Gerry's new Trike

Looking back at my recent blog posts, I realised that, with the exception of him learning to drive, I haven't posted much about Gerry. I guess my dad must be bored stiff by now as the only reason he checks this blog is for the latest pics of Gerry!

Anyway, to make it up to my dad, I have decided to inundate this blog with Gerry! Enjoy!


We recently decided it was time to buy Gerry a tricycle and took him to Toys R Us so that he could choose which one he likes best. For some reason though, he much preferred cars to bikes!


Nevertheless, we persevered until we finally found one he liked. A Buzz Lightyear trike - To infinity and beyond!!

These are just pictures of us wandering around the TST mall so that he could show off his new trike.


And here I am taking a rest while Gerry rides on his own. Hey, give me a break - bending over all the time is really tiring!


As usual, the obligatory closeup of Gerry to show how cute he is.
:)

Gerry likes going fast

Its been a long time since I blogged about Gerry so I figure its time to give you an update on what he is doing now. Anyway, he is a big boy now, so I figured it was time to give him a driving lesson. :)


Here he is getting familiar with the layout. In case you are wondering what he is doing, he is trying to turn on the air con - its hot in HK!


With the air conditioning on, the car cools down a bit and its time to hit the open road. Considering its his first lesson, I'm actually quite impressed. Look - he even has both hands on the wheel!


No Gerry! Keep your eye on the road!!


That's better! Remember, you need to stay alert at all times when you are behind the wheel.


Here you can see the instructor reminding him to check his blind spot.

Video(games) killed the movie film star

Wow - another game related post on this blog. I know I promised to keep gaming stuff on my gaming blog - but this topic has enough social consequences that I figure its worth putting on my main blog. Plus, I wanted to sound really smart by using the term "social consequences".
:)

Just in case you weren't aware, Halo 3 (a video game for the Xbox 360) was released on September 25. Arguably, Halo 3 is more than just a video game. By now its almost become a cultural phenomenon. For example, how many other mainstream video games are used by churches to pull in kids.

However, the item of news that I found most interesting is this.

Basically, for the October 5 weekend, Box Office sales at cinemas were at their lowest since 1999. Total industry ticket sales (in the US) were only at $80million. And the reason for the drop in moviegoers has been attributed to the phenomenal success of Halo 3 which topped $170million on the first day alone. Not bad for an industry which is supposedly targeted at kids.

Of course, the drop in moviegoers couldn't be for any other reason, right?

All jokes aside, it does indicate the emergence of video gaming as a serious hobby. As a gamer myself, I know that video gaming is a billion dollar industry. However, video gaming is considered by many, including the mainstream press, as a hobby for kids - assuming, of course, that they don't denounce it as the work of the devil in the first place!

Although I say that facetiously, the fact is that some people have denounced games as being evil and tools used by the devil in order to corrupt our youth. In a similar way, this exact same thing has happened with novels, movies, music, comics etc etc etc. And no, you don't get any brownies for spotting the trend.

However, with the phenomenal success of Halo 3, does this represent a turning point for video games? Will video games now become socially acceptable? Not a chance!

I fully expect mainstream press to continue to sensationalise the video game "issue" rather than dealing with it in a mature manner.

Despite this, the fact remains that video gaming is now on the map in a way that it never has been before. Furthermore, gamers are now more politically active and aware than at any other time in the history of video games. And this is wholly down to the fact that with the amount of money being poured into video games, it is now worthwhile mobilising, in a political sense, in order to get the right video game agenda onto politicians tables.

Yes - video gaming as an industry is moving beyond the stigma of a kids hobby. However, I don't expect this issue to go away until the passage of time has meant that people like me (ie people who grew up with the first generation of video games) have grown old and died.

And on that morbid note, its time to bid you adieu (at least until my next post).


PS if you can recognise the inspiration for the title, then you are an old git like me (Git off mah lawn!)

Do I really need a new laptop?

