Aliens from Beijing

Ghastly looking critters, aren't they? Hideous.

Pan Pacific Hotel

Container Port

ST Kinetics Compact Personal Weapon


Calibre: 9mm (Options for other calibre too)
Length: 350mm (500 mm extended)
Barrel: 180mm (7")
Mounting: 2 sets of Picatinny Rails
Weight: 1.5 kg, 2.5 kg (fully loaded)
Operating features: Semi and auto
Method of Operation: Delayed blowback
Rate of Fire (RoF): 900 - 1100 rpm
Maximum effective range: 100 m with 1 in 250 mm rifling barrel

ST Kinetics' entry into the PDW market. I wonder how many armies and paramilitary forces have adopted Personal Defence Weapons (PDW) such as the Heckler and Koch MP7 and FN P90 PDW?

ST Kinetics Ultimax 100 Mark V Section Automatic Weapon (SAW)


The latest variant of the Ultimax 100 with a strange monopod with two-legs.

Calibre: 5.56 x 45mm
Length: 1004 x 1094mm (Adjustable stock)
Weight: 5.0 kg
Full-loaded weight: 7.2 kg (with 100 round magazine)
Rifling: 1 in 12" twist (for M193 rounds)
1 in 7" twist (for SS109 or M855 rounds)
Rate of Fire (RoF): 400-500 rpm
Muzzle Velocity: 970m/s (M193), 945m (M855)
Maximum Effective Range: 460m (M193), 800m (M855)
Mode of Fire: Single shot/Full auto
Number of Picatinny Rails: 5
Stock: Removable, foldable and adjustable length

I had lunch with my father and sisters at Brotzeit at Vivocity today. Great food. I would visit the place again.

I had eyed this place for a while but whenever I was there in a weekend evening, it was full except for the bar counters. Heh.

I picked up Lost Empire: Immortals, Superpower, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, Universe at War: Earth Assault and Europa Universalis III at Tec-Drome last night. Mr. Woo said he would be bringing Sins of a Solar Empire in soon! Yes. And he will try to secure Galactic Civilisations II for me.

I have my eyes on:

Ancient Wars: Sparta
Caesar IV
Glory of the Roman Empire
Imperium Romanum
Civ City: Rome
Settlers: Rise of an Empire

Heh. Quite a bit. Where am I ever going to find the time?

Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 are very low priorities.

The Village

Last night I played less than an hour. There were a few firsts for me. It was my first time playing on the Village map and my first time toting a machine gun. Still, this was a difficult small map where snipers and drone operators reign supreme. 4:4, 5:8, 5:4. I spent most of my time seizing objectives instead of killing though I got some kills with the machine gun! I tried out the machine gun seriously for the first time.

A guy noob-tubed* me three times at least. Oh dear. We are beginning to see noob-tubers.

* Noob-tubes is leetspeak for grenade launcher. Noob-tubers are kids who tote these weapons. What noobs do is that they use noob-tubes in games like Battlefield 2 for direct fire. Blast people at point blank range or short range, spoils the game. You can't use grenade launchers like that in real life, there is a minimum arming range for 35/40mm grenades or other rifle grenades. Noob-tubing renders MGs, SMGs and assault rifles pointless.

I went for a run last night. I wasn't in the mood. 9:25. Heh. I do need to focus on my runs. I need to start doing 5 km runs again.

Short

This MSN/Windows Live Messenger exchange started with me expressing that I was tired of Mobile Weapon: Battle Stations and that I was thinking of erasing the account. Kuoby wanted my gold. So, the exchange ensued.


Kuoby says (2:10 PM):
lau sai lover

Kuoby says (2:10 PM):
so are you giving me the gold?

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:10 PM):
Woo Kuoby is back!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:10 PM):
Gold? You?

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:10 PM):
It goes to Yen Lyn.

Kuoby says (2:10 PM):
i am truly hurt

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:11 PM):
WOO!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:11 PM):
C'mon.

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:11 PM):
BEG.

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:11 PM):
Grovel!

Kuoby says (2:12 PM):
i'm really really hurt

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:12 PM):
Oh.

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:13 PM):
Then, it is going to Yen Lyn.

Kuoby says (2:13 PM):
i'm begging!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:13 PM):
She gets 3 million.

Kuoby says (2:13 PM):
please!

Kuoby says (2:13 PM):
give me the gold!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:13 PM):
Are you short?

