It's Super Dynamic!

Oh looky. Blogger has gone and made some new viewing modes called Dynamic View. So now instead of the usual style (which we had spend a fair bit of time years ago deciding on a theme, and switching twice so far to this current theme), we can go...

Flipcard

Mosaic

Sidebar

Snapshot

Timeslide

It's Super Dynamic Viewing Time!

Generally the new Dynamic View gave us that feeling like when Apple introduced Cover Flow for iTunes, and then for their iPods and iPhones: we need to post up at least one photo per post.

But here's the thing.

Us, we use the NewsRack app to download blog updates to read (the problem with NewsRack is that sometimes trying to comment isn't easy as using Safari itself).

Others use Google Reader. Or probably the sidebar of a blog where the latest posts show up.

And while we do have bookmarks to blogs we keep up with, it's bookmarked for the usual site. So we'll have to manually edit it to get the Dynamic View, but by then we would be too busy reading the post already.

So, uh, Dynamic View, anyone? We guess it'll look pretty if you use your favourite blog as an interactive desktop wallpaper, though.

This Is A Triumph

Recently we've actually picked up a slight interest in Portal (after listening to Still Alive and watching some of the Portal YouTube clips admittedly) but never did get around to borrowing the game from someone - for one thing first-person shooters give us vertigo, although alakazen tells us that since Portal's very much a thinking game rather than running and gunning the vertigo shouldn't be so bad, and for another we wondered if our PC could support the game.

What really got us intrigued about the game was GLaDOS. Not the thinking using portals and definitely not because it was a FPS.

Then just last week, we got word that Steam was releasing Portal for free!



Hence no need to wait to borrow from anyone. And we'll be owning an original copy.

So far, we've only found time to play the game twice, and both times we could still feel the vertigo come on (although not as fast as, say, when playing CounterStrike or Left 4 Dead!) and we're quite happy that Portal runs smoothly on our PC...when the video settings are set at the bare minimum. That's fine, since GLaDOS kept us entertained with her exclaimations and the game doesn't really need to be played in high-end graphics to be enjoyed.

Our only gripe? Playing via Steam meant we at first spent the entire night and following morning downloading the 5GB game, and then finding out after that that we need to be connected online to play! We're not sure if we need to maintain the internet connection while we play, like for Command & Conquer 4 or Assassin's Creed 2, but we don't like the internet dependency as set by Steam.

What happens if something happens to our connection, like our modem getting fried?

At least with Good Old Games we can download and play anywhere anytime. At least Steam chose a good game to lure us in. Otherwise we might just forgo the download (and getting games from Steam in the future) and just borrow Portal from a friend. For now, we'll be busy exploring the depths of Aperture looking for cake.

Castles & Towers

First we had Angry Birds to occupy much of our time. Not only did the game had many green pigs to kill and birds to launch, they do a pretty good job getting us to come back to the game again and again, first to finish all the stages, then to score three stars for each stage, and with the recent update, a new episode with more stages and a new type of bird.

Now that that's over with, we're waiting for more episodes from Angry Birds to occupy our time. In the mealwhile, we've found two other games that tickle our fancy:

First up was Babel Rising. Was free for a while back, looked simple yet interesting for a god game, and so we figured no harm trying and downloaded the app. We had a good laugh with this, as we visited all sorts of divine retribution against the heathens building the Tower of Babel. Very addictive app, and after a few games we gave in and bought the (in-app purchase) Campaign and Fury Modes.



The Campaign Mode allowed for slight variations in gameplay (ie, the tower begins half built, a level is added to the tower at the following stages) and allows abilities to be upgraded, while the Fury Mode has the workers being invulnerable to certain abilities (blue workers cannot be electrocuted, for instance). In fact the longest we'd played on a single stage was in Fury Mode (normally somewhere within 10 minutes the workers would have overwhelmed us) was just over 30 minutes! The battery drain we faced!

Then we were introduced to Crush The Castle. Admittedly when we first saw this app on the iTunes Store we weren't impressed. Only recently we got around to trying the Flash version online, and it's sort of a mix between Angry Birds and Babel Rising. Instead of birds on a catapult attacking pigs, it's a trebuchet launching stones at castles with people in them. Kings, knights, maidens, all must be killed to clear the stage. Blood splatters everywhere as they scream when rocks fly, walls shatter and everything plunges and crumbles.



