July 27th, 1938- March 4th, 2008
Without whom the world would never have dared to dream of fantasy.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Dear Martin Taylor,
I didn't watch the match the other day, but I didn't really have to. The photos were all over the papers the next day. Today I read on soccernet that there are crazies sending you death threats. You may (hell, odds are more on never, period) never see this, but this is just a little note to voice some moral support for you.
Yours,
Ximin (die-hard Manchester United fan)
P.s. Maybe you should go visit Eduardo in hospital, man. Bring him some cookies or something.
Yours,
Ximin (die-hard Manchester United fan)
P.s. Maybe you should go visit Eduardo in hospital, man. Bring him some cookies or something.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Enter the Retro
So I've been playing Megaman X Collection these last few days.
It's weird, I know. Playing SNES and PS1 games on a PS2. In this day and age. When I've got Overlord and GRAW2 sitting in their cases looking at me accusingly. When the most intensive use my new Razer Diamondback (no, not the 3G one, yes, I know I'm behind) has seen is clicking between worksheets in my CSE111 tutorials. And yet...
Nostalgia seems to have a greater hold on me than I would have thought. After I happened across some Megaman X Youtubes (don't ask me why, I'm not entirely sure how it happened either), I got the itch. ...No, not that kind of itch. Old game itch. You know, you're reading old PSMs or you read a comic strip about old games, and suddenly you're like 'Damn, man... those were good days. Now where'd I leave that CD...?' Yeah. And it helps that instead of the dinky little 15" I have in my room, I played on the 32" LCD in the living room. X and Zero never looked so detailed before.
...Then things kinda got crazy. I actually dug up my old Dreamcast and lo and behold, the damn thing still works. Granted I kinda had to bang on the lid a bit to get it to recognise that yes, that IS a game disc in there. And I had to clean the controller port to get it working. But after about 20 minutes of cleaning and dusting and swearing, Sonic Adventure appears onscreen. Would you believe Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure was waaaaaaaaaay back in 1998? Gosh. Where did that 9 years go?
The point to all this? I'm not sure, really. But maybe you're like me, and you still have every console you ever bought instead of throwing it away. Why not dig it out and give it a whirl? I'm sure they'll be happy to see you. You'll get to show your kids/friends/significant other the stuff that devoured so much of your life way back when. And if you've kinda given up on gaming lately, maybe this'll be where you take it up again. Get reacquainted with your first love and all that. Yeah. You know, I think I'm gonna go play SA a little more now. Maybe see if I can find my Shenmue discs too.
It's weird, I know. Playing SNES and PS1 games on a PS2. In this day and age. When I've got Overlord and GRAW2 sitting in their cases looking at me accusingly. When the most intensive use my new Razer Diamondback (no, not the 3G one, yes, I know I'm behind) has seen is clicking between worksheets in my CSE111 tutorials. And yet...
Nostalgia seems to have a greater hold on me than I would have thought. After I happened across some Megaman X Youtubes (don't ask me why, I'm not entirely sure how it happened either), I got the itch. ...No, not that kind of itch. Old game itch. You know, you're reading old PSMs or you read a comic strip about old games, and suddenly you're like 'Damn, man... those were good days. Now where'd I leave that CD...?' Yeah. And it helps that instead of the dinky little 15" I have in my room, I played on the 32" LCD in the living room. X and Zero never looked so detailed before.
...Then things kinda got crazy. I actually dug up my old Dreamcast and lo and behold, the damn thing still works. Granted I kinda had to bang on the lid a bit to get it to recognise that yes, that IS a game disc in there. And I had to clean the controller port to get it working. But after about 20 minutes of cleaning and dusting and swearing, Sonic Adventure appears onscreen. Would you believe Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure was waaaaaaaaaay back in 1998? Gosh. Where did that 9 years go?
