An April Fools’ Day Post for Gamers

Well, it was inevitable. I knew that somehow, I would still be a victim of some kind of cruel prank. Aware as I am that yesterday was April Fools’ Day, I was still subjected to a minor seizure followed by contempt upon realizing how gullible I was. Want to know what prank got to me? Read it at the end of this post. ~_~

April Fool’s Day seems to give people the obligatory feeling of a need to pull-off some kind of practical joke with the sole intention of embarrassing a person or misleading him into thinking about something that is quite far from the truth. Which means that I should have taken everything posted in my RSS feeds with a grain of salt. Anyway, at the end of the day, what matter’s is that we can all laugh about it. I’m gullible, I know. >_<

Anyway, here’s a roundup of my favorite game-related pranks.

1. Mister Chief by Bungie Online
Logging on to Halo 3 presents a rather peculiar image on the world map. Either that or it’s just a coincidence.

Can you see Master Chief’s rip-off?

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/04/01/mister-chief-spotted-tormenting-the-world/

2. Lego Halo 3 by 1up
Well, this was actually reported around a month ago. But I must admit, even though it’s an April Fool’s joke, the idea does seems appealing. In fact, I hope Bungie would somehow make this happen.

Now, if we could only replace Master Chief’s head with Yoda’s head.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3167187&p=4

3. Legend of Zelda Movie by IGN
I must admit, this has got to be one of the most well done game-related movie trailer that I’ve seen. Too bad this won’t be making it’s way to our local cinema house anytime soon.

Just feast your eyes at the preview video. ‘Nuff said.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/863/863492p1.html

4. *New* Xbox products by Microsoft’s Xbox team
I first saw this one on my 360’s Inside Xbox segment last night. Major Nelson did a great job introducing the products. Though, it was too obvious that this one was a prank. But still, the idea is there. I DARE Microsoft to make these products! >

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/promotions/2008/spring/default.htm

5. New Hero Class for World of Warcraft by Blizzard
Rock on! If this was really on World of Warcraft, then I’ll immediately pickup the map containing the location of my buried credit cards and dig it up to renew my WoW account!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/bard/bardclass.xml

6. Assassins’s Solid or Metal Gear Assassin by Konami/Ubisoft
Nice. They said Konami’s Hideo Kojima and Ubisoft’s Jade Raymond collaborated on making this video. Don’t get me wrong, it is a prank but I still think that, being a huge fan of Kojima’s work, it is possible for him to include this as an extra costume/camouflage suit for snake. Anyone else with me on this?

7. FFVII Remake CONFIRMED by PSXExtreme
My heart literally palpitated with excitement when I first read this headline. Good thing my asthma inhaler was in reach. But upon reading the comments and realizing that it was an April Fool’s day prank, it felt like my heart was stabbed and my was soul sucked out of my body. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit here. The point is that I agree with everybody on this one - this is just plain cruel. I’m one of those fanboys who’re really looking forward for an FFVII remake. Unfortunately, this might forever remain a fantasy… a final fantasy that is. Lol. And yep, this was the prank that got me. Well, at least Crisis Core is out.

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/2821.html

No Gurlz Allowd

 

I know this doesn’t really count as a photo (or does it?)… but I can’t help but share it to everyone. Awww… the irony…
Thanks to Selah for pointing this out to me.

BTW, for those who doesn’t know what netvibes is, think of it as a personal webpage where you can add various RSS feeds and widgets based on your own liking. Try it. The screenshot above was taken at my public netvibes page. You can visit it here if you don’t mind reading my geeky feeds.

Romantic Programmer

In commemoration of the recently celebrated Valentines Day (Feb. 14) and White Day (March 14), one of our officemates sent us a mail containing various pick-up lines that programmers might find useful in trying to seduce the love of your life.

To whoever made the following lines, kudos to you. You will forever be known as the original romantic programmer… and I will forever gaze and ponder upon your teachings as your self-proclaimed protégé.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from the mail…

“You are a field in my class. You will always be protected.”
“Are you an exception? Let me catch you.” 
“You are my increment operator. You make my value increase.”
“I think you’re my compiler. My life wouldn’t start without you.” 
“You are my initializer: without you, my life would point to nothing (null).”
“I am a BufferedReader. You input meaning into my life.” 
“You are my semicolon; always present in everything I do.”
“You are the JDK (Java Development Kit) in my life. I won’t compile without you.” 
“If I were a method, you must be my parameter, because I will always need you.”
“Can you be my private variable? I want to be the only one with access to you.”
“We are an aggregation of classes: one cannot exist without the other.”
“public class YourWorld extends MyWorld”
“You are my superclass: you define what I can do.”
“You are the IDE of my life: I find it easier because of you.”
“I am the field attribute in your class: I can’t exist unless you do.”
“My love for you is a constant variable: unupdatable and unchangeable.”
“Are you an applet? You make me feel all GUI (gooey) inside.”
“You are my loop condition. I keep coming back to you.”
“You are my methods. I am nothing without you.”
“Are you my driver? Because you make my life worthwhile.”
“You are my API. I want to know everything about you.”
“Can you be my ActionListener? That way you notice everything that I do.”
“I am a boolean method whose love will always return true.”
“Are you a double? The thought of you always floats inside my head.”