Kuoby says (2:15 PM):
yes i am!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:15 PM):
WOO!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:15 PM):
Wait!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:17 PM):
Thanks thanks! I am so happy!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:17 PM):
Benita and I had a competition for the last few months.

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:17 PM):
Since last year.

Kuoby says (2:20 PM):
gimme gold!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:20 PM):
Thanks!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:20 PM):
I am going to celebrate!

Chuang Shyue Chou says (2:20 PM):
WOO!

Late last year, Little Hobo Benita and I had a contest in that we wanted to see who can make Kuoby admit that he is short. We must do this without revealing to Kuoby that there was a contest. We tried various means and it was difficult.

Finally, I succeeded this morning! WOO! I am elated! WOO HOOOO!

At War


I played Frontlines tonight. Woo! 3:1, 1:1, 9:2. The first was mainly IFV kills. The third game was a combination of sniper kills, IFV automatic cannon kills and tank gun and machine gun fire kills. Heh. Not too bad. Great fun.

Recommended. All thanks to Wilson.

Frontlines! Frontlines! Frontlines!

This game was great fun! Last night, Gary and I were on the Invasion map and we racked up a lot of kills. He was sniping from the edge of the map and had twice saved me from enemies behind. Night fighting. Simply great.

I was running amok behind enemy lines, shooting drone operators and snipers in the back. 9:6, 3:10, 7:3 or something. Good ratios except when our frontlines got overrun.

Join Gary's squad!

Modesty Blaise Novels

My sister and I are fans of certain pulp fiction. Modesty Blaise and Conan the Barbarian. Now, the novels of the former has been re-issued! Whee!

Good Morning!

Sinking with impunity

A conversation on MSN/Windows Live with Kuoby this morning:

Kuoby says (11:37 AM):
the missilers are up in arms and howling about the nerfing

Chuang Shyue Chou says (11:37 AM):
They are still sinking us.

Chuang Shyue Chou says (11:38 AM):
With impunity.

Fighting In Built-Up Areas (FIBUA)

I played 'Frontlines' last night and it was great. There was a sniper on the fifth of a building. I didn't know how he got up there. I called on cluster munitions to be delivered there and he died miserably. Most of my kills last night were mostly through tank gun, IFV automatic cannon and the assault rifle. I didn't get anyone with the grenade launcher or calling precision strikes. I also remembered to trigger flares whenever my vehicle was locked by a missile. 13:8 and 3:10. I also focused a lot on capturing points, especially in the second game.

The setting was in a ruined Russian city. Wonderful atmosphere though the city felt more American than Russian

I avoided the solar farm map because it was one for aircraft and helicopter gunships.

What a piece of crap blogger is. I was constantly saving my blog post as I wrote. Half an hour later, I found that the entire post had not been saved. I lost a long piece. Bravo to this lousy piece of software.

This is not the first time. This has happened quite a bit.

I will be writing on a Word document first in future. I will also look to migrating this blog too.

Here's a wonderful quote from Richard Dawkins:


"Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it."

Richard Dawkins

*Taken from www.richarddawkins.net

The Frontline Fighter*

Woo hoo! I had a wonderful time playing Frontlines: Fuel of War last night. I managed to get a few opposing players last night with a few carefully placed airstrikes. The grenade launcher was great too. Area effect kills!

Initially, I was getting blown away by snipers in the Solar Farm map. I decided to use a sniper rifle and I combined that with an airstrike role. I positioned myself near a base and defended it. I did some defensive sniping and did alright. 6:6. Later, in another map, I decided on an assault rifle and grenade launcher. With those, I engaged in close combat was able to inflict substantial damage. 11:8 or something. Heh.

I imagine that it is only a matter of time before the cheaters started appearing with their aimbots and other hacks. I remember the many cheats encountered in Counterstrike and possibly Battlefield 2. I wonder if Punkbuster in Battlefield 2 even hindered the cheaters. I wonder about Call of Duty and Battlefield 2142 as well.

A cursory search using the terms cheats and aimbots yielded the existence of a few. There is apparently an aimbot being tested for for Frontlines. I have a forlorn hope that there will be no cheats for this, that is unrealistic. I guess in no time, one will witness a lot of miraculous shooting as often seen in Battlefield 2. I guess it is best to enjoy the game while one can for now.

*Heh. The irony. You should know the reference.

** Image of a limited edition set from an online site. A few sites are apparently using this same image.

A sunny afternoon in the garden


I decided to paint the doodle I drew earlier with a ballpoint. I used the colour pencils in Corel Painter X.

