Category: Others

Chelsea lost…

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It must have been a sad night for Chelsea fans (I ain’t one of them).

It is as if the sacking of Mourinho isn’t bad enough, Mikel John-Obi got sent off on the 31st minute in this match. Playing with 10-men is always difficult. But to playing with 10-men against Ferguson’s men and hope to get away unscathed, would be about the same as a man attempting flight by flapping his arms. Without Mourinho’s brilliance, to even try to equalise or win, was the equivalent of attempting flight by thought alone.

The fact that they conceded only 2 goals is the credit of one man, Chelsea goalkeeper, Petr Cech. After all, ManUre had 9 shots on goal, and Cech managed to save 6 goals and conceded only one in play. (The other one he conceded was a penalty, and that has always been difficult.)

Either way, it was a marvelous display of goal keeping. Roman Abramovich should give Cech a pay raise after this… and my personal advice to him is to stop meddling as long as the club makes money before it goes the way of Crystal Palace.

It is my considered opinion that what Abramovich did is akin to cutting apart the goose to try and take the golden egg from within. But should Chelsea end up like Crystal Palace, I hope Abramovich won’t be alive to regret the decision of sacking Mourinho.

BlackBerry Art

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This is some of the things you can do to your old Blackberry. Do a Picasso…

It’s called the blob, the stain, and the eye…

If you don’t understand why it is art… that is not my problem.

Tribal Wars

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I have played Tribal Wars for well over several months now, probably since mid or late April. It is a browser game I have seldom talked about except with another colleague who found an interest playing after I told him about it, and two other friends who have since quitted. And I also don’t talk about it for good reasons, since I want to experience the game for myself without anyone who thinks he is a pro telling me to do things the way he would do it.

There are several things I noticed in the game:

  • Some players do not seem to understand that things don’t happen instantaneously in the game even though everything they built takes a certain amount of time to complete. They seem to believe they can find strength in numbers or just go along with the strongest. They foolishly think that being in the strongest tribe means they would go far because they will be well protected, without realizing that they are at some god-forsaken corner far from the rest and support will take too long – if not forever – to reach and do them any good when they come under attack. My personal recommendation, join a continental power, and even then, expect that even your neighbour won’t send you any help when you need it.

  • Many players just panicked when under attack. They aren’t even capable of making a decent call for help. ‘I am under attack!! Help!’ is the best they can do. And it is painfully annoying to people who really wanted to help when they found out just how far away this player is, without any idea if their support would arrive in time or not. In summary, no one knows if it’s already a lost cause by the time they read their plead for help.

  • Responses to calls for defense contribution to fellow members under attack can really make one weep. Generally, a tribe is lucky if just 10 – 15% of the players respond and contribute selflessly. The rest will ofen just sticking their heads into the ground like ostriches either by ignoring emails and the game forum. They do so to save their own ass and hope for the storm to go away. And while it is understandable one doesn’t want to send forces too far away as it takes the equal amount of time to recall them back. It is quite commendable because I know of one tribe whereby one cluster of their tribe members in another continent offered support to another cluster on another continent even when they themselves are under threat of attack.

  • Also, a lot calls for co-ordinated attack on enemies also went unheeded and they fell flat even before execution. I felt really sad and sorry for the tribe leaders / members who tried to organize something. In once case, only 5 members replied favourably to a proposal for a concerted attack, while the rest didn’t even bother to read their mails.

  • A lot of players seems to just sit tight and wait for the axe to fall on them when they are attacked, even for those who have more than one village. A common response would be to start building more troops madly, even though the force they need won’t materialise even after the enemy’s attack is done. And by then even whatever defensive forces they had originally would have been reduced to nothing and whatever they built would do them no good anyway. Somehow, I have seen no tribe which would go into an active counter attack with their assault troops – axes and light calvary – just to shake things up a little.

The last point above is the most surprising, because I would have preferred to kill as many troops as I am losing, and if possible do as much damage to enemy village(s) before they take mine. Above which, it almost will delay the attacker’s time table in taking the target village, since the attacker would be quite wary of the remaining troops which can serve as a threat to their nobles, which is the only unit that can conquer a village.

Anyway, if the entire tribe can get down to the act of actively helping in the defense a tribe member, they might as well also get down to actively attacking the attacker’s mustering point(s) to make it difficult for him to launch more attacks. And if the attacking village is taken, then those troops that survived the attack – either on their way back or serving as garrison in the village just taken are removed from the game (for reasons understood only by the makers of the game). Just why it is not done boils down to one simple reason: Self Preservation.

