Monthly Archives: October 2002

Rebel and Live Again!

Immune to your tune, I commune;
Despite your respite I invite;
Your crooned balloon blewn, popped too soon;
My sight tight, I fight for my plight.

Anyway, I’ve restored all my old guestbook entries as well as my blog entries. I wish I could salvage the comments too, but I failed. Sorry. 🙁

Thanks to the following for helping me with their caches:
Evan (who does not wish to be linked), Cara, Nina, Caryna and Paul.
PY, although she visits really often, has a screwed up cache and had quite old archives! For that, I had to be extra thankful. Gratitude has been justly promised in a free lunch. That’ll teach all of you who didn’t help me to! (Besides, I just got my salary.) 😛

For the finishing touches, I used Google. This is my make-or-break search engine – if I cannot find something with it in the first page, I would give up. The best part of it is that it kept cached versions of pages it visits, so I referred to those!

A strange discrepancy occurred, though – Yesterday when the accident happened, the caches had my site until the end of August. Today when I checked, it had till the start of October! That must mean that the cache was updated yesterday, right? Nope. If it did do so yesterday, it would have more than just the start of October!

I even went so far as to download the database and attempt to open it in Internet Explorer. (Extension change.) I got a lot of interesting text in between delimiting fields. Stuff relating to flooding, chemistry, politics, spam, and even a Malay quote! I hadn’t encountered the text in any of my database tables, much less delete it, so I wonder where it came from. Maybe Brinkster, my current website host, had a faulty database driver? I searched the Malay quote in Google but got only one proper hit, and get this – the site was on Geocities and was a HTML file! That is scary.

Now for that person who posted not-so-sweet-and-cheery things in my website: I know who you are. Your “English” style is very distinct, and I know where you were referred from. If you don’t believe me, email me and I’ll furnish you with details on how I found out.

My Own Worst Fumble

I was deleting some ‘appropriate’ guestbook entries the superhack SQL way, when I accidentally deleted all my posts!

Joey the Crazycoder and Paul of 012 Spurious would be laughing at me now. DJCS, would you know how to save my MDB predicament? I’m sorry to all the frequent visitors, especially the posters like Brickchick, yunnermeier, Dide, Caryna, PY
, DJ Phuturecybersonique, Lionel, Yi Jian and Zebra.

Brickchick, I’m feeling almost the same pain that Greymatter’s reinstallation gave you. This bites, man. Like how I felt when I lost my old handphone and most importantly the numbers on it. All those newly acquired numbers of the opposite sex! 🙁

Don’t panic. Fine, I didn’t. Luckily I had an ancient mirror of the site, which had my posts until the 18th of August 2002. About 2 and a half months from the point of writing this gone!

God bless Google’s cache, which had my blog… until the 28th of August 2002. Sigh. When I was trying to restore whatever posts I could find, I wished Google wasn’t crawling my site at that moment (but if it crawled it 2 days ago it wouldn’t be so bad!)

I already was having a bad day. Dang.

I lost a lot of classics, like the one about MUTLIMEDIA and the one about StickyPics. Ultimately, my greatest loss would be The Dot Masterplan. Long, looong ones. Hopefully my house PC has something in its cache. Hopefully I can still find my source text files.

I posted a lot of filler for comments, too. The guestbook’s out of order, too! 🙁

How can you help?

If you’ve been to my site before, don’t check the older posts yet. Please please help me restore my entries! (Desperate plea, I know…)

How?

In Internet Explorer, click File then choose Work Offline. Click on my older posts link down there. If Internet Explorer asks you to connect, nevermind – your computer can’t help me. If not, wait for the page to load. Click View then Source. Notepad should open. Copy the whole text into an email and send it to me! Thank you sooo much. I don’t know what I could bribe whoever helps me out, but rest assured I will assure a fine reward. =]

Double the reward would be given if you can get the page older than that and send it to me, too! =]

Bug Fix!

q3albdm4 (q3albdm4, 9788 bytes)
q3albdm4.zip (301 KB)

Since nobody has downloaded my q3albdm4 map I suppose I can safely say I’ve patched it, with the following fixes:

– you always start facing solid ground
– extra lights so you don’t confuse the black void for the ground, and vice versa
– wind tunnels now work (Tech info: I put the wrong target entity!)
– you no longer sometimes start under the ramps (bug discovered by my playtesting brother)

Have fun.

