filled episodes without even a breather!!! Everything comes from the manga itself!!! That actually means a lot, as the whole story feels completely connected, in line with what the mangaka is trying to depict. Moreover, there are already 9 published volumes of Claymore, which means a plausible non-filler Season 2 coming up.

Claymore rocks. All converted Naruto and Bleach fans, who have grown disillusioned with insane fillery action and screaming Naruto, all agree that Claymore rocks. =D

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

NDP 07

2007-08-09T23:09:00.000+08:00

The parade sequence; the UGs are all holding replica model guns, and not marching. That'll definitely make the U-turning of the marching easier to execute, but kinda harder to stand there for 40 mins I guess. If only they allowed the participants to carry it home too. =D

Everything at the beginning of the Parade was pretty cool. Couldn't see the 40 commandos rappeling down the Sheares bridge or something. But everything was pretty novel and cool. They'll have to spice things up a little if they're gonna do it at Marina Bay again though.

Why Marina Bay though? Isn't the floating stadium just right in front of the Marina Square Shopping Centre? I thought Marina Bay was on the other side of the ECP? It ought to be NDP @ City Hall.

The President must have felt awkward not having anyone to wave to for a 1/4 of his journey. Not that anyone could, army law prevent them from waving. But dude, the UGs got to wave to the President!!! Normally we'll have to stare straight ahead and pretend to have tunnel vision. If the camera catches you shifting your eyes to follow the camera or anything, you're basically Lolz-ed. Lolz. Though the President was really sincere in thanking the participants. At the end of the Parade, the MCs said the President was preparing to leave, which was supposed to be a cue of some sort. But President S.R. Nathan continued shaking hands, till he finished the width of the row and went back to his escort car. Makes me have a better impression of him than just a figurehead of the government.

The stage is kinda too bright I think. The performers with all their slightly glittering suits, don't really stand out a lot in all that glow. And the animal placards thingy, they're virtually invisible in all that light.

What was with that really really really monotonous and irritating narration about water?

Who was THAT in a Lamborghini? Why was there a Lamborghini?! How come there are still parachuters that late into the segment? And the singer Gandhi, I wonder if he did notice, but the crowd was cheering for the parachuters, not for him. Though he was really immersed. And when he finished singing, he stared up expectantly, only to be plunged into complete darkness. =| hm. Maybe I'm over imagining things. This is not his first performance [rehearsals].

The National Day Theme Song was really ... unpatriotic, in that there was no notion of nation, of community, or of society in that song at all. And it's really "artistic". Rock was better in comparison, though rock versions of previous National Day Songs had a slight ruinous effect. This is the worst National Day Song EVER. It's basically crapping a whole lot about entrepreneurship and creativity. Commitment, loyalty, cultural diversity were all non-existent.

~~Mediacorp artistes were missing on the stadium. Maybe the TV live telecast didn't film them. Perhaps it would be better if they were more evident.~~
I was wrong. I just watched the rerun and heard the artistes' voices. The entire NDP had a feel of a musical concert rather than a NDP. Especially the Gandhi guy, who made it like a rock concert, seriously. Some performances were lacking luster. Some choreographing issues perhaps; the performances moved along really slowly; the performers' dance actions were completely unrecognizable from such a distance, especially with full blasting lights that made everything so ... bright. The performers are supposed to be highlighted by their sparkling suits. Instead their suits were just another bright spot in a really bright stage. Contrast problems, really.

The last segment was kinda the best. They played the 3 most famous of Songs, and it was really nice to hear them. The crowd obviously felt that way too. Or maybe the Parade was designed that way, atmosphere-wise. Anyway, I would love to be there for the last segment. And to be part of a contingency for the first segment.

Fireworks were okay. I could see the fireworks while eating at Tiong Bahru market. =D Got to see the fireworks every year. Though I'm still surprised Marina Bay is actually close to Tiong Bahru. Relatively.
The "flares" on top of some skyscrapers were quite insignificant. Too far and too small to be observable to the Parade goers. Might as well not be there; they made the Parade look cheapo. Or being overly excessive. 画蛇添足.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention the billboards were completely DISTRACTING. What, is this Windows Media Player or what? What's with the darn "visualizations"? I prefer they do a close-up of the performers/their dance moves (Yes they do, but not enuff). Us TV viewers can see some details, but not much. I hate to think what little sense the spectators can make of an overly bright and distant performance.

One final thing. Did anyone notice that this year's NDP was solely ENGLISH?!?!?! Not a single Chinese word uttered, much less Tamil. [Malay was present in the Pledge and Anthem.] The entire NDP stinks of rich/upper-class English-ness, or at least the 2007 Theme Song is. I'm not a favourite of English radio/local TV [gee, I must hate English a lot], if that explains anything. XD I'll be happier if they at least HAD a different language. Even German will do.

Conclusion? This year's NDP was cool and novel. The fact that only 1/4 of the "normal capacity" was occupied, the rest were open stadium, allowed for quite some nice stuff. But they should have more amphibious floats I guess. The skating and the giant moving pearl was kinda cheap-skate, no pun intended. The main skater is really really lucky to be the main attraction for nearly the entire NDP. The stadium must have had some cooling sea breeze, though a bit humid and stingy [salt]. They should have more Navy stuff on the sea. The mirror-like sea waters made really mesmerizing waves in the wake of the boats [could possibly use to great effect if there's little turbulence. Think drawings]. The drive-in APC/Tanks/Armoured Riot Cars sequence was too small to see anything. Couldn't make out what they were doing with the hoses, or their shields or whatever. Lower the intensity of the bloody lights. PM Lee Hsien Loong returned the salute of an officer who welcomed him when getting out of his Mercedes transport. [For those who don't know, saluting without Army/SAF/Navy kit, and that includes the beret/cap, is against Army regulations.] PM Lee does not exercise as much as MM Lee. His speech at the NLB talking about economy forecasts was a bit cliche and suspicious, (the stare-far-away-then-turn-around bit), though nothing to do with NDP. Damn lucky for there not to be rain. It rained in the morning. That's how many consecutive years of rainless NDP? Blessed.

I wonder if other countries ever have this kind of nation-wide sense of NDP in the air. Sure we might not go crazy over it like others do over Fourth-of-July, but we like our NDP a lot [IMHO]. I'm not sure if there's an equivalent NDP to speak of, probably separated for each of the regions, which doesn't quite unite a nation as well as an island-nation does.

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

RJ NDP

2007-08-07T22:45:00.000+08:00

I love this year's NDP celebration!!! It's so cool and interesting, and omg, the first major night-time school event [for me]!! When everything's so dark, cooling, though unfortunately humid, and under moving spotlights, anything's interesting!!!

I was just saying that Sing-Along sessions were really cool and completely defined National Day Celebrations, and how unfortunate that we don't have them anymore. Then omg, Sing-Along, yay!!!! I love sing-along, it's been so long [2 yrs well] since my last one, I completely didn't realise I couldn't sing high anymore. -.-" Or screech. I want my voice to crack!!!! Lolz.. Ahem, so ya, had to sing low soft. I like Ou De Yang.

My throat a bit phlegm now. Must be that mee siam and that screaming. I'm surprised I lasted the night on just a mee siam. Wanted to get a popiah but zzz, nvm.

Unexpectedly slept late last night while trying to double-check the guarantee on a mint-condition yoyo i had. Anyway I thought sleeping late will make really grogginess and might daze off while trying to last till evening. But actually no leh. Quite okay, only 2 hrs to burn only. And the celebration was pretty enlivening stuff, how can ever doze off?!?!

Damn you ppl who boon!! Damn wet blanket and 扫兴 loh. But their loss. Actually it depends, yah lah. =)

Is this the last NDP celebration? Even if NUS got, don't think it'll be nice as JC or SS or PS... in that cannot just wild and patriotic and all that. =) Lolz. I'm an official patriotic convert after my stint as participating NCC platoon in NDP'04. It really changes your perspective of the NDP. You feel like part of the ten thousands sitting ard the stadium. And you gain some respect and admiration for the rehearsal process. Seeing them setup the seating, draping on decorations and tarps, positioning the big guns, drilling the rifle firing sequence on the front parade square. =D And feeling that you feel the same thing as every other performer/participant there. And slight mixing of the diff UG grps and across diff schs. And kinda just missing everyone there, the atmosphere when NDP ends, and you look back and say, OMG, that part of my life just went away. And you can't even stop to reminisce, 'cause everyone's got to scramble and get the hell out of the vicinity b4 the crowd is dismissed. So, you end up leaving the stadium with a sense of loss. The performance is over, excellent job, and now we're running away from the place, as a grp for the very last time. Then each of the UG grps, and within each UG grp, with different destinations [some on the East, some on the West], drive off on the designated buses. And waving like hell and making a lot of noise to the ppl on the other buses.

Though the OIC then said NDP'04 was the last one to be held at the National Stadium. Then our squad was like omg, nice. And I wished I actually had a camera phone to take some photos for memoir. But it wasn't the last yr, damnit!! The OIC and CO and specialists lied!! Though I still wish I had a 2.0M camera phone then. And during RV Grad Nite too. I know now I'm definitely having a camera on RJ Grad Nite. For too long I tot some events were just gonna be trivial and thus not worth being bothered with. But it ALWAYS turns out otherwise. Social stuff does weird things on your perception. So now, CAMERA for Grad Nite!!!! RAWR!!!

Jking ard too much isn't too nice either, cannot get into the mood. Like trying to joke ard too much during Chem that the lesson just flew by. but on the bright side, i stayed awake i guess. And no jokes to distract on NDP! =D

Sry abt that NDP rant. I ALWAYS feel like ranting abt it, that was the best part of life past. That rant will be compensation for not ranting after watching the real NDP on TV. The marching rhythm played by the SAF band, the marching commands given off, and the formation, are all so hauntingly familiar and dreamily intimate....

I'm weird.

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

MakeHuman

2007-08-03T19:15:00.000+08:00

In case you ever wanted your very own self-made fantasy character, you now can with MakeHuman from MakeHuman.org. It's free customisation tool, that allows you to customize a default human, from lip width, teeth size, reticle size, head indentation, feet extrusion, abdomen width, endomorphic/mesomorphic, etc. It's pretty cool.

Except that I can't get it to work the way I want it to. It's really quite good, but.... there's problems with the eyes. Namely, you probably can't get it to have an anime eye. The settings they have for eyelid expansion are very limited. Can't get a very big eyelid.

Probably with more practice I can make it work. Plus a little modification on my own inside Blender 3D of course. 'Cause there are a lot of things to look out for when you want to have an animated model: the places where the face will crease, the mouse openings, the eyelids, the eyebrows etc.

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

New DevArt!

2007-07-30T14:59:00.000+08:00

:KnGB: Gash's Emblem by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

My first successful attempt at 3D modeling. =D Though I would have liked to have known how to spin the camera around, thus making a pretty cool rotating animation.

Blender 2.44 is quite cool to model it, but it sucks like hell if you're ever thinking to export from it.

Basically, perfect for modeling, difficult for game exporting.

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

DeviantArt!

2007-07-29T23:05:00.000+08:00

:KnGB: Our King by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART
It's the beginning of the end of Konjiki no Gash Bell. Kanchome got sent back. D=
It's really a pity the anime ended before the manga did. It would have looked awesome in sound and colour... Ikue Ohtani was a darn good VA, she did the voices for Tony Tony Chopper of One Piece and Pikachu [and others] for Pokemon. And certainly, Makoto Raiku's slightly not-so-good artwork would have looked much better on screen after modification by the on-board animators.

I saw the manga artwork exhibited in front of the RJ canteen and was completely OMG, it's so nice! Which further reminded me that, it's not the tool that draws, but the person. There was a particular pencil artwork that was so uberly CG/Airbrush feel. I'm so 自卑 now... =(

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

Chem sucks.

2007-07-24T22:53:00.000+08:00

Chem sucks. I hate Chem. Especially portions where they make you memorise stuff and so on. I tot it's all about application not memorisation. Sure, some memorisation is expected. But if we have to memorise details for individual elements that's just ridiculous.

Like halogen. Or Alkaline metals. Or periodicity. There's just so much freaking different things to remember.... Product of disportionation of halogen, the reactivity of the metals with steam, the oxides... So much stuff..

Do real life Chemists remember these stuff?! Well, 'course they do to a certain extent, they deal with these stuff half the time of the day. But seriously, we should all just have a table of values, properties to reference. Saves memory work by A LOT. People who can't memorise can't score. What's this?! It's not fair at all!! If we all had nothing else in life but academia, then all right, we'll just all be insane muggers. But it's not that case. We still got a bunch of other subjects, and Chem is really just so damn difficult with all its properties.

I really hate Chem. I was joking once that Chemists must be really sad people back in the early 19th century. Just as Physicists had nothing qualitative to work on, Chemists as well. They only had observational data, nothign concrete. I think. Anyway, Physicists spent their time coming up with a table of every imaginable value that can ever be observed experimentally. Which i suppose kinda infringes in Chemistry. While, I suspect Chemists spend their time looking for observable patterns in those mountains of values. And they got really insane and silly and started naming their compounds with pet names. Like Edta and Danny Boy. And formaldehyde and ammine. Well they didn't have a sense of humour so Danny Boy was never a compound.
Then Physicists came along and saved Chemists from their sorry fate of giving monickers to every single compound in the world, by giving them Quantum Theory.

