Cytus: The "touchier" touch-based rhythm game

During the recent weeks I have been occasionally engrossed in playing Cytus, a rhythm game for the iOS and Android mobile platforms. Most people would probably take a look at the game and just pass it for another one of those catchy touch-based rhythm games that only become popular for a few moments then slowly and painfully die out into inexistence.

Cytus is especially unique due to it being completely designed for capacitative multi-touch screens. I have also played other touch-based rhythm games like osu! (more specifically its Android port, osu!droid) in the past, but osu! appears to be designed specifically for graphics tablets. Additionally, due to its user base consisting of mouse-trotting players, a good handful of songs available for osu! made by the players are optimized in favor of mouse players more than those who play with graphics tablets, or in my case, fingers.

Cytus is also relatively easy to pick up and learn. The gameplay is easy and intuitive. A black bar continually bounces up and down from the top to the bottom of the screen, with each direction of movement corresponding to a measure (though sometimes I think a complete round trip from top to bottom corresponds to a measure, I'll have to take time to study this). A black glow on the sides of the screen repeatedly pulses after every two 1/4 beats. Colored circles (that are colored by group depending on which trip the black line is going to and fro) pop up on the screen, and the player has to hit these circles alongside the music's rhythm. Then there are the sliders, which are a couple of smaller circles connected in a chain. The player has to slide their finger through the slider, hitting all of the smaller circles in the process. Then there's the freezes (or holds), where the player has to keep their finger on a large circle with a bar running underneath, and wait until the black line has finished traversing the entirety of the freeze bar. Because Cytus is specifically written for multi-touch screens, "jumps", where the player has to simultaneously press two or more circles at one time, can be easily implemented.

As of the time of writing, Cytus comes with 26 songs (2 are cleverly hidden, and one of the songs requires the player to like Cytus on Facebook or follow Rayark's Cytus Twitter account), most of them unique and highly enjoyable. A song in Cytus is about a bit longer than an average DDR song (most Cytus songs do not reach two minutes in length). Rayark (the development team of the game) announced that the current roster of songs in the game are currently incomplete, and there are at least a hundred more songs that are about to come out in the future. They created an interesting release plan---every hundred thousandth registered player of the game awards everybody with ten more songs, possibly an entire new chapter; with all the songs presumably unlocked for everybody by the time Cytus gets a million official players.

Notice my use of the word "official" in the last paragraph. Cytus is available for both the iOS and Android mobile platforms, though it is not free (as in both freedom and beer). iOS users are expected to shell out approximately two dollars to get to play the game. Android users can initially pay the game for free, but as they play on the second and third chapters, they must wait out a 30-second and 45-second "cooldown" period (respectively) before the song plays. F2P Android players also have song restarting disabled by default.

F2P players are not included in the release "census", for obvious reasons. Additionally, those who acquired the game illegitimately through black repositories for jailbroken iOS devices and leaked .apk's for Android devices are also (hopefully) not counted for the census.

I bought the game off Google Play (with the same price as the iOS version) because I've decided that taking a mandatory 30/45 second break between each song isn't fun.

I have a couple of gripes with Cytus, especially with the Android port, since that's where I play most of the time anyway. Firstly, the game rendering performance is awfully poor on my Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. I suspect that the primary reason for the lag is due to Nvidia implementing poorly-written Tegra drivers, where by doing so, they can effectively force game developers to optimize their games for the Tegra devices, rather than for every mobile GPU out there. The game runs smoothly on my HTC Desire HD, though there are some freezes here and there (but that's probably because of activities and apps fighting for CPU time in the background). There are also timing issues present within the Android port of the game, where a rather perfectly timed tap is registered with an annoying delay, turning some of my "Perfect" notes into measly "Good"s. So I can also hypothesize that some blame is to be put on the game developers themselves as well, probably because from my experience most games ported from iOS into Android are almost always badly implemented.