Bouncing Balls

Cue Ball (cueball.jpg, 3201 bytes)

Agenda of today? A certain type of fun.

Hit certain balls into certain holes at certain spots. Certainly snooker or billiards or pool or whatever variations of the certainly green table. I certainly didn’t know and certainly forgot to find out.

So I was dragged into this parlour at a shopping mall because I was of legal age while my cohorts weren’t. (They shall remain unnamed.) Rather reluctant I was, considering it was 15 Ringgit (Malaysian Dollar) for one hour at a table! Worth it? Consider that you could play more than 5 hours at a cybercafe for the same price. Of course, bring more than 5 people and it would be cheaper because it was charged per table.

I was then told that each table had to buy a drink. Weird regulation, but heck, so I ordered a Coke. The coke came in a regular tall glass with ice and straw. Then the waitress took out this wallet-like thingy and unfolded it. In it was a receipt, posh diner style! More than 7 Ringgit for a coke?!? Gee, a McValue Meal at McDonalds costs as much! Two cokes would cost more than an hour there! I asked if the entry price was inclusive of drink, and they said no. I told the waitress that I would’ve ordered water if I knew it wasn’t a package of an hour and a drink. No fuss, as the person who dragged me paid for and drank it.

I hadn’t played whatever variations of this game before, so I was totally clueless on what to do. I knew you had to hit the white ball and make it hit other balls into the holes, and that the white ball should not enter any hole. I also thought that the idea of the game was to hit as many balls as possible with the white ball and make them enter the holes. I was wrong. Nooo you had two types of balls; striped and solid-colored, and you could only hit those of your team’s into holes.

Hitting your opposite team’s ball would result in penalty unless you hit any of your own team’s balls first. Also, the black ball was a no-go for both teams until the team had scored all their balls in holes. By then, the black ball would be the last ball and the scorer of that ball would be the obvious winner. Plus you had to hit at least one of your own team’s balls with the white ball each turn or face the penalty again. The penalty would be that the opponent would get his/her turn and get a chance to put the white ball anywhere to his/her advantage. Now don’t take my rules exactly because my um, teacher had only played twice before. 😛

I then found out that besides my teacher, the other person also hadn’t played pool before. A newbie! 🙂

So then our teacher taught us how to hit the white ball. Sort of. A hand would be outstretched to hold the stick up at its end while the other hand (right for right-handers like me) would shift the stick forward. I couldn’t figure how to position my left thumb and index finger to force the stick to go straight! I warmed my left hand by practising striking, taking my time at the expense of my teacher (who agreed to pay as she dragged us both here!)

Strike, and my stick would usually lunge clumsily upward. I took a while to figure out that you just needed to strike hard to get it straight. Once I figured that in the second round, I could hit ambitiously. 🙂

Really, confidence in striking is all I needed to make the balls go where I wanted to. By the third round we switched teams and I took on both of them. >:) That was fun because I tried some stuff you see on TV like bouncing against the wall to hit another ball. It was a fun stunt whenever it was successful. Yep, Albert the showoff. 🙂

I lost the third round by two balls but heck, I won in the fourth round, plus I had a 3-ball scoring streak! =] My other beginner friend didn’t have as luck, though, as most of the time the ball was hit too low, causing it to jump. 😮

It was really fun, but expensive fun at that. 🙁 It was then 3 hours already! We paid per hour each. Ouch. In case you’re wondering why I wrote so long on it, yes, I am an inexperienced greenhorn. I haven’t even tried bowling. Could somebody, anybody take me out and teach me bowling (and pay for my company as well?)

Here’s a quote for Dide who made a guest appearance, cheering me to lose:

“Circle my forehead to show 3 O’ clock.”