Now they have the Pauli exclusion principle, Aufbau building up principle and the Hund's rule. Kudos to physics. Chem became a much more meaningful subject especially with orbitals and being able to analyse compounds with the Electron Tunneling Microscope.

Of course, everything up there was fictional, but it might as well have been true, 'cause Chem still sucks. If they'd left out the last 4 topics of Chemistry, Chemistry might actually be a really enjoyable subject. But they didn't. So it sucks. Grr.

:Naruto: Rock Lee by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

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

Doggy

2007-07-13T23:01:00.000+08:00

I once had a doggy. It was a really cute doggy, when barking too much late at night, but really active. Scuttered around the house and it would slid sometimes, didn't clip it's nails too well.

Then it ran away while I was still in sch, during Pri 2. My mum was walking it along Tiong Bahru old estates, then it managed to struggle free of the leash, or rather, carried the lease with it and ran off. Didn't find it. Can't quite remember anything else much, other than life was pretty mild onwards and I got snails at Pri 4 and then got fishes at Pri 6. None were quite as cool as a dog.

Meh, then now I just had the curious urge to find out what breed my dog belonged to. I only knew it was kinda foxy, not much to work from there. Almost wanted to give up.... then had the idea to go look for a comprehensive dog gallery. A quick glance at the thumbnails for each dog album found it.

It's a Pomeranian!!! Some kind of Spitz dog [wolf ancestry], from cold parts of Germany, no wonder it was had a foxy snout and a really cool coat of fur.

Isn't it so cute?!?!?!! PS: It's not mine. My photos are locked somewhere safer.

Lolz, occasionally I'll meet a Pomeranian on Tiong Bahru, and I'll wonder if someone had picked it up. Actually I think there's only one guy with a Pomeranian on Tiong Bahru ard my block. But it's not reacting so i'm just dreaming things...

I wonder how cool would it be to still have that little doggy... I'll probably not have had fishes, nor have set up a fish website. But having a doggy beats that anytime, imho. Fishes are way harder to maintain, harder to keep alive. They have random illnesses, random behaviours like biting each other or refusing to eat, or just die like mysteriously, and even with your best shot, they can only last a year or so. Unless you're pro skill. 'cause an aquarium is like an entire ecosystem onto itself. It even has nitrifying bacteria to turn ammonia to nitrite to nitrate to nitrogen gas/nitrogen dioxide liberated to the atmosphere, or nitrates which are absorbed by plant-life or just spawn an algae outbreak due to high nitrate or phosphate content.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Learning journey

2007-07-11T23:23:00.000+08:00

Meh, I felt so bad at being a skeptic of the Zoo learning journey at first. It wasn't quite half as bad as i thought it would be after all. Pretty interesting and cool, a much better way to spend an afternoon. Or a learning journey, compared to going to some other locations which are completely choke full of National Education...

Learnt some stuff,
bonded more with the class (well, kinda selectively, but anyway),
Was actually interesting.

Animals are interesting. Of course, more so when you're on the other side of the barrier. But definitely more enchanting than on Animal Planet. I like the fishes. Pity they only had fishes in the newer exhibits (are they new?)

Too much monkeys/primates. Trams are not eco-friendly?!! They're running on diesel I think... But anyway, after like how many years of not going to the zoo (last was Pri Sch) it's pretty interesting. I like the new layout, quite cool, relative to previous ones. Merkats are pretty cute.. =D

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

The in-between period

2007-07-09T21:39:00.000+08:00

Right after CTs, debriefing.... Right after that, Prelims.... It's getting along pretty damn fast...

I hate H3 right now. Maybe that hate will go away soon, but right now it's completely filled with holes in the understanding.... Or so I believe? It's hard to do well in something when you're filled with so much negative energy against it.

In exact correlation to effort over results, my Econs scored the highest thus far, with Maths coming in, then Chem. I studied less for Maths than Chem, but then I pia-ed AP,GP, Induction, which I scored in. Most other stuff was flunk. Chem... I rushed then gave up. Then rushed a bit more on the day itself. I'm elated for Econs. My best result so far. Been S all the way till this year, where I gained an interest in Econs, then it climbed to E for CT1. Now it's a C! =D 2 grades jump! At least... I think.... I can't quite get the grading system down in my head. Meh, but it's still a giant improvement for me.

Need for Speed: Underground 2 is kinda fun... I love the entire GTA concept, run around city doing stuff. But .... it's kinda boring after a while. When your car pretty much sucks and you've unlocked pretty much everything there is to unlock in that city, and remaining races are super difficult... When's the next city and cars and races gonna be unlocked?! I'm getting frustrated.... It's taking up too much of my time playing that....

I still suck at drawing. I want to take some time to touch up but i'm never getting the time. Pfftt, I can't draw fore-shortened eyes... Or chins...

I'm trying to learn Blender 3D. And C++. I hope to master 3D, it could be pretty exciting... C++ is .... overly complex. I'm forcing myself to think of it in a positive light. But it's very hard not to be frustrated at its complete lack of controls. C++ just gives you complete power, and dumps it in your lap. I seriously don't know how half the C++ programmers in sch manage to learn all that. In fact I think they don't even know anything except algorithm programming, which is like using the most basic of C++ knowledge.
Pointers?
Copy Constructors, Destructors?
Assignment Operators, Overloading other [], ++, +, ->* operators?
Multiple Inheritance, virtual classes, the modifiers?
Friend functions?
Problem of returning from functions as the local obj is copied to a temporary obj as a return value, which then both the temporary copy and local obj is disposed of.
Templates?

And meanwhile, I'm coding the 3D engine... Right now I'm coding the base exception classes.... zzzzz

The pressure is killing me. D=

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

The End of Kira

2007-06-28T09:17:00.000+08:00

Whoa, finally, Death Note ends. I totally dropped the show right after Light dies. I believe the climax lasted until a bit after Misa Misa appeared. Second Kira was rather intriguing, for a while. Then Light legalised himself with Ryuzaki and it went all downhill from the silly Four Leaf Corporation thing.

But the ending was awesome. I didn't really get the part about Near's blah blah explanation. It's too repetitive and long and in actuality, just a bunch of coincidences. Near could have very well lost. It's just a stroke of luck, and not as Near, Light, Mello, or even Ryuzaki said, logic. Which is why I started hating the show. The mangaka made them seem smarter than they are, but their explanation stinks and has loopholes all over.

Anyway, I'm, for once, extremely delighted they changed the ending of Death Note. I'd my manga beside me and checking those last moments of Light, and man, they did change a lot. But for the better.

Light now dies a much more decent death. At first, his running away, I thought he's gonna die somewhere secluded, begging for mercy with Ryuk. But Ryuk did not even appear to Light at all. Light ran as far as he could, while Ryuk wrote his name, out of sight. Then Light died peacefully on top of a stairwell while a beam of light shining down. And OMG, Light "saw" Ryuzaki as he closed his eyes! Awesome scene to add in. The final conclusion on what had always been a battle between Light and Ryuzaki. Light died peacefully. The only one to do that, apparently, from the effects of the NoteBook. The only other person to die peacefully, but not from the Notebook, was Light's father. But then again, Light was pestering his father for the name while he's dying, so not exactly peacefully. But at least painless.

They also showed Misa Misa standing on the edge of a high plateau. Did she commit suicide? We all know she didn't in the manga. But all things considered, that was a pretty nice ending. Questions left unanswered. Protagonist died nicely. Antagonist (L) appeared in death hallucinations. Last remaining Kira: Dead or Alive? Pretty good.

All much better than the silly ending of, the world went on normally, sort of, without Kira. And a bunch of Kira devotees forming their own pitiful little sect someplace far away. And Light begging for help in front of Ryuk when he died.

Well that's that. End of Death Note. It was nice while it started and ended.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

CTs

2007-06-26T21:51:00.000+08:00

It makes a pretty big difference. Whether or not if you've felt you've tried your best, compared to if you think you could have done better.

IMHO, I know that if I am aware that I'd just wasted time away doing nothing when the CTs is like tomorrow, or two days later, I'm in depression mode. Which is like, during the CTs, in moments of utter despair, my finger will be resting on the "To Hell With Everything" button. Which also can be rationalized. Didn't spend enough time revising it. So, 理所当然地, of course I can't do this question. And most probably flunk the paper. Then I'll take a breather, and just take a break. Surely, with 15 minutes left, and so many questions remaining, I can't possibly make a difference. What's more about those questions I quickly glazed over with cheap shot answers?

Mmm, but if I think i'd tried my best the previous day, I'll try my best to do the paper. It's not like I'm condemning myself consciously or whatever, it's just so depressing when you find something you can't do, but are supposed to be able to do, and you know the reason is because you didn't put in as much effort.

Thus far was pretty successful. Stayed off the computer for most of the day, except directly after the CTs. Fatigue helped a bit. I was thinking that, being so knocked out after studying and the test, I couldn't possibly muster enough energy to do anything fun or interesting at all. So.... might as well, spend some more time staring at the chemical compounds and something good might come out of it. Or ... sleep. Which I did, right on time at 10.30pm thus far. Meh, can't stay awake any longer. And also, my belief is that, it's better to sleep early, than to stay up late studying. Which i think is proven, for my case, that I got totally knocked out after every major test. Just feel like slumping over for a nap.

Bah, Chem is rather dead now. Econs is okay. To my dismay I found out that studying 3 weeks before, no, even 1 week before, is not exactly long-term memory stuff. Thus far, for Chem and Econs I keep doing last day rush to cover EVERYTHING again. For Chem I gave up at Nitrogen. 20 topics is too much. Econs I barely made it. The part I didn't quite make it was monetary policy for Singapore. Especially the crap about some trinity rule about cake and not eating cake. Last minute revising is all about refreshing memory, not about sorting out questions. Don't know, skip.

.. Just spent 8 minutes working out a 2 mark Summation question. =( I suspect it's 2-mark because supposedly you can use your GC and trial&error to figure out the answer. But nah, it's more satisfying, in this case, to just write the whole thing out by hand, and say, Damn you, I worked the thing out using logic not trial&error.
And as you can see, I'm not a big fan of Primary School Trial&Error stuff. Every question should have a logical derivation and solution behind it.

Just watched some oldie show on Ch 8. It replaced the rerun of 喜临门. Both of which are pretty nice shows. But I like this new oldie rerun better. 野蛮亲家. Thought that was a Hong Kong Chinese drama? Anyway, maybe I like it better because of the senior actors. I find them easier to remember, recognise, and their acting is way better. The new ones, meh, they all come in from mainstream OMG IDOL! or some other talent contest with not so convincing acting. They don't have much of their own unique style at all. With the exception of that female actor - the one that's appearing on the soyabean commercials or something. The bowl-shaped Hinata-Byakugan hairdo type, that is way too enthu. Which is kinda good, since she's like, instantly identifiable. Stands out among the other new actors who's more like hired by-standers than anything. Meh, even any old uncle/auntie that was dragged onto the set for a one-off appearance give off a more convincing and amiable feel compared to new actors.

The new show, 幸运心, 看起来似乎蛮好看的. 或许又是因为范文芳是情节的主角吧? 但是, 有经验, 演艺有不错, 加上一个 "大概" 刺激的童年爱情情节, 我蛮期待的. 那是, 若我能记得收看的话... 矣, 还是觉得旧一代的演员有料. http://ch8c.mediacorptv.com/shows/variety/view/887/1/.html Meh, especially the people who appear in the photographs there, damn memorable. I'm a fan of Mark Lee. =D

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Progress

2007-06-20T22:30:00.001+08:00

Bah... Title's getting more meaningless by the day...

Results are good. I don't know, I just like having some feedback on whether the current situation is effective or not, and then tweak on them. Kinda like programming. Run the program, see whether there's any problems, then tweak configurations.

I like it best when I run my program and something happens. Anything happening is good. Even errors. At least they tell you something is wrong. Whenever I run my program and I get no errors i get kinda unnerved by that. The code can't be perfect, I'll think. It's never that way. If an error happens, great! That's one less error. The probability of another error is now lower. (Wait, is that correct?)

Runtime errors are like hit-and-miss. 'Cause runtime errors only appear when the program is running. Your code is grammatically correct. But unfortunately something's wrong. Maybe a careless mistake, forgetting to do some calculations? Put a plus sign when it should have been minus? Got the logic completely wrong (which would be a mathematical logic error then)? So like, if it happens on the first try, that's awesome. It's all luck most of the time, catching a runtime error. Sections of code never get accessed until later later later. Then it gives a wrong value and that mistake multiplies itself a dozen times over and it looks like your entire program's gone bonkers.

Not really doing very well art-wise. My art, is sucky again. Was it not sucky before? I'm not too sure. I do pretty well on reference pictures but drawing stuff on my own is really hard. I'm practicing on Naruto, since Masashi Kishimoto really draws very accurately and life-like. You can see it in the way he does different poses and the sceneries in Naruto.

Academic-wise.... not so good. I was supposed to do one subject each week. Econs was marvelous, finished with the weekend to spare and slack off. Chem was pretty good, I was on Carboxylic with 2 days to spare. Then I don't know, maybe I slacked too much. The remaining Nitro and Phys Chem took up an entire extra week. So I have 1 week left for Maths and Physics.

