JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

I gained patience after I got my Iphone. Whenever I have to wait for something, someone, I busted the Iphone out and I no longer paid attention to how people are wasting my time, whether it is the gas station, my favorite restaurant, or even traffic.My life was exactly, well not exactly, the way I envisioned it in one of my novels I worte years ago, people are connected, the world is connected. We no longer leave the interenet while we are away from our computers. And for the most part, I am quite happy with it.

And we have entered an age when people no longer have privacy, they choose to not have privacy. People updating their facebook profile daily, hourly, on what they are doing. People on Iphone’s Loopt telling others where they are, sharing their pictures, comments. People on Xbox Live sharing the data of what they have played. I went the other day to profile.mygamercard.net and took a look at my own Xbox Live gamecard, and I saw each achievements I got. It brought back memories of me being stuck in a hotel room in Ohio with my PS2 browsing through my memory card to see what saves I got, it brought me back to finished Lost Odyssey, a game I stopped at the final boss fight but was too weak to defeat it, but didnt want to grind anymore levels — my missing end-game achievements bugged me, it was a living testament of me not completing this fictional piece of art (and yes, sometimes this game’s pace was slower than your grandma dragging a dead orangutan) The 360 has won the race of this new era of non-privacy gaming, because of a better foundation of online network, and achievemnts. It has become the PS2 in the last era.

While I patiently await for Little Big Planet (which they called the web 2.0 of games), probably the only exclusive left for the PS3 (well for a long while), I tried out Dead Space and Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. Dead Space brought up good memories of System Shock and movies like Event Horizon, while Ecclesia reminded me fondly of Castlevania 2. It feels like a new gaming era has begun, no not the golden age of gaming, but something new, maybe we can call it the age of community gaming (seen the penis creature others made on spore?)

Well I finally found time to blog. Here’s the new finalized cover of my book, and please, no Final Fantasy Comments.

Job, being a Project Manager sucks, I have PMS everyday (short for Project Management Shit), I get blamed for crap that has nothing to do with me and I get yelled at everyday.

Games, I wanted to talk about my 5 minute impression of Fable, a game that I never wanted to play, but fell in love with it anyway, and it helps because its my favorite word that contains my name, but in any case, during 5 min of playtime, I caught a husband cheating on his wife and promised him not to tell (+5 evil points), then I told on his wife (+5 good points). I thought about this? Is it not the reverse of real life? I consider going back on someone’s promise evil and breaking up families while it has nothing to do with you, even more evil. Games make us think, that’s why I love games.

The good month of XBLA went by, there was a good game every single week. I loved Braid, a game that got the attention that it deserved, an ingenious creation of art that made the players think. After Bionic Commando Rearmed, Galaga, and Castle Crashers, I played Samurai Showdown 2 to death. I played this game 10 years ago in the arcade in UCLA, I remembered that every battle was intense and fought to the last breath. XBLA opponents were not a disappointment. I thought about what made this game great, and why this game withstood the times and it is still the best SS game in the series, this game was not about perfecting the art of comboing, chaining attacks, super cancels, fireballs and uppercuts, overheads and hop attacks guessing, it is in fact a game of patience, of 2 hit kills, a game that really micmic weapon cutting flash. It is also a game of unpredictability, where the health item drops, when someone powerups or go dizzy, it is a game that perfectly micmics two samurais that faces each other and thinking whoever makes the first mistake, will pay heavily for it.

I want to talk about Spore, to sum it up it is a jack of all trades, master of none, it kind of reminds me of… me. Spore flows like this, Flow -> WOW -> AOE -> Dune 2 -> Star Control 2, it micmics so many games but it does none of them perfectly, but together as a package it overwhelms you with awesomeness. At the end it was love and hate for me, I loved the first 2 days I played it and when I went to the space colonization part it went downhill for me, which seemed to have been the culmination of the beginning, but it felt nothing like the pinnalce of glory it had led me to belief. It did not make sense for me to control 1 captain to fly across the galaxy saving planets from alien invasion while I built a species from the cell stage I could not deploy my underlings to save themselves. At the end, I am looking forward to Fable 2, and playing King of Fighters 98 UM over XBLA, well there’s Fallout 3. Is the PS3 permanently collecting dust next to the TV?

