'm very interested in the release of the latest expansion for ffxi, even though i won't be playing the game anymore .. (right..)

and it made me remember about two screencaps pages that i made during my active time there .

1st page


2nd page

i think i can write two-three paragrphs for every single picture on those pages.. very nostalgic feeling indeed..

got this from a coffeeshoppe


i've never seen it before but at the same time, i don't think that this is something new (takeaway coffeecups with handles) ?

was inspired to (re)experiencing the joy of ffx(the one, not the other one) after a brief appearance of auron on kingdom hearts 2..

and this time, managed to dodge the 200 lightning strikes .. basically you've to peel your eyes open and watch for a flash on the screen and press the button immidiately after the flash, and you've to do it consecutively for 200s.. (can't change screen, can't save while doing it).. funny how after 3-4 hours of trying to do it, the flash seemed to be staying on the screen for abit longer compared to the first time you're doing this.. maybe the eyes adjusted itself, etc.

on towards another challange, the 0:0:0 chocobo racing bits .. the race itself didn't bother me (well.. it did annoy me a bit), but the question that arise from that silly little thing is, with all the technological marvel we're currently playing with, are we actually ready to represent stuff in 3d ? see, even with all the latest graph card ,etc , everything, at the end, would still be represented in a flat 2d display.. and having an object bigger and in focus doesn't neccessarily means that it's closer to the viewer than smaller, (and/or) out of focus objects ..

if it's part of game design (to cloud your perspective and distance judgement), then it's fine . but if it's not part of game design, but rather, an unfortunate situation that actually happened because they're doing something with the technology which shouldn't be used to execute a certain activities, then you sorta wonder if it's a smart thing that they do. i was having so much problem with the chocobo racing because i don't think i can actually judge if the character is turning left or right (automatic camera movement) , and how far ahead the objects are in relation to the main character.. not to mention they have evil bird that pops up in the mid air and try to annoy you so you can't get to finish line in time... the birds don't cast any shadow on the ground too.. so you're not really sure if it's close, or very close. oh, and they don't have visible borders to contain the area where the race is supposed to take place.. if you slams into the invisible border, you'll bounce back into the race arena, but chance is the evil birds are waiting for you in your path .. (the reason why we're heading to the then-unknown-border is most probably to dodge the birds in the first place)...

met the ex-teddies (well, ted didn't exist anymore.. heck, even cmis was already disbanded, according to k) on friday at rathdowne street...
met the ex-aimers on saturday at rathdowne street...
was going to meet the ex-kermits on sunday at rathdowne street (but it got cancelled) ..


wonder why they all pick this week to do a meet up and they're all at rathdowne street

beers are best served cold (well, some might argue, but we'll just assume that cold is the ideal climate here)... but after long minutes of talking, sometimes we ended up getting half empty beer glass, which is no longer cold, and we can't get a new one, because we haven't finish the old one.. not to mention the temperature of the beer has become somewhat unfavourable (too warm) !
so people often chug away the rest of the glass, feeling somewhat disappointed ..

one way to solve this, is to use ice cube to sustain the favourable temperature for the drink, but this often lead to the negative condition known as "watering down"

a more proper, more futuristic way of doing it, would be to use a special ice cube made of the same beer to keep the beer cold (see diagram below)..

see, this would keep the temperature nice, and while the cube melt, it would just join its fellow beer liquid without watering down the whole thing. excellent !

just heard the news that one of my relative back home passed away today..



shite happens.. too often too soon..

z was saying about how we are becoming more and more amphibious these days where we go from online->offline->online mode without really thinking about it anymore.. society is changing..

and speaking of the duality of things, here's one good article about the localisation process of games .. but it might be rather moot point to the eye of the big corporate companies.. they always assume that they know everything.

also had fun making some sort of random "self intro" cards (top left of the screen)