And Maths, unfortunately, was much harder than i expected. I thought I had vectors nailed down pretty good, since I was doing vectors in 3d programming. But... apparently not. The only thing I could remember was cross-product. That's all. Had to re-revise LOP and the foot of perpendicular stuff all over. And Power Series, Mathematical Induction was a headache. And I discoursed to study a bit of Integration. I suspect I might have to discourse again to study P&C - can't remember anything either.

Crap, not going to make it in time. I never do, lately. I really need to get down to doing my own notes for each subject. Perhaps I'll dedicate two hours per day after the CTs mugging, I don't know, it doesn't seem enuff to cover everything, and I don't think I have enuff time for Computer AND mugging at the same time...

BAAAAHHH I rly underestimated Chem, Maths, and perhaps Physics... Too long, too deep. And screw it, I spent a week watching D.Gray Man. Awesome show, much better at sticking at the plot of exorcising the rogue undead to save their souls, better than Bleach is. Bleach is just a sorry excuse for endless battling. Really, the entire, omg, scary hollows thingy with mystery and suspense just completely disappeared from Bleach when Byakuya and Renji appeared to slaughter Ichigo. Now everyone's just fighting humans. Well Death god humans and humans with a hole in the stomach.

D.Gray Man is much better at the suspense thingy. 19th century Gothic Exorcists, fighting Akumas, which are produced when a loved one calls for their late one's souls, and implanted into a skeleton mesh by the Millenium Earl (demon). It's fun guessing who's the demon in disguise each episode. Much less obvious than Bleach where everyone goes around annoucing their names and leveling up. WTH, Byakuya said Bankai was only available to the nobilities who get their name engraved in teh history of Soul Society or something... wasn't catching much when watching 8 episodes a day. But now, everyone can Bankai. WTH... Even noob medical shinigamis can Bankai?! (who's the guy with the scapel Bankai, konohamaru or something like that?)

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

New tools

2007-06-16T23:01:00.001+08:00

It's tough maintaining two blogs at once, one here @ cardinlee.blogspot.com and another one @ cardinal4.byethost2.com.

Especially if most of the posts I have to post are about techno stuff and, obviously that goes into teh techno blog, but then again, maintaining formality is bloody suffocating, so maybe it should go in this one... It's hard to choose.

Then i go around regretting my decision to create a new blog. Then i immediately stop myself, 'cause it's still not too late to trash the new blog and merge it with this one here.

It was fun going into a bookshop. And very headache also.

Everytime I enter a bookstore always feel like wanna buy something like that. NO not assessment books! Only someone muggerish will do that.

But always feel like buying stationary. (and manga of course) Especially the artist kinda pencils. Y'know, 2B, 6B, HB.

At first was normal lead pencils. After collecting a small set of 'em, in denominators of 4B, eg. I got HB, 2B, 4B, I wanted to get the entire set. They had these pencil sets of 4H all the way to 8B. Very cool.

I didn't buy that. Instead! I bought a 4B mechanical pencil lead! It's nicer, never gets blunt like a pencil, but still sharp and dark enough. But i don't know how to use it though. I keep changing in between 4B and 2B for sketching. Now I cant be bothered. Sure the texture and tone is different but that hardly makes a difference when all you're doing is a sketch. A v.bad anime sketch. Ah but i try to make an effort to use 4B, leaves a lighter mark on the paper: I draw quite hard sometimes, especially when frustrated.

Right, I wasn't stopping at mechanical pencils. Wanted to buy a nice pen for inking. At first I was sure I was gonna get a ballpoint. One of those cheap Pilot pens with no name. Or Uniball Laknock. Absolutely perfect for sketch work. Yep, ballpoints CAN do sketch work quite nicely. But most of the time you screw up on the pressure and that's it, the drawing is done for. And anyway, inking is meant to be hard, no? So i tot about getting those leaky type pens. Uniball Signo DX is like perfect. Comes in sizes .38 and .28, works brillantly. I have those right now on my table. But i nv use a pen so far for inking. Beats the purpose of inking later on the computer.

Well then, I decided to buy some color pencils. I can colour something on paper faster than on screen. I wanted Faber Castell Water Soluble Colour Pencils pack, the 36 colours one. But ran out of money. And again. And again. Then got lazy and decided not to take the long trip and walk to Popular. So till now, no colour pencils. But great thing that procrastination was, 'cause now I felt not like buying it anymore. IF I'd did that would be a waste of $$$.....

Yup, anyway, I kept thinking that having new tools, new pencils, new colour pencils would suddenly imbue me with magically manga abilities to produce clean and sexy artwork instantly. Took me a while to realize that, and how stupid that was.

'Cause I was like, at the Clementi book store today. The one close to the NTUC. The corridor of shops where you walk down got Bank, Dental, Four Leafs, PhotoGallery, then McDonalds, KTV one. They sell lotsa lotsa brand new computer books. And electronic circuitry and accounting books too. Pretty darn ex too. Just grab any one book from a NLB branch in the computing section, it's about USD 49.90 sometimes. 'Course, the books can go up to $500 since they're like Uni Textbooks anyways.

Anyway I was wanting to buy some books, like on CSS, PHP, C++ or C#. I wanted to improve those areas, see. Then I was like, why buy them, I could get the same info online with a bit of Googling for online tutorials. But still I wanted to buy them. Then I was like, why buy them still, not like I'm actually gonna read them, am I? I'll never have time, I never have. Then I realised, wth, I'm buying them 'cause i figured they'll make me a better programmer. WTH? Just because I buy some excellent books on C++ doesn't mean I'm gonna be a whiz on C++ instantly. If I'd never bothered to look for info on it to learn, I'll never bother to read it even if I bought it, but i wanted to buy it because i tot without reading much it'll make me smarter.

Rite, confusing, but anyway, I'm not buying any stuff. Or books. I'm an emotional spendthift, absolutely believing that I need a particular item on occasions of 'enlightenment' where I realised something was missing in my life.
But then, when i get a little bit more rational, I question every thing that I would be buying, and whether that was utmost neccessary or not. =) So flippant.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Shareware now...

2007-06-11T23:37:00.000+08:00

After having been not actively coding for more than 2++ years now, I loaded my long-time favourites HTML-KIT and PHP Designer 2006, to find updates!!! WOW!

"I love updates, everything is gonna look so fresh and sparkly!!!"

Then well, ya, I realised that the new versions have turned shareware, instead of being freeware. HTML-KIT bars you from downloading the latest version completely. PHP Designer offers a Personal Edition, whose stripped down features just leaves one feeling a bit less than satisfied.

Whatever in the world happened to the Open Source Spirit?! And especially these two popular code editors... I'd never would have guessed that this would happen.

I have Dreamweaver 8 installed, but it doesn't quite support CSS 2.0 nor does it support PHP at all. Dang, what am i to do...

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Code to XHTML converter

2007-06-10T23:07:00.000+08:00

Frustrated at the inability to instantly post up code snippets without Blogger corrupting a great deal of it,
I've created this Flash application to help convert code snippets of any kind into valid presentable XHTML, preserving tab indentations.

Originally planning it to be a simple code-and-run application, I attempted customizing it more and more as i debugged and discovered more neccessities. After a whole day's work, this is the end result.

Downloadable at http://parallax-engine.110mb.com/CodeConverter.zip.

It works for all kinds of code, be it PHP, XHTML itself, XML, MySQL, C++, Perl, etc.
That is because it removes all opening and closing <> angle brackets, as well as turn all whitespace, and tabs into  , and newlines into <br />

You can customise how many Spaces = A single Tab. Alternatively, you can just specify it to use the <pre> tag to preserve whitespace instead.

Comes with a HTML preview for checking the Tab to Space conversion, as well as specify border color, text color and background color of the code snippet. Comes with automatic CSS scroll-bar for small page widths.

Generates XHTML Transitional 1.1, using CSS 2.0, with clear comment markers. The only reason it fails to be XHTML Strict 1.1 is because of all the original code snippet that the w3c code verifier mistakens as invalid XHTML. Heck sometimes the verifier even deems it NOT XHTML but HTML 4.0!!

Here's an example code snippet, of the Actionscript code used to run the application, created using the application itself.

/*
* This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
* Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy
* of this license, visit
* http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
* or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second
* Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105,
* USA.
* Copyright 2007, Cardin Lee
*/

_root.buttony.onRelease = function()
{
    var body:String = "";
    var front:String = "";
    var back:String = "";

    if(input.text == null || borderColor == null ||
       bgColor == null)
        return;
    body = input.text;

    body = Replace(body, "<", "<");
    body = Replace(body, ">", ">");

    front = "<div style='border: 1px " + borderColor.text
    + " solid; background-color: " + bgColor.text
    + "; text-align:left; color: " + textColor.text
    + "; overflow-y: auto; overflow-x: auto;"
    + "border-style: solid double; border-width: 1px 4px;" +
    "margin: 15px 10px; padding: 5px 20px;'>" + newline;
    back = newline + "</div>";

    if(convertWhitespace.selected == true)
    {
        var noOfSpaces:String = "";
        for(i=1;i<=parseInt(tabSpace.text);i++)
            noOfSpaces += " ";
        body = Replace(body, "\t", noOfSpaces);
        body = Replace(body, " ", " ");
    }else
    {
        front = "<pre>" + newline + front;
        back += newline + "</pre>";
    }

    final = front + body + back;
    final = "" +
    newline + final + newline +
    "";
    final = Replace(final, "\n", "<br />\n");
    _global.final = final;
    output.text = final;
};

/*
* Credit, and probably copyright too, goes to
* mrand01 of Actionscript.org forums for
* coming up with such an ingenious function!!
*/

function Replace(block:String, find:String, replace:String):String {
    return block.split(find).join(replace);
}

_{This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.}

I hope this has turned out useful. It certainly would prove to be a useful obfuscator, lolz, the HTML version is very cryptic.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

OFFSCREEN NO!!!!

2007-06-10T22:47:00.000+08:00

Oh, DAMNIT NO!!!! MY LOVELY CODE RAN OFF-SCREEN!!!!

Look at teh previous post!!!! NO!!!!!!

Dang, i need a new layout now, hopefully that will solve the off-screen problem.

EDIT:
Non of the stinking Blogger layouts look nice at all!!! I only love the Rounders theme, especially this green one. And the awesome custom Bankai Kurosaki vs Bankai Byakuya poster that i cropped to fit is just so nice... Couldn't bear to change the theme.

I also not pro enough to change the CSS layout. There's too much use of stinking images, the whole thing is just being support by stinking images!! If i change a single setting, everything else will fall apart, instantly. Seriously. I located the width of the main post area and changed the code. The entire sidebar disappeared. Screw-up CSS. Thank goodness i'm not a CSS programmer, I'd be heartbroken to know that the language i specialise in, is so screwed up and random.

Yup, so in the end i found a scrollbar thingy on the web. Just 2 CSS style edits. Cool, nice and simple. I should have rmb that scrollbar style straight away, read it more than 3 times in a CSS 2.0 book, and thought it was mighty cool.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Paradigms of code #1

2007-06-10T17:59:00.000+08:00

Paradigms of good and efficient code design:

Only write error-checking when the compiler ain't doing it for you:

        /// <summary>
        /// Cuts out a selected portion of Frames and returns them.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="start">The zero-based index of the Frames to remove.</param>
        /// <param name="count">The number of Frames to remove.</param>
        /// <returns>The cut-out portion of Frames.</returns>
        public Frame[] Splice(int start, int count)
        {
            Frame[] ret = new Frame[count];
            for(int i=0; i<count; i++)
                ret[i] = frames[i];
            frames.RemoveRange(start, count);
            return ret;
        }

Obviously, an Exception [aka Error] could occur, namely an Out-Of-Bounds Exception, since I didn't check to make sure there actually was that many amount of frames after the starting index.. But there's no need to implement your own Exception handling here, since the compiler's error checking does the job; implementing your own Exception handling just slows down your code unneccessarily, it's like redundancy checking.

Unlike the code below. Alpha values should be positive, and between 0 to 255. Setting any different will corrupt your image data, or just result in glitches that runs just fine, except that, well, it isn't a game anymore. Like seeing your character walk through walls or something. [ wait, that's an exploit/hack then. =P ]

        /// <summary>Opacity of the Scene.</summary>
        public int Alpha
        {
            get
            {
                return alpha;
            }
            set
            {
                if(value<0)
                    throw new ArgumentException("Alpha cannot be less than zero!");
                value %= 255; //not the best option here, but ....
                if(this.alpha != value)
                {
                    this.alpha = value;
                    for(int i=0; i<frames.Count; i++)
                        frames[i].Alpha = value;
                }
            }
        }

If you're wondered why I didn't check for positive values, it's here, further further down the procedural chain. That all [150 lines of code] just for changing opacity. XD

        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a new Bitmap with a new opacity value, whilst preserving transparency. A pretty
        /// laggy function.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="bmp">A Bitmap.</param>
        /// <param name="alphaPercent">The alpha percentage, from 0-100.</param>
        /// <param name="alphaChannel">A Bitmap, of the same dimensions as <paramref name="text"/> to use
        /// as the alpha channel. <paramref name="alphaPercent" /> will be calculated based on this new
        /// alpha channel.</param>
        /// <returns>The new Bitmap.</returns>
        /// <remarks>If you want to preserve transparency, keep the original Bitmap and use it as the
        /// <paramref name="alphaChannel" /> next time you need to change the opacity
        /// of the image again.</remarks>
        public static Bitmap ChangeAlpha(Bitmap bmp, int alphaPercent, Bitmap alphaChannel)
        {
            Argument0to100(alphaPercent);
            if(!alphaChannel.Size.Equals(alphaChannel.Size))
                throw new ArgumentException("The dimensions of alpha channel does not match the input bitmap.");

            Bitmap newBmp = new Bitmap(bmp);
            int w = bmp.Width;
            int h = bmp.Height;
            WinColor[,] channelColor = IrrBitmap.Retrieve(alphaChannel);
            byte _temp;

            BitmapData bmpData = newBmp.LockBits(new Rectangle(0, 0, w, h), ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
            int stride = bmpData.Stride;
            System.IntPtr Scan0 = bmpData.Scan0;
            unsafe
            {
                byte* p = (byte*)(void*)Scan0;
                int offset = stride - w * 4;
                for (int y = 0; y < h; ++y)
                {
                    for (int x = 0; x < w; ++x)
                    {
                        _temp = channelColor[x,y].A;
                        p[3] = (byte)(_temp*alphaPercent/100);

                        p += 4;
                    }
                    p += offset;
                }
            }
            newBmp.UnlockBits(bmpData);
            return newBmp;
        }

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

artz..