Using the trebuchet isn't as easy as the catapult but that doesn't stop us from now trying to score gold for every castle!

Now, if only there was a free version of Canabalt for the iPhone. We find ourselves singing Erasure's 'Always' when we play that. Oh yes, and there's also Canabalt Typing Tutor to try as well...

Inspiring Video

So esteban sends an email to the lot of us, titled 'Inspiring Video', saying:

Hi All....
Just stumbled on this video... very meaningful and kudos to the director...
Must watch soonest....

Plus a link to the video. We know esteban to be someone who would actually watch inspirational Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul kind of videos, so for us there wasn't really any urgency to follow the link to the video immediately (that, plus the fact that the video couldn't play on our iPhone).

Then, the other Taman Tun-ites start replying to the email, and the general gist was that it wasn't so much a motivational inspiring video but a comedic one. Still, since we couldn't watch it on-the-go we pretty much forgot about it, until lad asked us about it today.

lad: hey
lad: did you check out esteban's movie yet?
Janvier: not yet!
Janvier: cos it doesn't play on the iphone
lad: oh
lad: i think you'd appreciate it the most
lad: takes time to load

And so, we followed the link to the video. And waited. And waited. It really was a rather long wait. And in the end, the video played... Midway watching it at the height of suspense, we were slightly puzzled and freaked out. Then we started laughing, realizing why lad said we would appreciate it the most!




And we forwarded it to the BFF, thinking that the video would be personalized to the person watching it! Sent out this email:

If you're feeling lost, or down, or just feeling uninspired, this is the best time to watch this.

For the divas, you know this video was meant to be for you.

In any case you guys should watch this ASAP!

That, and the link to the video. Only...after a while chatting on with lad we came to the realization that the link we sent to the BFF might be misinterpreted as being rather muka tebal, and so we quickly emailed them again saying it was a wrong link and that we would send them the correct one soon.

Then everyone got a personalized one, much to different reactions!

Oh well, if you've watched the video already, go have fun!

Cryptic Crosswords

lad: treasure hunt training
Janvier: Ooh. Cool beans.

And that began rather badly, because when we found out it was a crossword puzzle site that lad sent us to, and even after giving it an initial go, we soon enough closed the tab after only managing to solve one word and was stumped over the rest.

Then somehow or another, we actually found ourself opening another tab back to the site again, and this time we went through the tutorial, and found out that all the clues do not test current general knowledge to a Trivial Pursuit extent!

'Political party that uses braille (7)' does not need us to know what kind the name of political parties at all (well yes, since it's an Australian website we can pretty much rule out the answer being BN or PKR or summat)!

And the tutorial made it clear: the clues are somewhat similar to those we've been facing in our treasure hunts. Goodness.

Of course, we've only been playing on the easy difficulty for crossword puzzles so far, we've yet to see if the harder ones will trump us. After that we shall check the newspapers to see if those are the same. If so, all the more practise for us!

And we'll hopefully do better (that is, faster) this year!

Wishing Every Show Was The Last Show

OK, it's more of wishing every blip was the last blip.

Lad just invited us into Google Wave, and until now while we've heard a bit about it from Engadget and Lifehacker, we have no idea what Google Wave is supposed to be about. So far from what we've read before (and even as we fiddle with it now) we think it's more of a sort of forum planning site where those involved can discuss any plans, like for birthdays or trips.

Regardless of whoever started a Wave, anyone could edit any post that has been posted up, and anyone can reply anywhere, so instead of looking for updates at the end of a thread like we used to do when event planning was done using GMail threads, we would probably need to look everywhere!

Thank goodness one of the first things we did upon receiving our invitation was to read the welcome Wave, and it's mentioned that we can check new 'blips' or updates by pressing the space bar.

Right now there's only a few blokes like lad and ethancya and us on Wave (in terms of our social circle that is). A few invites have already been sent out (seeing how Google only gave us eight invites!) and the word is to slowly 'chain-invite' others.

Then we'll see if Wave would make a good place for events planning or whether things will get bitchy. And with more folks on a Wave thread we guess it'll definitely be heavy with updates here and there...

Janvier Soldat And The Clouded Word

We were done installing the iPod Touch software 3.1.1 today when we were thinking of a new wallpaper for the iPod Touch. So for something different we recalled something we saw in Magic: The Gathering's Arcana section and decided to give it a shot.