My new job has been ultra demanding and I am finding less and less time to blog so I’ll try to keep it short (and probably fail at it). The thing I found out about myself is I absolutely despise Project Management, am I good at it? I will not answer that, I do not enjoy it and that is all that matters. I think I will be better at managing projects I care about, but when you don’t care, it is difficult to keep up with the time-consuming aspect of it. The new covers have evolved much, thanks to Yan the artist. I am still torn about which one to use eventually, but they have come a long way from what was. The spirit of the story is now fully captured, and I have to say, that brings tears to my eyes (yes, and I will not cry even if I see kids massacred in front of me, as long as they are not my kids)

And I still have yet the time or heart to do a final revision of my book, I will have to do that soon. On other aspects of life, game development project is moving along, slowly, but the pace is picking up, and I know that’s where my passion is anchored, that and writing good stories, I really don’t care about anything else, not my career and my salaried job, as long as it feeds me and those I take care of (me), I really don’t give a damn about it. I think the important thing is making dreams come true, and gaming and writing does just that.

On the gaming front, I was totally disappointed with MGS4. It felt like a half-assed written story. Yes, War has changed, and Snake has gotten old, and Kojima managed to answer all the questions and tied up all the loose ends of the MG saga, but it felt forced. Who were the Patriots before everyone from MGS3 took on that role, it did not seem to end the convoluted narration MGS2 has begun. The ending was not satisfying. It didn’t jolt my interest like MGS2 did and it was not the masterpiece that MGS3 had set out to be, it was simply disappointing. The graphics were great but the gameplay is lacking, getting from point A to B and watching cutscenes was all MGS4 was about, it did not have the old metal gear gameplay. And this is the game I bought the PS3 for?

I was quite suprised with the game Folklore, hugely underrated but it was a gem, and I was quite satisfied with the beautiful Uncharted, and with so of my 3 finished games my PS3 is collecting dust, and I am going back to XBLA on the 360. E3 announced that FF 13 is not going to be a PS3 exclusive. Am I angry about it? Nope. I hardly care. I will probably get the PS3 version because of a way better controller, and the fact that I don’t want my PS3 to rot. Microsoft is doing something right on the gaming front, and I am glad for it. I tried out the much hyped Too Human demo, and I am more than disappointed. The gameplay stank I am looking forward to the 3G Iphone and I will never understand why people line up fort the whole day for it. All I know is, I hate when people waste my time. I am having headaches from the lack of sleep, until next time.

Here are more new concept arts from Yan. I personally think they are great, really fitting the theme of the story.

What’s new this week is I finally accepted another job offer. One that takes me on a somewhat different career path. But my motto is still I dont quite give a damn about my career as long as it pays the bills. What I really care about is what I have talked about in this blog, developing a kick-ass game and writing a even more kick-ass story. Changing job brought me to a discussion of motivation with a good friend of mine. She said she thinks I am a totally unmotivated individual. She thinks that I am not interested to do anything at all. I do agree that I give off that vibe constantly becuase I am very easy-going and I often sound very lazy and I often complaing about going to work and driving in traffic but I just realize that the vibe the I give off totally overrides every accomplishment I have and things I actually do. Sometimes you think that people know you well, but in fact, they don’t. And I start to realize people who don’t read my blog probably don’t know me at all. She argues that most people she knows are more career-oriented and seem much more motivated than I am, and I said but if they don’t make much more money than I do how do you justify their motivation? I really expect seriously career-motivated people to have started a few companies and become CEO by my age (hay look at the facebook guy!), or they should have failed by trying. I think the kind of motivation she felt that other people had, were all superficial, there are people who are motivated to go to a new club or do a new sports or go drink new wine every weekend, but I am the kind that likes to stay home and finish a few more books or finish playing GTA. I guess I don’t sound very motivated, and I do feel that I have much less motivation than much more succesful people than I am, but I think I have done more than the regular person, even though that may not be good enough. But seriously, we are all trying to be happy, if being lazy make you happy, your motivation is to get the most by doing the least, and that is your motivation, who is there to judge you?

