Category: Life

Things are going a lot busier now with Doom3 installed on my machine. It requires a rather mean machine to run it at high quality settings and fortunately, my machine meets those requirements. [XD] . There are people who manage to run it on GeForce 2, getting 15-50FPS but at very low quality settings. So low it’s doing injustice to the game.

I got surprised and jumped at 2 scenes, when I open the door and the fire imp jumps right towards me. And another when I approached a control panel with a zombie soldier lying on it. That fuck woke up and started shooting at me.

Apart from the scary gameplay, Doom3 has it’s own revolutionary 3D engine that’s going to be the new standard in FPS gaming. The realistic lighting and impressive physics are the reason why there’s huge commotion in forums when the game got officially released, and it’s bittorrent having hundreds of seeders and went from hundreds of leechers to twenty thousands in just an hour.

Gahh… Right now I have a bit of fever coming up and a running nose. It’s just one of those usual sickness. If it gets worse, I might go see a doctor and get MC~

About time I tried something else and no more pretty females in my blog’s cover image.

Finally it’s Friday again. I feel so relieved. It’s been a tough week because of the hardware problems.

Nothing much to say now, I’ll be off to indulge myself in work to make time fly and then, it will be time to knock off and it’s another Friday evening to enjoy…

12.50pm: Skipping lunch again. The taste of coffee lingering in my mouth keeps my appetite away. I took a screenshot of my FinalFantasy 11 character last night, here’s my Frodo lookalike in an Onoko Yukata. There’s a Summerfest going on for 2 weeks in Vana’diel. From 6pm to 6am in Vana’diel time, Windurst and it’s outskirts have the background music replaced with a traditional Japanese festival music and fireworks can be heard and seen.

There’s also a special quest which requires a partner to participate. Upon completing it successfully, you get the Yukata! So I partnered with a friend and participated. The quests begins by transporting us to a faraway land that has very high level monsters. We were both seperated and have no maps. There, we had our equipment stripped, level reduced to 1, invisibility cast on us. The aim is to search the huge area for a hidden GoalPoint.

We didn’t know how to run this quest for the first time, so I had to logout and check up FF11 forums for more info, and we had a second try at it. Evasama found the GoalPoint in just 5 minutes. He happened to see someone remove the invisibility and teleported back. So I had to locate him, and we both got the quest items. Trade the quest items and give it to the moogle who then rewarded us with a Yukata each.

From shadowandy’s entry, I too get my fair share of FIRs.

The kind I encounter can be easily found in most forums, easily identified by their style of writing. A habit of theirs is not bothering to read other people’s text properly! [>(] And to make things worse, they misinterpret other people’s words. I’m gonna stop talking about this before anger takes over and I whack everyone in sight with this keyboard I’m mashing.

A month or 2 ago, I had dinner with a friend at Yoshinoya at Bugis Junction. They were playing some nice JPop songs at that time. I went to check out the counter and saw a picture of the album that they’re playing. Kokia was the singer.

Recently, one of her albums were available on the net. I downloaded a copy. And listened. It was good. Very good. Like Kotoko’s but with more optimism in most of her songs. As a matter of fact, I found most of Kotoko’s songs sad. But I still like her singing too. Like I said, I’m impressed with singers who write their own lyrics and music, which is what Kokia does. Or at least that’s what I found out on the net. I don’t know the words to describe how good Kokia is, but it’s good enough to make me add her albums into my shopping list. [XD]

Now, who said MP3s were evil? If the singer/band/whatever is really good, I WILL buy their CDs even though it means skipping a week of lunch.

With the launch of vPostJapan, I may consider buying CDs from Japan that can’t be fucking-found in Singapore~~~

Last Wednesday, the fan in the Power Supply Unit of my webserver stopped spinning, and the PSU started giving off lots of heat. Just to be safe, I had to shut it down.

So when Friday came, I took the time to move the harddisks over and designate my Athlon machine as the new webserver. This time with careful planning, I managed to keep a neat arrangement of the IDE and power cables. Just when I plugged in the power cord, there was a pop sound as loud as casually clapping your hands. I noticed bright light from the back of the tower. I suspect the fuse blew up.