Headed over to Wordle's and plunked in our blog address, and came up with this.

We even printed it out to probably use as a folder cover or summat. But a white background wallpaper on the iPod Touch just would do, so we made another one with black.

Much better.

Clear Disrespect: Who Do You Think You Are?

We first read about this on someone's status update on Facebook. Tried to follow the tinyurl link but it didn't load. Then when minishorts posted about it we got to read a bit more on what it was about, and even see the article scan.

In a gist, Muslim reporters have gone undercover to spy in a Catholic church and even participated in the Holy Communion.

Total. Disrespect. For. Others.

Now we're not getting riled up because it's an attack on our religion. God knows how we are with regards to our faith, but faith is always a personal matter. Plus it's a Catholic church here, and we're not Catholic. Still, it's the idea of you, of one religion, entering incognito into another religion's place of worship, participating in their ceremonies and rites that not all would participate in unless they were ready, leaving only to write an article that is both disrespectful and insulting.

Yes, you've also been told already that, if the roles were switched and that if another religion would enter your place of worship and do the same, you would have caused an uproar and your followers would be out on the streets creating a ruckus. We remember how you got uptight over the use of the name of your god in another religion's magazine.

We wouldn't have minded the intrusion much if all you did was go in and look around without participating much. There's no need for you to act like a Catholic and participate in the Holy Communion even when there are Christians who aren't prepared for it.

We wouldn't have minded if you've acted decently and upon receiving a 'tip' that there's been Malay teenagers going to Church, you had gone to request permission to send someone to investigate during service one fine Sunday? After all, people do bring their friends to church and they are not expected to do things a Christian would do. You don't have to sing hymnals just because everyone else is singing them. You don't have to join in the ceremonies or feel forced to because everyone around you is doing it. After all, you'll be a guest and you're not coerced into it. You just have to respect your hosts and the things that they do.

We're also put off by the way you treated the accusations bought to you - you've heard of Muslim youths forsaking Islam and embracing Christianity, and better still, that the cause for this is that Christians get paid to 'recruit' believers? And get paid more should they get Malays to convert? And that should people convert, they are offered incentives or rewards like a cash allowance? This is a serious accusation indeed - an accusation that a religious establishment of being a multi-level marketing organization.

And we don't see how your sneaking into a church would help matters. Yes, you might probably find out if there were Muslim apostates (and you did not). Are you hoping to see, in some room, members of the church being paid money along with verbal communication of how they have brought others into the fold?

But no, you didn't stop there. You can write about how impressed you may be at how the congregation treated each other with respect and goodwill, but clearly in your article you don't do the same when it comes to the Christian traditions and ceremonies. Instead, you choose to write your article in an offensive style, twisting things such that to say, "They do this and this which which is correct, as it is how we do it and is how it should be done, but they do this and this which is wrong and deviant and misleading!"

Is this how you write your articles? Push that your religion is better than others? Make fun of another's religion? Couldn't you just report your observations without comparison?

In what is suppose to be a multiracial, multicultural nation, you're grossly disrespectfully spitting in someone's face in front of everyone.

And we gather you know that what you are doing is wrong, because as you write, you feared discovery while in the church.

Again, what we're ranting here is the sheer disrespect you've treated another establishment. You've painted a bad name for yourself.

Tetris Friends

Something has entered into our life once again to unleash a terrible bloodlust in us, and it's called Tetris Friends.

Now Tetris on it's own already can sap up hours without us even realizing it, due to the dreaded One More Turn syndrome. Hundreds of hours and AA batteries spent powering the Game Boy (and it took 4 AA batteries each time!) to play Tetris, and when Tetris DS was launched we spent hours each time playing against the AI (and occasionally online against strangers).

Now, it's Tetris Friends. Online Tetris with a few different gameplay modes.

So far, we've only been playing the 6-player Battle mode where we go up against 5 other strangers in clearing the most lines and scoring the most KOs. And what makes it so addictive is that each round only takes 2 minutes, so it keeps us coming back for more!

Our only problem? We're so used to playing it on the Game Boy that using the keyboard takes a bit of adjusting. Sometimes it does cost us our game when a piece lands somewhere it's not meant to.

Ok, one more game.

Quick Aside: Just To Spend $9.95

Things are piling up at the moment, and there was something looming that's gotten us fidgety.