On a second note, did Amazon.com crash Friday morning because of pre-ordring of MGS bundle? I was quite motivated to get the bundle (talking about my lack of motivation for everything else). The deal started at 10 pacific time, I got to work and logged in and 10:10 and could not get the deal, and constant refreshing after that caused Amazon to crash for 2 hours straight later. Did I participate in brining down the house? Is that poor load balancing on their end (should they not hire me instead)? Is it simple coincidence or has the world underestimated the number of MGS fanatics? But at the end of the day, I did not get my hands of MGS and PS3. But today, I seem more excited at the 3G Iphone. Until next time, JF out.

A very good article talking about Pursing Happiness in Game Design: Happiness is a perspective.
Reason: A recent study explained that the mid-life crisis happens when it does because at that point in life, people have to face giving up their dreams. After and before that happens, people are happiest in life. Before mid-life crisis, people have hope. Why are they happy after giving that up? Because they reach acceptance and appreciation of what they do have.

I will never give up my dream (I think). Another one that lists the Top 5 Things you can learn from video games, and they are Resource Management, Spatial Relations, Economics, Goal Setting, Logic of Complex Systems. My personal top 1 will always be “Everything else that I don’t learn from books”.

There was a conversation about what kind of guy my friend wanted the other day. She said guys who play video games are a big turn-off, actually she spoke my miind: Girls that think guys who plays video games are turn-offs are uber huge turn-offs for me. Women who can’t find enjoyment in video games just don’t make very good wives / mom, in my opinion. If you heed my advice and read “The Game”, this is one thing you never do, never ask a woman what kind of men she wants. Because what she thinks she wants is always irrelevant because her body will never respond to those criterias she think she has.

These are sketches of the new redesign of my book cover. It is done by my friend’s cousin who is an aspiring manga artist. I got to find out her name later. The setting is kinda wrong because this isn’t a medeival piece. but I do appreciate the work and they look like concept art of a game. Hopefully more pics will come when she gets exactly what I want. It’s interesting when you compare the japanese style to my previous Amercian style cover. What can I say, I dig the East much much more (just like I prefer my women).

ZP dissed one of my favorite game on the DS, the World Ends with You. Like I said before, people who are baised towards a certain genre of games is not qualified to review games belonging to that genre. It’s like me complaining about a FPS giving me motion sickness, it’s pointless. And I don’t see a problem of linear storyline, while most Western RPGs only give you the illusion of choice (kinda like real life), and even games like Halo only have scripted events only.

My RX-8 finally flooded and couldn’t start and I had it towed to the shop to fix. My mechanic tells me that “stop and go” is not good for my motor and the chatter noise will only get worse. Well unless I can drive like I do in GTA, there’s no helping the “stop and go” in LA. The lesson is, don’t get a sports car (especially one with the rotary engine) when you live in a metropolitan with poor public transportation system and excess of dumb people. And yes, flooding is caused by turning off the car before its sufficiently warmed-up. And did I mention, I parked at a stacked place and everyday I got to move out of my way when my coworker gets out. So what am I going to do? Have it run for 10 minutes while I sit in the car and fondle myself? (This adds to my job disatisfaction, see below entry). People been saying I am being grumpy lately. This is one of those things that contribute to my grumpiness.

I am known to have certain bias against Americans becuase I think most are stupid (even though I live here and carry a passport), we did elect the stupidest president in History twice, I am not at all proud to be American (plus the dollar sucks). Like I was in Vancouver this weekend and when I got off the flight I overhead two Americans complaing about why they don’t annouce the temperature in Fahrenheit, cause they could not figure out how cold or warm it was. Do they not realize the rest of the damn world uses Celcius? This reminds me of the argument between me and my girlfriend about what is the difference between an apartment and a condo. She tells me that Americans refer to an apartment as a place you rent and a condo as a place you own but they can be the exact shape and size. I said that Americans are wrong because the name to describe an object should always be describing the size and shape of that thing and not the property of it being used (Triangles and squares). To me, an aparment will always be a “flat” (a term used everywhere else), a townhouse is a single home that shares walls and a condo is the official term that includes all of them, who gives a damn if you rent or own it. She tells me thats why I don’t have white American friends because I think they are stupid. But the point is, THEY ARE STUPID.