I Concur, Bill Gates is waaaay cooler than Steve Jobs

Click here to view a higher quality version.

It’s My Birthday!

Actually, I’m lost for words… but somehow, I feel obligated to post something here before the day officially ends. Really, it’s been a regular work day except for the greetings… and these…

Ok, I’m gonna go wash my face now. Something’s wrong with my eyes. Probably the dust or something… I’m very sensitive to dust… really… >_<

Snowboarding Marathon

We’ve been on a snowboarding marathon for the past 3 weekends. We started last Nov. 10 and went snowboarding 3 consecutive times since then.

On our first week, we went to Yeti. Nope, I’m not talking about a yeti-yeti. I’m referring to Snow Town Yeti. You can look it up here if you’re interested. Anyway, it was my first take on snowboarding. I must admit, at first I was confident that I could get the hang of it pretty quickly since I did experienced skateboarding back when I was still young.^[1]

How did it go you ask? Just take a look at the pic below.

Me, doing a 360 indie grab followed by a backside 720 air to fakie spin. 0_o

Ok… so I didn’t do all that… I wasn’t in the mood anyway. >_< Kidding aside, I took quite a beating. I could barely even move on the next day. My body was bruised all over.^[2] My experience with skateboarding gave me a little edge on the balancing part. However, the similarities between skating and boarding seems to end there. The navigation and speed control part is quite different. Nevertheless, it was still fun.

 

The week after that, we went to Yeti again for another round of beating. This time, I have at least learned the basics of snowboarding… kinda. I still can’t control my board as accurately as I wanted to. But being able to do a continuous run from the top of the slope to the bottom was a very satisfying experience. In summary, I had more time on the slope, less time falling down, and less injury. ^^

On our third week, we went to Kagura. Which is another resort for skiing/snowboarding. We rode a shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo. This wasn’t my first time riding a shinkansen and it was too early in the morning (6:00am) so I just slept the ride out.

When I woke up, what I saw was something astonishing. Everything was covered with snow! In fact, it was still snowing at the time… It might have been normal for everyone else but for me, there was something, for lack of a better word, “magical” about it.^[3] I kept on telling my friends that I felt like a child who went to Disney Land for the first time. Anyway, Kagura is the real deal. The difference with this one compared to Yeti was that the snow was real and the slopes were wider and at least 10x longer.^[4] All in all, I find this third trip the best snowboarding trip of the three. It’s sad though that I won’t be able to join their next ski/snowboard escapade.^[5]

November has been a busy yet very fun month for me.

—-=============—-

[1] Not that I’m old or anything. Back to top.

[2] Mostly on my wrists, ankles, knees, and my behind. This is why wrist guards, knee pads, and butt padding are important. >_< Back to top.

[3] It’s still autumn in Tokyo. So, seeing snow fall at this time of the year was quite bizarre. It was like traveling from one dimension to another. Before going to Kagura, everything had a brown/red tone (autumn color). Then, after an hour or so, I was already staring out the window of the shinkansen marveling at how everything was covered with snow. Back to top.

[4] The slope on the Yeti resort was only artificial since it was still early November. Since it was just artificial, only a small portion of the slopes were covered with snow. In addition to that, the slope can be conquered in 10 minutes more or less (that is if you already know the basics).Back to top.

[5] I’ll be going home to the Philippines this December. And so far, there’s no confirmation that I will be coming back anytime soon. Back to top.

*By the way, I’m trying to see if the footnote comments ala The Bartimeaus Trilogy works here.

Photography Practice at the Asakusa Tokyo Jidai Matsuri

A girl wearing the traditional Japanese dress - Kimono

Last Saturday, I went to Asakusa to watch the Tokyo Jidai Matsuri (Festival of Ages). Asakusa is approximately a 1 hour trip from my apartment. Quite far actually. But, I really wanted to see this parade so I went through with it. The travel was quite smooth despite the fact that I almost entered the wrong station from Shinjuku. Good thing I was eventually able to ride the correct train. You see, I kinda have this habit of getting lost. My friends back in college always tease me for not having a good sense of direction. >_<

Anyway, the festival commemorates Japan’s transition from the Edo-period to the modern era. A parade was held there with Nihonjins (Japanese) wearing the traditional costumes for the appropriate period depicted. There were samurais, priests, and so on. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of gaijins (foreigners) too.