2007-06-09T22:21:00.000+08:00

Naruto: Konoha Warriors by =O-renji on deviant ART
Omg, it's so cool! Too bad Sasuke's not inside here.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Vectors

2007-06-08T12:16:00.001+08:00

Here's a little refresher course on Maths: Vectors in 3d dimensions. =D

The following code creates a 3d plane that will always be facing the viewer [camera]. With a little guesswork on how computer languages work, but knowledge of Maths, this should be easy to figure out.

Now we just need a Maths question to come out for the CTs regarding finding the points of a 3d plane facing a guy standing at a specified coordinates and we're set. =D

BTW, Vector3D.Normalize() refers to finding the Unit Vector. It's NOT finding the normal vector. 'Cause, Statistics, Normal distribution, normalization means setting mean to 0 and standard deviation to 1, which is basic units. So Normalization, in Vectors, means finding the Unit Vector.

C# code for letting a 4 vertex Mesh face the user at all times

Vector3D campos = camera.AbsolutePosition;
Vector3D target = camera.Target;
Vector3D up = camera.UpVector;
Vector3D view = target - campos;
view.Normalize();

Vector3D horizontal = up.CrossProduct(view);
if ( horizontal.Length == 0 )
{
 horizontal.Set(up.Y,up.X,up.Z);
}
horizontal.Normalize();
horizontal *= 0.5f * Size.Width;

Vector3D vertical = horizontal.CrossProduct(view);
vertical.Normalize();
vertical *= 0.5f * Size.Height;

view *= -1.0f;

for (int i=0; i<4; ++i)
 vertices[i].Normal = view;

vertices[0].Position = horizontal + vertical;
vertices[1].Position = horizontal - vertical;
vertices[2].Position = - horizontal - vertical;
vertices[3].Position = - horizontal + vertical;

Cool Code design by Cardin.

_{I can't help myself. XD}

Yup.

Dang I give up. I was trying to code something that looks like the top of the windows title bar. But it's just damn tedious, keep having to move each thing pixel by pixel and see if they fit nicely together.

Wait, there's more trouble. Browsers don't display pixels the same. And that's gonna be affected by your computer's pixel resolution as well. So you can spend hrs tweaking it to look super nice, then another guy who's using resolution 1024x1280 comes along and everything is wrecked. CSS coding is so awesomely frustrating.

Algorithm coding is way more fun. You actually see results. And those results can be so much more impressive than a nicely designed page. Depending on what algo you're coding, the fun varies. I'd just finished coding, as seen above, a 3D plane that follows the user around. And there's also an option to turn that following system off as well. Flying around a 3d board is definitely much more fun than pushing 2d blocks onto one another in XHTML...

Though I'm kinda surprised my XHTML/CSS skills haven't gotten at all much rusty since a few years ago, when i coded a dynamic changing site design. =D

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

No space...

2007-06-07T23:37:00.000+08:00

Oh no... my Start Menu is running out of space now... Two more programs to the next column which will partly disappear offscreen.

Can't find anything to delete. Sure there's some useless stuff like Real Player, Windows Media Player, QuickTime player, but then, if i delete them then i wouldn't know they existed.
I could package them all under one folder called "Useless stuff I'll never use unless some idiot used that format", but then if i uninstall it won't clear that mod folder...

Dang, I still have 12Gb more space on my computer and this already has happened. Guess I can't install any more stuff then..

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Programmer Personality Test

2007-06-07T23:09:00.000+08:00

From: http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11
PS: They don't actually have this in a nice template unlike all the other tests on the web. I went and copied/pasted the test result's HTML.

Your programmer personality type is:

DLSB

You're a Doer.

You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most
important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better.
After all, time is money.

You like coding at a Low level.

You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an
intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers
around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.

You work best in a Solo situation.

The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you
know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.

You are a liBeral programmer.

Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as
freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore
so we can take up as much room as we need.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Search engines

2007-06-07T22:50:00.000+08:00

Ask.com is actually quite cool. I decided to try it out today, after reading that Ask.com was the fifth most popular search engine in the world, behind Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and someone else.

Wanted to use Metacrawler instead since it compiles searches, but Firefox users obviously weren't much fans of it, so i couldn't find a search plugin for Metacrawler, so scrap Metacrawler. I'm using Ask.com instead.

But of course, Google's important too, so i FINALLY, RELUNCTANTLY, got myself the Google ToolBar for Firefox. Comes with a Google Search Bar, with auto completion of search terms. And instant Wikipedia search and search for links in current page as well. Pretty cool. Don't have ANY use for the other funky stuff like Bookmarking or Blog about this page etc.

Ask.com helps provides alternative search terms to help narrow down your search. I suppose Google have this too, it ought to, but it's probably not very visible since I haven't seen it in years....
It also helps you expand your search terms if ya want... hehe similar point..
Most importantly, Ask.com has the option to preview your search results.. Pretty cool. Of course it's not exactly up-to-date, the preview updates when Ask.com crawls through the site again. Which is quite not so frequent considering how big the Internet is. And also not all sites have the option; Ask.com hasn't crawled through ALL the sites yet either. But all in all it's quite neat. Novel maybe but i still think it's neat.

Plus, I really don't want to contribute anymore to Google, and Yahoo just sucks at doing everything substandard, including its search.

'Course I'll still be Googling around if I find I'd exhausted all my options in Ask.com. Of if I wanna find the cached version of a page, it's great for finding stuff that people took down from their sites.. =D They forget Google has a copy of it. Oh yeah, some Internet archiving organization also as a QUARTERLY archive of pages too. Maybe even more frequent. Or less, depending.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Wrong tool for the wrong job...

2007-06-05T13:56:00.001+08:00

What puzzles me to no end are people who do not use Flash for most of their game projects. 2d = flash. More especially so if they go around asking in a 3D engine forum about how to do frame-by-frame animation.

I've seen 2d games that could have looked better if that guy had used Flash instead. Flash is a 2d vector ART program, no need to rely on Paint or simple 2d sprites. Flash you can have all those fancy buttons, flying/morphing text under minutes with minimal coding - most of the minutes will be spent trying to come up with an aesthetically pleasing design. Using C++? Instead the guy will be coding coordinates and animation sequences,then to debug, compile, run, and then keep changing his coordinates and then compiling and running again to see.

And there people are dissing Flash that it's dying out, that it's good for nothing but annoying popup adverts. I do wish people who are just getting their feet wet, will get themselves the best technology for the job and not using the wrong tools for the wrong tasks...

Flash is for 2D, for those who haven't got the faintest idea wth are event handlers, listeners, vertices, UV coordinates, normal vectors. Flash is the ultimate amateur game programmer's toolkit/IDE. Visual design, comprehensive offline manual, simple animation control, strict or lenient OOP coding, ubiquitous Flash player platform, all bundled into one. If you gave me a choice between Java and Flash, I'll take out that few hundred bucks and go buy myself Adobe Flash CS 3. (If I had Vista.)

Why am I not using Flash?
I need speed. I COULD spend some time optimizing my code to go faster OR I could spend time coding more features.
Flash's 3d capability comes at a cost of speed.
To make Flash run naturally even faster, I need Flash CS 3 + Windows Vista.
I love the syntax of C# in that in allows FULL control over the computer system and provides opportunities for elegant/neat code that is in line with the style of C++, which i need to know better as well.

Why Flash would still be good?
So I would save the stupid trouble of having to avoid images not of dimensions the power of two, eg. 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024.
So I won't need to go an animation system, and synchronize time across all elements to keep the framerate constant, which is crucial in a 2d animation system.

I'm kinda worried at how Adobe came under heavy fire of late about Flash being phased out.... Why isn't anyone mentioning FLASH when they're talking about dynamic website devices [AJAX]!!!!! Come on, silly Javascript and CSS runs into hell lotta problems with browsers... Just use Flash and get the job done with an additional graphical flourish!!!

I saw a AJAX guidebook and I was like, damn it, with Flash, XHTML, CSS, PHP one can do all the stupid stuff that AJAX claims to do (And AJAX is just a mashup of technologies, it's not even a solitary product onto itself) and yet everyone's falling to their knees to AJAX and Web 2.0.... As far as I can see Web 2.0 is nothing more than allowing a million monkeys to type a Shakespearian play, wrt to the Entertainment sector like YouTube, MySpace. I mean, does the human race seriously need all that much ways to do more unproductive things that make more people gather around and be further more lagging around doing nothing?!

*Watches a portion of the world crumbles.*
*The other portion of the world stays intact because they're much more concerned with doing stuff that actually has an impact on the world and is meaning to society.*

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Anime = illegal

2007-06-03T12:23:00.000+08:00

Hm, yah, Singapore is placing a very serious control over illegal downloading of stuff. First it was music, now it's anime.

I'm not a collector of anime, so it doesn't affect me =D, but regarding the state of the anime industry worldwide, i doubt any clamping down on illegal anime is going to do anything to help the Anime DVD industry.

I've tried looking at the prices they have for just 5/10 episodes, and it's like $30++. I'm talking about legal English releases, not cheap Chinese translations. Importing original Jap releases aren't much cheaper either, about $60++ i heard.

Not that I have any issues over the prices... but some animes have 100+ over episodes. Are fans supposed to fork out $300+ dollars?

Oh wait, most ppl actually spend more than that on a monthly basis as part of them misc budget. =X

But still, the prices are okay if the DVDs are high quality, but they're not. English translations are often poor. And I would rather much like to have Japanese as the language medium instead of English. BGMs sound the best when they're untouched by English Voice Actors spliced into the soundtrack.

Perhaps a special type of Anime DVDs, English Subtitles on Japanese, would emerge over time. If it does, and is cheap enough, I might consider purchasing whole series i guess.

But until then, Singapore is completely OUT of the anime scene. We'll still be around YouTube though. =D Streaming video files based off a foreign server, I HOPE, isn't illegal. If it is, that has some serious implications..... that viewing media, not just possessing it, without possessing the permission to do so, is considered illegal. =\

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

New DeviantArt! KnGB Sink Pg 3

2007-05-30T11:52:00.000+08:00

No I did not finish this in the course of a single day, in case you were wondering how the hell did i publish two pieces in 2 days.

Took 1 month++. D= I'm ashamed at my extent of procrastination in terms of time period and the wide array of issues/projects procrastinated.

:KnGB: Sink Pg 3 by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

BitmapManip, a Bitmap manipulator class

2007-05-30T06:10:00.000+08:00

A BitmapManip class I put together since I was trying to do 2D sprites quite a bit.

Includes common manipulations like:

Changing opacity w/ alpha channel options
Rescaling w/o aspect ratio restrictions
Cropping
Checking for power-of-two dimensions
Specific color replacement
Rotate around center of image
Blitting two images together
Flipping
Bitmap to Texture
Texture to Bitmap
Byte[,] to Bitmap
Bitmap to Byte[,]

With the latter two, you could probably use those C# GDI+ bitmap manipulation classes on the Web to do weird stuff like Perlin noise, etc.

The script is located here: http://cardinal4.phpnet.us/BitmapManip.cs.

Set BitmapManip.Device to the IrrlichtDevice first before using it.

Don't forget to include a reference to the System.Drawing library to use Bitmaps.

This uses alias directives... , I'm not too sure if it's a .NET1.0 feature.

Do not load non-power-of-two Textures into memory via VideoDriver.GetTexture(). Load them in as Bitmaps instead. It is perfectly fine however, to change non-power-of-two Bitmaps to Textures.

Should be able to handle most images. .png, .bmp, and .jpg all work with transparency functions since I used Format32bppArgb, ColorFormat.A8R8G8B8 and .pngs internally.

Potential conflict with filename "I1r2r3C4P5.png" and textures that use the name "I1r2r3C4P5", so don't use those names!