Finally gone from my last company, i started working for this Digital Forensics Company. The first week of work was extremely uncomfortable for me, for my browsing habit somewhat got me in trouble, that and now I sat in a cube with 2 walls in a busy intersection and I missed my old office. It was embarrasing when the Head of IT came over and asked me what was Crack.com, becuase it was flagged as an adult site. I resisted the urge to tell him that it was actually very good porn and he should try it himself. No doubt as I am typing this, I am getting flagged and recorded and monitored and studied, but seriously, I don’t quite give a damn.

I still have yet to finish my book (still hunting down the cover), but I have started on my game design project with a few people. I started my design document today and it was loads of fun. I really do realize that, damn, am I in the wrong field. I totally hate my regular job. I am seeking another artist to re-design my cover. I don’t know why I keep delaying the publication of my book (not really all my fault), but in some ways, I don’t feel prepared for it (they say that once someone attains his dream, it all comes tumbling down). The cover is important too, who says you don’t judge a book by it covers. In fact everyone looks at the cover and judge the book, that and the first few pages, provided they can get past the cover. It’s a lot like dating, you can’t really go out the first time sloppy unless you have estrablished that you already are cool, then you can wear your pajamas. On a side note, I have been dating someone for 2 months. That’s somewhat new for me, I haven’t had anyone remotely serious for 10 years. In any case, I keep recommending this book, “The Game”, to all my single guy friends (read my preivous entries if you missed it). And No, I didn’t actually use any techniques from the book on my girlfriend. But it helps, a lot, when you want to initiate conversation in the public, and it helps you understand the female psysche, and often why you screwed up and why you must give up and move on, I learned that the hard way, I suspect everyone did (unless you are Brad Pitt, or some kind of Greek god).

It’s funny since I haven’t updated my blog for months last night I got a call from my friend in HK after 3 hours of updating it. I thought that was awesome. But then I think many things are awesome for I am generally happy and easily amused.

I started playing GTA. Out of my busy schedule I get less than an hour of it a day but the game is very “short-session” friendly. The game looks gorgeous and it’s a blast playing it but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the previous ones. Because I feel that no new grounds have been broken here, and to me now as a designer that’s important. I don’t have too manycomplains, other than that now the game is just too realistic (like more realistic handling of the car doesn’t necessarily add to my enjoyment), and the RPG elements I enjoyed in San Andreas was gone. And I think they spent much less money on the voice acting this time around than the last (where’s Samuel L Jackson?), and if you follow the news you know they make (and will) much more this time around, while only paying the lead actor 10K over 15 months of work. I think the industry has gotten to the point that, writers, actors should make an uber amount, if the game sells. (On a side note, I haven’t beat up any whores yet)

Is there going to be Olympics this year? John Titor the time traveler claimed that he didn’t remember the Olympics in 08. And then the quake happened. So we’ll see whether he’s for real or not. I write a lot about time travel, but seriously, I never really thinK I would believe in it.

I haven’t been here for a while, but I am still alive, I want to tell my dedicated readers that (plural, just in case). Well I am again sticken by Writer’s Laziness, there are so many things I need to do but I haven’t done it yet, and I vow to complete them by this year. I got a second version of my book cover, this probably wont be the last revision. It kept giving me “Heavenly Sword” vibe, and I was not the only one who noticed. I can’t complain much about the cover, and I still haven’t reviewed my manuscript for the 100th time (hopefully the final review).

I am glad I sold all my stocks in december, all by a stroke of luck. I thought I was going to use it all for downpayment for a house, which I did put down an offer, but the bank never got back to me. I haven’t looked at houses since, which is one of those tasks I need to do this year, is to find a place I call my own so I can decorate it like a medeival dungeon (just kidding). I slowly bought back stocks recently (mostly from the Solar energy sector), but they have mostly been losing trades (hay I ain’t the god of stocks). I didn’t sell my apple, and it became rotten. But the following look damn cool:

I started looking for a new job, I even found one. It paid me more than 20% of my current salary, but I turned it down, for many reasons. It felt like turning down free sex from a hot woman (okay it actually doesn’t, because I never turn down sex). I am not sure if it was a right move, but maybe in a few months I would be jobless again, maybe I could just write. But I don’t believe in free will anyway, so I didn’t believe i actually made a choice. I went to more interviews, and some I do really badly on. Eventually I got better at the technical questions. It wasn’t because I became a better engineer, it’s just because I ran across all the possible questions and eventually they start repeating themselves. If you like IQ questions and you read a lot of them eventually you can answer them all in the world, it isn’t because you have higher IQ. I guess that’s the difference between intelligence and wisdom. The task list keeps piling up.