I gave a lot of thought as to whether to post this or not. The problem is that this post will make me look like an idiot. On the other hand, everyone knows I'm an idiot anyway - so I decided to go ahead and post.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I mentioned that I was looking for a new PC - primarily because the fans on my desktop are so noisy. However, since making that post, my desktop has been acting very temperamental. After switching it on, it would automatically switch itself off after 10-15 minutes. At first, I thought that maybe it was upset that I was going to replace it with a new sexier laptop (reminder to self - in future, make any blog posts about replacing my desktop from a different PC).

However, I soon remembered that I had a similar problem to this before. Many months ago, my PC was also switching itself off as soon as I ran any software. In fact, I even blogged about it. That's right - it was a recurrence of my CPU overheating problem. Actually, I shouldn't say recurrence as I never actually got around to fixing my PC last time. After a while, the problem disappeared so I just forgot about it - till now.

Anyway, as the PC was now completely unusable, I took it to a PC repair shop (I went back to the shop which built the PC as the owner is very trustworthy). I take it in and the guy opens up the PC, takes one look and says that the problem is that my CPU fan is caked in dust. I had a look for myself and sure enough - the CPU fan was caked in dust. Apparently, all I needed to do was open up the PC and vacuum up the dust off the CPU fan. So heading back home in shame, I promptly did as he suggested.

As you can see from this blog post, my PC is now working again. Furthermore, the fan is a lot quieter as well (as the CPU was overheating, the fan must have been going into overdrive hence the noise). Obviously, its not as quiet as a laptop PC - but it may be quiet enough to not disturb the missus when she's working.

Which means that I may not need to buy a new PC after all.

Looking for a Laptop

Have any of you used an Apple Mac?

The reason I'm asking is that I am looking to buy a laptop. Currently, I use a desktop PC which is placed in our study and takes up most of the desk. As the PC is quite powerful, the cooling fans on the PC are also quite noisy. In fact, they are so noisy that the missus is complaining that they stop her from thinking (the study doubles as our home office and is where she spends her time at home when she is working from home).

As a result of the noise, I am now basically banned from turning on my PC if the missus is working from home. Unfortunately, the missus is a workaholic - so this basically equates to a ban on turning on my PC if the missus is at home!!

I'm sure you will agree that this is an unacceptable state of affairs! So what to do? As I firmly believe that all problems can be solved by throwing money at them, I have decided to buy a new laptop. :p

The question is - do I buy a PC or an Apple Mac?

I have heard lots of good stuff about the Apple Mac. In fact, I used to use an Apple Mac waaay back in secondary school. However, I have never before considered buying an Apple Mac simply because the gaming software on an Apple Mac is a joke. Seriously - if you say the words "Mac gaming" to any serious gamer, they will just collapse and rofl. Being a hardcore gamer myself, I naturally always went with the PC.

However, with Apple using Intel processors and the release of Bootcamp on the Apple Mac, the situation is not so clear anymore. Bootcamp is basically a software which allows Macs to either boot up using Mac OS or using Windows. In theory, I could use the Mac OS for normal stuff and then boot up in Windows if I wanted to play some PC games. Now granted, Apple Mac hardware isn't as customisable as PCs and may be slightly more expensive (you are paying a premium for the Apple brand of course). Also, I would need to buy a separate copy of Windows. However, it seems like I can get the best of both worlds by buying an Apple Mac.

Which, to be honest, sounds too good to be true.

So my question is - are any of my readers using an Apple Mac? Does anyone have experience with using Bootcamp to run PC games? Am I missing anything else from this equation?

Serves ya right, ya cheating scum!

I'm back! Sorry for not posting on Wednesday but it seems that Shanghai has blocked my blog. As I said before, I probably need to be nicer to the Chinese government! :)

Anyway, for those of you who watch football, you will have no doubt heard about the Dida incident. For those of you who don't watch football, you can check out the YouTube clip below to see what I'm talking about.



