Thursday, November 30, 2006

Toyota Football Fever Party

My pals the SoccerGurus have extended me an invite to their year end soccer party, of which I am extending to my readers. So those of you who wanna go, let me know, I'll get that organized for you. Obviously this only applies to my readers in Malaysia. Unless of course, you are mad and fly in from Zimbabwe just to attend. But if that happened, I'm not sure you should attend as you probably are mentally unstable. Anyway here are the details from the email:-

Dude,

Can you get your mates to join in and tuck in to sum fine free food and drinks and supports us in this event. Maybe if u like to post in to your blog? I will need the number of your mates plus names to work on F&B

Toyota Football Fever "Live Viewing"

Time: 7.30pm till late
Date: Saturday 9th Dec 2006

Venue: My Home Bistro's (Formerly known as Cristo's)
Address: 76 Jln 27/70A, Desa Sri Hartamas
50480 Kuala Lumpur (Opposite Project Station)

Attire : Club colors

There will be free food and drinks as well as fun & games and lucky draws. Agenda to be finalized.

Cheers.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

CELGames 2006 equals Loser is Me

Yes thats right, loser. Me.

Serves me right to enter a video game competition and actually expect to win. I need to realize that I am not 16 anymore and video games, well at least at a competition level, is not for me. Needless to say, my two buddies and I, all in our 30's, got handed our asses handed to us by these kids. I never felt more like a old man and a loser than I did on saturday. I actually brought my own special gaming mouse and keyboard, that kids can't even afford. And still I got whipped. At the end of the day, I should just enjoy online gaming from home and relax. Leave the professional gaming to those who are well and truly dedicated to the sport. Here is a picture of us before the start of the Battlefield game. Our faces filled with blind optimism and foolish bravery.



Oh well, I'm going to play golf on my XBOX 360 now, by myself, if you don't mind. Oh ya, just as I'm writing this, one of them 'kids' just messaged me on MSN with a link to his webpage with the results and pictures of the competition. Naturally, he was on the winning team. There was a picture of him holding the winners cheque. I said to him "no need to rub it in". To which he replied "rub?". Meaning he is so young and ignorant, that he has never heard that phrase before. Needless to say I have just blocked and deleted him from my MSN list. Just a perfect end to a crappy weekend. What the fuck.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

XBOX 360 or PS3?


And now I address the issue of XBOX 360 vs PS3. How to choose? Which is better?
Ok, before I say one more thing, you need to know that I just bought the XBOX 360. So what I'm about to say might be to ease the guilt in me and to somewhat justify my recent purchase. It seemed like the logical thing to do seeing as I already own the old XBOX of which I modified it with a 120Gig Hard Drive so I can store all my downloaded movies and stuff. What a wonderful thing the XBOX is.

What attracted me most about the XBOX 360, is the fact that you can play online with your friends on XBOX Live. Now granted, you need to pay a subcription. I think 50US a year is worth it, because you have access to all the latest demos and downloads Microsoft has to offer, plus live streaming media. Now this online component is where I feel that Microsoft has an edge over Sony. Sony has announced, they too will have online gameplay. We will have to see how good it will be.

The next attractive point is the fact that thx XBOX 360 can act as a Multimedia extender. A what extender? A Windows PC running Windows Media Center Edition 2005 can use the Xbox 360 as a "media extender," more commonly known as a media hub. Using the very nice remote control that comes with the 360, the console becomes a TV tuner, allowing gamers to watch, record and playback live TV. The Xbox 360 supports all the major DVR (digital video recorder) features found in so many products on the market-today (this is where the adjective Tivo-like could come into play). In extender mode, the 360 can even stream videos stored on networked computers.

The Xbox 360 also connects to portable devices, ranging from external hard drives to a wide variety of MP3 players, including iPods. All of the basic music navigation tools are available when playing back from these devices, including listings by Artist, Genre, etc. and access to any playlists that have been stored on the device. For music players such as iPod, which charge their internal batteries from USB connections, the Xbox 360 is happy to re-charge your portable device for you.

The PS3 on the other had has always been about a console for serious gamers. But what the hell does that mean anyway. Are you saying XBOX players are pussies? With all the hype about the technology behind the PS3 and Sony's new Blu-Ray Disc, expectations are very high. When the PS2 came out, it blew away the competition with its ground breaking graphics and advance hardware. Sony is looking to again do the same this time.

Now the PS3 has just been released in Japan, now I can tell you that, the queue to buy one was not that long. By no means was it sold out. People just aren't running out to get one just yet. The main reason being is price. The price is not attractive at all. It is three times the price of the XBOX with less additional bits like a headset. Then of course you have about 5 games to choose from one which is Ridge Racer, wow. Don't get me wrong, the teaser trailers for Devil May Cry and Grand Turismo looks mighty tasty, its just that for me, will it justify the price tag. I think we have to wait and see when the second batch of games are released, to know for sure if its the console of choice. Hardcore die-hard PS fans will disagree with me I'm sure.

Honestly, I don't know which is the better console. I'm sure if they were equally priced, the decision would be harder. I would have trouble choosing between the joy of playing Tiger Woods 2007 with my three friends online on XBOX or the joy of completing Metal Gear Solid on PS3. But for now, I think I made the right choice. XBOX is the one. For now.

Stern Review (supplemental post)

As a follow up for the previous post on the Stern Review, check out this flash animation..

http://www.endofworld.net/

you loopy Americans!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

What in the hell is 'The Stern Review'?