Here is a really cool screenshot I took from playing Space Quest 6. While I am by no means recommending the game, what happened in this scene was simply awesome (and yes, you’d have to have been there). I came across a program called DosBox (a dos emulator) which enabled me to play a lot of old classic games. I replayed some great classics like Conquest of the LongBow, Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 (It’s insane how good the Beast Within is, being a game with real actors.., even while comparing to the excellent voice work from Tim Curry on GK1), which got me to get Jane Jansen’s novel Dante’s Equation (very complicated), which I have been reading on and off when I have time. I played Simon the Sorceror 1 and 2, and Discworld, which contained great british humor, if that floats your boat. The past month has been mostly adventure games for me. I played Nelly Cootalot, a winner of the AGS 2007 awards, which was one of the greatest game ever, with humor that reminded me of Monkey Island. I played Still Life, which had great atmosphere like the movie Seven. I played Professor Layton and the Curious Village on the DS, which can tease and churn your brain cells to their limit. I enjoyed the game, more so than Apollo Justice: Ace Attourney, which I had been eagerly waiting after the excellent new case of Phoenix Wright 1, but it more than disappointed me, filled with plot holes and poor design choices. That’s about all I have to say for now. Considering how much other stuff I need to do, I need to stop playing games. But I can’t.

Today I finally got out of the stock market, for many different reasons. I don’t know if the trend reversal is here (and nobody can ever time the market), but as Warren Buffet said, he made most of his profit by selling too early. I felt like I lifted a burden off my shoulder. No doubt I will pick up new vices, mostly other people’s demons as my own in due time, but hay at least now I can go live in the forest (or go on a trip) without net access and having to worry about the market crashing. No, not really, I don’t think I can live without the net, I feel like I am cut off from the rest of the world.

Now to my real topic, coming back from Europe, the package that waited for me at home I pre-ordered from amazon contained the book Confessor, and 360 games Assasin’s Creed and Mass Effect. You have no idea how much I have looked forward to these three things. I will get to them in order. Confessor is Book 11 of the Sword of Truth series. Its the big finale and a big letdown as I have expected, but its one of those things that because you started, you have to finish. I grew up reading a lot of fantasy novels, and I think I stopped reading them at some point because they became repetitive. The Sword of Truth series is one of the only two series I keep following, the other one being the Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin which I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone because that is a series that can be compared to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Hay there’s always a chance a series get so long the author would die first before completing it (look at Wheel of Time), but Ice and Fire is pretty worth it. Sword of Truth started out pretty uniquely and the pinnacle of the series is really the first trilogy, and also book 6 which started the dreamwalker thread but it deteriated from there pretty much. Book 1 was famous for its S&M scenes (not so much about the sex but the torture), the mod-siths (these red leather-clad succubus like chicks) hold this rod thing called the Agiel (think of it a giant dildo) that causes pain to their victim. I don’t want to dive into the whole series but Goodkind’s writing deteriated from having good torture scenes, good swordplay scenes, good hopeless trapped scenarios, to very childish elementary-level writing that keeps on rambling about the philosophy of life, as to why they are fighting which is repeated over and over from book 6, and the whole book 11 felt like a drag to the end. Overall the plot is tied up nicely, and Goodkind managed to put every major plot device (usually some kinda magic thing) in use for the finale and it feels like he hasn’t really wasted too much time writing fillers (other than the horrible Pillars of Creation). In the series everything counter everything else, War Wizard and the bond of Rahl vs the Dreamwalker, the boxes of Orden countering Chainfire, and there is the ending. Yes, like the stock market, I feel like I lifted another burden off my shoulder, I no longer have to follow the stuff he writes. I really believe in this: truly great writers don’t really become popular, at least not in their lifetime. And things you get from the best seller’s list, they are never terrible, but they are just popular. I am not sure if I would recommend the series to everyone, but chances are if you started the books, you will want to finish it, just because you can.

