In the realm of amazing viral videos, comes a new video advertisement by Honda. Well, not so new, because I have seen it before, but didn’t really bother to take note of it, or blog about it.
Essentially, this is a sequence of precisely synchronised parts that come together to work, all without fudging by video editing programs or CGI manipulation.
Now, if only one can live sufficiently high enough to jump out of the building, get his clothes changed, teeth brushed, breakfast fed, and be parachuted down nicely into his car before driving off to work – now that’s one smooth flow.
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On the recommendation of Lockergnome, I decided to try out Microsoft’s new offering, the Live Writer for blogs.
As they have caught the “beta” bug, pioneered by Google, and followed eagerly on the coatails by Microsoft and all the other major companies, this program is kept quite hush-hush, as if it were some illicit off-spring.
Yet it is a refreshing experience, especially when I was faced with a whole load of configuring to do with other post editors; Live Writer was able to jump right out of the box with only the most basic information (my blog address, login ID and password).
This, coming when you got tired of opening script files to make customisations, proved to be a welcome change. The program even managed to emulate my blog’s actual interface, and slap it on as the skin, so that I can view, and edit the post as if it were directly on the website!
If you are inclined, or don’t know where to start, the initial interface offers to set you up for MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s solution to Blogger.
Coming from a company known for its complacency (after all, it took them 6 whole years to get their butts off the seat, and start coding Internet Explorer 7), this is an interesting development indeed!
Perhaps Google had better watch this development carefully, it just might take the rug right off their feet if they are not cautious enough!
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If you ever played any game for an extended amount of time, you would find a great number of times where you are frustrated with your progress; like a monster that you couldn’t kill, or a limitation that you couldn’t overcome. At times like these, the creative juices in humans start to flow, and we begin to wonder: is there an easy way out of the stalemate.
Some turn to their multiple-tetrahertz computers lying stagnant in their heads, churning the problem around, hoping they could wring a solution out of a brain tired from a marathon gaming session, some believe in their determination and hard work, while a minority of gamers resort to actual shortcuts to the answer.
Cheaters are demonised and despised by much of the gaming world: they are able to breeze past those who invest their time and brain power into breaking a deadlock in the game easily. Whatever their tactics, be it as simple as getting the answers from a website, or as complicated as hacking the game: cheaters save much time by skipping levels they can’t get through or solve.
Does this make it right to cheat? It is controversial. Firstly, cheating enables a person to gain an advantage in the game over the orthodox routes of progress in the game, something which might not impact as much on the gaming community for simpler games, but is disastrous for games that place emphasis upon player rankings. Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMPORPGs) are extremely sensitive to cheaters.
In fact, where cheating affects the game play for others (like in the case of player rankings), the effects can get disastrous for both the players, and the publisher of the game. Legitimate players get unfairly disadvantaged in the game when a cheater manages to by-pass a limitation in an extremely short time through means unavailable to the ordinary player, and the managing company is frustrated by the endless task of closing loopholes in order to keep the game a level playing field for all players.
Then again, there are games that for which cheating in no way disadvantage other users of the game. General puzzles and games without a ranking ladder are usually prime examples of benign cheating: getting around a puzzle that you have been stuck at for 4 days surely qualifies you for at least a little bit of a hint? For such cases, cheating is alright. That is, if you can live with cheating yourself out of that Eureka moment.
I have to admit, so far, I have not been exactly honest in playing the games that I have currently; Diablo II, WarCraft III, and Red Alert II are just some examples of games which I have hacked to physically get an advantage over the pre-set missions in the game. Since it was for fun, I was able to over-power my characters and units to god-like status (in the game). However, when I took to online playing, where there are plenty of other people around, there was no good way to gain an unfair advantage without physically compromising the host server for the game.
However, even with the basic deterrance in place, there still remain hackers whom are determined to spoil the experience for other players. Companies create new software to limit hacking activity; however, hackers see it as a challenge, and turn the game into a rat race: on the company’s part to thwart hackers, and on the hacker’s part to crack any protection scheme that comes along.
Such activity is the sad case of life online, and games look set to live with this problem, for as long as humans continue to seek unfair advantages.
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I haven’t the heart to publish the vitrol-filled venom that I have just wrote. Instead, we will adjourn to the relaxation corner, and see stick figures fighting their animator instead.
[coolplayer width="450" height="320" charset="EN"]http://pkchukiss.sgblogging.com/Content/Animation/redkangang.swf[/coolplayer]
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I was a bit apprehensive when Wee Kiat approached me for assistance to acquire additional resources, and a new domain name.
“Yesterday“, he wanted to call this new project.