It was a golden what-the-fuck moment as I stared for a while. Tried powering it up again and the whole thing’s dead. My router that shared the same multi-socket power outlet froze, the LEDs that blinked remain lighted up. A funny way of telling me he’s shocked too.

So in a short period of 3 days, 2 PSUs died on me. I was so used to working on 2 computers at once that I find it rather uncomfortable using only 1.

Saturday came, I had agreed to meet up with some anime lovers from HardWareZone’s anime forum. Out of 6, 4, including me, turned up. They were all very nice people and there was never a moment of silence. We chat on hardware, games, anime and career. Walked around SimLimSquare after lunch together, followed by a trip down to Anime House at Sunshine Plaza. I’m glad the place has more new shops that hold a lot more anime stuff.

I bought a Pinky Street: Evangelion designer toy for $35, a Narusegawa Naru figure for $9.50, 3 anime OSTs (Sakura Diaries, Mahou Tsukai Tai, Hoshi no Koe) totalling $62, and to put all these stuff in, a printed paper bag featuring a very beautiful Evangelion art for $4.

Back home, I rearranged the harddisks and cdwriter in my Athlon64 machine. So now, I have the noisy harddisk cooler removed, the harddisk cage in the Tsunami casing full with 5 harddisks, cooled by a 120mm fan. The temperature of a harddisk without cooling was 50-52 degrees celcius, with the harddisk cooler, 43-44 degrees, with just the fan blowing, 40 degrees. The 120mm fan gave more airflow then the 2 40mm fans in the lousy harddisk cooler that also came with a huge heatsink.

Sunday was a day of Final Fantasy 11 all the way to 3am~ I was lucky to join a group of people that played their roles well. A WhiteMage would heal us, DarkKnight deals lots of damage, A Summoner/WhiteMage summoned the cute Carbuncle to fight with us and heals us at important times, a RedMage casting spells that affect the enemy, a warrior dealing damage and tanking occassionally. I was a Monk/Warrior who had to pull monsters and tank.

Monday, managed to stay awake most of the time except 10 minutes of nap in the morning and afternoon. After work, it was straight down to SimLim Square for a new PSU at $29. Then spent the rest of the evening fixing and setting things up all the way to 3am again. [X(]

I’ve been heavily into classical music again but it probably won’t last long. Currently listening to Johann Pachelbel’s Kanon in D-minor which inspired me to write this entry.

It was about 2 years ago when I borrowed Neon Genesis Evangelion VCDs from a friend and watched 3 episodes everyday. Even skipped lectures once to go home and watch it. It wasn’t totally about the sleek looking mechs or the pretty Ayanami Rei that got me hooked but the character development, and I was most interested in the main protagonist of the show, Ikari Shinji. Young teen bearing earth-saving responsibilities.

*Spoiler Alert*
Towards the end of episode 24, Shinji had to kill someone who he believed, could have been his closest friend, Nagisa Kaoru. Even though they met and known each other for only a short time, it turns out that he was an Angel and thus, needs to be eradicated. In the end, Kaoru allowed himself to be killed by Shinji. He had to be killed so mankind will survive. And he wished for his own death because he believed mankind deserve to live.

It all began with Kaoru taking control of EVA-02, bringing it with him down to Central Dogma and Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 playing as the BGM making it more dramatic. Shinji piloted EVA-01 and soon caught up. A fight between the two mechs broke out. After a series of events, there was a one minute frozen scene showing EVA-01 grabbing hold of Kaoru with one hand and in the next scene, a head falls into the sea of LCL below. This one minute scene was exceptionally painful for a lot of Evangelion fans out there and me.

This scene was repeated again in one of the Evangelion moves, I believe it was Death and Rebirth. Will check it once I get home. Instead of the TV ending, this depressing scene ended off with Kanon in D-minor and a beautiful sunset scene with ending credits rolling horizontally slowly. After the show ended, Kanon kept playing on and on in my head.

Each time I listen to this classical piece, I am reminded of the pain Shinji had to go through before he killed Kaoru. Gradually, I started listening to other classical pieces by other great composers and perhaps maybe I learned how to appreciate classical music a little. But depending on my mood, I still listen to other genres so don’t think I listen to classical 24/7/52.

I dedicate this blog entry with respects and admiration to writer and director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno.

More info of him at IMDB.