Those who follow my Dot Masterplan should also know that the parlour was also filled with double-dot-worthiness! 🙂

P.S. I’ve updated my Quotes page again with six new quotes. For the benefit of some, here are the remaining five:

Suicide: “There is only one thing you cannot live to regret doing.”
Blissful Ignorance: “What you don’t know can’t hurt you so if you don’t know anything nothing can hurt you.”
Justificable Narcissism: “If I wasn’t full of myself, I’d be hollow inside.”
Customer Service: “The key is to look sincere.”
Teenage End: “Work is where rebellion is broken. Work is where nobody is outspoken.”

Space Ramps

q3albdm4 (q3albdm4.jpg, 9788 bytes)
Click here to download q3albdm4! (301 KB)

I’m back with another Quake 3 Arena map! You can click on my Models page to download it, or click on the same picture above. There are no curves in this one, though, since it’s a conversion of the same map I originally made for Quake 1 (and later ported over to Quake 2).

Those of you skilled jumpers should find this map a challenge. It looks easy, yes – you can go through the entire map without jumping, but throw in a few bots and then you’re in the wrong place.

I also patched q3albdm3‘s download – I figured out why the Pure Server had to be turned off. My PK3 paths were wrong! Of course, since nobody downloaded it, I guess a patch is unnecessary. 🙁

P.S. My spots are almost gone now. 🙂

Linkage and Post-pillage

Allergic Hand, allergichand.jpg (4458 bytes)
My spotted hand

Hey. It’s me again. Yes, the lethargic one. Remember last fortnight when I was down with the sickness? Anyway, I’ve got spots. Pink itchy ones. Dangit. It’s not contagious though. Upon meeting a doctor he said I either had a virus or an allergic reaction. Most likely to the previous antibiotics. Well, at least I have an excuse not to eat those white airplane-glue-tasting pills!

The cure? Two different types of pills. I took the pink one (which thank goodness was only 2 milligrams but is supposed to make me drowsy.) I’m still waiting to get knocked out. It’s been 3 hours now…

Oh, in the meantime I’ve added lots of links and removed those dead ones. Some of them may still have URLs but never seem to update. If you’re wondering what happened to all those tiny rhymes that described each linkee’s website, I took them off. Blame yunnermeier for that – I stumbled into linker’s block! So I gave up and just gave everybody links without descriptions. Now, the only thing that will make your site more clicked on would be your title. If your title’s not attractive enough, too bad! (Notice how I gave yunnermeier a head start – twice?)

Oh yeah and here’s another front page link for Caryna, who’s been bringing me lots of hits lately. 🙂

Update:

I’ve also added anti-spam-bot-searcher code. Notice how the email links haven’t got the mailto: format? It’s a custom script to (hopefully) thwart bots which crawl this site for email address to spam. Check this out DJ Cybersonique!

P.S. Could somebody read my palm please? Tell me what my future holds, or at least whether I’ll have to take more pills!

Ramps In Spirals

I have made myself productive. Sort of. I still haven’t finished my assignments. 🙁

I made myself some Quake 3 Arena maps. (You know, that 3D first-person shooter computer game?) The first order of the day was to make curved surfaces or beziers, in QuArK. Making beziers are fun – it’s a face with 3×3 points! Just drag the points around to make a curve.

Shots of both q3albdm1 and q3albdm2 meshed together (q3albdm12.gif, 3454 bytes)

The first map I made was a weird hilly place, thus christened q3albdm1. Besides the corner support beams, everything else was a curve! Lagging coolness! It had bumps and humps and valleys and pits, and it was quite symmetrical. Heck all my Quake 3 maps so far are symmetrical.

The second map is going to be the killer one, a sphere with jump pads. Air-control freaks will enjoy trying to catch railguns in the air!

Now here comes the finished one, reaching in third place. It only has one bug, and that is that you have to set “Pure Server” to off. You can click on my Models page to download it, or click on the same picture below:

q3albdm3 (q3albdm3.jpg, 10640 bytes)
Click here to download q3albdm3! (149 KB)

It’s a simple map made out of ramps that has no curved textures and would look and play as well in Quake 1 or 2. Turn on the bots and it’s immense fun, though! 🙂

Which reminds me – Bonecrusher has also been linked properly. It’s still unfinished and he’s still borrowing Air Raid‘s weapon. 😛

The files come in ZIP format. If it’s wise to prepare an umbrella before it rains, then you should install WinZip before you download files! 😉

Down With The Sickness

Warning: Grossness ahead.