Illustration Friday theme: Garden

An afternoon in the garden

Ballpoint pen doodle. Approximately 13 cm x 10cm. This doodle was done during lunchtime when I was manning the cash register. Heh. It is, of course, influenced by a place in the Botanic Gardens that I like a lot.

I can imagine spending an afternoon there, gazing at the clouds with a book in hand.

Illustration Friday theme: Garden.

Manchester United 0 Portsmouth 1

Ho ho ho. Simply splendid!

Impartiality? Fair coverage?

You know how certain games get 'exciting previews', front page features and top billing? Well, it's paid for. Who is surprised by the revelations, really?

Exerpt from an article titled 'Preview Ho: Gamespot/Gamespy'.

"As it happened, he said, such a gumball is currently in play, for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox 360. "I wouldn't want you to jump to the incorrect conclusion that the extra push being given to the review must mean that the game's publisher somehow influenced the review in the first place," Kasavin added hastily. "My guess is this promotional deal was negotiated after we decided to give the game a positive review, but since I'm not privy to the details of these types of deals, I don't know for sure." He insisted that Gamespot maintains a strict separation between editorial and ad sales."

Oh yeah. Right.

It's Friday! Hopefully, I can find time to browse at Borders this evening, possibly even time to head to Sim Lim Square to get 'Supreme Commander: Forged Alliances', 'Caesar IV' and 'Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts'.

Borders Discounts

30% off one full-priced book. Another 10% off for cardholders. Click here.

Spend over $75 receive 25% off all DVDs and CDs. Click here.

Offer ends on 19th March 2008.

Frontlines: Fuel of War

It's ALL Wilson's fault! There, I have said it. The truth is out. Heheheheheh. Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the intensity of this game. It's running on the Unreal Engine 3.

So far, I haven't seen any evidence of cheating on 'Frontlines: Fuel of War' whereas I have wondered about some out of this world shots made in games like 'Battlefield 2', 'Counterstrike', 'Battlefield 1942' and more. It is only a matter of time before some idiot employ auto-aiming bots. In the meanwhile, the game is a joy. It's great fun! Last night, I was doing badly in an incompetent team initially. No one else was making kills except me. Later, I joined another server and was able to rack up kills in an IFV with automatic cannon. I tried the sniper too. I also used the rocket which was excellent as I was able to guide the missile into vehicles and players! Two pistol kills, one chain gun kill from a chopper, a couple of sniper kills, numerous automatic cannon kills from an IFV, some assault rifle kills! Yes!

My online moniker is 'Marlboro'. I'll be online on one of the Kaos servers this evening. Feel free to join me.

After losing the DOS programme and drivers for an old Monarch-Paxar barcode machine in the old PC, I was concerned. I was projecting that I would have to spend several thousand dollars in acquiring a new barcode machine. Fortunately, the software engineer here had written new Windows-based software drivers for her company. I paid for the service which was excellent, she came down and installed the software, showed us its usage. Now, everything is working fine. Yes!

It would appear that Obama would be the next president of the United States. It was quite evident even in the early days. Still, it remains to be seen.

A veritible junkyard

I spoke to Amelia just now. Her video card finally gave up the ghost. Arrrgh. She needed a card and I had at least five lying around late last year. Alas! I threw it all out when I was clearing my study of old computer parts. I would have given her whatever she needed. I had too many parts lying around anyhow. Seven or eight hard disks, a couple of CPUs, three casings that at least, a two monitors, three sets of speakers and more. There was even an Apple Writer printer lying around somewhere just a few years ago.

Springcleaning!

Launching a lawsuit is plausible I guess.

How do you recover $25,000 in debt? Small claims tribunal? Lawsuit?

And what of $7000? Small claims?

Someone I know just got laid off a few minutes ago. He is in the information technology (IT) industry. He is in infrastructure and servers and has a few years of experience. If you have a possible position for him, do let me know.

Trying out

I went through the tutorial of 'Company of Heroes'. I was impressed by the adaptation from 'Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War'.

Another real time strategy (RTS) game that I was impressed after trying out the tutorial was 'World in Conflict'.

I liked 'Supreme Commander' as well.

I went for a run last night. Time: 9:20. Heh. The weather was excellent. I also ran up-slope.

This is like Italy winning the World Cup again! Oh yes! Celebration!

Splendid!

