wyred dot nu

Okae. I’m going to make an attempt at describing the feeling I’ve been experiencing after watching the trailers for Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I’m very fascinated at the world and story behind both afore-mentioned titles. But I feel I lack the proper words to describe lots of things because I didn’t pay attention during my english classes back in secondary school. [:(]. Too late to regret now. By the time I realize the importance of education, it’s already time to take my GCE ‘O’ levels.

Ghost in the Shell (GitS). The world where humans have become machines. The mind or soul can be transferred from body to machine. We begin to question our existence. Are our thoughts artificial? Are the decisions we make everyday decided by an advanced and complex AI which we never realize we have? I’ve watched the first GitS movie. Loved the futuristic Japan in GitS and wished I could walk the streets of the cities, experience how it feels to be part-machine and smell the air.

I’ll be looking forward to GitS: Innocence. And witness Batou’s struggle in a world where people’s mind can be easily manipulated.

There’s probably 101 words that can be used to describe the world of Final Fantasy 7 (FF7) but I know only a few and they are commonly used adjectives like beautiful, fantastic, wonderful, blah… But I can say I feel the same way for FF7 like I do for GitS. Can’t wait for the movie to be released. I want to relive the scene where Cloud submerged Aerith after her death in wonderful CG.

Here’s 3 photos from the lanparty I participated. Sucks actually. Could’ve been better. I’ve taken more pics but do not have the space to host them. The webspace I’m using now is provided free by my ISP and we only have 2MB of storage space.

I had 8 hours of sleep but I still have difficulties trying to stay awake at work! [X(]. Before I left for the lan party, I had only 4 hours of sleep. Then it was 32 hours of gaming, during that period I probably had 1 or 2 hours of sleep. It took me less than a minute to fall asleep last night. Hahaha.

Here’s my Day 2 report on the LanParty held on 6-7th March 2004 at Funan IT Mall. Photos will come soon.

Slowly, everyone came back to life. Looking around, more users are starting to play CS besides the group of professional players. Playing with the professionals was no fun. The only way I could take them down was to take a different route and sneak up on their backs. [XD]. I succeeded only 60% of the time. They had fast reflexes and insane accuracy.

Some participants had left the party. They went home to sleep but left their computers at the venue. We weren’t allowed to leave because it was a very commercialized party. The organisers were using us to attract more customers to their booths held right next to us. Their booths have so much space and so little customers where we have so little space yet so many people.

My friend and I teamed up with 3 other teens. Their area of expertise was in real time strategy games, namely WarCraft 3. We teamed up for the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo competition. There was a total of 4 teams. 2 from a clan named X3M. 1 called ABC. We were called NooB! [XD]. There are only prizes for top 3 teams. First 2 prizes involve a DFI motherboard. The 3rd prize was a sUrface1030 gaming mousepad which costs around S$30.

Our first match was with X3M’s second team. They are good in UT2K4. The game mode was Onslaught. To win the game, both sides must be quick and battle against each other fighting to take control of nodes all the way to the enemy’s base so that we can destroy their power core and win the game. I’m not sure but I think the time limit for the match was 40 minutes.

Damn were they good. We lost our first round in 2 minutes! They were fast and accurate. We never had the chance to take over the middle node. My team was able to defend longer for the second round onwards. By the end of the match, we lost 0 to 11.

We had a second match to see who would get into the 3rd place. Our competitors were team ABC. They are good at CS. Before the match started, we were allowed 15 minutes break. My teammates came over and we discussed how we lost the first match and how our opponents played. We then planned how we would play our second match. We learnt a lot from the first match.

The second match against team ABC was more fun than the first one. I can say we were equal in strength. Our first round took up to 10 minutes. We were struggling but no one gave up. Taking over the middle node boosted our morale. The sad thing is, our opponents quitted the game the moment we won the second round. Even though we still had a lot of time on the clock left to play.

Hah! I didn’t expect to win a prize during this party. All I expected was lots of gaming but everyone who came in groups were playing their own games. Some even created private games to play with their own friends. Before the party, the organisers created a forum for us to ask questions. Many people thought it was a tournament. In fact, most of the people came because of the prizes.

Hmm… How should I put this? It didn’t turned out what I thought it would be but it wasn’t too bad either. Right now, I’m blogging at 5.40am. Just woke up from a short sleep.

I woke up at 8am. Packed my stuff. The Transpo that came with my goodybag turned out to be useful. Made carrying my computer around much more easier. We had to bring our own keyboards. And for once, I found out how fucking dusty and filthy it was. Most of my room was in darkness. I didn’t need light for my keyboard anymore. I’m finally used to typing without looking at the keyboard. [:D]. 9.30am, a guy, I assume he’s one of the organisers, called up and said the chartered bus will arrive at the designated pick up point in about 20 minutes.