In a vain attempt at my blog being more than just mindless crap from me, I present to all my readers, this...
The world has to act now on climate change or face devastating economic consequences, according to a report compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government. And hence the name, 'The Stern Review'.
Here are the key points of the review written by the former chief economist of the World Bank.
TEMPERATURE
- Carbon emissions have already pushed up global temperatures by half a degree Celsius
- If no action is taken on emissions, there is more than a 75% chance of global temperatures rising between two and three degrees Celsius over the next 50 years
-There is a 50% chance that average global temperatures could rise by five degrees Celsius

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
- Melting glaciers will increase flood risk
- Crop yields will decline, particularly in Africa
- Rising sea levels could leave 200 million people permanently displaced
- Up to 40% of species could face extinction

ECONOMIC IMPACT
- Extreme weather could reduce global gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 1%
- A two to three degrees Celsius rise in temperatures could reduce global economic output by 3%
- If temperatures rise by five degrees Celsius, up to 10% of global output could be lost. The poorest countries would lose more than 10% of their output
- In the worst case scenario global consumption per head would fall 20%
- To stabilise at manageable levels, emissions would need to stabilise in the next 20 years and fall between 1% and 3% after that. This would cost 1% of GDP

OPTIONS FOR CHANGE
- Reduce consumer demand for heavily polluting goods and services
- Make global energy supply more efficient
- Act on non-energy emissions - preventing further deforestation would go a long way towards alleviating this source of carbon emissions
- Promote cleaner energy and transport technology, with non-fossil fuels accounting for 60% of energy output by 2050

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
- Create a global market for carbon pricing
- Extend the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EETS) globally, bringing in countries such as the US, India and China
- Set new target for EETS to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2020 and 60% by 2050
- Pass a bill to enshrine carbon reduction targets and create a new independent body to monitor progress
- Create a new commission to spearhead British company investment in green technology, with the aim of creating 100,000 new jobs
- Former US vice-president Al Gore will advise the government on the issue
- Work with the World Bank and other financial institutions to create a $20bn fund to help poor countries adjust to climate change challenges
- Work with Brazil, Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica to promote sustainable forestry and prevent deforestation
IN SUMMARY... in Jinggez Summary that is, the end of the world is coming soon, whether we like it or not. Try as we might, if successful, we only are prolonging the inevitable. Doom is near. Make no mistake. So make the most of your short time here on this, currently still in excellent shape, Earth.
I'm officially depressed now after reading this. And to those of you who didn't read this and scrolled down here to the end, DAMN YOU, you lazy bastard! Go back to the top and read it, this shit is important.
Thanks to Annonymous for highlighting this to me.
P.S, leaving your name in future comment posts, will ensure your place in Heaven.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Battlefield 2142!

First off I'd like to apologize for the delay in posting, I had a long holiday and went traveling inter-state to my mother's hometown. More than that, the delay was mainly due to my new obsession, Electronic Arts's Battlefield 2142, a multiplayer online futuristic war first-person shooter game. You may have noticed a statistics banner at the bottom of this page. That is my characters statistics for Battlefield 2, EA's 2005 game based on modern day warfare. I've been playing BF2 for a year now and when EA announced a follow up game to BF2, I went mental. I pre-ordered the special edition version that comes in a neat metal box and I got a limited edition mobile phone strap, woo-hoo! Anyway, I've been playing BF2142 every night since, till the wee hours of the morning in a vain attempt to 'level-up' my character and 'be all that I can be' as it were. I've been walking around in a zombie-ish daze during the day from the lack of sleep. We use to call this at Uni , 'reverse-polarity', where we were awake at night and asleep during the day, trying to finish that 47,000 word paper due the next day. Now that my brain has turned into dog-poo. I'd thought stop playing for a few minutes to check my email and of course update my Blog!

So now, a little background history of the future. The game is set in the future, 160 years from now. If pre-history dictates correctly, the world has been through several ice ages, an environmental anomaly with far reaching effect on the entire globe, of which scientists claim to have actually transpired not once, but 4 times before, from as early as the Proterozoic Age to the most 'recent' one, 10000 years ago. It is in at the mid-point of this new Ice Age cataclysm where a huge war is being fought between two superpowers, the European Union and the Pan-Asian Coalition. Interestingly, America is swallowed by the glacial push from the pole. This is a nice change from having them as a prominent feature of most every major war to date. The makers wanted to get away from the static overuse of American, Russian or Middle Eastern forces. Instead they wanted this to be a war of survival and nothing else. Not religion, not politics, but for the last remaining piece of habitable land.

Once again, like BF2, this game has improved graphics so some hardware improvements were needed. Burning yet another hole in my pocket as I have had to upgrade my graphics card to 512MB, CRT monitor to 19 inch wide-screen LCD and my 1000 Dpi Viper mouse the new 2000 Dpi Copperhead mouse. There are plans to upgrade to the new Dual core processor but I think I will wait for Vista and DirectX 10 to be released first.

I've manage to coax all my friends into buying the game so play together as a Clan. The Jinggez Clan of course. We can all log on, get into a squad and reek havoc in cyberspace. This month there is a cyber games tournament at a mall in the city, of which I will be entering. Hopefully I can win something so I can justify to myself that all this has not been for nothing. Actually after reading all this, its quite sad that this is what excites me. Have I turned into one of those geeks? Or I have I always been one...

 Does anyone still use this???   Seriously.....