Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Mac Book Air

Yeah as part of the "Techie" society, again I'm being fooled by Apple's lastest gadgets. Just a while back (1/10/2007) when the iPhone was shipped, I couldn't help myself but to drop by the nearest 02 to get a feel of the sweet thing.

Then the new IPod Nano came along, being this cute irresistable thing that can fit into my slim wallet, its just the thing I love just looking at. Its not something I need but just something that cute that I like. With video capabilities it looks like the baby version of the IPod Video.

But browsing the web few weeks back make me want another Apple item...The Mac Book Air.

Yeah at 1.94cm thick and weight at 1.36kg you might think what the hack can it do? And with a Intel Core 2 Duo processor, I wonder how did they even put in a decent fan. The higher end of the Mac Book Air, it also has all the common stuff on any laptop, 2GB RAM (on board), multi touch trackpad, Intel GMA X3100 144MB shared memory, etc. But at a price of £1,199.00 / £2,028.00, you are most likely paying for the coolness of having something "IN" for the times.

Here are some videos on Mac Book Air's intro at Mac World 2008...


Monday, January 28, 2008

LEGO® “Toy of the Century”

January marks the passing of LEGO® half a decade of fun play. LEGO bricks was nomiated as the "Toy of the Century" by both Fortune Magazine in the US and the Britsh Association of Toy Retailers.

The History
1932, Ole Kirk Christansen founded a small factory for wooden toys in Billund in the south Denmark. LEGO is a fusion of the Danish words “LEg” and “GOdt” (“play well”).
1947, Christiansen discovered plastic as the ideal material for toy production, and bought the first injection moulding machine in Denmark.
1949, he developed the LEGO brick prototype.
1963, production of LEGO bricks with Acrylonitrile Butadine Styrene (ABS) began.

The Bricks
There have been adjustments in shape, colour and design from time to time, but today’s LEGO bricks still fit bricks from 1958. LEGO bricks are produced in special plants in Denmark, the Czech Republic and Mexico. The ABS compound is delivered in granules, which are heated to 232° C until they melt. Injection moulding machines (weighing up to 150 tons) presses the hotplastic mass into LEGO brick shapes and is left to dry and harden. Each injection mould is permitted a tolerance of no more than one thousandth of a millimetre, so that bricks of every colour and size stay firmly connected. There are 2,400 different LEGO brick shapes. LEGO bricks in boxes that are not sold are melted again and turned into new bricks, in accordance with waste prevention and environmental responsibility.

What I really wanted to talk about
LEGO® MINDSTORM® is made up of several main components the NXT (the brains), touch sensors, sound sensors, light sensors, untrasonic sensors (detects distance), and servo motors (for movement). There are several development areas that basically lets you go into robotics without any skillsets. Areas to explore
  1. NXT firmware development for the ARM7 ATMEL microcontroller and the 8-bit AVR ATMEL microcontroller.
  2. Software development using SDK. The software controllers can also be easily developed using LabView, NBC (Next Byte Codes), Microsoft Robotics Studio, and Gostai URBI for LEGO Mindstorms NXT.
  3. Custom hardware development using HDK. Mindstorm competible hardware are HiTechnic Products and Mindsensors.
  4. Custom hardware communication development using BDK (Bluetooth Development Kit).
Getting started with some of MINDSTORM's robots with blueprints and guides. Meet the robots;
Alpha Rex (Humanoid) has sight(an ultrasonic sensor), hearing (a sound sensor), voice(a built-in Speaker on the NXT brick and sounds from the NXT Software), mobility (2 servo motors) and sense (touch and light sensors).

Spike (Insect Scorpion) has movement (six legs), a set of pincer arms (pedipalps), sight(an Ultrasonic Sensor) and hear (a sound sensor) and attacks with its stinger (a touch sensor).

RoboArm T-56 (Machine) can lift, pivot, and grab objects with its claws. It can detect colors (a light sensor)feel objects (a touch sensor) arm mobility (3 servo motors - 1 for the grabber claws, 2 for the robotic arm to move up, down, and turn).

Tribot (Vehicle) can grab a ball when you give it a sound command (a sound sensor), move following a line (a light sensor), feel objects (a touch sensor) and see objects(an ultrasonic sensor).

I think this is really a cool toy to get for any child. I'm thinking of getting one (heh...). However it does cost GBP179.99 (estimate RM1155.52)

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Dystopia (The Utopia Gone Bad)


BioShock is a great game. It has evil concepts that seems so good for the soul and you actually want to be one of them. However, there is a double twist to the story and it really intrigue me.

Company Background
BioShock is by Irrational Games (yeah what a name). They were the people that brought you Freedom Force (those Marvel and DC Comic real-time tactical RPG) and SWAT 4. Those where never games that held my interest for long. Anyway...