Reached the place where the lan party would be held. Met up with an IRC friend for the first time. Signed in and went to the tables we chose. The area is too damn cramp. Since the party was held at Funan IT Mall, we were always watched by lots of people. I’ll post a pic when I get home.

We weren’t able to play for the first few hours. Seems like they did not prepare enough power for all the computers. Power cables and LAN cables are all over the floor. They hired a radio DJ to host and no one’s listening to him. We had a 15 year old gamer by the nick of Ducky, who happens to be the second best Warcraft 3 player in the world, spent most of the time playing cards with his friends.

The games played by the majority were WarCraft 3 + Frozen Throne Expansion, Counterstrike 1.5, Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo. Everyone besides us were at least very good in 1 of the above. My friend and I, being casual gamers, were trashed in every game we played. We would be raped in WC3. Sniped within the millisecond of spotting and AWP(sniper rifle) user in CS. Easily fragged in UT2K4. But we didn’t care. We came just to play anyways.

Out of a maximum of 50, 49 seats were registered. But seems like a few didn’t turn up. Over S$10,000 worth of hardware are to be given away as prizes. I would be fucking pleased if I won a Surface 1030 mousepad.

7am: I feel much better now. I had been plagued by an awful headache for about 10 hours. Neither the cappucino from CoffeeBean nor the free flow of coffee they provide was able to keep my headache away. I’m addicted to my usual brand of coffee I suppose.

The CS players are still playing CS! If it were me, I would have grown bored after 2 hours. I’m not a hardcore gamer afterall.

9am: Haha, no one’s playing games anymore. Everyone’s either falling asleep, chatting away or watching movies. Everyone wants to go home. I wonder what made the organisers expect teens to stay throughout the whole night and still be able to stay awake for the next 11 hours gaming all the way.

Argh!! I don’t know how I managed to pull this off… This morning, I mistook bus number 165 for 166. 166 is the bus number I take to work every day. Damnit. During the first 15 minutes of the ride, the route both buses take are the same. After that, they both go different ways. By the time 165 had taken a different route from 166, I had already fallen asleep!! [X(]

I woke up and looked around, fucking shocked to find myself in an unfamiliar place. Quickly boarded off, crossed the road and waited for a bus back. It was 8.30 already. I soon gave up and flagged a cab. The driver had to top up his cash card and so he stopped at a petrol station. He was kind enough to lift the $1 peak hour surcharge. But I had to pay $3.50 for his entering into the CBD area. The grand total was $12.00. [:(]

While reading php-Mag, I came across another interesting blog and from there, I learned about GeoCaching. From what I’ve read, GeoCaching sounds like “treasure hunting”. People would store stuff in containers and hide them in suitable places, most of them in the wild but safe location. They would then submit the GPS co-ordinates of the location of the item to GeoCaching.com. I’ve found out that there’s quite a number of hidden caches in Singapore (Click on the Seek button in the link.). I’ve read that even a foreigner who was probably here on vacation, participated. Click here for a sample of a hidden cache somewhere in Singapore [:)].

It sounds like a healthy hobby to pick up. My ex-tutors advised me to pick up a hobby just to spend less time on my computer. The only problem to this is I need a GPS device. A simple one costs around S$150 if I buy it from amazon.com. I was wondering if Pocket PCs are GPS compatible. Getting a Pocket PC would be better since I can do lots of stuff on it [:D] . But it’s very very expensive [:(] . Hmmmm…. I might consider monthly installments…

Oh yea… KDE for my Gentoo installation is still compiling… 36 hours already. Hope it finishes before I leave for the lanparty.

I signed up for an upcoming lanparty that’s to be held at Funan IT Mall. It’s called: “eXe” – The DFI Singapore LAN Party 2004. The registration costs S$18 and each person is given a goody bag. I’m more interested in Transpo. It’s used to strap around the tower to make it easier to carry around. There’s also a SurgeArrest and a eXe lan party t-shirt. The maximum number of people they’re accepting is 50. I feel that’s too little.

Just 48 hours ago, Monday, I began installing Gentoo Linux on my Pentium 2 233MHz machine. Last night, I was finally able to complete the installation. Right now, I’m trying to set up KDE (Click on the link for some screenshots). Sort of like a graphical user interface. The machine’s still compiling the software! I’ve heard that if you try to compile Gentoo from scratch, it will take 3 days on a modern machine. What about an almost-antique machine like mine? Weeks I say. Haha.