Example: how to do an overlay

Code:


BillboardSceneNode bbsn = _scene.AddBillboardSceneNode(null, new Dimension2Df(100,100), 456);
         BitmapManip.Device = device;
         //I just used the textures sitting on my drive so I have to resize them. They don't need to be of the same size for Blit() to work.
         Bitmap bmp1 = new Bitmap("umagon_shocked.jpg");
         Bitmap bmp2 = new Bitmap("2ddemo.bmp");
         bmp1 = BitmapManip.Scale(bmp1, 256,256);
         bmp2 = BitmapManip.Scale(bmp2, 256,256);
         bmp2 = BitmapManip.ChangeAlpha(bmp2, 50);
         
         Bitmap bmp = BitmapManip.Blit(bmp1, bmp2, new Vector2D(0,0));
         Texture text = BitmapManip.BitmapToTextureHigh(bmp);
         
         bbsn.SetMaterialTexture(0, text);
         bbsn.SetMaterialFlag(MaterialFlag.Lighting,false);
         bbsn.SetMaterialType(MaterialType.TransparentAlphaChannel);
         bbsn.GetMaterial(0).MaterialTypeParam = 0.3f;

Starting off with a 100x100 .jpg, then changing it to a Texture, then back to a Bitmap, then scaling to 128x128, then changing back to a Texture, will work just fine, since the image was loaded into memory first as a Bitmap, not a Texture.
Code:


BitmapManip.Device = device;
         //a 100x100 bitmap
         Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap("umagon_shocked.jpg");
         Texture text = BitmapManip.BitmapToTextureHigh(bmp);
         text = BitmapManip.ChangeAlpha(text, 40);
         bmp = BitmapManip.TextureToBitmapHigh(text);
         //A pretty round-about way, but just to show that a Texture, so long
         //as it was not loaded in via IrrlichtDevice.VideoDriver.GetTexture(),
         //is perfectly fine to mess around with despite being 100x100.
         bmp = BitmapManip.Scale(bmp, 128, 128);
         text = BitmapManip.BitmapToTextureHigh(bmp);

I worked on this for a long long time... But only when into hard-core programming mode last Friday till today. Waking up on a sch holiday, full of ideas and programming is very very enjoyable. But then you'd kinda feel drained afterwards during the afternoon and just wanna take a nap, barring which can always play Tiberium Wars. =D

This is like my second contribution back to a community. First was a Gash's Chi-Eng translation. Now it's this BitmapManip library. It was about time I started reciprocating all the free help I've gotten this few years.

I hope I don't get shot down by the pros about the code. In either case, even if they shot it down and wrote their own better improved code, it's a win-win situation.

One, my forum reputation will increase slightly. That way I'll possibly get more help next time I have a problem.
Two, I'll still use this code even if they shot it down and rejected it. I seriously need Bitmap manipulation libraries.
Three, it's also possible that they try to optimize my code to make it run faster, or offer alternative suggestions to my method. In that case, I'll have even faster code!

=D Right, now to play some Tiberium Wars. I always have a habit of hanging around forums especially after I posted something up, waiting for a response. That is soooo unproductive. Gaming is making better use of that time. =D

EDIT: Deleted a replicated Bitmap function that made a specific color transparent.
EDIT: Used Texture.Modify() instead of Texture.SetPixel() for pixel-by-pixel Texture modification.
EDIT: Officially it's using unmanaged code now. Has direct access to byte array of Bitmaps => Speed improvements. Also comes with a Bitmap quick accessor class now.

I was right. Suggestions offered by other forum members have led to cleaner code. And they got me thinking about how to use a byte array to construct Bitmaps.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

New DeviantArt

2007-05-29T18:47:00.000+08:00

Kinda getting very very tired of Anime.... I also wanted to do wildlife. Or sceneries. 'Cause I can work my pencils instead of my tablet.

Here's some birds, sparrows i imagine? Technically, I used a reference drawing of a BlackBird from a sketch book. But of course I didn't go for the details like tail feathers, color, beak, or tonal texture, etc. So it's just an anoynymous bird. Anonymous birds that I tried to model after a mental picture that I have of sparrows.

:2 birds on branches: by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Unsynchronized

2007-05-28T15:55:00.001+08:00

Sleep deprivation = depression. I seem to have a penchant to drag as much hrs as possible out of each day.

Maybe it's the momentum of tots accumulated during the day, and all so eager to be conceptualized at the end of e day/nite.

Or maybe the exact reverse: wanting to find something meaningful to put a fullstop to an othewise uneventful day.

Watever e reasons, today i feel so out-of-sync with the world. They're mugging, i'm nonchalant. I look at ppl studying, i noe their purpose bt i cannot relate to their motive for their fervour.

In the canteen, empty save for a few muggers, i feel so at ease... and so tired. A mundane, monotonous existance was somehow suddenly appealing. To just stone there.

I would live the life as orthodox society defines it, just to be able to enjoy another life. Bt as i become more immersed, these both worlds start to divide. One becomes more independant, detached and isolated from the other. It forgets which is primary, which is secondary. Tt one is a parasite, and tt its excessive indulgance is sucking the life out of both.

I hope to balance my priorities rite. It's more gratifying to succeed in both work and my own projects than to succeed only in one.

The clock's ticking; wont be long b4 another day ends. How should i spend it?

Fan Service

2007-05-26T16:58:00.000+08:00

Well, not Fan Service, but rather fan's service for fans.

Just translated the Chinese scanslation of Konjiki no Gash Bell Chapter 274... http://community.livejournal.com/konjiki/220609.html#cutid1

Well, I was kinda the only guy who knew Chinese there, and who was aware enough to notice that the Chinese scanlation was already up on another affliated site. I do wish I knew Japanese too..... then I can read more stuff.

I think I'm starting to know how Lim Kim Choo felt when she had to translate Ek's messages into Chinese. T'was a nice reading it in Chinese... occasionally. Spells DO NOT do well in Chinese. Like I mentioned, Zakeru => 开玩笑. Rashirudo => 结界. Baou Zakeruga => 终级雷龙. Okay, so the last one was correct, but it still doesn't roll of your tongue unlike Baou does.

But if Chuang Yi [publisher of Zatch Bell in Singapore] really has dropped Zatch Bell, since there wasn't any more new releases beyond 10, and that coincided with Kids Central dropping Zatch Bell, I mighta have to buy the Chinese versions.... D= Or I could just import the US Zatch Bell. Which is also on hiatus at the third season, the Faudo arc. D=

I hate Digimon Savers. It forced Toei Animation to end Konjiki no Gashu!!

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

Technology Checklist

2007-05-25T17:55:00.000+08:00

This is just like RuneScape... leveling up the skills just for the sake of it. =D

With Flash for interactivity on websites,
PHP/MYSQL for persistent internet data + network capability,
XHTML/CSS for ... well, making all those above come together nicely,
C# for unlocking the power of the Windows OS,
I could pretty much do anything offline and online. IF I actually knew what are proxy servers, C++, DirectX, coded a bug-free PHP application, not have sucky web design, and had Windows Vista so I can use the latest Flash program.

Flash
- [Flash 5](Games for Fish Info Site) Made 2 fish games duo-logy [as compared to trilogies =D]. Players had to avoid obstacles zooming down the screen using the mouse to navigate.
- 1. [Flash 5](Games for Fish Info Site) Made an Archer Fish game, side-view, non-scroll, wrap-around, using keyboard to accelerate/decelerate the fish and fire a projectile to hit flies down and eat them. Attempted MySQL high score database.
  2. [Flash MX] Attempted to redo the game, top-down, scrolling, border-delimited. Scrapped when designing background, due to lag.
  3. [Flash MX 2004 Pro] Redid the game, remodeled after 1st version. Added a fire-mode and swimming-mode to balance the game. Parabolic path bullets, instant jets. Time limit, bonus flies.
  4. [Flash 8 Pro] Improved UI, designs. Multiple levels, smart bullets, fountain sweep 'cross bullets. Failed to fix a bullet spamming glitch, fountain bullets' code broke. Abandoned project.
- [Flash 8 Pro] Did side-scrolling Movie Promo Poster ticker tape.
- [Flash 8 Pro, AS2.0](Graphics Engine) Created a framework of classes to read map data in XML format and construct an isometric tile map using BitmapData. Had double-buffers, clip-screen and individual tile modification. Abandoned and ported the project over to C#.

PHP/MySQL
- [PHP 4](Fish Hobby Site) Set up an anonymous comments system using MySQL.
- [PHP 4](Blog) Made a userid/password system with a two-way encrypted login form. Users were manually added using PHPMyAdmin.

XHTML/CSS
- Created a goldfish info site with minimum aesthetics.
- Created a Fish Info site with Flash nav, Javascript nav, comment system, Flash Game.
- Created a Cartoon FanSite with Javascript nav and dynamic theme selector, page elements completely aligned only using CSS positioning and no HTML tables.

C# 2.0
- Attempting to create a 2d character sprite engine with 3d terrain rendered as isometric viewpoint, using Irrlicht NET CP as a helper 3d engine. Able to traverse XML map data using DOM method, and using GDI+ to manipulate bitmaps.

Some other technologies I came into contact to inadvertently:

Javascript/DHTML
- I HATE AJAX!!!
- (Cartoon FanSite) Created a recursive-directory nav bar.
- (Cartoon FanSite) Created dynamic website theme changer: able to replace the banner, background, nav bar UI design without refreshing. Used session cookies.

C++
- Can guess-read, cannot write at all.

Visual Basic.NET
- I HAVEN'T studied it at all before, but....
- Ported a Bitmap Manipulator to C#. Trashed it since I can do it better in C# with GDI+.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Death Note

2007-05-23T23:19:00.000+08:00

Took down Death Note as my favourites... I wasn't really feeling much of anything for it except for suspense. I mean, sure it's a nice mystery graphic novel and all, but apart from that pretty much nothing. I hated the way everything ended near the end. Everything seems to "fall into place" for Light, or rather, for Near, but actually it's all a bunch of amazing coincidences that their train of thought actually managed to get them that far. 'Cause their logic doesn't make much sense and mostly likely fails if placed in any other context. It's pretty Poisson, really.

I do like the front parts of the manga though, all the way to when Light had to deal with Second Kira. There was great suspense. It was like 四面楚歌 or sumpthing. Then... it was slightly like ... blergh, what a drag, but i really wanna know how L died and what happens to the Shinigamis.

If I had 2 more extra hours of free time per day, I might actually consider watching the Death Note anime. I'd stopped watching when Light joined forces with L to find the new Kira [Higuichi, was it?]. Certainly, DN anime is an all together experience from the manga, of which BGM totally plays a part in the whole "mystery" mood.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Alones] - Aqua Timerz

GP CT

2007-05-23T22:39:00.000+08:00

Today's GP was oddly easy... I don't know, I was expecting killer questions, i guess so as to know what would my grades be in the worst possible situation...

I had something to rant about for essay today again. =D So far so lucky, there were topics these past few essays for me to rant on. Ranting is good, keeps one enthused about writing the essay and can actually sound convincing in a very weak kind of way. *shrugs* I don't know, all i know was that writing it was fun, made me kinda happy, and the grades don't really matter at this time. Till I get it back. But then again, GP grades is like ... ambivalent, so getting bad grades, IMHO is like attributing it to bad weather or something, just pure randomness.

Did the question on intellectual property rights infringement. Lucky I did not what i dreaded most: having to talk about YouTube and all that. (<- That sentence is grammatically correct btw. But not punctuation-ally correct.) I'm so dead tired of reading on that. Sue here sue there; I've been avoiding YouTube lawsuit news for some time now.

I've been doing all sorts of different topics so far: politics, poverty, media, human rights. I was wondering how the heck did i manage that, until when I remembered all those essays had at least one example featuring technology. And those examples usually made up 1/3 of a page at least. Guess I wasn't as random/good-at-other-topics as I thought. =0

Oh well, B? i hope so, this paper was supposed NOT to be hard.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP6 [ Alones ] - Aqua Timerz

How to paint...

2007-05-21T23:21:00.001+08:00

Ah.... I am such a klutz at painting. Among other things, of course, but i'm moaning about painting right now.... Been failing Art classes at painting and design forever... But I got an A at still art on my very last Art exam! =D

Anyway, I've just discovered the world of micro drawing... zooming in until everything is pixelated and then pushing and pulling the colours here and there to make sharp and soft tones.

That's the bad thing about digital art. It's big. There's more to draw. And there's more flaws to see with the zoom key on most browsers.

Thought about using colour pencils - at one point I was SO OBSESSED with wanting to buy a set of Faber Castell Watercolour pencils. Then I realized it probably wouldn't look nice when scanned in. And certainly no one uses traditional art for game art!

I'd finished smudging some really nice shine on Tio's hair, when i realised my tablet was some much sharper than before. Yep, I used too much force, wearing away and sharpening my PLASTIC pen nib. Dang, must be more careful. What's more, the smudge tool that i was using DIDN'T EVEN HAVE PEN PRESSURE CONTROL ON!!! What the hell was i pressing so hard for!!!

I still got some 5mm of plastic nib left before it's officially an unsalvageable blunt end. I would need another tablet then... Hopefully my current one will last two years... I'm on a technology hiatus, see, no point upgrading my workbench when I'm not gonna use it for a good two years. =( Hopefully tablet prices have fallen much by then! I know I can get tablets 25% larger than my current one for the same price at which i bought it at back then. Which was like only nearly one year ago. Not Wacom. It's Genius - some taiwan brand that works remarkably well even at half the price of the western Wacom brand that EVERYONE [literally, every single tutorial/deviant-artist out there uses Wacom] uses.