GOOD RIDDANCE to that clown for fostering upon us the most crappy of all roleplaying game systems, Dungeons and Dragons. Good that he died. He has done enough damage.

YESYESYES! This calls for a celebration!

Credit, though, must be given to Gary Gygax for co-inventing roleplaying games. Beyond that, his undue influence until 1985 was harmful. He had also created a monster, TSR, which was responsible for churning crap worlds* (settings) and RPGs until lately.

*Dragonlance by Weis and Hickman must one of the most vomit-inducing worlds ever, including the novels.

Data Recovery


A few years ago, my sister had an unpleasant experience with a data recovery service whose name I shall not disclose. They would essentially disassemble one's crashed HDD and examine through it and if you were to decline their services, they would charge examination fees before they would return it. Well, given the data 'held hostage', I was not surprised that most people paid up.


Anyhow, I shall relate a good experience. I was not able to access my HDD some weeks ago, and I could hear a 'clicking' sound. I called up three different data recovery services, Adroit Data Recovery Centre, Ontrack Data Recovery and Data Savers. The quotes ranged from $500 to $2600 depending on the difficulty of recovery (as well as the possibility). I decided on Data Savers which was located at Suntec City Tower One. They had guaranteed if no data were recovered, they would not be charging.

After a preliminary examination, they were able to determine that the drive head was either spoilt or off alignment and that there were no damage to the platter! Hurrah! Anyhow, all my 'lost' data was recovered thanks to them. Cost? $480 including GST. Recommended.

It is like an episode of the Keystone Cops, isn't it? Meanwhile Mas Selamat remains at large.

It has become a national comedy of sorts. I have seen at least three poster parodies so far.

I was glad that I switched to Avast anti-virus software from Grisoft. Last night, I found four trojans while I was scanning some data on an old HDD which previously had Grisoft Anti-Virus software installed on it. I found that despite constant updates and scanning, Grisoft had often failed to detect viruses and trojans. It was the second or third time this had happened.

The funny thing was that I wasn't a bittorrent user either. The last time I had downloaded anything was at least four years ago.

The Mas Selamat Media Offensive

Actually, from my observation, the current oversaturation of the media channels is a case of a late over reaction due to the initial failures. All the information about the height, weight, etc should have been released within the first 24 hours.

Games Galore

I was back in the office for a short while at 2:30 pm on Sunday afternoon. There were some pressing issues that had to be settled.

Afterwards, I took a bus down to Rochor Canal Road, ran in the relentless rain to Sim Lim Square where I met Wilson.

I bought 'Frontlines: Fuel of War' collector's edition, 'Company of Heroes', 'Supreme Commander', 'Dawn of War', 'Winter Assault', 'World in Conflict', and 'Total War: Medieval II Kingdoms expansion pack'.

I would be waiting before purchasing the other games. I was looking at some old titles like 'Patrician III' and 'Port Royale II'. I was also contemplating the purchase of 'Caesar IV'. Wei Yi had indicated his interest in 'Caesar IV'. Despite some misgivings I bought 'Company of Heroes' based on Wilson's prompting, I installed it and it looked promising.

Northrop-Grumman versus Boeing

KC-30 wins! Northrop-Grumman has won the 179 tanker contest. After the fiasco over the original award, the

A Businessweek report details Northrop's plan for the new contest between the aviation giants:

"Northrop's Sugar began plotting his attack after the Pentagon's initial deal to lease 100 new tankers from Boeing erupted in an ethics scandal because a top Boeing executive, Michael Sears, discussed a job for Air Force point person Darleen Druyan while negotiations were still ongoing. Druyan and Sears were convicted of corruption charges and served time in jail; the scandal led to the resignation of then-CEO Philip Condit. When the Pentagon opened a competition for the contract, Sugar found an ally in EADS, invested in new technology and hoped the new plane would be attractive to a military disillusioned by the Boeing fiasco.

As detailed in a BBC report:

"Boeing loses out in $40bn US deal

EADS and Northrop Grumman won the contract with their KC-30 aircraftThe owner of Airbus, EADS, and US firm Northrop Grumman have won a contract to build refuelling aircraft for the US Air Force, worth up to $40bn (£20bn).

The companies put in a joint bid to compete against Boeing for the lucrative deal to build 179 new aircraft over the next 10 to 15 years."

I am expecting vehement protests from special interest groups within the US, maybe not Boeing but other groups. Will Boeing appeal after their role in that corruption scandal? It remains to be seen.