The Setting
During the 1960s, in Rapture, an underwater getaway city built in 1946 on the mid-Atlantic seabed. Rapture wast the future, a selft-sufficient city, powered by submarine volcanoes. The owner and founder of Rapture was Andrew Ryan. He envisioned Rapture as the solution to the problems above water; increasion political and religious authority oppression. Ryan wanted Rapture to be the getaway for those that exemplifies the best in humanity, making Rapture the new "Eden".

For all Eden(s) there lived an ADAM. ADAM are stem cells created from certain sea slugs by Dr. Bridgette Tennenbaum. ADAM was the answer to all human lackings and weaknesses. ADAM was the ingreadent of creating plasmids that allows humans to have extraordinary abilities. And with ADAM there must be an EVE. EVE are the serum needed for the plasmids to work (even utopia men needs females).

The Little Sisters and Big Daddies (Yeah a kinky naming concept but in the games its more hellish then kinky). Little Sisters initially were ADAM factories that lets the slugs live within them. But later during the war, Little Sisters were used as collector of ADAM from the dead and process it within them. Big Daddies are armed and highly advanced humans in diving suits that protects the Little Sisters.

The Downfall
Nothing perfect lasts forever. Ryan's vision was lost and soon he tried to keep his utopia a secrect and passes a single law, contact with the surface was prohibited; this turned out to be one too many. Soon this opened to the possibilities of black markets and backdoor transections. Former mobster Frank Fontaine had the same vision as Ryan but he wanted control. His wealth, combined with his monopoly on Tennenbaum's research, soon gained Fontaine enough power and followers to challenge Ryan for control of the city.

In late 1958, Ryan lost patience with the conflict, and apparently had Fontaine killed. But soon Atlas took Fontaine's place as the leader of the opposition. On New Year's Eve that year, Atlas and his ADAM-augmented followers fomented a riot and civil war between Ryan and Atlas broke out that eventually spread to all of Rapture. As the war progressed, Ryan began to betray his ideals. He began using torture and mind control in his battle with Atlas. Eventually, he became so unreasonable that a number of his supporters attempted to assassinate him. By the time the player enters Rapture, only the "Splicers"—citizens with severe mental and physical problems caused by excessive ADAM use—are left, scavenging throughout the city. The remaining non-mutated humans have managed to barricade themselves in the few remaining undamaged areas.

The Story
This is where Jack (the character controlled by the player) comes in as a passenger on a plane that crashes over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960. Where he enters into the dystopia of Rapture. Atlas assists Jack via radio in making his way to safety, while Ryan, believing Jack to be a government agent, uses Rapture's automated systems and his pheromone-controlled Splicers against him. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to use the abilities granted by plasmids, and that he must kill the Little Sisters to extract their ADAM. Dr. Tennenbaum intercepts Jack, and urges him to save the Little Sisters instead.

The games unfolds until Atlas tells Jack that Ryan must die. After finding Ryan, Jack uncovers his true identity. ack was actually born in Rapture two years ago, genetically modified to mature rapidly; he is Ryan's illegitimate son as a result of an affair with Jasmine Jolene. Jack was designed to obey orders when given the specific phrase "Would you kindly" then followed by the order. He was sent to the surface when the war started to put him beyond Ryan's reach but later brought back by orders to hijack the plane and crashed it near Rapture. Ryan then orders Jack to kill him, so as to die on his own terms. After Ryan's death, Atlas reveals himself as Fontaine and leaves jack for dead by the reactivated security system.

The End
There are two final possible endings to the game. One being if Jack saves the Little Sisters and they along with Dr. Tennenbaum helps Jack safely away from Rapture to the surface and living full lives under Jack's care, including them graduating college and getting married; it ends on a heart-warming tone, with an elderly Jack surrounded on his deathbed by all of the adult Little Sisters. The alternative being if Jack harvested (and therefore killed) any of the Little Sisters, the game ends with Jack turning on the Sisters after defeating Fontaine, making him the new ruler of Rapture.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Comedy Central's Jeff Dunham

Hillariously weird, he has a purple thingie, a maxican on a stick, a terrorist, and a few lots more in one small box...hmmm...Here are some of his videos...




This is his all American friend, Walter, the videos are a little long...enjoy...




Wednesday, January 16, 2008

My Longed Awaitings...

I've played lots of games and various genre of them. I like them all no matter the format, the least loved would be tycoons and management games. The games I love most are fantasy based RPGs (Role Playing Game) and RTSs (Real-Time Strategy). So this little snipnet will go to the few games I'm really looking forward to enjoy. I'm an amateur at games review but I'll give it a shot here.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
This is one of my favarites.
WOW (World of Warcraft) is the first release of MMORPG (Mass multiplayer online RPF) for the Warcraft series. This was one of the games that really got me sitting on one spot for hours playing. The combination PvP (player versus player), RPG, questing, missions, battle grounds, etc. will never let you down and will never be boring. Warth of the Lich King is actually the third release of the WOW series. The new stuff comprises of a new dungeon Utgrade Keep, a continent Northrend, profession Inscription, hero class Death Knight, level cap rised to 80 and etc. WotLK will be here this year 2008, so there will not be too long a wait but here is a sneak preview at WotLK main site (the video is a little too large to post).