To solve the performance issue on my phone, I resorted to overclocking the CPU up to 1.2-1.4GHz, choosing the Performance CPU scaling governor, and/or closing every background activity and app that I can close. For my Transformer, however, overclocking the CPU doesn't seem to have any effect, nor does closing a couple of background applications. The only viable solutions I can think of are (1) just living with the game with bad lag and timing issues (I did get a couple of Million Masters with the tablet though), (2) Just play the game on my smoother phone (though thumb players will probably be a separate category for "competitions"), or (3) steal an iPad off an unfortunately picked friend who plays the game.

I also do hope that the game will offer its players the ability to import their own songs and use them in the game, though the iOS roots of the game will most likely prevent that from doing so, if the developers decide to make the iOS and Android versions of the game completely similar to each other in respect to features. It's the same thing that keeps "osu! for iOS" an unstable hack job for jailbroken iOS devices.

Some friendly requests to professors and instructors everywhere

This probably isn't news anymore for some people, but I recently jumped ship to another college and I do not reside anymore in De La Salle University-Manila. Old news aside, I like my new school, and I'm going to be staying in it for a good two years or so. The place is great (the places around it are better though), and most people there have quite some eccentric tastes and are actually interesting.

However, there are some do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts though) that I'd like to point out regarding my professors and instructors there. These will probably apply to everybody else out who are teaching to at least one other person besides themselves.

Don't put your class's/section's group on Facebook.

I for one try to avoid Facebook like it is an ugly part of town, but sometimes it just comes back like a bad habit and I end up being there anyway. For example, this post gets automatically advertised on my wall and every unfortunate person on my Friends list's news feed. Other notable examples include looking for someone, trying to communicate with people I barely meet every week, and checking out a group my professor made for the class I'm taking.

And the latter isn't really supposed to be there. Facebook is still a long, long way from being a good choice to organize serious groups, like groups between co-workers or, in my case, groups between instructors and students. For one, every privacy issue associated with Facebook profiles apply to groups as well. You really don't want outsiders knowing what your little private group is up to. That's why some companies opt for private corporate "social networks" because apparently people can't communicate on the Internet anymore if it doesn't involve a news feed or an instant messaging platform. I still communicate through old fashioned e-mail, and handle most instant communication through IRC (and sometimes VoIP), so that probably means I'm old.

What's a good alternative for Facebook groups? I'd have gone and suggested Yahoo!, but to me Yahoo! is just a silly company trying to be like Google but instead became a Google clone for those with inept computer skills and awful English. Google Groups is a good place to start, and there are also a lot of other services out there besides Facebook and Yahoo! that you can try out.

Stop handing out documents to students in formats other than PDF.

I like the Portable Document Format ever since it became an open standard at around the year 2008. It does a great job of preserving the original content and format of documents and its sheer portability and commonness is due to Adobe pulling a Microsoft move and telling everybody that their PDF reader and authoring tools are the only things that matter, when there are actually a lot more better readers out there and numerous ways to create PDFs. I can read PDFs on my desktop, my ThinkPad, my tablet, my phone, and my Kindle. And that is good.

However, some instructors thought it was a good idea to hand out documents to their students in their original, editable document forms. The "editable" part isn't the problem here, I actually do not give a shit whether I can manipulate my copy of the document or not. The problem is, handing out documents in such formats hinders portability, because, for example, files that use Microsoft's new formats (*.docx, etc.) look messed up when you're not using something that has Microsoft's name on it to open them. Sure, LibreOffice has done a good job of at least trying to preserve the original formats and looks of Microsoft .doc and .docx files, but when I open these files in my tablet or my phone, things get really ugly. I haven't tried opening .doc, .docx, or .odf files on my Kindle yet, probably because I think that's a very stupid idea.

Instructors should save all the documents that they're going to hand out to their students as PDFs - this goes for presentations as well. This saves me (and other students as well) a lot of time trying to figure out the original format of the file when LibreOffice is having a hard time opening it. Don't know how to save a document as a PDF? Your (probably pirated) copy of Microsoft Office 2010 has that functionality built inside it already.

Don't upload your materials to Rapidshare (or some other bad "filehost").

Right now as I'm typing this, I'm also downloading an economics textbook encoded as a PDF about 69 megabytes big. The size really shouldn't be a problem here - 69 megabytes are downloaded in less than 10 minutes by my connection on average. But right now the estimate says it's going to take a bit like 40 minutes to download (not adjusted to compensate for how badly Chrome estimates remaining download times). The problem lies where the file lies - Rapidshare.

