08:56 by FoxTwo Given that I play MMORPGs, and that a majority of players of these MMOs are not in Singapore, arranging raid times can be a daunting task, ESPECIALLY for people who live in countries where they have those dang Daylight Savings thing going into effect.
The guys at Swatch invented Internet Time some time back (a few years back actually) but it amazes me at how un-popular it is! Now granted that a majority of my interaction have been only with Americans but the impression I got from them was that "the [name of event] will start at 2pm EST. You figure that out in your time zone".
Despite some efforts on my part, many of them just don't bother. In fact, it is disheartening to know that many of them don't even know what time GMT is. Only those who have been in the armed forces know it, and they call it Zulu time.
Internet time is a great concept - one single time, for everybody in the world. If it's @800 here in Singapore, it's @800 there in USA, or Belgium, or Belgrade, or Yugoslavia, or wherever. The time is the SAME.
I even went ahead and made a widget for Konfabulator for Internet Time. At the time of this writing, my widget had been downloaded about 630 times, which isn't too bad considering how apathetic people are towards the Internet Time concept, as well as it being my first widget to be published for Konfabulator.
Now, if only more people would just be aware of Internet Time and how great it is especially for people who interacts with other people from different countries in many different time zones.
07:54 by FoxTwo Ever wondered where that phrase came from? I do.
Last night I was hanging out with the guys at the regular pub we always go to on Fridays (technically they weren't all guys. The guys that have wives need to tell the wives something heheheh!). So anyway, the topic kinda turned into local language, customs and social norms.
One of the girls at the table had brought along an ang mo guy friend who hails from Australia. We were just giving him a hard time and teaching him "local words" like CB and all that. It was damn hilarious! So anyway, the phrase "Half Past 6" came out (in reference to the ang mo's pronounciation of Hokkien words) and he had a blank look. He didn't understand what it meant.
So, we ended up giving him a crash course in Singapore slangs . Now, if you have read my previous blog entries, a slang is not how we pronounce words and the way we sound, which is actually called accent. A slang is "local language", meaning that our local brand of English, affectionately referred to as Singlish, is a slang.
But, I digress.
So we ended up giving him a crash course in Singlish, and he in turn gave us a quick tour of Australian (eg a pawpaw is a papaya, that kinda stuff).
Then he asked the conversation-stopping question - "How did this phrase 'half past 6' come about?".
You know, we never actually thought about that. It just kinda latched on to our memories when we hear it in school, at work, in the army and all that. We had to honestly tell him we do not know. Our best guess is that 6.30am in the morning is way too friggin' early to wake up, and our brains aren't fully working yet, so we will definitely suck at doing things. So maybe, just maybe, that is where the phrase came from.
Then again, you guys with families and kids, nowadays you wake up much earlier than 6.30am don't you? After all you gotta shove your kids to school, send the wife to her office, then you have to get to your own office so your ass doesn't get chewed out by the boss (or for families where the woman drives, send the husband to his office).
So yeah, the ang mo got me thinking - what are the origins of this phrase?
07:20 by FoxTwo First of all, check out Technorati.com. Look at what the top search entry is there.
Technorati is kinda like "Google" for blogs. If you wanna find something somebody wrote about on a blog, you go to Technorati. So, the search results are for the whole world. Planet Earth. Yah, not just Singapore.
click to expand
So anyway, this is the top search term today:
What's the story with Tammy? Well apparently she's from Nanyang Poly (hence the search term "Tammy NYP"), and she recorded herself and her boyfriend having a sexual romp on her handphone video recorder (these new gadgets are wonderful aren't they?). Now, as luck would have it, someone swiped her handphone, downloaded all the videos and photos, and sent them all out into the Internet.
The previous time that something like this made headlines around the world was when Annabel Chong set the record for having sex with 250 men. Yeah you figured it out - Annabel Chong is actually a screen name for a "sweet girl from Singapore". She made it big in the USA folks... using - you guessed it - SEX.
Aren't we starting to see a pattern forming here, readers? Apparently, Sex Sells. No doubt about it. It's a well known fact that sex sells, hence you get all these perverted sites shoving their popups into your face as you surf the net (not me, I use Firefox... no popups of nekkid ladies to distract me from my real destination!). So since sex sells, and when it happens to Singaporeans, it sells REALLY WELL, new entrepreneurs might want to consider this new avenue of revenue.
And if you really make it big - I want royalty fees... I thought of this idea first!
17:27 by FoxTwo
iPod (and other MP3 Player) Users - Beware!
Who the heck is RIAA? They are the people who "protects" the "interests" of recording artistes in America. They are the people who will sue your pants off you to "recover losses". They have gone after people using P2P software to share music before, and they are still doing it today.
In fact, there's a news article here where a woman was being sued by the RIAA because her son was downloading music off P2P networks. Because her son is a minor, they cannot sue him directly so they decided to sue the mother instead. Not only did the woman refused to pay damages claimed by RIAA, she decided to stand up to their bullying tactics.