Basically, during the Celtic vs AC Milan match, Celtic scored a (very) late goal which put them in front. As you can imagine, the Celtic fans went wild. A little too wild as one fan runs onto the pitch. Said fan then runs upto Dida (the AC Milan goalkeeper) and taps him on the cheek/neck. Dida then starts to give chase before realising that someone touched him and then dramatically collapses onto the floor. He is then stretchered off the pitch while holding an ice bag dramatically to his head (ie not where the fan tapped him).

Now, just in case there is any doubt - I think the actions of that fan are deplorable. He has been banned for life from Celtic games and will also appear in court. He is getting his punishment for his rash actions.

However, the actions of Dida are, in my opinion, even worse. The playacting by Dida is cheating - plain and simple (and also farcical - can you believe this guy had to be stretchered off!!). And luckily, UEFA have agreed as they have given him a 2 match ban. And in my opinion, the cheating scum got what he deserved.

Some people may consider the ban to be excessive especially in light of the fact that diving for a penalty (which is also cheating) only warrants a yellow card. I don't care - I have always deplored cheats and I have always wanted people to be punished severely for cheating.

Especially in situations like this. I think Dida knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that Milan were going to lose that match and he deliberately cheated in an attempt to get the match abandoned so that Milan could either replay the match or get a win by default (especially as this isn't the first time this has happened so there is precedent).

Dida - you should be ashamed of yourself.

Badminton skill (or lack thereof!)

I'm just back from playing badminton at my club. Hold on, I hear you say! Doesn't Jokemeister normally play badminton on Tuesdays? Well you observant chipmunks - you are right! I do normally play on Tuesdays.

However, I need to fly to Shanghai tomorrow which means I can't play. Turns out (and I wish I knew this before) that the club will allow me to switch to a different day of the week on an ad hoc basis provided that there is enough room on the other day. Luckily for me, there was a spare slot in today's session so I played today instead.

Kind of strange feeling after playing today. Normally, for badminton players, I classify them into 2 groups. The first group are people who play regularly (either currently or in the past). The other group are people who only play occasionally for fun.

I myself am in the first group and I can easily beat people in the second group (no surprise since I do play regularly). However, whenever I have played people in the first group, I have always been one of the worst players in the group. I've never had a problem with this - to be honest, I'm not exactly the sporty type and I've always been bad at sports. For example, back in University, my friends would generally beat me. When I first came to HK and played with my uncles and their friends - they would all beat me. Even in the group I currently play with on Tuesday, there are only a couple of people who are worse than me.

However, in todays group, I was actually one of the better players - which really surprised me. My partner wasn't very good (I'm quite confident in saying that I'm better than her) and after we won our first game, we were up against 2 guys. The first thing my partner says is "shit, they're good". However, although they beat us, the final score was 11-8. Those 2 guys then managed to win another 2 games and stay on the court so that we were up against them again. Again, we only lost 11-8. Both matches were quite close (and good fun!).

As a kid in PE class, I was always the last kid picked (can you hear the violins?). I'm not used to being one of the better players in a group. As I said - it feels kinda strange.

What color is your car?

The color of my car is champagne. I don't actually know what color that is meant to be but that is how the dealer described it. In practice, its kind of like a mix between a very light grey color and a very light gold color. Furthermore, I make sure that the car is clean (the maid washes it once a week).

Which, according to this website, means that I am careful and pay attention to detail while wanting people to know that I am wealthy and independent.

However, my favourite car would be a red Ferrari which I unfortunately can't afford. So does this mean that I want to be a wild person? When I purchased my car, I also seriously considered a black or light blue car. Which indicates that I'm in control and peaceful.

So - does that sound like the Jokemeister you know?

Badminton racquet

When I first started playing badminton, I used to prefer a head-heavy racquet - mainly because I liked to whack the ball. The problem is that I'm not a very good badminton player and my smashes were never particularly dangerous. In fact, most of the time, the opposing player would very easily knock the ball to the back of my court.