Assassin’s Creed: a truly flawed game that is, well, I think great in its own way. I hated it as much as I loved it while I played it. Watch Zero Puntuation’s awesome review here. To sum up Assasin’s Creed in 1 sentence is Prince of Persia meets GTA, or in other words, Tenchu placed in a sandbox with Conspiracy Theory. The gameplay gets repetitive but just being in the game should take your breathe away, it IS that beautiful. Combat is love it or hate it, and it gets from ridiculously easy to ultra hard. The only thing I care about is plot? And the good news is there is one, and it’s a pretty good one at that, it is at least complicated and trying something new.

Mass Effect: it is the culimination of all things that is good. It is KOTOR meets Star Control 2 (in a good way), and the plot rivals one of the best Space Opera-ish SF novels, and looks better than most dramas on TV. The game is full of choices (which I love), and for the first time in a game, I think, investing points into charisma affects the plot (no you still can’t defeat the final boss with charm). I think people play games for different reasons, and I play it to experience art, and most importantly, the plot. I no longer like games that make me level grind or repeat a platform jumps 10 million times before I get to the enxt level, I don’t like the challenge, I just want to get to the end and see how the script unfolds itself. And i have proven that here that some games have better plot and writing than books. But if you like plot, why not experience it all?

Exhausted after my trip to Europe, I am finally back to the cyber world. I checked emails and other stuff intermittently but lasted five days in paris without net access. That was amazing, but in conclusion, Internet is an addiction, my hands must have been shaking without holding a mouse, but it’s a benevolent addiction, for the flow of information is the source of knowledge, and knowledge is power. And I had so much information to absorb this morning I was swamped, and now I finally find some time to reminisce and write a few things.

The two places I remember most about Europe, among other things, well one of them is the painting Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The painting really took me by some unmeasured serenity and beauty that was too breathtaking to describe. I found that more impressive than the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa, perhaps it was becuase I visited the gallery near closing time, instead of fighting through the crowds at every step, I was able to just sit in the middle of the room with my travelling companion and breathe in the atmosphere of the masterpiece. I could have sat there for hours but we were apparently pressed for time, but being there for a few minutes it already felt like hours, but hours not enough. The goddess Aphrodite simply captivated me. And yes, for some reason the greek name just seems more appropriate for the goddess of beauty, and it is more original.

The second place I happened upon was the Shakespeare & Co bookshop in the Latin Quarter in Paris. It was a good thing my DK travelling guide mentioned it for I just happened to be on the same street without prior plans to visit the place. It’s an antique bookstore (similar to sister bookstore City Lights in San Francisco) not unlike the one I wrote about in my novel Pillars. Well it so happens I walked in and the man from the bookstore annouced that the owner would be having tea upstairs, so we followed the crowd upstairs. The owner George Whitman is an Einstein-looking 91 year-old gentle looking man, who, I found out later, is supposedly pretty famous. He said “Ni Hao” to me and my companions when he saw us. It’s not hard to identify us as Chinese (maybe harder for Westerners) but I was a little bit fed up with waiters and others alike speaking japanese to us. I guess with age it comes wisdom. While we drank English tea Whitman came over to me and a set of keys dangled from his hands, he said he offered me to stay at his house for free. I politely declined telling him that I was leaving in 2 days. He asked me what I did and I said I was in computers and he told me if I knew any Chinese writers I should tell them that they could stay at his house. So I told him I also write, and he said that if I come next time I could stay. I wish I could have talked to him more afterwards but the place was soon getting crowded so I left soon after tea. As I walked out on the store I wondered why he talked to me out of all people and offered his key before even asking me what I do, I wondered if he sense of people was keener than most of us without his years of experience, I wondered if he could tell that I write even before asking me. Perhaps I possessed a writer’s aura? I’d like to think so.

Perhaps I will talk more about my trip if I feel like it, but I have to admit, each time I travel I learn something new, sometimes it’s even about myself, though everytime before a trip I usually don’t want to leave the comfort of home or prepare for it, but I probably should do that more often. And for the moment I vow to stay away from red wine, Cappuccino, pizza, art galleries, museums, and churches. I am seriously sick of them. Well, perhaps not Cappuccino.