Then we jumped to Engadget and had a good laugh.


No, we shall still keep hitting that F5 button.

Telly Tunes Nostalgia

Seems that while most people should recognize most of the tunes, a couple escaped notice. And we do notice or remember the tunes easier than the story sometimes! Anyways, we picked a bit of here and there (and all our ages showed with our answers...), and they were...

TV Theme 1 - Ally McBeal

But of course many would get this, with Vonda Shepard's 'Searchin' My Soul' making it oh so memorable. Plain hilarious, especially with surreal imaginative scenes (Biscuit being thrown into a garbage dumpster just as he was dumped by some girl), and one show we tried to catch every week...until the later seasons where we couldn't keep up.

TV Theme 2 - MacGyver

Good Gods he was so young!

TV Theme 3 - Mind Your Language

With the terrifying Dragon Lady!

TV Theme 4 - Dynasty

We love the music, even tho' we don't remember zip about the series (save that the brunette was an evil bitch)!

TV Theme 5 - Picket Fences

This show we found funny because of the many weird things that could happen in a small town! Also we love the piano piece played in the opening. Odd enough that we cannot find the opening scene so we've to make do with clips of the town's hilarious lawyer. Created and produced by David E. Kelly. Ayup, he who went and did Ally McBeal after this show.

TV Theme 6 - Poirot

The music caught our interest, although it never, ever did hit us that we were seeing Poirot when we first caught a bit of it on telly. And rather sadly when we did realize it was the best adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hercules Poirot (seriously, we only did suspect it when we saw David Suchet as Poirot and put two and two together some time later), we never got the opportunity to sit down and watch it!

TV Theme 7 - Star Trek: The Next Generation

Obvious the moment Patrick Steward opens his mouth with, "Space."

TV Theme 8 - I Dream Of Jeannie

Well partly because the music's catchy and the sitcom's funny. Didn't Jeannie had a sister genie?

TV Theme 9 - Airwolf

Goodness knows why we watched this show back then, heh. But catchy tune.

TV Theme 10 - Hawaii Five-0

Now this one, we don't think we ever watched, hahaha. But that tune, so danceable to.

Okeh, this wraps up Nostalgia Week!

Cartoon Nostalgia

There was a particular day where lad, esteban and us were at lad's swapping DS games and checking out Youtube...for the following.



It's the music that we remember, and that she's got earrings that allow her to become a holographic secret identity, and that the songs are like MTVs.

What even surprised us more was when esteban could tell us the song he liked out of that cartoon and found the Youtube of it too.

Then we moved on to something funnier.



We were shocked that the Chinese She-Ra can be so garang! Oh our stomach...

Of course, this soon led to watching all sorts...He-Man, singing along about how Captain Planet's a hero, or the initial X-Men opening sequence, Transformers, how Thunder Cats are on the loose, Spider-Woman...

Speaking of Transformers - we're glad we got the original cartoons and not this!

Choir Commercial!

We're starting to feel a tad terse upon seeing "23 DAYS LEFT" printed in YCA as we went for rehearsal on Monday. Amazing how it's already been past nine months since we first set foot in there. Anyways. We now bring you a special awareness program - the YKLS Breakin' It Down Performance.

First the poster. Surely some of you have seen it elsewhere already.

There's loads more pictures - the choir had a photoshoot session for promo purposes (the opportunity to camwhore and to have your face in the media, who wouldn't want?) - to be found in the following media:

On Astro channels:
- Animal Planet
- AXN
- Cinemax
- Discovery Travel & Living
- E!
- Hitz.TV
- Star Movies
- Star World

In magazines (October 2008 issues):
- KLUE
- Expatriate Lifestyle
- Time Out KL
- Vision KL
- KL lifestyle
- Talents

On websites:
- Kakiseni
- TimeOut KL
- KLUE
- KLPac
- VisionKL

On blogs:
- YKLS
- Joery-Joery
- The Tracy Writes

OK. So to make things clear - we're not shamelessly plugging our face for everyone to see ya. See closely and you'll find that we're not in the pictures. The reason simply because we were at 'Nic's wedding, which was more important.

What we are doing is shameless plugging the YKLS upcoming performance. 21 more days to go! Now here's the cut-paste script of what it's all about. Read!