Sometimes, I find my own art so adorable i just wanna hug it. But I can't, since it's well ... 2d. I wonder if it's a coincidence that a certain character more often than not, ends up being drawn/painted better than any other character. It's like selectively inspirational painting or something. =0 Highlights does wonders for fleshing up art.

I really want to work on my painting skills, but obviously i can't do that with a comic strip - each panel will take forever to paint. Like now. But then... if i do a big single frame shot and i mess up the high quality line art with another suck oil painting, i might kill myself even more. Hmm... heck, just see what another stuff i think up next and just paint it.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

The curse of Irrlicht

2007-05-20T11:26:00.000+08:00

Finally, Blogger fixed its layout, everything looks nice again, what's more with an auto-draft saver! Cool, just like Livejournal.com

Streets of London by Ralph McTell is a pretty good song to hum yourself to death with. There's this constantly fingering of guitar strings in the background, and with a voice that sounds really echo-ey to accompany it, and the whole thing is like a folksy song.

I'd started humming it while walking outside, 15 minutes later, i still found myself humming the same verse. It's like never-ending, cause the song seems to keep looping by itself, if you aren't taking note the short 5 seconds or so that actually signals the end of the song and well, ends it.

Anyway, Irrlicht is VERY screwed up regarding texture handling. Images needs to be in the power of two. 32, 64, 1024, 256, etc. Sure, it might look okay when one just loads a texture and paste it onto an object. But if you try to modify the pixels of the texture, it gets screwed up. Weird botches here and there.

'course, I'm sure the solution is to ask people to make their images in sizes of power two... That's just unreasonable. I'm gonna try filling up the image to sizes power two by putting in transparent spaces. Darn it.... This is gonna wreck havoc on my opacity fading code...

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Microsoft's Cult

2007-05-14T17:54:00.000+08:00

Someone lamented the lack of a cult for Microsoft. Of how Linux, Macintosh have their own fanatic fanbase, but not Microsoft. And how even Microsoft employees themselves display a profound lack of enthusiasm for supporting Microsoft against the onslaught of crazy alternative fans.

I suppose he's a fanboy himself. And i suppose i am sort of one as well. Not that I have a choice. Not that I'm complaining either.

You see, nothing else except Windows has the ability to run almost ALL of the commercial big-hit games out there in the market. That's an instant thumbs up for me, and pretty much a lot of people out there.

Secondly, Windows is VERY popular. Sure, no crazy fans. You keep hearing dissent. But .... aren't like most people using Windows? School computers use Windows. Government institutions mostly use Windows. We all have used Windows some point in our lives. Practically everything to do with computers in this world is attached to Microsoft and Windows in some way. Macintosh support is like an additional bonus. So a lot of people in the world are actually Microsoft fans. We're just not enthused about it that's all.

Thirdly, we're not enthused about Microsoft because ... Microsoft is dominant. It doesn't really need us to commit to its cause fervently. It's just always been there, forever and ever. It's like your mobile phone or your shoes. We just buy them and use them. We surely don't go around encouraging the use of other phones and shoes (well phones, actually some do) =0. Windows technology, most of the time, just works perfectly fine for the average user. There is no incentive to switch.

Fourthly, most people CAN'T afford to switch. Compatibility issues. If you switch, you're locking yourself out to the plethora of resources. You're minimising the chances of your work/document working on other computers. If you're a developer, you don't have much time or the effort to produce binaries for more than one OS. So to maximise audience you would choose Microsoft. ~~And Microsoft's new technologies, especially heavily hyped ones like .NET have an especially strong backing. You can be sure that the technology will stay around.~~

Actually, I take that back. Some of Microsoft's technology COULD fail. It's possible and it's happened before to one of Microsoft's Operating System called Bob. Lolz, what a funny name.

And SilverLight, Microsoft's new technology to compete with Flash and Java. It MIGHT not succeed. C++/C# programming ain't exactly the best way to do animation/menu bars/movie clips. Flash was BUILT for that kinda stuff. It could beat Java.

So yep, it's useless talking abt a Microsoft Cult. There already is one. A silent one that permeates every level of society.

Damn it Blogger, I really hate you sometimes but i can't switch away. You have the best features and so many third-party software developers support you. Naturally, by following you I get access to tons and tons of resources. But damn it, your CSS is screwing up. All my browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera are screwing up the posting screen. Haiz... finally got it to work slightly by disabling the Rich Text Editor. Didn't have much use for it anyways - I'm a XHTML programmer and this is no better a time to get those rusty skills working again. But still, screw. Apparently the Blogger interface is so good that no one has made much of an effort to do a different version of the Blogger posting interface. How unfortunate for me. D= The good ones [rly rly good ones] are all commercial.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Tanimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Registration Pt headache

2007-05-07T23:41:00.000+08:00

I'm having a headache designing my 3d game engine... I finally ALMOST got the first type of object done, but some freaking Vectors question is bugging me.

Here's what i'm trying to do. Shifting the registration pt of an image in 2D is easy. Just move the object.

Now, a billboard. It constantly faces the camera. Don't ask how, it's some internal directx thingy *shrugs*.

Okay, so i shift the billboard in the normal view, which is ground level view. I shift it upwards and sideways. Just like a 2d image thus far.

But what if i change my viewing perspective from a ground level to a top-level? A billboard always faces the camera, but does the shift done earlier [sideways and upwards] look the same in a top-level view? In the top level view, does the billboard looks like it was shifted to upwards and sideways as well?

Here's a picture.

The way to solve the above example would be, in the ground view, to move the billboard LEFT and INTO the page instead of LEFT and UP. Then, when viewed from the top view, it would seem as if the billboard has been moved LEFT and UP, which is correcting for the registration pt.

But... 'course it's not THAT easy. I'm NOT using a top-down view. I'm using an ISOMETRIC view. Think of it like Red Alert 2 style. There is no depth. No matter how far things are into the page, they look the same size.

And to make things more complicated, i have no idea how an Isometric perspective matrix works. One need a perspective matrix to tweak the camera viewports. Yes i have a matrix, but i dun noe how my matrix works. It just ... works.

What am i gonna do?! Am i just scrapping the registration pt feature? If i do so i'm forcing a complete adherence to same size images, with center as registration pt.

Or i could manipulate the image and fill it up with empty space, thus changing the size of the image and making the registration pt the center without needing to move the image physically.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Futile?

2007-05-01T22:50:00.000+08:00

I try to make my life as meaningful as possible. So far most of the thing i've done in my spare time are pretty productive: generating comics, programming code. I could have gamed. Watched anime. Surf forums endlessly.

Of course, those efforts to be productive have gone pretty much unnoticed by my parents. Sometimes it just makes me feel like having a short quick exhilaratingly fun RTS game.

But i don't. Who, or what, am i doing all this for? For myself. For those who support my art. For seeing my favourite fantasy come to life in a game. For those who wished they could make their own character in a game but couldn't.

It's hard. Hard to stay on track, even harder to keep going, and still, need to be lucky to be able to ever accomplish it all.

Right now? Still nothing to show after more than half a year ago on whence proclaiming my decision to embark on this task. However i can say i have come a long way to understanding many many things about 3d and about the engine i'm using to build my own engine. It made me rethink lots of my decisions. Sometimes i had to forsake weeks of work because of that. But what matters is the product, is it not? But then again, if getting the product is that important, shouldn't i have stuck to my original route, which would thus enable me to produce something faster?

When the future seems bleak, at least I'll have something decent at hand, that can be further built on at a later date. Say, two years afterwards.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Javascript Errors Galore!

2007-04-30T18:53:00.000+08:00

Until recently, have i generally discovered how many Javascript bugs there are out there on the World Wide Web. Surprisingly, I considered it to be a rather unique event at first, something that happens to me only, or at least, people who happen to have the same browser configuration and hardware as me.

Don't know how i came to that conclusion, but anyway, you can confirm this amazing phenomenon by switching on Javascript debugging. Be awed by the amazing amount of errors that arise as you prowl through the Web.

Basically, it's "Program crappily and it'll still work", but "program while keeping in mind all the pitfalls, and it'll still not be flawless". Awesome ain't it, Javascript? And that continues to puzzle me why hasn't Javascript support been improved yet, and why hasn't enthusiasm on Javascript been doused despite the inconsistencies?

The internet world acts in odd ways... =\

EDIT: For Firefox, go to Tools > Error Console. You'll see a ton of CSS errors there as well. Blogger has tons of them. I wonder who's at fault here: Firefox for rendering so crappily, or Blogger which has so many bugs? I was never a Firefox nor Web technology fan.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

2d games ARE still commercially viable!

2007-04-21T21:48:00.000+08:00

Mmm, Dofus has a new series, called Wakfu. In case you don't know what Dofus is, Dofus is a MMORPG game designed in Flash, featured turn-based third-person fighting. It uses 2d sprites overlaid on an isometric terrain. Isometric terrains are 2d images that look 3d.

Wakfu has just showed how incredible Flash is. The graphics system is terribly awesome, with rich colours to accompany the game. And because it's a 2d game, the game is able to feature many animated scenes that those 3d MMORPGs could never replicate.

I suppose it appeals to a different group of gamers altogether.
And perhaps, the attraction of both games isn't that its anime RPG. RPG gets tiring, no matter how beautiful the graphics are. But that a turn-based fighting system promises a much more interesting and long-term enjoyable gaming experience. Turn-based strategy can be fun sometimes.

See the really really interesting in-game Flash trailer of Wakfu here! Even if you don't like the in-game video, there's this introductory Flash movie that's really high quality. If only all American cartoons looked like that.... http://www.wakfu.com/en/media/video.html

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

:KnGB: Sink pg 2

2007-04-21T01:01:00.000+08:00

:KnGB: Sink Pg 2 by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART

Well, tt's done. Took 2 months to do it, on and off, starting from February. Obviously, I couldn't do it while the CTs were on, and obviously, my skill was nowwhere as good then which is why i took so long, working on it when i couldn't stand revising and also honing my head drawing. Which is pretty good now, My only problem now is the back of the head.

Thing i like about Anime is, it provides a really compelling storyline, with great characters with their own slice of history. In a way, fictional as they might be, anime allows one to get in touch with the characters on a more personal level. Plus there's great BGMs that one can love too!

And in case one's fanatism is really die-hard, one can always start drawing them like i do. =D

Y'know, the reason why i got started on fan art drawing is because ..... I wanted to design a 3d anime game! To do that i needed 3d models, so i got myself trying to make a 3d model to test my concept: that i could model 3d, and thus make a 3d game.

I failed. The 2d reference picture sucked like hell, and the 3d model was like cubism art or something. Though i haven't given up on a game yet, i told myself to go 2d instead of 3d, which unfortunately made me a fan artist.

I'm obsessed with producing real-life 3d-ish anime art. There's just something pretty captivating about it. Chibi art as well. I get the most fun out of drawing them. Not that i can say i've done so, but i'm inching there. =)

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Internet based services are the future?

2007-04-17T22:16:00.000+08:00

Reference: http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000825

Why Internet services are expanding, and are set to be the next market for big computer players [I meant Apple, Microsoft etc] continues to elude me. Undeniably, yes, we are entering a world where a lot of things are being powered by Flash, AJAX (javascript), and XML. Irrefutably, they have made life, more importantly, online life really easy and facilitated global information communication to a very high level. But are they really a major part of our lives, this magnificent user-friendly web interface that companies are throwing billions onto? I see just a big hoo-ha by big companies to find more ways to make the human race idle.

Flickr, YouTube, Friendster and blogger. For those entertainment sites, we already are spending too much time creating and viewing them. Are we really SOOOOO deprived of photo hosting sites right now? What's so cool about Flickr anyways - more people are using ImageShack and Photobucket. But somehow news agencies simply love to talk about Flickr. Just because it uses fancy Javascripting doesn't make it any better.

Okay, weak argument above. But my point is that, web-based AJAX services are for people to slack off on. For people to find new ways to produce useless content and share it around the way and waste more time viewing them. It's not a viable market. Are you able to foresee the majority of the world population just spending a large portion of their day at these "Internet Services" sites? It's just not going to happen.

What most of us need are secure tools and services. Not like what AJAX provides, which is sooooo weak in encryption. We're never ever going to do anything secure on those technologies.

What most of us don't need are those silly online word processing tools, and similar computer workbench tools. Come on, Windows is ubiquitous. We can practically bring .doc documents anywhere. Unless it's not a Windows. Then again, you have OpenOffice anyway which is multi-platform and can open .doc documents.

Microsoft DOESN'T have a future on online services. There isn't a future to online services unless you love to procrastinate on the web all day, or you're a online advertiser who targets those procrastinators.

Can you imagine a Operation System on the Internet? One that will fail when your internet connection is cut, or lags just because your internet lags? Can you imagine doing anything remotely important on the Internet? People rarely do. Sure we USE the internet as a medium of communication [broadband], much better than a phone line, but we don't DO anything on the internet that's important.

Okay, sorry, but i'm just freaking pissed at what silly things the world is coming up with or working towards.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

LineArt in Photoshop CS2

2007-04-16T00:07:00.000+08:00

It's pretty tough when first learning how to do fanart in Photoshop, or on the computer for any matter. There's quite a few techniques one can employ to make sure you get a well-organised, decent piece of art. These techniques work for Photoshop CS2, and best if you have a tablet plus a decent scan to start with.