I had thought that it sounded too antonymical to a certain Singaporean news aggregator, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out what was going to happen next.
After dashing off the domain set up request to DreamHost, I set up the required MySQL settings (some geeky words to throw you non-geeky people off), and shot off the reply.
Needless to say, the rest is history.
Now that Yesterday’s has been set up, there remains the question hanging on its birth: will it survive the stormy seas of the ever turbulent Internet? There was also the problem of competition from the incumbent of all aggregators in Singapore: Tomorrow.Sg, and the possible negative interest by the local media, including the similarly thematically named “Today”.
Perhaps some prophet might predict a new storm brewing in the Singapore blogosphere, with the new entrant’s completing of the aggregator “trinity”. Will Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday’s fight it out, or will it spell the start of a new era on Internet information aggregation? Am I even asking too much questions here, or is being rhetorical all the vogue?
A Digg-based local content vertical collecting engine had existed; the predecessor of Yesterday’s, Click.Sg, is currently defunct. Goodness knows what happened to it, since I had not even heard of it until someone mentioned its demise straight after the founding of Yesterday’s.
What we know is that Singapore, being a country with a paltry number of savvy Internet users whom bother to participate in social networking (other than obsessing about the head count in one’s Friendster profile), it is tough achieving a critical mass of active population to sustain the engine.
It becomes trying when you see that a certain percentage of posts in the aggregator are irrelevant to Singapore, and shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And coming at the heels of Internet experts’ recommendation to specialise, this could score a nagging anchor for a new website that is trying to fly.
As it lies, the current postings all come from Wee Kiat (the founder), and some of his friends. Whether this pilot will catch the fuel and burn will totally depend upon the response of Singapore Netizens.
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Derelict is a state that happens because one doesn’t care. Just like what has happened to the host of the ShoutBox.
There are some unsightly errors on top of the usual details shown on the ShoutBox, but apparently, the host took a 3 year long vacation break.
Probably this is time for the ShoutBox to leave too.
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Singapore is known for its conservatives. We are careful with saving our money, way of life, and our speech. Best of all, we persist in arcane beliefs that people serving in the service sector are subservient to them. Cleaners, customer service personnel, maids… they believe that receiving good service is their right.
If you have read about the maid abuses in the newspapers, you would know that Singapore is full of pathetic beings who endure abuse abuse, and take it out on maids, or other service personnel they come across. If iron burns and nipple bruises were not enough, you see maids being deprived of their off days: the law has conveniently avoided legalising a compulsory rest day a week for maids.
I can’t blame the powers that be; as with all other Singaporeans, they depend heavily upon their household helpers to keep their houses together. Goodness, imagine the state of all the rooms in the house if the maid were to take a day off! Not to mention the layers of dust that would wantonly lampoon themselves liberally upon all the surfaces around the household.
Not to mention missing a person whom would personally fetch your water, briefcase, PSP, mobile phone, pen, paper, (the list goes on). Little wonder that they are reluctant to give maids a right that have long been legislated for the rest of the workforce in Singapore: a mandatory rest day in a week. It almost makes you wonder if maids were treated as being less than humans.
On another vein, Singaporeans hold the stereo-type that if an Indian customer service officer answers the call, it is damning evidence that the service support has been outsourced to India. That is where you see horrible humans at work. I have seen how a colleague of mine gets abused by customers who couldn’t understand her accent.
Perhaps, it is a never ending cycle. The top abuses the subordinate, who in turn passes on the problem down the line. The end result is something that the world’s 140th media hesitates to report: a culture of human abuses that stems right from the very high flyers.
Note: This is not to say that all high flyers are bad, but just some is enough to perpetuate a continual cycle of bad attitude to service personnel.
Enough ranting. I don’t want to be labelled as a partisan player in local politics, by making criticisms of the very foundation of our noble country without making suggestions for improvement. May I suggest a Hitler style persecution?
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You have seen furnitures around the house literally attract dust, usually gathering at the niche corners, where they lay undisturbed until the unfortunate day where you slip your finger the wrong way. You stare at the sticky black goo on your hand, and exclaim, “why was this here in the first place?”
Somehow, this is what has happened to this blog now. Once again, the entire episode starts with me, the overtly bored blogger, who suddenly decided to click around the Wordpress interface after a long gaming session in MapleStory. I happened to hit on the comment moderation queue system (that holds all new comment posts and suspicious bits from entering the comments page).
Caught with its pants down (almost literally) were erotic website links, casino advertisements, and some privates enlargement medicine that promise to mount long lasting monuments. I am glad that the spam filters have helped keep this blog clean.
Now, if only there were something that can automatically keep my house clean, without having me to twitch a muscle.
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