I often joked about the guy cleaning toilets at Google is probably richer than anyone I know. Today I read this: Even the Masseuse is a Multimillionaire at Google (what they pay whores with stock options? just kidding, I know Masseuse aren’t whores, at least not all of them, the 2nd question is, Google hires masseuse?), now isn’t that just sick? I had 20 shares of Google I bought at 400s and people think I am rich. Yeah, right. I always say that we don’t always get rewarded for hard work, so don’t work hard, work smart. Now i have no advice for people who want to start or work for the next Google, but you can invest in the next Google. For a while I invested and traded a lot, I still do, but I find that researching sometimes don’t really pay off, now I try not to read the news, the charts (damn if I can read the charts), and even look at it less. I try to look at other people’s blogs, people who know what they are talking about. If there’s a central place where more knowledgable than you people share what they find, you spend less time to look for them, and spending less time to know more is always a good thing in my book. Freakonomics said that there is not one economist that can predict the future of the US economy (unless its Greenspan), by that rule you sould know that one person can’t really predict the market, but 10 economists can usually come up with something better. This guy’s Z-stock’s blog is pretty educational (and really complex), while the economy seems to be going to hell for the last few days, he has pretty high target for the stock market based on EPS growth (QQQQ:60, SPY:1675, DIA:15,000), this guy uses math to explain everything, and for 90% of the time it works. He said he’s read the Foundation series 10 times, which is about using math to predict the future of mankind. The other times I go here, Beanie’s Blog, which has pretty good long term picks, and usually interesting and lively discussion (and also pictures of beautiful women). The other day he said that his astrologer predicted a worldwide market crash, and it is interesting science that if you map market cycle to planet movements, well, you get something out of it, so believe, or not believe it at your own risk.

I just realized I am probably never going to get to talk about my topic, but as you know me I am ill stricken with long windedness, and I am long overdue to write something. I have been busy making some of my Europe Trip preparation. I find that Yahoo Travel is quite useful, for making a trip plan and looking up recommended places. And Google Map reaches everywhere, even the outskirts of some undiscovered country. Other than that, they Eyewitness Travel guidebooks are quite good, even if not totally informative, they are pretty to look at (yeah just like how I like my women). And the funny thing is, I made all my travel preparation at work (I hope my boss is not reading this now, but not that I care). While I was messing around at work, my coworker called me, and I just realized he took a vacation day, and he asked me to send him some code from work. He said he was bored at home and wanted to work on something. Well, what I really want to say is, that people should get a life? If you are on vacation, even if you are at home, fuck your wife, play with your kids, fuck your wife again, play video games with your kids, whatever, you know, dont fucking work? And he wasted 5 sec of my work time hunting down files and attaching them in stupid Lotus Notes. I just realized how different people really are.

The other day I was stuck at a traffic jam. So I busted out my Ninendo DS (yes I recently got one) so I no longer need to stock my PSP in the car. I played Trauma Center on it while moving less than 5 miles per hour. Yes I know, its incredibly dangerous, so kids, don’t try this ever, unless you are the king of multi-tasker, have an IQ of 130 or above, and half as awesome as I am, or you will really end up in the Trauma Center. The funny thing was as soon as I passed the point where there was an accident, I noticed every car was suddenly racing towards the other end of the empty freeway. I was going about 90 miles per hour then and was literally the slowest moving car. Yes, even the grandma driving an old Buick next to me with a dead orangutan clanking in her trunk was driving faster than me. Hay, I had a sports car so I really had to drive closer to a hunderd just to be faster than everyone else. It’s funny because everyone wanted to make up that loss time and they knew that every cop in the vincinity was probably attending to the accident so you can’t really get caught for at least the next 5 min (hay, afterall the traffic handbook says you follow the flow of traffic, not the maximum speed), in an event that all cars are speeding, only the slowest one get caught. Freaknomics author said that when he visited LA, he noticed one of the things is that everyone uses thier Blackberry to send messages in the car, and the other thing is that people keep telling each other how beautiful they are (but we won’t get to that). The thing is that the traffic situation breeds really pissed off drivers in LA, and I become a pissed-off homocidal curmudgeon every day when I go to work. Trauma Center really works on the DS (yes I know, I am about 3 years late to the game), but yes it works much better than the one on wii because using the stylus to perform surgery is much more like surgery than using the wii-mote (oh and its very challenging when you are driving). That comes to my topic, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And since I recently finally get to play the DS castlevania games, I can attest to that, the same old formula works, and it work wonders. I grew up loving Castlevania and I still love it. Dracula X is also recently released on the PSP, and yes, it comes out of Symphony of the Night. I lost count of how many versions of this great classic there are out there.