But, we're in Singapore. We're safe, right?
Not exactly.
RIAA represents music labels such as EMI, BMG etc etc. They distribute music worldwide. RIAA is only their lap-dog in USA. You can bet we have our own version here in Singapore.
Anyway, the point is - the record companies now declare that even copying the music from the CDs you already own and paid for, to your MP3 player, to be illegal. The only way to stay legal is to sing your own songs, record them, and play them on your MP3 player.
I don't know about you but I find that to be incredibly stupid.
07:57 by FoxTwo
Quirky Singaporeans - Kiasu-ism At Its Best
Ever wondered why we Singaporeans even need to have the government telling us what we basically as humans should do?
Ever wondered why we even need those yellow lines and queue-spots marked out on MRT stations?
Oh yeah, it all boils down to one thing - kiasu-ism.
See, this is what we have been told from young - "You need to be best!". "You must get first in class!" etc ad naseum. Oh yeah, our parents want us to be the best we can be - even at the expense of others. What they have been drilling into our heads is "Think of yourself first! Forget everyone else!".
Even the government didn't really help there. Our government is based on "meritocracy", ie if you have the skills, if you have the qualifications, you get ahead. Hence, everyone is getting the skills and qualifications, your neighbours be damned. We must be the best! Second place is not good enough!
While this may be true to some extent, don't you think that because of kiasu-ism we're becoming the "ugly Singaporean" that many people frown on?
Ok how about this - There was this one time I was at the Singapore Zoo. There was a lion feeding show about to start. The enclosure of the lions had this big, HUGE glass panel to allow the visitors to see the zookeepers throw meat to the lions. There are seats placed around the glass panel for visitors to sit down and watch.
So what happens?
Mommies tell their kids "Go in front dear, so you can see!" and promptly pulled the kid RIGHT UP TO THE GLASS PANEL, totally obscuring the view for the people seated behind at the seats provided. Every parent does this. Notice this - it's the PARENTS, not the kids, that run up to the glass window. The kids were actually seated on the seats!
Where the hell is the common courtesy of sitting down so everyone can watch the feeding?
This kiasu-ism gets into our everyday lives. Everyone RUSHES into the MRT without allowing the people to get off because they want that seat! Everyone stands at the exit door on the bus, which is right in the middle of the bus, and don't move to the rear, because they want easy access to the door.
This vicious cycle of kiasu-ism has to stop. The kids grow up and become parents themselves, and they will then tell their kids to "go in front" and "must be first in class". Singapore is already experiencing the full blown disease of kiasu-ism.
Be the one to break this cycle. Teach your kids to put other people in their minds. Think of how their actions will affect other people.
When that happens, we don't need no more stinkin' "courtesy campaigns".
20:40 by FoxTwo
Quirky Singaporeans - Misused Words
Today I'm going to introduce more ways that Singaporeans twist and turn various words in English into a totally Singaporean context and thus, confounding Ang Mo's that visit us and ever hear us speak to one another.
- Quite - Oh yeah I know you have heard this one everywhere. "Oh he's quite cute hor?" and "Aiyah he's quite good only lah, not that good" etc. Did you know that the actual, dictionary meaning of the word "quite" means "very"? Oh yes indeed. If he's quite good, he's actually VERY good. Almost bordering on Excellent!
- So-Called - That's another word totally twisted by so many people I know. One girl that used to work in my ex-company used this phrase every other sentence that came out of her mouth. She would say "Oh that Windows XP is great! They have this so-called start button all in green at the bottom! It will launch all these so-called cool programs on my computer that I can use, and I can play so-called music and video files just by using that button!". My friends, so-called means NOT. Yes you read that right. So-called = NOT. When you say "I can play so-called music and video files" you are saying you cannot play them, or that the music and video files aren't really music and video files.
00:50 by FoxTwo
Quirky Singaporeans - Watch The Ang Mo's Cringe!
Now, some of you might not know, but I play a lot of online games - be it Battlefield 2, Neverwinter Nights or even full blown MMORPGs like City Of Heroes or Everquest 2. As such, I interact with the Ang Mo's alot. Hell my ex-company (yeah I'm "in-between jobs" right now) was an American one, and we had conference calls at all odd hours with the Americans all the time.
Anyway, back to the topic.
Have you ever noticed that when Singaporeans speak to Ang Mo's, they suddenly try to emulate the accent of the Ang Mo's? Many times, they fail miserably. I even caught myself on a few ocassions doing the same too, and when I do, I make a concious effort to stop doing it.
I remember this one time, I was on Teamspeak 1 with them on a raid in Everquest 2. As you can imagine it was around 10am or so Singapore time, because the raid was scheduled for 8pm CST. Anyway, point is, we were all talking fine, calling out tactics and how to attack and all that.