The point to all this? I'm not sure, really. But maybe you're like me, and you still have every console you ever bought instead of throwing it away. Why not dig it out and give it a whirl? I'm sure they'll be happy to see you. You'll get to show your kids/friends/significant other the stuff that devoured so much of your life way back when. And if you've kinda given up on gaming lately, maybe this'll be where you take it up again. Get reacquainted with your first love and all that. Yeah. You know, I think I'm gonna go play SA a little more now. Maybe see if I can find my Shenmue discs too.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Hello? Hello! Wait... That's an echo. Damn.
To my readership (yes, both of you),
Hello there. I realise it's been an awful long time since there was an update here, but then again, no one probably noticed. This blog was started as an academic project, as you can see from the bulk of the posts, and this is where assignments were submitted and all. I still have this page bookmarked, and occasionally something might happen or appear, but you know... It just might not. It seems that there are a lot of things that can be done with a blog, nowadays... Maybe I might do something with mine. Hell, I don't know... Maybe game reviews or some stuff like that. But I kinda doubt it'll bring any more traffic than there is now. We probably get even less traffic than Radiator Springs does, and they only have one traffic light.
...Anyway. So to the one or two lonely souls who might wander by every so often, thank you. And to the rest of you who don't, you're not missing very much. Like I said, maybe some day something will be made of this blog. We'll see.
Hello there. I realise it's been an awful long time since there was an update here, but then again, no one probably noticed. This blog was started as an academic project, as you can see from the bulk of the posts, and this is where assignments were submitted and all. I still have this page bookmarked, and occasionally something might happen or appear, but you know... It just might not. It seems that there are a lot of things that can be done with a blog, nowadays... Maybe I might do something with mine. Hell, I don't know... Maybe game reviews or some stuff like that. But I kinda doubt it'll bring any more traffic than there is now. We probably get even less traffic than Radiator Springs does, and they only have one traffic light.
...Anyway. So to the one or two lonely souls who might wander by every so often, thank you. And to the rest of you who don't, you're not missing very much. Like I said, maybe some day something will be made of this blog. We'll see.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Singapore Police Force to follow HPB's example?
And the weird thing is... You know, it might actually work.
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=2251&mode=thread&order=0
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=2251&mode=thread&order=0
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Bonus Mission #2: Life, second or otherwise, is not a game.
I’ve been playing games ever since my cousin bought a Sega Genesis waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1990, and ever since then my entire family has been corrupted. From challenging each other to Road Rash to hogging the controller on endless rounds of Sonic the Hedgehog, that Sega Genesis probably did more for family bonding than anything our parents ever tried. Now that we’ve all grown up (a little), all of us have since moved on to systems of our own, and video games have been a staple at family gatherings since forever.
So being a gamer from the tender age of 7, I was rather skeptical of Second Life (SL) when the topic was first broached in class. I mean, the screenshots and all didn’t look half bad, but seriously, the first thing that shot through my mind was “Well… It’s kinda like a chatroom in 3D, isn’t it?” And besides, there were other, more epic games to play like Final Fantasy 12 and God of War 2.
And actually, my initial reaction wasn’t too far off. Why is SL not a game? For the simple reason that you can’t win. You might be able to obtain some special stuff and recognition from your peers in SL, but you can’t really, actually win, solve, or complete SL in the way you might win, solve or complete, say, Counter-Strike or God of War 2.
As Elizabeth Lawley said in “World of Warcraft: Is it a Game?”: "In WOW, I can cross things off a list—I've finished a quest, I've reached a new level." (Levy, 2006) It is this sense of achievement, this sense of accomplishment, that defines a game. A game has clearly defined goals and structures (Game, n.d.), be it to save the princess (Super Mario), win the Master League (Winning Eleven) or destroy the gods of Olympus (God of War 2). Games, by their very nature, are designed with some kind of goal in mind: a villain to slay, a trophy to be won, vengeance to be pursued.
And yet, SL lacks all of these. Granted that for a majority of the people kicking around, acquiring a new house or a new piece of land is a major accomplishment, and it’s something that’s easy to do. But it doesn’t serve any actual purpose other than looking cool. It doesn’t add stat bonuses, nor does it allow the player any special abilities. It’s there for the sole purpose of street cred, that nebulous currency of peer recognition. In short, you could actually get through SL wearing and having nothing besides what you’re issued when you first create your avatar.