I am quite sure the reason why a lot of players keep a low profile is because of that voice at the back of my mind that is always saying “Are you fxxking nutz? If you send your army to help defend your tribe mate or attack the attacker, you might draw attention to yourself and you end up with your own ass kicked!”

Sure! But sooner or later, when all my tribe mates are gone, my ass will get kicked anyway, right?

xedO – || – Odex

If you see a nine-year-old kid being kicked around on the streets, no matter that this nine-year-old is no saint, you’d rush to his defense for sure, hardly thinking about yourself. – Excerpts from ‘Kicking kids for profit?’.

I agree, absolutely. And I suppose, no company or person has gotten more hated in such a short period, with perhaps the exception of a particular Wee Shit Min. In fact, what Odex did must have been quite irritating when it actually got a mention on this Stooge Times article. (Do I sense a Durai in the making?)

Even when I went to watch Bourne Ultimatum yesterday, someone among the audience actually said, “Fxxk Odex!” On the Internet, it has spawned several anti-Odex movements, one of them being the ‘Recycle your Odex CDs’ movement.

I must say, “Freaking ‘well done’, Odex!”

Personally, I am no anime fan. When I heard references about anime downloaders being sued, my first impression was – Yet another ‘Kill Chicken Scare Monkey’ (杀鸡儆猴) Operation, and these are probably heavy downloaders who get what is deserved. In fact, I was expecting Odex to actually kick those who are not only heavy downloaders, but also stupid enough to re-distribute their downloaded stuff to everyone else! And if it was that, I would have thought they deserved whatever coming for them.

Then I read references that even those with financial difficulties are expected to settle with Odex. While I ain’t saying that when you are poor, you are allowed to steal, I would at least expect them to be given a warning instead. Odex, however, showed no compassion at all. From then on, I told myself I will NEVER buy anything carried by Odex.

Then I read on blogosphere that even a 9 year-old kid was ‘odexed’ (the term now used to indicate people who received the warning letter from Odex) and his parents were forced to pay several thousands in settlement. I originally took it with a pinch of salt, until I read it in the CNET article.

And that’s when I started paying attention to links received from angered friends, and pings of blog postings on ping.sg talking about this. I begin to read about the poor quality of Odex products and to my surprise, there’s even a Wiki entry on this. A lot of my friends were adamant that this isn’t all made up by angered fans, and a fellow blogger has even told me that I can look at how bad the quality is just watching those showed on TV. It begs the question if sales is bad because of downloading, or just simply the products are of shoddy quality, or that they are outdated.

I must salute the Internet community standing as one in this. I am surprised how fast dirty linen is brought to light. Such as this forum posting when he gloated about suing people:

But the worse of it all, is clause 6 in the settlement document. It reads:


Summary: ‘I hereby bend over so you can screw my ass again when you bway song’.

With this, the last shred of support I had for the Odex lawsuits vaporised faster than an atomic bomb can vaporise a city after I consider the people who got ‘odexed’ – people who are downloading not for profit, but for personal consumption. Will Stephen Sing also sue those who taped Odex distributed anime off the TV for future consumption?

Stephen Sing is definitely not helping in getting the understanding from the anime community, or even a layman like me. One could hardly in clear conscience think of this as a company doing it’s best to defend its interest. Stephen Sing (and Odex) is giving me an impression that I won’t want to talk about in public domain. After all, downloaders are sued, people threatening him are sued, and I am not surprised I might get sued for libel if I said the wrong things here.

Anyway, many people have also given their take on this, and some have advised what you can do to when you get ‘odexed’. One of the better suggestions is here.

By the way, I know everyone is angry. But threats like beating him up, raping his grandmother or burning his office / home to the ground on forums is no use. If Odex wanna be legalistic, so can we. Since the quality of their CDs is known to be bad, it simply means there are loads of legal evidence out there you as consumers can take it up to CASE against Odex. And that is only the first step. The next step would perhaps be letting the Japanese know just how badly Odex is screwing all the local anime fans, so they remove its right to distribute.

There is no need to resort to threats and get yourself into trouble. In fact, there is more joy in destroying Stephen Sing’s means to make more money. And taking away the distributorship from him is better than skinning him alive.

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