I can’t really say the same for Silent Hill Origins. Weapons break. Come on, a wrench, after 3 whacks on a zombie, it breaks, when have you ever seen a wrench break ever in your lifetime? I don’t know whether the game is good, or bad, since I hardly played it, but I know they broke the “If it ain’t broke” rule, and that’s not good. But the game does look amazingly good on a handheld, and I wonder, if we will ever need another next generation handheld ever. While the DS continuously amazes in the fun factor, the PSP amazes in its graphical abilities. The controversial Manhunt 2 looks almost identical to the PS2 version on the PSP, and better yet, you can hack it so that the execution scene are not faded out, which is I think necessary to fully enjoy what the creators intended. Yes, parents out there, a plastic bag kills, your kids should learn that. We die from lack of oxygen, it is very simple. That’s how Manhunt is educational in teaching kids. Yes well, in order to hack Manhunt, you most likely have to pirate the game. I had recent long discussions about pirating, whether it is good or evil. I don’t advise people to really pirate (because its almost equivalent to stealing, and it hurts the developers), but I don’t think pirating is immoral. Sometimes paying extra to get an inferior product is stupidity, and being stupid in life is not a very good thing. Why pirating gets you a better product sometimes? At least in the PSP case, it elimintes the load times from the UMD and let your get a crack at the original content which isn’t available from the original disk, also it most likely saves you money and time to drive out to the store to get it. Yes, we all know that pirating hurts the developers, but has any creator of something really popular ever gone out of biz because pirates were around? I really doubt it. Pirating is a necessary evil, how I arrive at that is, through numbers, not statistically real numbers, but my assumptions. Lets say if 25% of Gamers have a firm stance of always paying for what they play (the true moral people), 25% of Gamers have no technological knowledge to have any access to pirated content (the idiots), 25% will never pay for the content unless they have pirated copies (the cheapskates), 25% can be swayed either side and they most likely wont pay for it if they can pirate the game (those who don’t give a damn). OK, so even in the existence of hackers, developers still gain 50% profit, but they would have gained 75% if pirates did not exist, but in the lights of pirates, 100% gamers get to play the game, and if the game is really any good, the word gets spread. What I always say is that true art only gets destroyed when it doesn’t get distributed. There really is no good or evil in life, there are only consequences and cascades of chain reaction. Consequences are that even people who make money from pirating (yes, those of you shamelss people in Asia) have mothers and starving children too. If your money don’t go to the developers, it goes to someone else’s. People buy the DS and if they want to pirate it they need a micro SD card and I am pretty sure Nintendo and Scandisk benefits from the sale, and Sony benefits from the 2 gig and 4 gig pro-duo memory sticks they keep releasing. Yes, sometimes the developers get screwed, and that’s not fair, but at the end of the day, has anyone really gone out of business because of pirates? And even if they had, is it because people pirated their kick-ass game and nobody bought it because it sucked? A good way to really counter piracy is selling content directly online, like the Xbox live model and the Sam & Max episodic content. I think people actually care less about not paying money to gype the developers than really getting things conveniently, and this way, the developers get to bypass the publisher fee and the evil GameStops that put the games on the shelves. Can you believe that, one time a GameStop employee kept badgering me to buy a used game for 5 bucks less. I kept telling him no, but he kept asking me if I was sure. I would have gladly stuffed him 5 bucks to shut him up. Buying used games is the equivalent of piracy, for the developers don’t get any profit for it, and you should never do it, unless it is under 10 bucks. Anyway, as opposed to what they teach you in school, this world isn’t black and white. And for the while, happy whipping.