In actual fact, SL is more like the next step on the online community/chat evolutionary ladder. After all, SL is like a cross between a chatroom and an online forum rendered in 3D. Here instead of tricking out your signature and your picture, you select clothing, cars etc to your taste, with only your imagination as the limit. Another fun thing to note is that French Sociologist noted in his book, Games and Men, that a game must be non-productive (Game, n.d.). Yet another statement that proves SL can’t be a game, because you can make some serious moolah out of it. Just look at Anshe Chung.
SL can be a lot of things, and I’m sure that somewhere, somehow, someone is using it to conduct roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. However, this still doesn’t make SL a game, since in and of itself SL is just a tool that facilitates communication. Similarly, just because there are strip joints doesn’t make it a porn site. So once again, humans have acquired yet another tool that can be anything its creators want it to be, morally unsavoury or not.
___________________________________________________________
References:
Levy, Stephen (2006). World of Warcraft: Is It A Game? Retrieved 23:20, April 6th, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/
Game, n.d. In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:20, April 6th, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game
So being a gamer from the tender age of 7, I was rather skeptical of Second Life (SL) when the topic was first broached in class. I mean, the screenshots and all didn’t look half bad, but seriously, the first thing that shot through my mind was “Well… It’s kinda like a chatroom in 3D, isn’t it?” And besides, there were other, more epic games to play like Final Fantasy 12 and God of War 2.
And actually, my initial reaction wasn’t too far off. Why is SL not a game? For the simple reason that you can’t win. You might be able to obtain some special stuff and recognition from your peers in SL, but you can’t really, actually win, solve, or complete SL in the way you might win, solve or complete, say, Counter-Strike or God of War 2.
As Elizabeth Lawley said in “World of Warcraft: Is it a Game?”: "In WOW, I can cross things off a list—I've finished a quest, I've reached a new level." (Levy, 2006) It is this sense of achievement, this sense of accomplishment, that defines a game. A game has clearly defined goals and structures (Game, n.d.), be it to save the princess (Super Mario), win the Master League (Winning Eleven) or destroy the gods of Olympus (God of War 2). Games, by their very nature, are designed with some kind of goal in mind: a villain to slay, a trophy to be won, vengeance to be pursued.
And yet, SL lacks all of these. Granted that for a majority of the people kicking around, acquiring a new house or a new piece of land is a major accomplishment, and it’s something that’s easy to do. But it doesn’t serve any actual purpose other than looking cool. It doesn’t add stat bonuses, nor does it allow the player any special abilities. It’s there for the sole purpose of street cred, that nebulous currency of peer recognition. In short, you could actually get through SL wearing and having nothing besides what you’re issued when you first create your avatar.
In actual fact, SL is more like the next step on the online community/chat evolutionary ladder. After all, SL is like a cross between a chatroom and an online forum rendered in 3D. Here instead of tricking out your signature and your picture, you select clothing, cars etc to your taste, with only your imagination as the limit. Another fun thing to note is that French Sociologist noted in his book, Games and Men, that a game must be non-productive (Game, n.d.). Yet another statement that proves SL can’t be a game, because you can make some serious moolah out of it. Just look at Anshe Chung.
SL can be a lot of things, and I’m sure that somewhere, somehow, someone is using it to conduct roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. However, this still doesn’t make SL a game, since in and of itself SL is just a tool that facilitates communication. Similarly, just because there are strip joints doesn’t make it a porn site. So once again, humans have acquired yet another tool that can be anything its creators want it to be, morally unsavoury or not.
___________________________________________________________
References:
Levy, Stephen (2006). World of Warcraft: Is It A Game? Retrieved 23:20, April 6th, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/
Game, n.d. In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:20, April 6th, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game
Monday, April 2, 2007
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