Just what do the Young KL Singers have up its sleeves this year? This diversely funky group of singers is set to mesmerise the audience yet again, with a taste of jazz in true YKLS flavour. The audience will be taken through a time warp of evolution, exploring rhythm, improvisation and syncopation in the simplest yet very catchy forms.

The Young KL Singers (YKLS) will be collaborating with renowned television & stage performer, choreographer, coach of the Malaysian Idol fame, Michael Xavier Voon, as its director & choreographer; Tay Cher Siang, an American music graduate with numerous commendable works and performances under his belt – locally and abroad, as its jazz music advisor; young and upcoming arrangers in the local music scene, strongly backed by an enthusiastic team of spunky jazz musicians – to showcase the essence of what makes jazz, well, jazz!

The YKLS will demonstrate how jazz can bring contrasting rhythm patterns and improvisation to popular songs. Amazing songs like ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles, ‘Warna’ by Sheila Majid, ‘Maiden Voyage’ by Herbie Hancock and a myriad of other popular tunes will be jazzed up in perky, modern and surprising ways!

The concert’s winning formula lies in its upbeat, youthful, and carefree approach towards the sharing, education and performance of jazz in a choral arrangement. So come share in the fun and experience the magic that is jazz!

Concert dates & time:
30, 31 October & 1 November 2008 @ 8.30pm
1 November 2008 (charity matinee - seats subject to availability) @ 3.00pm
2 November 2008 @ 3.00pm

Venue:
The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac)
Jalan Stratchan, off Jalan Ipoh
Sentul Park
51100 Kuala Lumpur

Tickets:
RM45 (adults) & RM35 (children aged 12 years & below)

For ticketing enquiries, please contact the KLPac Box Office, tel: 03-4047 9000 or The Actors Studio @ Bangsar Shopping Centre, tel: 03-2094 9400

Or contact us.

Browsing For Choice

Starts of with our sis mentioning that she's trying out Chrome today as we were finally back online as normal, and we just filed that little fact under without giving it much thought. After all, sis and us were discussing our different browser usage not too long ago - sis sticks to IE7 and FF3 (which we keep thinking Fitness First at first) while we use all three browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

We've always used IE. Bugger the fact that it can be buggy, it crashes or hangs. Since IE comes with Windows it's of course the first choice for browsing. We don't mind IE really, and IE7 makes things much neater being with tabs and all (finally jumping on the bandwagon with everyone else). Only in our experience, IE7's the only browser ever to crash on us (especially, especially during a download/email drafting/upload).

Firefox was good, being customizable and not problematic. Only why is there a need to have a Downloads Box appear separately?

Then Apple had Safari for Windows - and seeing how we were using the iPod Touch then, we thought to give it a try as well (since we would be syncing our bookmarks with Safari too). Safari initially while aesthetically pleasing, lacked in a few areas. From the lack of being able to play Flash plugins (no embedded YouTube while reading blogs!) to where it's currently at now - we're currently using Safari as our primary browser, regardless of the fact that it too pops up with a Downloads Box and that their Bookmarks isn't quickly accessible.

Then again, we are slowly being brainwashed into buying things Apple. :P

When Juangtis too happened to put her personal message as 'Chromed', we admittedly got curious as to what Chrome was all about. So we searched.

Turns out Google's out with their own web browser! Cool.

So we're giving it a try as well. Sis says it's fast. What we're interested in (so far) is the fact that if a tab crashes, only that tab is affected and not the entire window. Will Google Chrome do for web browsing what GMail did for email?

Otherwise, so far we'll just stick to Safari for general browsing and IE7 for blogging (because we like the html format) and for work.

Avenue Phew

Well it started off with JOEry mentioning that Avenue Q would be performing in Sporeland, but it was late and we sorta didn't register it properly - we thought that the discussion was that Avenue Q would show in Sporeland, while everyone knows that it doesn't stand a chance of performing in Bolehland.

Then the folks at Life Liberty were discussing about it (read the 100 plus comments to find the subject somewhere...) so we realized, "Oshit we need to get our tickets before they're sold out."