Then, my mom, who happened to be visiting me, asked me something, so I replied. I totally forgot I still have the microphone turned on, so whatever I said to my mom was broadcasted over Teamspeak to the Ang Mo's in the USA.
Everyone on Teamspeak went silent.
Then one of them said "You actually sound like that normally?". So I went "huh? what do you mean?"
They said, that for a brief moment, they heard me speaking with a Singlish accent. It was still English, they understood me fine, but the entire accent changed. They weren't used to hearing me speak like that (to my mom). Then they kept asking me to "do it again! do it again! That sounded cool!"
Then I realised I had been unconciously been guilty of the same thing as the topic of my blog - I had unconciously tried to emulate their accent. The only saving grace was that I didn't fail quite that miserably :)
It was then, that I realised they find our Singlish accent "charming", and that they are envious of the way we can switch between English and Chinese and a whole host of other dialects mid-way through our sentences. All through the rest of the raid, whenever we weren't getting pwned by the mobs, they'd be talking about various accents of the countries they have visited.
They did say that some of them actually hate it when the locals of the countries they went to tried to talk to them in an emulated American accent. As they said over Teamspeak "If I wanted to hear an American accent I'd have stayed home". It's worse when the locals fail to emulate the accent correctly and they cringe at every sentence the local was trying to speak in an "American accent".
So anyway, after that incident, whenever I get onto Teamspeak again, they'd keep reminding me to speak in my "charming accent" (polite way of telling me off I guess heheheh!) because honestly, some people, even Americans, can't get used to the idea that there are people OUTSIDE of America playing MMORPGs like Everquest 2.
Of course my reply was "I don't have an accent. You guys do!"
Footnotes
1 - Teamspeak is a voice-over-IP software which allows you to talk with your voice to people over the Internet. It's been around since like forever, way before all these new fangled Skype or other "Internet Telephone" software were invented. Yes, it costs nothing to talk to them, cos we are not using the telephone. For all you non-gamers, it's better for you to get something like Skype than Teamspeak cos Teamspeak is really geared towards gaming and requires someone to set up a server for you to log in to talk.
14:59 by FoxTwo Ok this is getting scary. I just came across this piece of news called Half-Life 2 Goes Episodic - PC News at GameSpot.
What's scary about it?
Simple.
If it takes off, more game companies will want to follow suit. When that happens I can forsee 2 things.
- Less "new" games will be coming out, because, programmers are inherently lazy. If they can "inherit" work that has already been done and then just add more content to it, they will.
- Other gaming companies might like the new "Steam" idea from Valve and want to implement something similar. In the future, all your games that you buy from the shop will need to download a huge "activation key file" in order to play it. No thanks, if I wanted that I would just stick to playing MMORPGs.
The thing with number (1) is that, it makes a lot of business sense. You have sunk x amount of dollars into research and development of this game, invented a new graphics engine that blows the socks off everything else on the market, and you made one game with it. Why waste all that money? Make use of the engine again and make more games - release them as "episodes" and milk the damn market dry!
Game level designers will have something they are already used to, since they have used it before. They just have to thing up of new ways to lay out that "level", and tell the scripters to write some scripts to trigger some new monsters or something.
So, in effect, the 2nd, 3rd and subsequent time around when you re-use (think OOP programming paradigm) the game engine to make new "episodes", you are spending very little money. No longer do you need to fund R&D into making a new graphics engine. No longer do you need to pay artists to create new monsters. No longer do you need to pay sound engineers to create new sounds. Well okay, maybe "minimal amounts" for them, if the new episodes require new mobs and new sounds due to new weapons or some such.
Now, if they are going to sell these episodes at full retail prices, then it's gonna be all hell breaking loose. The article refers to them as "expansion packs". Most times, expansion packs are sold just under retail prices of the original game (like Hordes Of The Underdark and Shadows Of The Undrentide for Neverwinter Nights). However, by calling them "episodes", it gives gamers an impression of them being just "mods", or just "some new stuff but using the same engine" thing. In our minds, that doesn't command "full retail pricing".
Then of course, there is the universal love-hate relationship gamers have about Steam and any kind of "Internet Delivery and Activation Anti-Piracy Protection System". Oh yeah, when Steam was launched, it was touted as unbreakable.
What it actually did was to inconvenience legitimate customers, people like me, who actually pays money to buy the games. What do hackers (and consequently, the pirates) do? They just hack it. They can play it without even needing to download the activation key file.
Oh yes, don't be surprised. Do a search on your favourite P2P file sharing network. You will see whole lists of "Half Life 2 - no-Steam crack" and similar files. Oh yeah, Steam was unbreakable for only like a week or 2. Didn't take hackers that long to bypass all the protection measures taken in the game.
Me? I personally swore off ever buying or playing anything from Valve Software again, no matter how good the game might be (see this blog entry). I hate their business practices, and I hate being inconvenienced especially when I am a legitimate customer and have never ever pirated nor purchased pirated versions of their games.