I’m sick. (Physically.) My absence can be accounted for by my green-colored flu and fever. Green is an indication of its severity.

I’m online just to clear my spam. I wish it was as easy to clear my bronchial tract. 🙁

ZZZ

I’ve been sleeping, or in a state of half-asleepness wheezing away. Seems it was time I repaid my sleep debt of 2 years with 4 hours of sleep or less. Oddly, my eyebags became darker. Well, at least I got a cool square mohawk.

Aww nuts.

I’ve always had a weak nose. I don’t have asthma, weirdly, but I’m nasally sensitive. Heck as of last year my nose started clogging up almost immediately after taking peanuts! Sad. 🙁 I remember those nights couch potato-ing with my uncle, groundnuts on the table and trashcan beside. You know how it is – you can’t stop till it’s gone. Bonus points for triple or quadruple nuttage. Ah, those were the days.

My uncle also used to cloud his room with cigarette smoke. The effects on me would be an icky white coating on my tongue. Even though his door was closed, the ventilation holes leaked the fumes. Yech. I wonder what Singapore must smell like, having banned cigarettes. I wonder what pubs and nightspots there smell like, minus the toxicity. Does it just reek of (bearable) piss-smelling beer or do the authorities not care and let the patrons fag away? None of my friends are old enough – you have to be at least 25 years old to enter! Ironically, by then, most other people in other countries would have outgrown their clubbing stage.

Pills pills pills

I hate pills. I can’t swallow them. Try as I may, I can’t voluntarily invoke the involuntary reflex. Crunch! That’s the only way; in, down, powderily. Eww. It tastes like aircraft model glue! (Not that I’ve tasted it; I’ve only smelt it but I guess this would be what it would taste like…)

Well, at least you know I won’t become a pill-popping junkie. Or a needle’s resting place. Or a tar-lined-lung chain smoker.

The Waiting Room

I’ve been changing skins again. The latest would be The Waiting Room. This has to be my most designer-like trend-following skin yet. Before this it was the Blueprint.

I always wanted to make a skin that was based on any of my failed Quake/Half-Life maps but never got to… until now. It’s a case of having assignments due wayyy ahead. Heck I even handed in an assignment a month early, not knowing the real submission date! (I took it back after finding out how many mistakes there were in the rush job.)

The textures are default Half-Life (thank you Valve for making such pretty textures) and the map was constructed using QuArK. Yes, you can actually click on the items! The relevance of each item to its link is doubtful, though. 😛

8a1 16g2 16d3 16#d3 8e3 8a2 8g2 8e2…

I feel darned proud for figuring out how to convert bass guitar tabs into Nokia ringtones! I don’t even know how to play a guitar, much less a bass one, but after a Google search, I took a crash course in it and figured out my first – Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Walkabout! I assure you this is as catchy as bass lines go.

I’m sorry Ericsson users – the more complex bass lines use three octaves. Ericsson phones only support two octaves. Dunno about the others though… 😛

Now to irritate people!

Me: (Pretending to receive a phone call while testing the ringtone…)
Me: Hello? Hello? Hey you’re (still) breaking up, I can’t hear you!
Me: (Looks shocked and stares at phone…)

Repeat as necessary until battery is drained, or physically reprimanded. 😉

Now to serious stuff.

My online (and recently real-life) friend Icegurl passed away from a terminal illness. She was a well-known Xfresher in the forums and chatroom. While I can’t drop a tear for her just yet, a lot of people have. Then there’s the sensitivity backlash from strangers who suddenly had something to say about her. I pity those who did know her well, because they got lumped inside this category. It’s so easy to confuse these groups and call people opportunists that it’s best not to pass judgement.

Death is already sad enough. Like I said in the last blog post, certain types of suicide are not good and a waste. Of course, I’ve never had suicidal tendencies, so I can’t say that all forms of suicide are completely stupid. I can only say that if you have to eliminate something or someone, let it be your obstacle.