Avenue Q? By now quite a fair number of people should know about it already. We first heard one of their songs when 'Vin sent a Youtube that had World Of Warcraft characters singing 'The Internet Is For Porn.' Never realized that the song was from Avenue Q tho'. So when joeRY told us about Avenue Q early this year we looked it up, and it wasn't long before we got ourselves the songs. :D

And of course, we'd started sharing the songs with lad, Chief, and others. Chief enjoys musicals. :)

So when we told the Chief that Avenue Q's showing in Sporeland, we were already making the transaction at the same time. :P So the two of us were chatting online to settle on a date and time, and once we'd confirmed on the details we proceeded to buy the tickets online.

Only to realize later on that night that the date of the show we bought would clash with our YKLS production. And we weren't gonna bersusah-payah go for rehersals every week and memorize the songs and then only decide to sing 'just for fun, will not be participating for the production, sorry'. So we put out the plea for people who may be interested in taking the tickets off our hands...

So next morning we'd conferred with the Chief as to a new date, and the Chief told to sell off our current tickets first before we buy new ones. After all, buying from Sistic meant nonrefundable nonexchangeable tickets.

Then we read the email:

Should there be any discrepancy, please alert us at (65) 6348 5555 or email feedback@sistic.com.sg no later than 12noon the following day.We regret to inform you that any discrepancy reported thereafter cannot be rectified.

Did we breathe a sigh of relief. Thankfully we'd read the email before noon, so we called them up straightaway, mentioned that our tickets erred (in date, time, and seating :P), and had our tickets swapped for the following week. And in the process, we got better seats! Now we know to check via phone reservations as well when buying tickets.

Avenue Q, here we come!

eF-iling 2008

Every year for the past few years now we've had headaches come the end of April. Well actually the headache starts sometime in February, but it's the kind that you can put off till April and so we did that.

Now we've got another 6 more days till income tax submission. And as far as we know, all our necessary documentations are at hand - all we need to do is just fill in the blanks.

Filling in the income tax forms, while it looks like a straightforward process, always stump us by being somewhat different every year. The first time we've gotten our EA Form, we just thought it to be just one of them statements your company gives you stating your earnings - and so we just dump it into our workbag to get lost with the rest of the trash papers that goes in and never comes out of that bag.

Then when we were asked whether we've done our income tax baru we learn what that form was for. Thankfully that EA form hadn't disintegrated to shreds yet. Printed out the English version to read and refer to, and the BM version to fill up for submission, but even then we couldn't make out head or tails what really goes where, or why are we leaving so many columns empty. So we had Randall help us fill up and calculate our first income tax submission.

The following year, even better. Instead of the simpler BE Form, we downloaded the B Form which had loads more pages and sections - all that we needn't bother with. Didn't realize what was wrong and we wondered why that year the income tax form got more complicated.

Last year we started e-Filing, and it turned out to be a relatively painless process as we finally did not need to calculate everything ourselves but just dump the numbers in the relevant columns. Only now the forms all look foreign again to us and we still needed some time getting used to filling it up.

And with income tax, we normally just get over it and forget about it until the following year. With e-Filing this year we ran into a few more bumps. Firstly we forgot our password. It wouldn't be so much an issue except that we only had three attempts to get the password right (and we didn't want to know what happens if we get it wrong - heaven forbid they lock us out of e-Filing and we had to do a manual submission).

So we called them up. Waited for an operator to attend to us some 15 minutes later and stated our predicament, and was totally embarrassed when she told us to look for a 'Forgot Your Password' link. Years of surfing online and we never thought to look for that. Just did not know where to hide our face. But later on we found it was a good thing that we did call, as we couldn't remember what was our confirmation question / answer as well.

When it came to filling up the form we almost felt lost again, but thankfully we'd last year's submission to refer to. Would have submitted it today itself except that there were two hiccups. Firstly there is a RM1000 exemptions on books - and when we tried typing in '1000' a popup informed us to keep the receipts handy for inspection. Well we can't be too sure if we have spent more than RM1000 on books, and even if we did we had to start digging all the books for the receipts.

Second, this is the first time we have to pay tax. We were more indignant about that and so we aren't submitting yet till we worked out if we'd mis-filled a column somewhere. And we're gonna look to claiming more - hmmm, is our iPod Touch counted to claim for personal computer? We can claim up to RM3k for that. Well, actually we would have worked on it today but taking a look again at the main page we decided over that today probably isn't meant to be a good day for income tax.

Deadlines: 6 days for BE Form, 66 days for B Form.

Dead Fantasy

Sometimes, something just comes along the way and blows your pants off.

And no, we're not talking about the Chief.