It was a great opportunity for me to try out my D80. So, I did. I took a lot of shots. And I do mean a LOT of shots. So many that my 4GB memory card was full in just under 3 hrs. Though, I was only able to take a handful of quality shots. But, as they say, practice makes perfect. The photo that I posted above is one my favorites among the ones that I took. There’s something about that picture that really strikes me… I hope I can continue taking photos like that. =)

For more pictures, visit my flickr account here. Right now, due to technical difficulties, I was only able to upload around 5-6 photos. But I’ll try to update the gallery as soon as possible. =)

Status Report 10-31-2007

It’s been a while since I last posted here. And just for the record, I didn’t went insane and stopped posting due to the incident in my previous post (the horror… the horror…). Something just came up and the days just went passing by. The days became weeks, weeks became months, and so on… Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, I’m finally back and ready to wear my writing cap once again.

So… what’s new? What have I’ve been doing lately? Well, I’m currently on a business trip and am now reporting here at Lenovo Japan. It’s been a pretty good experience so far. Though, I must say, the work environment here is quite different compared to the previous ones I experienced. And I mean this in a good way. Though, the downside is that we rarely speak Nihongo (Japanese Language) in the office when speaking with our Japanese counterparts. IBM, being an American company and all, seems to require their engineers to be able to communicate well in English. My officemates told me that the Japanese engineers really likes to practice their English. That is why they rarely speak to us in Nihongo. Not that I’m saying that we can communicate better in Nihongo and all. It’s just that I wanted to practice and improve my Nihongo as well. Oh well, I just have to practice else where then.

Oh, and last night, I finally got the Nikon D80 that I ordered online. Ahhh… I don’t know about you, but the sweet scent of a freshly unboxed piece of electronic hardware just strikes a chord in my heart… Not that I’m a geek or anything, but part of the, for lack of a better word, thrill in buying new gadgets is in the unboxing part. I usually take photographs of my gadgets being unboxed. However, this is a rare occasion where I couldn’t take any pictures since the one that I’m supposed to take a picture of is the camera that should take the picture. Wait… huh? Anyway, I can’t wait to take it outside this weekend to take pictures of unsuspecting victims civilians and other sceneries. I’ll post any interesting photos here soon.

Pray for my PC

 

My Gaming Rig (Except for the Wii)

A very unfortunate event just happened… I was informed just this morning that due to the heavy rain in Cebu, my room was flooded with water that came from our apartment’s fire exit. Unfortunately, I’m not there to clean it up so the dirt might stain a bit unless I could have someone clean it up for me. And I won’t be back until June.

Could it get any worse? Yes, it could. Apparently, I left my Desktop CPU in the floor before I left and came here in Makati. I was planning on bringing it here with me but last minute changes forced me to leave it home instead. Well, the good news was that I placed it inside it’s box. However, the bad news was that 1/3 of the box was soaked with water. The possibility that water might have came in and wet or moist the board and the other internal components of my cpu is a bit high. I worked long and hard to buy and build my pc. I just hope it wasn’t all for nothing. Thankfully, my friends back in Cebu are willing to see if my computer is ok or not. I might be able to know it’s status by early next week… Hopefully, everything will be ok…

The horror… the horror…

Most Creative Application @ E-Services 2007

E-Services Philippines is an annual conference held to allow companies to showcase their capabilities by exhibiting various projects (both internal and external) that could cater to the global market.

Now, several companies have sent their projects as entries for several categories. These categories include the Most Creative Application of the Year, Most Innovative Application of the Year, Offshore Product of the Year, and Outstanding Company Program.

Fortunately, our previous project at NHK won the Most Creative Application category. Actually, the results came in a few months ago but I think they publicly posted it just recently at this site.

High Definition (HD) Clipstation won Most Creative Application

This project was my first project in our company. I was sent to Japan last year to work on it for a cumulative period of around 9 months. Initially, the team was composed of about 3 developers. However, as the project went on, I was the only one left in charged with the development of the application along with our project leader while the other Japanese engineers were the one doing the hardware part.

It was both a pleasant and harsh experience. Harsh because we have encountered a lot of problems while developing this project. And I do mean BIG problems. A lot of hardware problems forced us to keep on changing our code in order for the application to still comply with it. In addition, the application needed to be super efficient. Even a 10ms processing delay was unacceptable. Part of the codes that needs to more efficient is already very straightforward. It’s like saying “make int a = 1+1; faster”. We had to consider how the various threads affects the processing time and all. And we also had to watch out for even the slightest sign of memory leaks since the application is expected to run 24/7 without restarting. :)) Thankfully, we were able to resolve it.

I was able to gain a lot of priceless experience doing this application. Not only technically but also socially in terms of working with other engineers (specially the Japanese engrs. >_<).

Anyway, our company also won 2 other categories with the ff. projects - SCM (Offshore Project of the Year) and AWS Center for Incubation (Outstanding Company Program). Congratulations.
Well, that’s it. I was just reminscing about my previous project. I’ll leave my other experiences in Japan to another post.