Rapidshare has earned its share of popularity for being the [probably most popular] site that annoys people trying to access it and ripping off people stupid enough to avail of their services by coughing up some euros. The site throttles down your download speed when you're just getting your files for free, and you can't even download more than 2 files at once; both problems are remedied once you've given in to your sanity and you've decided to pay up. They're also not the only one doing this, there are countless of other "file hosts" out there ripping off each other's business models.

The solution for this would be to use an actually decent file host, like Mediafire, or create a Dropbox account and share the files from there. And if the file is really big, it's not too hard to just make a torrent out of it.

Oh, and after finishing the first draft of this post, reading through it two times and doing some edits here and there, my download from Rapidshare isn't even done yet. That means I'm probably going to be staying up late again trying to create a very minimal presentation that no one can understand unless they listen to me talk while I'm presenting. Thanks a lot for making me lose my sleep, Rapidshare!

Why I think Dota 2 going free-to-play is a bad idea

After the last school year (which did not end well, but that's not the point of this post), I've decided to try out being a beta tester (read: someone who can't wait for the game to be released) of Dota 2, the derivative of the immensely popular action RTS game Defense of the Ancients (whose roots started as a Warcraft 3 map), created by Valve (who also created other not-so-popular titles like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Portal). The process was simple. Go to the Dota 2 webpage/blog, fill out a simple survey about your Dota habits and skills (which I'm sure a lot of people have purposefully put in false information), and wait for Valve to contact you back with your Dota 2 "beta key". For most people, the "wait" takes weeks, even months. For me though, it's just 12 hours or so. Probably because of my Steam game collection and loyalty to Valve and Steam:

I actually have more games that would probably fit 5 or more screenshots, but listing them all here would make me look like a douchebag.

Anyway, after downloading Dota 2 and having fun with it, I've somehow accumulated a little bit less than 200 hours of play time in the course of less than a month. Which is not totally a bad sign for my productivity because I still managed to work on some hobby projects of mine here and there, and I merely substituted the countless games of Solitaire with Dota 2 every time I needed a break.

What I liked about the community of Dota 2 that it was seemingly better than that of Garena's (where most online interactions between Dota players occur) original W3 Dota. Gameplay-wise, people in Dota 2 actually intentionally choose support heroes to help their teammates. In a Garena W3 Dota game, if you happen to come up against a team with a solid lineup (not consisting of 5 carries), they're pubstompers and you should clear out immediately or you're in for a bad game. And there are really a lot of other differences between the Dota 2 and Garena W3 Dota community that makes the former more superior than the latter.

It is in my observations that I believe the relative "good" behavior of Dota 2 players is due to the mere fact that beta keys are limited and once they're banned from playing, it sure is going to take a hell lot of time to get another one. Kind of like Team Fortress 2 before it became Free-To-Play, nobody would dare to cheat (although some did anyway, with hilarious consequences) because they didn't want to waste the $60-$10 (depending on how early you bought the game) that they spent.

But now it seems that Valve has decided to turn Dota 2 into a free-to-play game and follow Team Fortress 2's business model to generate income, which is simply "to sell useless cosmetic items at ridiculous prices while taking advantage of people's gambling tendencies by capitalizing on selling keys that open special item crates". The good news is that the game is probably already in a complete working state and that Valve is ready to "sell" it to people. The bad news is that the game is now open for everybody to play, which includes the diverse species of 'tards that inhabit Philippine comshops, that I'm desperately so trying to avoid running into in games.

There were some comforting thoughts that came out of my mind after hearing the news, however. Steam's current way of game distribution is that every user account using Steam on a computer was given separate copies of games for themselves, even if they both owned the game. Which means there would probably hundreds of Steam accounts logging in a single computer in a comshop every month. Doing the math, that would mean 5GB~ (a single installation of Dota 2, not including the base Source Engine stuff) * 100 worth of data installed on a single computer, or 500GB. I highly believe that comshops do not have that kind of money to acquire hard drives larger than 500 gigabytes, nor would it give them any sort of business advantage for doing so. Also, every time a new user wants to play Dota 2, they would have to download the game again for themselves, which, given how immensely slow the average Internet connection in the Philippines is, would take a very, very long amount of time.