Another problem is that my reaction times aren't particularly great so that whenever someone smashed the ball at me, I would never be able to return the ball. The fact that I had a head-heavy racquet also didn't help much! So in summary, I wasn't able to win many points by smashing and I couldn't return the ball when smashed either. :(

As a result of this, many years ago, I decided to switch to a more defensive style racquet - one which wasn't as head-heavy and hence quicker for me to play with. My thinking was that I would prefer to have a chance to return a smash (as I wasn't very good at smashing anyway). And this has been the case now for many years.

Anyway, while playing badminton last night, the strings on my racquet broke (a Yonex Isometric Swing Power 900). As far as I can recall, this has been the first time that the strings on my racquet broke as a result of play (normally, I replace them either due to age or because the tension has leaked). Luckily, my friend had a spare racquet. He lent me his old Yonex MP100 (which is a head-heavy racquet) and we restarted the match.

Now, bear in mind that our opponents for that match weren't particularly good (don't get me wrong, they were much better than me - but just not someone which I would classify as good). Having said that, they were still good enough to return most of my normal smashes relatively easily. However, after I switched to the MP100, the extra velocity on my smashes was very noticeable. In fact, I even won quite a few points just by smashing the ball at them - which for me is a very rare circumstance.

After playing a couple of games last night using the MP100 and predominantly smashing the ball, I'm just wondering now whether I should rethink my decision to use a defensive racquet. To be honest, I had a lot of fun last night just whacking the ball as hard as I could. I'm under no illusion as to my skill - I know that if I had been up against some good players, then the extra power on the MP100 wouldn't have been enough to make up for my lack of skill. Having said that, I really had a lot of fun last night whacking the ball as hard as I could!

I really like my ISO900. It has a very flexible shaft and feels very light in nature (I bought the defense variant). However, maybe its time to retire my old racquet to the bench and get a new one.

Halo 3 comic

Recently, I talked about creating a Halo comic. Unfortunately, this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

You may recall that I was going to do my first comic based on the Halo 3 storyline. However, the problem is that the story part of the game mainly occurs during cutscenes - which aren't recorded by the game. Unfortunately, I don't have a capture card so I can't capture the video to my PC either.

This means that all of the exposition explaining the story will somehow have to be ported into the game engine. And not just ported into the game engine but during the limited control that I have during the campaign.

So what problems does this actually create?

Firstly, unlike the Red vs Blue machinima, I am limited to 1 person. Which means that I can only control 1 person. Which means that it is very hard to setup the scene so that I have people talking to each other.

Secondly, as I'm creating a comic of the story portion of the game, it means that I will have to take screenshots from the campaign mode. Which makes it even harder for me to setup the scene. In case you don't understand why - you have to remember that while I'm positioning my guy for the best shot or best pose etc, I'm also being attacked by the AI covenant forces!

Even if I can get around all these, due to the requirement to put all the cutscene scripts into the comic, it means that I am going to have to spend a lot of time storyboarding the comic so I know what it is I'm trying to do. And all this is before I even start playing the video looking for screenshots!

Which leads me to the last and also possibly biggest hurdle. The camera in the campaign save games isn't as good as in the multiplayer games. Although I can control the camera placement, I can't rewind. This means that if I accidentally move past the shot I'm looking for, I have to exit the video and reload it from the beginning. Which is a huge pain in the ass when you consider that the first level took me 51 minutes to complete (which also means I have a 51 minute video to review!).

All in all, a lot of problems. Having said that, it might still be doable. However, I think I will need a lot more experience with storyboarding and graphic layout before I can tackle making a comic of the Halo 3 campaign. Which is why I have gone back to the idea of creating a comic based on one of my multiplayer games. Anyway, not sure how long it will take me - but I will let you know if there are any significant developments.