StarCraft II
Yeah, all teenage kids had their share of Crafting (may it be Warcraft or StarCraft) in their early years one way or another.
StarCraft is one of Blizzard's popular games of its time during its release in 1998 and its expension set StarCraft: Brood War. Now StarCraft II takes the three races (Terran, Protoss and Zerg) of StarCraft and add bigger, badder, meaner punch to all its artillery. Each race will have new unique units and gameplay. But the coolest of cool stuff that will get you mesmerized is the 3D graphics. Here is a little trailer on a Terran Marine playing dress-up.


Well, those two are what I'm waiting for. For now, I think gamers should fill up their time with some of these other games which are interesting and has great graphics.

Bioshock


Those games will kill most of your time until the great releases are out...and on a final note. No there is no news of Diablo III coming out anytime soon...and yes if I could I would certainly love to work for Blizzard as a developer on Diablo III.

Cheers and happy gaming.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

A Beginning of a Good End

As I'm moving into the world of gaming industry, I might as well go into its workings and news. Many articles pass by and changes to the games market, from console to PC based to mobile games, nothing made me go holly-shit.

In the sense since the gaming industry has been growing and will still continue to grow unless every single child, teenager, adult and senior citizens (yes grandpas and grandmas out there) in the world tosses out their PS2.

Well here is the news that put a sinister smile on my face, the Activision and Blizzard merger annouced in Dec 2007 (Link interest: www.activisionblizzard.com). I've always been a huge fan of Blizzard since it's Diablo days. I'm also a big fan of current (and maybe soon-to-be former) largest developing and publishing house, EA. This merger will make Activition-Blizzard take the top spot but can they hold it? I'm really looking forword to how all this will play out in the games industry.

Some reads on the merger:
ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD-The-deal-that-shook-the-industry
www.blizzard.com
en.wikipedia.org
news.bbc.co.uk

Friday, January 11, 2008

What the Heck is a Long Egggggggg?

I might sound ignorant here and a little like a fool but I've never heard of a "long egg" in my life. Its just too weird a thing for me. What is it for? Why was it created in the first place? Why can't you just use normal hard boiled eggs?

I think its suppose to be like a fish ball, only it is long and made of egg and shell-less..... Why?????

I managed to stumbled upon this totally weird item while watching Jamie's Fowl Dinner on Channel 4. It strongly resembles a soft d*** when he held it up on TV. Anyway there is this big buzz of news regarding chicken welfare, may it be in the form of egg farming or chicken meat processing. Totally a large topic to write on but I don't have the time now, next round. I just wanted to quicky flash the long d***, I mean the long egg.

Testing Your Skills

Is this why in most educational systems have exams? To test our skills? Do we even really need them?

Often we find ourselves being in the situation where...
"I hate this subject..."
"I didn't have time to study..."
"The subject is so vague..."
"I don't know what to study..."
"I'm bored..."

I used to be able to sit at the desk the whole day studying my subjects. Reading, doing exercises and writing notes. Doing what a student should be doing. After working in the industry for 2 years and hardly holding a pen in hand for 5 minutes stright, sitting down reading mini text is so difficult. Its alright to sit all day reading 10k paged book either on graphics or DSP but it really kill butt cells just sitting there reading slide notes on various topics.

When something does not hold my interest I'll end up humming to the music, turning my head to check if any email came in, google a topic (that I was reading) and end up surfing the net for more intesting stuff and behold, time is wasted.

Dang, I'm doing that right now. I hate this distracting blog.

Anyway, I'm just going. No I mean I just HAVE to go through with it and a day (in my case, 3 more days to my exam) passes in a blink of an eye. I'll just treat this exam as another, (*whisper*) lame, way of testing my skills. Just like (wanting to) playing EA's Burnout Pradise over and again for the best time. Hack I'm going to read those notes the same way. The only thing is my final lap cannot be replayed.


Complimentary clip of EA's Burnout Paradise.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

What the Blog is it all About?

One of today's biggest question, what are blogs about?

I'm currently not in Malaysia, in UK doing my Masters study in Games Programming. Something I've wanted to do my whole life. This is where I find myself looking at emails and blogs ever so often to keep in contact with the people I care and love.

Could never imagine if I were a generation earlier and I had to wait for weeks for a letter for updates. That will totally drive me mad.

So blogs, recently I've just found out that my guy have been maintaining an online blog for quite some time. A lot of people knows about it but I just found out about it yesterday. There were signs but I just didn't notice.

This made me wonder, why blogs? I try to justify its use. Maybe it will be fun having one, maybe not, maybe its a waste of time. So why am I at it now? Actually currently I've been very busy with work and its getting harder to keep track of everything. Using google as my life boat. So I figured a blog might help me keep track of life. My life and it's essences.

And behold~! While registering for a blog spot, I found out that I already had one opened a few years back. This might be a sign, to finish what I started...?

For this time and point in my life, this blog with be about life, about my life and this is where the journey begins.