Also, Dota 2 has some very strict hardware requirements that would require beefy computers. Which means most comshops will probably not be able to play Dota 2 since they commonly employ Intel GPUs from 2005 as their graphics cards, unless the kids today are fine with playing games at slideshow speed (what has this generation come to?).

After writing all of that, I now feel kind of comforted that most kinds of people that I don't like to play with won't be able to play Dota 2. The game's matchmaker would also do good to keep me safe as well, since nowadays I usually get teamed up with and put up against respectable gentlemen who actually know how to play. And if buying from the Dota 2 store would guarantee me a spot in the Dota 2 community's civilized circle, I would totally throw my money in Valve's direction for the sake of my own sanity (sadly, not for the sake of my wallet).

Why I think GNOME 3 and GTK+ 3 is subtlety trying to kill off the other DEs

As someone who spends hours toying with the look and feel of his machine's GUI (with only quite a few handful of people appreciating these efforts due to the fact that people today accept the ugly fact that they all look the same), consistency is a very important factor in the overall aesthetics of my work environment. Every window and dialog should look similar to each other in shape, color and form. Begrudgingly, the only operating system/suite of desktop applications that has accomplished the goal of total consistency is Mac OS X. However, I do so believe [from experience] that consistency can also be accomplished in a GNU/Linux environment, provided you have the time and patience to configure your system.

Most applications that use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on GNU/Linux usually use either GTK+ (GIMP Toolkit, or for those who like extremely long names, the GNU is not Unix Image Manipulator Program ToolKit) or Qt. GTK+ is by far the more popular choice for developers, although Qt has done a bit in terms of catching up (I personally prefer Qt over GTK+, but that's probably because I have not gone knee deep in GTK+ programming yet). GTK+ is primarily used in the GNOME Desktop Environment, while Qt is primarily employed in the K Desktop Environment.

Because of its popularity, other DEs besides GNOME use GTK+ as well. XFCE (my personal choice and longtime favorite) and LXDE use it, as well as many other less popular DEs. Even if you only use a Window Manager (WM) for minimalism, most of the GUI applications you are going to run are probably using GTK+.

With the introduction of GNOME 3, however, the devs at GNOME also introduced a new version of GTK+, GTK+ 3. The third major release of GTK+ includes many new widgets and features that we shouldn't really care about (unless you're a developer developing GUI apps in GTK+), but it also introduced an annoying side-effect: the lack of backwards compatibility.

The explosive popularity of Ubuntu's Unity and the distributions that choose to ship with GNOME3 by default has in turn raised the popularity of GNOME3 and GTK+ 3 in return. Which means more developers are now aiming to target the demographic that uses Unity and GNOME 3 by using the latest version of GTK+. While this is nice for people who use Unity and GNOME 3, it's not really that beneficial for those who use DEs that only use GTK+ 2 by default (e.g. XFCE).

Here comes the problem: When an application uses GTK+ 2, it loads the GTK+ 2 theme that the user chose for their environment and uses the widgets and pretty things from that theme to decorate itself. And when the application uses GTK+ 3, it does the same except this time it loads up GTK+ 3. What happens then, if the application does not find a working theme for the GTK+ version it's running on? It will start to look like this:

Bleh, right? It kinda reminds me of the classic Windows look, when everything was all boxy and threatened to molest your eyes if you stare at it for far too long. What happened here is that gitg (the program above) uses GTK+ 3, but the GTK+ theme I have set on my machine doesn't support GTK+ 3. So gitg had no choice but to fallback to the ugly defaults that are only suitable for the root user.

It appears that the only viable solution for this is to find GTK+ themes that work in both GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3. Which is a nuisance because there are only a handful of themes right now that support both versions. So when you find a really cool GTK+ theme online (hopefully it's not something that's trying to rip off OS X's look) and you've decided to check it out and install it, some applications are going to look completely out of place when they can't find the appropriate widgets from your theme for their GTK+ version.