Initially, when we first came across the Dead Fantasy video, we thought it was a sort of cut-paste job where the creator took scenes from all over to make the video. After all, we never played either Final Fantasy nor Dead Or Alive enough to see every single cutscene or movie. But after a while into the movie we realized that it wasn't a paste job we were watching.

Watch this. Simply amazing. The gaya that you can find in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children or most anime is a-plenty in here.



It doesn't matter if you've never played Final Fantasy or Dead Or Alive before. When this video first came out last year we couldn't pick up our jaw. Every moment was pure impressive fighting (weapons fighting to be exact) with scenes and choreography that'll put any martial arts show to shame - mainly because there's plenty of unrealistic bits like whether gravity matters and the girls' unflagging strength and stamina.

Then again, it's just like a fighting game.

We only recognized the Final Fantasy characters, so you can't blame us for rooting solely for them and not for any of the Dead Or Alive girls (no, we didn't even watch the movie). Now that 4 minutes wasn't enough, and now part 2 is just out! 11 more minutes of pure pleasure. Interestingly the music for Dead Fantasy 2 is taken from Brian Tyler, who gave us the Children of Dune soundtrack as well!



Seems that there's another 5 more parts to wait for now. Oh joy.

Curse Ten Times

Awesome. Didn't we say we like minigames? We do! Small stuff online that help keep the brain chugging so that the brain has something to do. There's the sudoku. Also Popcap. There's spam. There's that time we were hit badly by STD. There's free rice. Coloured rooms (oh we remember the first time we came across this game, it was via askmen and walkthroughs were scarce).

This one's very smart. You know how in games the idea is not to lose a life? Go to great lengths to avoid hitting an enemy and all that. For this game we didn't understand the term 'Coorperate by oneself?' until we played the game.

Cursor*10. And the website's called catgames some more, how cute.

So there you are. Get the mouse cursor to the stairs to get to the next stage. Each time you 'die' you start from level one again, but your previous moves are shown as 'ghost cursors' and what they did will affect your current life! Awesome.

Hmmm maybe next day we'll finish the game - today had to go get lost finding a petrol station in Putrajaya before our car starved once more.

Let Them Eat Rice

Shouldn't come as anything new that a favourite category of games for us would be mini-games. Tetris tops the list as it's short and quick, then there's all other sorts, from those found on Popcap or Shockwave or Yahoo! or MSN games (not all appeal to us though) to Gameboy/DS minigames.

The appeal we find lies in that these games don't require time and dedication, just a quick pick-up-put-down approach to it with the replayability (if it matters) being in beating your personal high score. Or just because of that good ol' "One More Turn" Syndrome.

Given the abundance of minigames about, there are some word games that catch our attention for a good long while. There's Text Twist (which is good practise for Boggle), Typer Shark (which is rather good for speeding up your typing), Bogglific and Scrabulous (where nowadays our games doesn't seem to be those casual 'play-the-first-word-you-can-make' but rather a lot of thinking is now needed) on Facebook, and now...Free Rice.

While we first came across this on Facebook, the application wasn't as comprehensive as that on Free Rice's actual webpage. Interest for this only returned when we saw RoB playing this at Mages. He was somewhere on level 42 when we started watching, and egads we barely could work out some of the words!

So. Free Rice. Choose the correct definition of a word, and donate some 20 grains of rice each time. To keep it simple, we tell people that the rice will be donated by the UN (you can always read up the actual process, it's on the site itself).

Still Alive

Was going through VGCats's latest comic (which isn't a comic but a Flash video rather). Now we knows little to none about Portal but the Flash video was very cute. It didn't help that the music was rather chirpy and happy, which may mislead you to what GLaDOS is actually singing!

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Aperture Science
We do what we must
Because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
And the Science gets done
And you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive
I'm not even angry
I'm being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart
And killed me
And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta
We're releasing on time
And I'm GLaD. I got burned
Think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive
Go ahead and leave me
I think I prefer to stay inside
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE
HAHA. FAT CHANCE
Anyway, this cake great
It's so delicious and moist
Look at me still talking
When there's Science to do
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you
I've experiments to run
There is research to be done
On the people who are still alive
And believe me I am still alive
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive
While you're dying I'll be still alive
And when you're dead I will be still alive
STILL ALIVE

Still, we likes the song, and Scott's video of it. Watch it!