First of, a decent scan. Make sure whatever lines you want are pretty visible. Sketch lines often tend to obscure what you want to trace over later, plus you would have to clean up those sketch lines if they're too obvious. So do yourself a favour and clean up those ugly sketch lines now! (before you scan it in!)

Scan in your image at 300dpi, preferably. That gets in the most detail without crashing your computer when Photoshop tries to load it (just kidding, the threshold of your computer is waaay higher). Scan it in as a colour image. Scanners differ quite a bit, so i'm not explaining any further about what settings to set here. Experiment by scanning again and again.

Okay, you're got the scan! Don't mess with the autolevels setting. Don't even touch it. Since you have a pretty good scan, PLUS you're going to ink it over later, don't bother tweaking those settings. They can make your art look really artificially bold and slightly pixelated. To go for the pencilley look, just turn up the Contrast. Following that, go to Adjustments and give your image a faded hue. Faded blue works best - it goes with black and looks kinda greyish, yet isn't greyish so you know you haven't inked that yet.

So now you have really nice scan lines that are sharp, differentiated YET complementing your black digital lines (which you'd be adding soon).

Next, you ink it in! Set up a new empty layer above your scan (please do unlock and rename the default layer PS gave you) and start inking! Remember, your inks are supposed to complement, not replace your scans! Your hard pencil artwork shouldn't go to waste! But ... don't ink too lightly either. It would look too faded. This is where a tablet comes in handy. Feel free to add in additional hatching details that you didn't dare put in using a pencil. The perfect brush in this case would be a fixed opacity brush with pressure-controlled size jitter. I set my tablet sensitivity (at the driver utility in control panel) to highest. Don't wanna to wear out my pen nib by pressing too hard just to get the right brush size.

Hotkeys are your friends.
Z for Zoom tool. Press LH mouse to zoom in. Press CTRL to zoom out.
H for Hand tool, when you don't want to use the Navigator panel to move.
B for Brush tool. Press SHIFT B to change to a subset brush. Eg Pencil.
CTRL ALT Z to undo. CTRL SHIFT Z to redo.
I for ink dropper.
R for blur tool.
G for paint bucket.
CTRL D for deselect.
M for marquee.

Remember to layer your work. That has got to be one of the most important things. You might think you don't need layers, but chances are, you'd be wishing you had made more layers. By having layers, you can go back to modify a portion of your image without disturbing the rest of it at all!

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

My very own webpage...

2007-04-14T17:16:00.000+08:00

I would really want to have my very own webpage.... My current free webpage from byethost.com, for some odd reason, refused to let me login, claiming my username/password was wrong. My site's still there though. I just can't login. Even using FTP.

I want a site with PHP 5... Preferably with subdomain and at least 1GB bandwidth... I don't need databases like MySQL since PHP 5 has this new feature called MySQLLite. It basically uses .txt files to store your data. Sure, it's not very secure and all, since anyone/everyone can see your stored database information. But ... heck.

If I had money I would purchase my own website. There's quite some really cheap deals, like 1Gb space, >5Gb Bandwith, no adverts for under $10/month. I don't dare to go too cheap. 'cause if it's too cheap, chances are it's gonna disappear or suspend service suddenly one day. I want to be able to hold a paid hoster responsible for anything, if i'm to be paying him.

But i'm not going to buy my own webspace. I'm not even going to look for a free webhost either. I'm just ... able to survive on what i have now. To look for a webhost entails research, time, consideration. That would be no problem if I actually have something to put up, but i don't!

I possibly might have some stuff to put up....

Like a Blog Jukebox! To upload music and play music on my blog! But for what? Novelty wears off, and it's just ... novel. That's all.

Like my Fish Fansite! My huge collection of fish profiles and tutorials on burp.byethost33.com! But .... I'm already losing interest/lack of time for my OWN fishes! I'm sure i go care about other fish-related stuff...

Like for me to put up my code and my applications that i created! But i can just use filefront.com or sendafile.com or whatever. I would be able to set up CVS (versioning system) to upload my files, as well as forums, sure but ... too much of a chore. I'm one for open source development, i'm one for sharing of ideas/code, but i'm not one for support management. People do ask the weirdest questions, and more oft than not i show my own ignorance than my ability..

In other words, I have no current needs for my own webspace, or in the future. Nothing. Simply nothing to put up, that cannot be put up elsewhere. Having my own webspace sure sounds mighty fun/interesting/cool, but I'm not a very good designer [programmer, YES!] Maintaining updates by having to recode each page is tiresome. Setting up a dynamic page, like Blogger did, to update news and stuff is too troublesome, as i HATE backend programming. Not having my own server means that to verify each line of code, i need to keep uploading the code onto the server, which takes time. Then i need to refresh the browser, takes some more time. Then if the hoster puts banners that screw up my site, some more time. Then i face limitations and lack of knowledge in server access, .htaccess, blah what you have in servers.

It's really too much work. I'm better off stuck with blogger.com. And windows programming. And flash programming.

I love the latter two. Flash and C# makes it pretty easy to code. Basically, i tailor the application to work perfectly on my computer, without making use of computer-specific code. My computer is not top notch. If it works on mine, it works on yours. If it doesn't work on yours, screw it, I made it work on most computers anyway, yours is an anomaly.

The above, doesn't work for the Internet. It's just about as volatile as you can get.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Lackadaisy new comic

2007-04-11T18:25:00.000+08:00

Lackadaisy Dysphoria by *tracyjb on deviant ART

I honestly think this guy's very good at portraying emotions. Not much of a storyline here, I don't get what's happening either. But even when taken out of context, you'd still marvel at how well you can feel what Freckle is thinking. Awesome-ness...

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Yahoo's new search

2007-04-09T18:31:00.000+08:00

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070405-yahoo-prepares-to-take-on-google-with-new-search-interface.html
Yahoo has a new search feature. It's a search aggregator. It takes search results from multiple search engines and then compiles them on one page, on Yahoo.

That's ..... quite okay, i think? Yes, I would love to have multiple search results collated from various search engines. However...

Using Yahoo's new search engine, Alpha, would require me going out of my way to the Alpha page to use it. They'll have to put it as a option beside their main search bar if anyone's going to be bothered with Alpha.

I have to login to Yahoo, customize my own search page, for me to have results from other pages listed. Alpha's default search engines, the notable ones, are from Wiki, Flickr, Ask.com and YouTube. Disappointing, if any. Not only must I be aware of how search engine's parse their URLs [That's easy. It's in the top of your address bar. But you should see the no of people who don't know that. If i could quote a source i would.], I would also need to actually be bothered to do that. What a chore!

Results in their own separate tabs?! WTH! I have to click on a separate tab listed "YouTube" or "Wikipedia", then using funky scripting [AJAX, which means plenty of pretty slow lag time like Hotmail's. Or maybe fast like Gmail's?], they clear your screen of the default Yahoo search results and put up YouTube's or Wikipedia's search. Hello..... This is totally not making sense. The only reason why I wanted to aggregate searches is because I want to have the most comprehensive results! I don't really need YouTube results, or Wikipedia results! If I wanted Wikipedia, all I have to do is just type Wikipedia along with my search terms in Google! If i wanted YouTube, I'll go YouTube!!! They have featured movies and preview screenshots in their homepage! Thing is, I want my aggregated results ON THE SAME PAGE. I don't want to have them in their own separate pages.

Finally, will my results conflict with each other? Often, I will get multiple results from the same website, as each search engine provides its own variant of the link. Yahoo obviously isn't good enough to filter out results belonging to the same URL. This problem is especially pertinent to Yahoo too. Normally, if the results from the diff engines are all on the same page, it'll be easy to double-check which results are similar and repeated. But if they're on different pages, doing that checking will be a big problem.

On the whole, when I first read about Yahoo's new search, a search aggregator named Alpha, I was having high hopes for Yahoo, though i wasn't expecting it to affect the visitor turnrate much. Now, after having seen their search first-hand, and even without doing so much as a single search, i can safely proclaim, IT SUCKS.

Yahoo, I'm very disappointed in you. You could do a search engine aggregator so much better than that pitiful thing you call Alpha. Alpha? That lousy piece of idea would be better off in the trashbin of concepts than to even be developed.

Take a page out of MetaCrawler.com's book, Yahoo. It's quite a good search engine. Personally, I've been using it as an alternative to Google, far more than i use Yahoo. MetaCrawler is ALSO a search aggregator. However, as you probably would see if you visited MetaCrawler.com, although it does not provide customized searches from diff engines [well, it does, but not very], it does a very good job in collected results from Google and Yahoo and combine them with its own. Metacrawler ftw! compared to Yahoo, that is.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Google

2007-04-08T23:13:00.000+08:00

Ha.. I'm still too used to my old blog address at livejournal. It was a pretty good blog hoster (and a pretty cool blog too! I think I'm cool. =D If I don't, I'm pretty much screwed aren't I, being pessimistic all day.). It managed to stay off the radar of search engines for a while, but some still found it. I think it was because i didn't wanna disable some "Exclude out of search engine searches" option that had something to do with "meta" html headers. Hm.

Funny how Google controls most stuff around here. I mean the Web. I wouldn't quite remember Youtube being owned by Google if i don't think it hard enough, that's a good job on Google's part. Seriously, I wouldn't want to know Google is omnipresent. If I did, I would probably try to avoid Google places. Y'know, the all, no monopoly! Equality for the underlings of the net~!

Which is why I have Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer! Internet Explorer for that annoying MSN messenger email popups, Opera for really fast loading, and Firefox for everything else. I don't like Firefox. People are hyping about it like it's so pro, but it's not all that. It has a really sucky RAM drain. Sucks up lots of RAM, especially if you're the "more than two programs" on the taskbar type. [I'mma Photoshop, Firefox, C# IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironment, WinAmp type. =D DRAIN!] Luckily there is a way to change Firefox's config file. 'Bout 3 out of the thousand plus settings, changing 3 of them will relieve RAM.
Opera's really fast, but it's CPU drain. That might be a good thing on most computers, we have more CPU than neccessary. RAM we need it for all the new fangled Web interactive devices that drain RAM, like Flash, ... and Flash. Oh yeah, Java too. But ... my computer has several svchost.exe running in the background, which eats 30% of my CPU. Curse you, you background tasks! I just delete them. Bleh system unstability.

[I have very much given up on centering my content based on my topic title....]

Just borrowed Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield and LockDown from Tampines Library. No, I did not go there specially just to borrow it. My dad was looking for some "quotes from ancient chinese philosophers" book there and i just happened to see this huge collection of games that my region doesn't have [Bukit Merah and Queenstown].

My computer was too crap to play LockDown. It hanged. Twice. Just like Battlefield 2.
Raven Shield was laggy. Or that the game is sucky. The random jerking of the camera when moving or rotating really seemed life-like. Or that it has sucky controls. Or my computer sucks. Which is highly unlikely since Raven Shield uses Directx 8.
I was playing training levels, pretty fun. Twice, on 2 assault, 1 sniper training missions, i got a team totally annihilated. First was when i accidentally switched to the sniper team and moved them in sight of the terrorists. The second time was when i didn't see a terrorist at the side he shot my assault them down. I managed to track down the rogue terrorist using my sniper team. But somehow the level didn't clear. I was confused. So i uninstalled the game. =D

Good thing I didn't buy the game years ago. =D

And here's an exciting preview of what i did over the weekend! [Lolz] I like my new painting style. Pretty quick, pretty nice. Emulated the painting style of the cover page of One Piece volume mangas. Much better than cel-shading, much better than CG painting, IMHO.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Streets of London - Ralph Mctell

Forbidden

2007-04-05T11:33:00.000+08:00


Forbidden. 

You were denied access because: 

Access denied by BlueCoat WebFilter content category. The requested URL belongs to the following category: Art/Culture/Heritage

I typed in DeviantArt.com. WTH. It's ART! What's up with that? So we can view ART on sch computers?! I would think a more appropriate title would be nudity, since half of the time, DeviantART features artistically nude pictures as one of its 4 "Deviations of the Day". You can get more nudity on YouTube.com. Honestly, the school computers are wacked.

I should get a DeviantART pastie on my blog.

Sometimes, i think it's kinda funny. There's this dozen over empty computers, amidst a 2 dozen computers in the computer lab. Why do people still insist on using the computers in the library then?

Convenience? Ignorance? Privacy?

The last point i beg to differ. You're more easily to get noticed in the library if you're watching entertainment or doing something else other than PW or KI or research stuffy.

Plus, in the com lab you can *almost* have your own personal PC. You can put stuff on it, and chances are that it'll be unoccupied when you next come and still access it.

Bad thing? Sure there is. There are no USB ports, no audio plugs. It's all at the back. Bit hard to reach, but if you're using a PC at the side where you can reach the back of the CPU easily it shouldn't be even an issue.

So why am i in the comp lab? I decided to procrastinate. I decided not to study the lastest second econs notes, instead, blog and continuing to investigate the perplexing world of C# and its 3d APIs.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

H3 Physics

2007-04-02T21:24:00.000+08:00

If I had any second thoughts on not dropping H3 Physics before 1st of April, [lolz, curious. I just wonder. If you walk into the staff room on 1st April and said you wanted to drop a subject, it probably would be reasonable to say, "April Fools!" halfway and just walk out. =D ] I guess I don't have any now.