But then again, some theme developers are kind enough to support both GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3 engines to appeal to a wider audience. But only "some", though. So that means the blame partly goes to the theme developers as well, who are too busy trying to rip off the look of OS X and not investing that time to make rip offs of the OS X interface that works on GTK+ 2 and GTK+ 3.

And while we're on the topic of desktop environments, allow me to shamelessly insert a screenshot of my working environment (which is in no way looking like a rip-off of OS X):

Why I suddenly want an iPod Nano

For some reason, the 6th Generation iPod Nano is currently on my wish list. That's weird, because I usually do not like Apple products, and mostly I just hate them. But the latest generation of the iPod Nano (as of this time of writing) has fulfilled one of my wishes: To make the conventional timekeeping watch do more than just tell me the time. I've tried that with a few sports watches, you know, the ones that come with timers, countdowns, barometers, a compass, and even altimeters. But I'm not trekking mountains or anything to use an altimeter, nor directionally-challenged to use a compass, or even too obsessed with the weather to use a barometer. Also, those watches are bulky.

And I am also in need of a more convenient portable sound system. Right now I roam around with my preferred pair of earphones connected to a Bluetooth headset hung around my neck, like a pendant on a necklace, while that Bluetooth headset is, in turn, paired and connected with my phone. I like this headset because it allows me to change songs whenever I don't like the one that's currently playing, since I play all my songs and just shuffle them around. Also, if someone is calling, I don't have to pull out my phone to answer it, I can just press the Answer button on the headset to answer the call, then I'll initialize the customary "Hold up I'm talking on my Bluetooth headset" pose (which is putting your index finger on the earpiece and bowing your head a little) so that I don't look like I'm talking to myself or to a random person in front of me (an unfortunate side effect of Bluetooth headsets).

Anyway, I'm here to ramble about the 6th generation iPod Nano, not my Bluetooth headset. And since I'm lazy, I'm just gonna post the things I like and do not like about the device in question in a list form.

What I like

• The watch form factor. The iPod Nano isn't actually designed to be worn as a watch, however, some guy probably looked at it and thought, "Hey, I can probably put a strap on this and wear it around my wrist".
• Low-profile. The iPod Nano is tiny, and I like that because I don't really like having big devices strapped on me (my phone is an exception).
• The plethora of other features on the phone. Like the pedometer and timers, which will probably be useful when I start running, and the FM radio plus other stuff.

What I don't like

• iTunes lock. This is given for all iPods and iDevices, especially those which are new. New iDevices do not allow the user to interface with their computer(s) with something other than iTunes which is a damn shame because (1) I do not want to boot into Windows just to manage my music, and (2) I hate iTunes, it's clunky and slow as hell.
• No Bluetooth. I would've liked the iPod Nano more if it had the capability to connect to a Bluetooth headset, because I think having a wire run up from my wrist looks kind of weird in general.
• No video playback. It would've been nice if the iPod Nano had video playback capabilities, but no, it didn't.
• Non-expandable storage. 16GB of storage might seem enough at first but I might need even more when the time comes. Sadly, I won't be able to buy a larger SD card when I need to because Apple doesn't use them.
• No GPS/Navigation support. Having a watch tell me where I am would be very awesome, not to mention convenient.

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Right now though, I'm sensing that Apple is about to release a new generation of iPods again, particularly the iPods that aren't the iPod Touch (stop fucking calling it an iTouch for fuck's sake). So I'm thinking of buying the 6th generation iPod right now instead of waiting for the 7th because I am certain that the 7th isn't really much different from the previous one, I just heard rumors that the new one is much like the 6th but with a camera (of all things!), but I don't believe in rumors, the entirety of religion is built on that shit. Also, I think that if the 7th generation iPod Nano did come, it's gonna take a while for it to be sold in the Philippines (because this country is slow on everything), and if it does get sold the accessories for it, especially the watch strap, is also going to take a while for it to reach the country.

Still, I'm in a bit on a financial lockdown right now, and I'm just doing my part in being frugal and saving up money so that I can buy one myself. If you happen to know and see me personally though, you can try and donate to my worthy cause. :)

My review of the updated Blogger interface

As I've stated in my previous post, I've just come back to writing on my blog again. It feels really good to be typing nonsense again, especially since my ThinkPad has one of the most comfortable keyboards I've ever used.

