Feeling kinda down still (not about results) so went back to Bugis to finish the remaining 2 credits on my card. One on TC3 and the other on Daytona. Shalln’t elobrate too much on TC3 except that I was too used to shooting Link Play so some bloke joined me in the middle of the first stage and saboed my game. Anyway died at the 3rd stage just before the tanks, after losing several lives unnecessary due to “insufficient cover”. Other guy spent like 4 credits continuing before he finally gave up.

Waited for a group of 4 guys to finish playing 2 rounds of Daytona on Advance. First 2 cars were spoilt so they got lapped pretty bad. If I were them I’d turn around and mess up the amaturish battle the other two were having. N00bs. Took over one of them when they finished and found out that the accelerator could not be fully depressed. Oh well, did affect my game somewhat but hey it’s like just 37 cents. Maybe I should stick to more TC3 next time.

Have been spending more time at the arcade after the “christmas present” from NUS, mostly with Time Crisis 3.

I still remember Em’s goal to complete TC3 under $5. And that’s when we were still playing at the expensive arcade which charge $1 for 3 lives. Now that we found out about the other arcade next door, at 37 cents for 5 lives, Em now completes the game with 2 credits (9 lives) while I still needed 3 (14 lives). Stage 1 seems so routine now and so does part of stage 2. Well it does help to have some practise and materials to mug. At $10 for a 28 credit card and a free drink, this really is a cheap form of entertainment. (=

Emily makes Time Crisis 3 seems so easy.

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Watched Kung Fu Hustle with Em, Cheese and Andre after the party at Em’s place. To quote Peter K, it was “a master of blending both comedy and visceral action with artistic integrity and traditional melodrama.. taking me from quite serious and intense graphic violence to over the top ridiculous spoofing.” It was great. However Em and Cheese felt otherwise. Don’t think everybody can fully appreciate such extreme comdey, humour so extreme that it might be over the threshold for some.

If you want to do something funny or silly, do it all the way. No point in making it midly funny or a little silly, bring it to the extreme. Make it totally rediculous and so silly that it is completely meaningless. Now that’s what I call comedy.

This movie did potray serious and intense emotions in the opening half and gradually evolved to typical hong kong kung fu movie spoof. The actions scenes were top of the class and there are also certain moral values which were potrayed rather subtlery. All these together with the extreme humour and a cheesy romantic ending makes it a great movie only to the select few. Others probably just got lost in the middle. Or maybe like Jelly said, it could be a guy thing.

Well, Stephen Chow is a genius at that. This is just the best comedy I’ve seen in recent years.

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After all these years, the story of Christmas never fails to move me, in ways unexplainable. The angels of heaven appearing to the shepards, the wise men from the East, God’s gift to all mankind, His “unconventional” approach is that still dazzles the human mind. Truly, Christmas is all about hope, the hope of a light in the darkness, the lamp in the fog, the lighthouse in the storm. I always imagine what it must feel like being the shepards or the wise men, looking down on a little baby, knowing that in him lay the hope for all mankind. It takes great faith, a great measure of faith to believe.

Which is why christmas carols will always be special to me. Not those commercialised carols like “Jingle Bells” but carols which tell of the orignial meaning of Christmas, which tell of the hope that we have in Jesus, the hope that God has gave. Let us never forget that.

Tidings of comfort and joy to ye my friends. Have a Blessed Christmas.

Just like how out-of-order execution results in faster performace in processors, out-of-order posting will result in faster posts! er.. well not exactly. heh. It’s just that I do have things to write about but just dun feel like writing at that moment. So don’t be surprised if suddenly there’s a post appearing several days ago. Yah they’ll have to be back-dated so they’ll still fit into the chronological order of events (think ROB and WAW )

I’ll try not to back post more than 10 articles else the RSS feed might not catch them. Other than that maybe I’ll have the sidebar display the latest posted entry (according to post date not entry date of course). Oh well..

** Update **
Ok I started putting up “placeholders” for days which I have something to write about. So maybe you can “motivate” me to fill them in. =P

Cheesecake and I taking a break on the bench.

Ahh.. got things to do but ended up playing instead.. hee

Begining to think that pMachine is not a very good system. Given it’s massive size, it only has the very basic functions of a blog/CMS and given the coding, it’s not easy to write a hack to implement a feature. I think Lynda sums it up very nicely in her blog entry. Might give Movabletype (MT) a shot to see how it does.

Ever encountered games which are totally dumb and brainless yet so addictive? Been playing MapleStory for the past few days and I just can’t explain why it’s just nice to play. It’s a side scrolling action (old gamers think Commander Keen) with an MMORPG (newer gamers think UO) theme. Yes there are classes to choose from, xp to gain, eq to gather but it seriously lack some important elements in an online RPG that is to encourage grouping and creativity. I mean one of the best ways to play the game is to go solo shooting or whacking monsters the whole day. There’s no team play element in where players organise groups to go after big monsters for xp, gold or eq which takes a group to take out. No room for creative ways to defeat powerful monsters, and no clan politics with war and pkill threats (heh).

Me (chaux) and Cheesecake (sucre) posing for a photo!

Oh well. This is just the start of a new style of RPG and there’s definately much room for improvements, though I can’t exactly say how. The simplicity of playing does introduce lots of lamers and idiots into the game (much like what counter-strike did to the FPS community). Not much time to lament on this now, perhaps in the near future..