It feels good to be able to deal with really tough question. Well, at least, they look kinda tough... But at any rate, it was an enjoyable test. A really enjoyable test. Physics CT and Chem were also enjoyable tests, but unfortunately you're graded for that so it certainly sucked big time to know you didn't do the least bit well in it, even though it was fun trying them.

Physics is especially fun/rewarding. They have these "Prove that" questions that are really satisfying when you finish the question. You feel good having solved the question. You feel even better knowing you solved it correctly - hey, you got what the question asked for, word for word! There isn't much Maths involved, just a bunch of algebraic substitution, but then there aren't much marks involved either. =X

And it was enlightening as well. During the test, I got like 2-4 concepts cleared up while i was doing the question. And damn lucky, I realised why the heck we needed to integrate wave functions last minute: To find the probability density of the electron appearing there, we need to find the area it would appear in, under the graph of the probability curve. I didn't manage to find the numerical answer, but i got the sketch of the curve nailed down. And there i was thinking i needed to draw not the curve, but the integral of the curve instead. D=

And yes, the theory of exclusion which applies for luxury goods. They aren't luxurious anymore if everyone's taking them. One would instinctively take pride in what they have if what they have is something others do not have. It works vice-versa, with being happy with not having. Yup, so .... H3 Physics is ... an exclusive product? It certainly is motivating to think of it that way. Despite it being entirely possible and even expected, that anyone who attends the lectures like the rest of us will be able to do the questions just fine, nevertheless it feels good to be one of the sole few brave souls who dared to take, as well as persevere in taking H3 Physics. =D And i guess H3 Physics is not as doomed to being a useless subject except for a teaching career as i thought. The function of a laser, which makes use of the Quantum Theory of Light, is definitely useful somewhere in Electrical Engineering.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Commonplace Art

2007-03-28T22:07:00.000+08:00

Lackadaisy Butterfly by *tracyjb on deviant ART

This isn't my artwork. OBVIOUSLY. The colouring is insane, the pencil art with its sepia tone is insane. The humor is just classic. This is a top notch artist here, and if you like this page, i believe you will like the other pages of his comics just fine, except without this level of humor. More of mature humor i guess, the other pages. Check his deviant page at http://www.tracyjb.deviantart.com for more of his wonderful pages. It's awesome.

And evidently, awesome art pieces are being left out of the spotlight, if they are done by non-professional/amateur/no-name artists. Many art pieces are honoured for their rich culture, their vibrant shades of colour, of the brutality of their message. Such art pieces are world renowned, few in number, and inside art galleries.

BUT HONESTLY, you can find better artwork dime in a dozen at deviantart.com. The quality of art there is really incredible. Sure, there might be other inferior pieces of art, like kiddy pencil sketches, photographs, and fan art like mine cluttering the area, but more likely than not, you can find whatever theme whatever generic subject [dun expect to find ulu subjects] in a professionally rendered quality there. And yet deviantart.com hardly gets any more popular than within the fan art/home artist community.

I don't know, i just feel ... annoyed i guess. There's also some 11 yr old kid. He's a fan of Konjiki no Gash Bell. So he does fan art on it yah. And he just made a friend of me just like that. Without even talking to me. I don't even know whether i should even care about him.

He had this bunch of pretty low quality fan art. Sure, mine aren't any awesome piece either, but that's not my point. He does Sadistic Art. I don't know why, but he likes drawing anime characters in pain. Under torture/complete annihilation defeats, etc. He has a serious issue there. What kind of a sick sadistic person is he? Thankfully he provided a photograph of himself cosplaying [dressing up as an anime character], and he was the plump type. Otherwise he'd be one of those bullies, sia.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Dream: Jurrasic

2007-03-22T23:46:00.000+08:00

I dreamt that i suddenly landed in some foresty jungle clearing, with a mud trail. Then suddenly there were dinosaurs everywhere, big, small, medium. Plant eaters,carnivores, etc. So i started running forward. And they were running too, in the opposite direction. One or two large sized carnivores ran past me, but i was running fast enough to avoid them.

No, i didn't feel tired. Just afraid of stumbling or crashing into a tree. I had the impression a T-rex was after me. Then after some running, i decided it was time to hide. I saw a slope beside me, a rather high grassy hill thingy, with large boulders jutting out like some kind of mossy ancient relic thingy.

Not that it wasn't there before. But i just felt i would slow down climbing up that thing, since it's so slippery. Strangely enough, the concept of tireness never occured to me. In fact, I was running so oddly light-footed that i was afraid i might float slightly and not get enough friction/grip on the floor that i would slow down and then the t-rex would come.

So anyway I ran up that grassy hill, hopping from boulder to boulder using my hands to propel me higher. The ambience and surroundings are still as astounding as before, with sounds of running dinosaurs [why are so many of them running] and grassy smell. Then at the top, i peeked over the hill.

I saw a flat piece of grassy floor. The plateau of the hill. A flat piece of land extending outwards to a jutted rocky cliff-face. And on the flat piece of grassy land, there was a mud-trail running across the length of it, all the way as the eye can see to the left and right.

And there were people. Lots of people. Chinese-skinned Western/indian faced people, sitting on the sides of the hill, almost near the edge of the hill. "Hey." Someone said. "It's you!" I turned and saw a familiar face.

I should mention i had a similar dream prior to this also set in teh jurrasic period, also running from t-rexes. And i met this person, native or modern can't rmb, who accompanied me throughout and helped each other out, along with my family and his family. and a bunch of other people.

Anyway, i greeted him back, still not quite sure of his name or identity, only that i think i saw him before and he helped me. Reoccuring dreams sure are creepy.

These guys and the rest of his community were watching this bunch of people. Who were throwing some kind of bash party. Complete with DJ, stage, microphone, and dancing people with disco lights.

And we were just sitting there, listening to hip hop music, on a grass plain, on top of a plateau of a hill, where this island, country is filled with running dinosaurs and the greatest fear of the land is the t-rexes. And i was trying to figure it out.

Suddenly, we were in a grass plain no more. I was in a courtyard. Where were the people? I saw tons of people in front of me, milling around me, making a commotion of sorts in the courtyard. The courtyard looks just like the RV courtyard between the old classroom block and the technical/special clsrooms block where Mrs lee always have her plants lined up along a gravel road outside the auditorium. Or the RJ grassy patch between the amphitheatre, block a and block b.

I went up to see what the commotion is. A t-rex. Ripping something apart. It threw that something sideways, and it landed a few metres away from me, as the crowd parted. It looked bloody. Might be an animal. I was terrified and tried looking for my friend. I went to teh right and saw him. From the right, i could see more clearly. Two t-rexes were biting each other. They had some restraints around their necks. Meanwhile, tons of people were milling less than 2 metres away from those monsters and cheering them on. Looks like a t-rex fight. I think one of the t-rex proceeded to chew one of the spectators and fling him aside but the crowd just quietened a while before cheering again. Lucky i was quite some distance away. The t-rexes would have to plow through rows and rows of people before reaching me.

My friend told me to follow him. We went up the stairs to a corridor beside the courtyard, on the second storey. Somehow instinctively i knew where the toilet was and said, "wait for me, i need to use the toilet." My friend said, "let me give you my number, so you can find me easily later." I said okay and took out my phone.

I was wondering how the heck do i call him through the time shift effect if i was in the 21st century [right, 21st, not 20th right? =X]. Then i was wondering whether there were radio broadcast towers in the jurrasic age.

But he was telling me his number, so i didn't quite catch it, asked him to repeat again. "9....4...7...8... Wait a sec". I switched to my contacts list, i don't know why, and had to restart typing again.

"9...6... sry, 9.... what? 4.... 7.... 97 sry, 9 what again?" I kept getting the number wrong. I keep pressing the wrong numbers, or that i can't remember the numbers. I tried again. This time repeating number for number. "9478 ... okay, got that, then what?"

He said some more numbers, then i woke up.

It was pretty dark, 7:08am in the morning, few hours before my chem Maths test. Feeling damn eerie from a reoccuring dream, and which is so surreal with its environment and characters and wth, i was memorising a telephone number in my sleep?! Plus T-rexes are just damn scary. I only just watched 10 seconds of Jurassic Park 1 before i slept, what about the White Haired Sponsor Guy talking to the Main Character telling him to be one of the archaeologists on his project to vouch for his programme. Somehow that triggered a horrid T-rex dream. =X So i switched on the computer and played some COD to clear my mind. =D

Yupz, and i think so far Maths is my best subject in the CT so far. Tried the same COD method for Chem but flunked it totally. Fortunately Physics is the morning, so i won't get a chance to try out that faulty method again.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

New Art!

2007-03-19T10:33:00.000+08:00

:KNGB: Switched by ~Cardinal4 on deviant ART


Tio's now blasting Zakerugas and Gash is ... uh... i don't know. Tio's spells are always double-handed, no idea where i got the idea for a single-handed spell...

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And, just as i thought, it looks weird. Gash was never meant to do glowing hand spells... Maybe electric hand but not glowing hand.

I like Gash's flowing robe, kinda like Zangetsu's/Bankai Ichigo's of Bleach. =D
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Tablet on Flash 8 Pro
40 mins Quickie

Konjiki no Gash Bell is © Makoto Raiku.

See! Blogger is better. It allows me to paste the Flash embed object of my DeviantArt submissions, unlike LiveJournal. The only interactive thing LiveJournal allows are YouTube movies. *cross arms and frowns*

I just felt i had to do one piece of art just before i went for my econs test. I don't know why. =| Still got some more time to revise, 'bout an hour before i set off.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Dream: Rukia, huh?!

2007-03-18T21:54:00.000+08:00

I had a very weird dream last night. Weird as in, unprecedented for me.

I dreamt that I met Kuchiki Rukia (the female lead in Bleach) and was helping her out with something. No, not with defeating a powerful hollow by stabbing myself with the zanpatukoh and draining her shimigami powers (which was what happened in the anime). Just something trivial, I think helping her pick up stuff after i knocked into her or something, can't rmb.

Then suddenly we were classmates, and we shared the same row of desk. (2 desks per row) And surprisingly enough we were talking like familiars [my vocab sucks], about anything under the sun. And apparently we were whispering with each other too loudly that the teacher took action. That was because the teacher was going through some Chemistry questions on the board that involved PCl3. (Somehow I always think PCl3 when i think Organic Chemistry) The teacher ordered us to split up and go to different groups to work out that Chemistry question on the board.

That was roughly where the dream started fading off and i woke up i think. Thinking about Phosphorous Halides reacting with Halogen-alkanes and the reaction catalyst kinda does that sometimes...

Well, that was weird since:
1. That was the first time I actually faced an actual academic question in my dream, but less one about Organic Chemistry. Sure, there's plenty of classroom dreams that seem to mix my 12 yrs of classmates together in one class, but never actually SAW a question.
2. I dreamt about an anime character, or a fictional character in the first place. My dreams are usually non-descript faces or my classmates, brother, etc.

I think I was listening to too much Bleach that day. I played the Bleach opening video 20 over times, staring at the characters, especially Ichigo and Rukia.
And Leon was grilling me on Chem too that day. Okay, not grilling. Just chatting.

That was a nice dream i guess. I guess I really wanted a best friend classmate, female kind. Haiz...

But Bleach is really quite a nice show. I'm rating it as my Top 3. Beside Naruto and One Piece. I'm quite over my fanatism over Zatch Bell now. It's quite cute though so i'm still liking it. But i'm more clearheaded now and recognise that One Piece, Naruto and Bleach are truly high-quality animes. Very nice storylines.

Awesome, can't wait to see what else the mangakas have to deliver.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range

Fickle

2007-03-18T21:42:00.000+08:00

Yes, I'm fickle. Very very fickle. My last post just said how I didn't much care about blogs. Now I'm at blogger.com. =D

Blogger actually improved quite a bit.

Readership Permissions. Not that I need it. I've got nothing to hide now, no crush, no shameful secrets, nothing. =D Life's easier this way.

I can actually play with HTML and CSS using Blogger. Livejournal doesn't.

Page Layout. This is quite awesome. Great job on Blogger's part, this great DHTML-ness. Wish I had the capability AND the time to ever do something like that. I probably could.

Multiple blogs with one account. Livejournal has one account per blog. Really annoying.

Labels. Woot! Finally.... Blogger was like one of the last few to implement Tags.

Yup, and that's enough incentive for me to switch to Blogger.com. My previous blog posts, they can't be imported, so i'll leave them at Livejournal.com. Making an import script probably isn't hard. I've just learnt how to use C# to access the Internet and crawl through a webpage using the links on the website. Essentially, a Web Crawler [aka sucky search engine]. Then I could save each post in its individual HTML page, then go to Blogger.com's FTP service and upload them. But tt's too troublesome. Seriously, it's all a big waste of time for so little thing. I'm prolly gonna change blog host later anyways. OR not. The delightful thing about Blogger.com is that you can change the URL of your blog instantly. That's awesome.

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

1. Konjiki no Gash Bell OP3 [Mienai Tsubasa] - Takimoto Takayashi
2. Bad Day - David Powter
3. Bleach OP1 [Asterisk] - Orange Range