Anyway as I was writing my previous post, I stumbled upon a small bar with blue text on the top of Blogger's composed page. It said something along the lines of "Try Blogger's new interface". I was intrigued, because recently Google has been redecorating and redesigning the interfaces of many of their web services, starting from Gmail to Youtube and Docs. Being tired of the default Blogger interface (seriously they've been using that for more than 10 years), I was intrigued and decided to give it a try.

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Consistency

Finally, Blogger looked like a proper Google Web Service rather than something separate from the rest of the services. The interface is highly inspired from Google Docs (which I greatly use and recommend) and Google+ (which I do not really use but highly recommend for other people who do not like Facebook). The sense of minimalism is apparent in the design, as well as intuitiveness. All major functions that you are ever going to need are on top of the area you are editing your post on, but then again, that's the de facto interface design of mostly everything you type text on.

However, added on top of that editor and its buttons is a row of very cleanly-laid and good-looking text and buttons, as well as your Google+ name and picture. However, the prominent "Google bar" that appears on most Google services such as Docs, Calendar and Gmail appears to be missing, but I don't really care since adding it probably makes it look out of place. It might also prove to be quite distracting.

I highly suggest that Google replace the buttons on the main toolbar though -- they appear to have been taken from Blogger's last look. I suggest that they use something similar to Google Docs' monochromatic, minimalistic buttons.

Editing

As a coder one might expect me to prefer editing my post in Blogger's raw HTML editor instead of the WYSIWYG editor Blogger provides. That would have been the case before Blogger updated its interface, as I find the editor to be ugly and boring as hell. However, with the new redesign I'm now more apt to use the WYSIWYG editor instead. It feels so clean, and the minimal design always inspires me. But that doesn't mean I don't need the HTML editor -- I still use it to fine-tune the elements of my post.

While I'm on that topic, the HTML editor appears to be very well designed as well, and it is noticeably wider than the Compose mode (I will now address the WYSIWYG editor as the Compose mode from now on). That's good because HTML tags can take up a lot of space and no one likes too many newlines.

Cons

No interface is complete without its flaws. As such, I will now proceed to list them here in this section.

No option to easily change formatting styles in Compose Mode

Someone who is experienced in word processors would prefer using "Formatting Styles" to format their bodies of text rather than just manually editing them. This is important for consistency, and it can also save you a lot of time.

However, on Blogger's Compose mode, there does not appear to be a menu or a button in the main toolbar that allows me to quickly switch formatting styles. This is disappointing because I have to go to the HTML editor and wrap my headers into appropriate header tags in order to turn them into headers. And yes, I know it will work as well if I wrap them in tags inside Compose mode, but it would look pretty much out of place with the rest of the interpreted text.

No indication of whether your post has been (automatically) saved

Google Docs has this neat little feature on the autosave that tells me whenever the document I'm working on has been automatically synced and saved to Google's servers. I really like that feature because I am paranoid that my files might not have been saved and that the next unfortunate crash of my browser would be the end of my work.

Blogger does not have that feature. The system automatically saves your work everytime you stop typing for a while, but it does not have that persistent indication that your work has been saved. While you are not typing to ponder some thoughts, Blogger automatically saves your work, and the Save button on top of the main toolbar briefly turns into a "Saving..." button that indicates that your work is being saved. While that is quite comforting, sometimes I'd like to know that Blogger has already saved my work some time ago while I stopped typing to ponder my thoughts, as I usually do so for extended periods of time and I usually leave myself in a state of short term memory loss afterwards.

My suggestion? Put something that tells me when the last edit I made was saved somewhere. I'm not saying the Save button should be removed entirely (as shown in Google Docs), because I think for this matter, it is still necessary.

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I think that's all I have to say about the new updated Blogger interface for now. It's pretty, intuitive, and most importantly, minimal. There's just a couple of stuff that they should try to fix here and there. I'm quite too tired of further scrutinizing the interface and adding more feedback, because at the time I'm writing this it's already really late. But I do expect improvements to happen in the future, somehow.

Nightmare House 2: A Game of Pants-Shitting Misadventures

Don't worry, there aren't any spoilers in here.

At some point during the Steam Summer sale I bought the Valve complete pack out of instinct. I did not actually plan to buy the pack, I only thought that it would be a good idea to buy it right ahead while it was 75% off its original price. It was one of the best fifty dollars I've ever spent, however, my desktop messed itself up during that time period, but that's a different story.

I've been playing most of the Source games included in the pack, most notably Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and the Half-Life series. However, I've been lurking Reddit for a while and heard about this awesome Half-Life 2 single player modification called Nightmare House 2. It is a survival-horror game that strangely enough, starts off in a creepy old farmhouse. I went to the mod creator's workshop and was glad that it was completely free, and only required the Half-Life 2 Episode Two game content files, which I have thanks to the Valve Complete Pack. I wget'ed it from my laptop (seriously it's sooooo fast from there) then transferred and installed it to my desktop.

The Good stuff

First, there's the game's really excellent level design. The actual first chapter, called the "Prologue", was actually the first Nightmare House game, just included in the second installment as a supplement. Most of the game occurs inside the creepy old farmhouse, however, they made excellent use of the entire house, everything was nicely and creepily decorated, and there were absolutely no loading screens during the chapter. Seriously, one thing I hate about Half-Life 2 are the annoying loading screens because apparently because of the limits of the Source engine. Nightmare House managed to go around that.

As some people put it, "Nightmare House 2 is a combination of Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R.". This is correct. Most of the enemies you are going to be facing in the game are zombies, the dark, and the instinct to involuntarily crap your pants. Also, the final boss showdown in this game is really, really similar to GLaDoS in Portal. You don't actually "fight" the boss directly in Nightmare House 2.

The Bad stuff

One thing I didn't like about Nightmare House 2 is that the farther you get through the game the more weapons you will get that will help you survive. A survival-horror game is defined as a game where you have a limited amount of things that will help you survive and the simple fact that you have only 5 bullets in your gun is the creepy part. In the Resident Evil games I'd really happy if I manage to find a box of shotgun shells, while in Nightmare House 2 finding a box of shotgun shells is as easy as just looking around. Or maybe because I played it in easy difficulty, I got a crapload of weapons and ammunition.

Overall, I think Nightmare House 2 is a great mod to play if you have bought Half-Life 2 Episode 2. It's just that if you're expecting the game to be very much like Silent Hill, Resident Evil or Amnesia, don't bother, because in this game you can kick anything's ass with the vast array of weaponry you will be receiving.

The 3 best and worst websites I have visited this 2011

With computers being one of my areas of expertise, it comes to no surprise that I'm an avid user of the Internet. I've been on the Internet since 2004 and from my experience, the standards in website UI design have changed dramatically over the years. There are some who took the aspects of design further, leading to beautiful websites that are also easy to navigate. However, there are also websites who disregard UI design, which impacted the overall usefulness of their websites.

Here are the 3 best websites I have visited this year, along with their bad counterparts.

1. Good: Newsmap.jp

URL: http://newsmap.jp

Don't let the URL fool you, the site is not in any way written in Japanese. Newsmap is a small website that grabs news from various news feeds around the web and displays them in a neat, color-coded grid boxes. These boxes are arranged according to importance and popularity using size. So essentially, the most breaking and controversial news are displayed in large text, while the not-really-that-popular ones are in smaller text. You can untick categories in order to hide them and give more space to other categories. Finally, news feeds can also be arranged according to country and region, although support for all countries and regions are still incomplete (unlike Google News).

Bad: Inquirer.net

URL: http://inquirer.net

Inquirer.net is the web site of the Philippine newspaper "Philippine Daily Inquirer". Like most other Philippine websites, it has lagged behind in terms of UI standards. For example, it uses an awful lot of tables for its layout, resulting in too many columns and rows displayed on the homepage. It makes navigation difficult, despite multiple navigation bars in the top and bottom of the site's home page. However, they are successful in their efforts to put the most breaking news on the front, where they are easy to spot. Additionally, they use a pleasant and well-balanced color scheme that is easy for the eyes. They need some work on the layout, though.

2. Good: Reddit

URL: http://reddit.com

Reddit is a place where people share links and rate them by giving upvotes and downvotes (similar to Youtube's like/dislike system), and give comments to content posted on the site. One good feature of the site is giving the users the ability to create sub-reddits, which are similar to subcategories. There are subreddits for different kinds of topics, like gaming, worldnews, etc.

Bad: Digg

URL: http://digg.com

Digg is a competitor to Reddit, since Digg also allows its users to share, rate and comment links. However, content on Digg has been recently monopolized by large media outlets, leading to most of its users leaving and finding more "open" link sharing sites (a large number of them migrated to Reddit). Digg had a good design before the "Diggpocalypse", however, after that everything became too blue and it was a lot harder to navigate than before.

3. Good: Imgur

URL: http://imgur.com

imgur is an image hosting site. The description probably ends there, but what I like about imgur is its very minimalistic approach to hosting its users' images. You just have to select your images, upload them either individually or as an album, and when it's done, you will be given links of all kinds. And those links are free from URLs to imgur, unlike other image hosting sites like Imageshack...

Bad: Imageshack

Imageshack is another image hosting site. It is reliable, however, the interface of the whole site is very, very messy, with advertisements everywhere and such. Also, the interface is not very intuitive, and new users can get lost trying to navigate its screens. Worst of all, Imageshack adds URLs to the links it gives to you for your images. For example, its pre-generated BBCode for forums has a link to Imageshack ("Uploaded with Imageshack.us"), and if you remove that part, the BBCode and the image will not work.

(My) best and worst Android app of June 2011

So now I find myself writing a post about my best and worst Android applications, at least just for the past month of June 2011, anyway. I don't usually do these, because a post describing the best, worst and/or both of [something here] usually calls in the fanboys. And nobody wants that.

WARNING: Opinions follow.

The Android Market is known for being a complete mess with tens of thousands of incomplete and/or useless applications created by hundreds of incompetent developers. However, just like with every big pile of crap, there's always something valuable to be found underneath (or on the top of) the Android App Market. There are also numerous good apps in the Android Market and some of them actually prove that Android is better at certain things where iOS isn't. But I'm not here to spark a war against the iOS fans, I'm here to criticize two Android Apps.

The Best App: Lookout Mobile Security

The one thing that sucks about an app market that isn't regulated by a team of Nazis led by a guy in a black turtleneck sweater is that most people aren't responsible with freedom. Apple prunes the bad apps from the good, while Google doesn't care that much unless the application is a duplicate or malicious app. Therefore, there will come the inevitable time when you accidentally download a fake, duplicate copy of some paid app that turns out to be malware that steals everything valuable within your phone (and no, it's not the photos of yourself).

There are many applications on the Android Market that offer malware protection and "app scanning" (comparing your installed apps to a list of known malicious apps), but I think the best choice for this is Lookout Mobile Security. Lookout Security scans every new application that you download from the app market, compare it with their list of known malicious applications, and give you the signal on whether the app you downloaded is malicious or not. Not only that, Lookout Security scans all the apps installed prior to your installation of Lookout, and you can set it to regularly scan your apps every once in a while in case one of them are late bloomers.

You might notice that Lookout Security is a "suite". That means it's a bunch of services grouped together into one program. Not only does Lookout Security check your apps, it also offers a phone-tracking service. Using your phone's GPS and phone network, you can easily find your phone through Lookout's website. Some phone manufacturers provide their own phone-tracking software into some of their devices (I'm looking at you, HTC), but those services require the GPS to be on. If you happen to have lost your phone without its GPS turned on, Lookout can remotely turn on your phone's GPS so that it could track it. If that fails, Lookout will try to find your phone using Wi-Fi connections and nearby cell towers, which is inaccurate by a lot of meters, but reliable. Want to lock access or even wipe the valuable data off your phone (you shouldn't trouble yourself over your pictures)? Lookout can do that for you.

Lookout Mobile Security also offers backup and restore of your phone's data. While all free features are good enough for basic security, you might want to purchase premium, which you can buy for $29.99/year or $2.99 a month. Luckily, all users are able to try out the Premium for free for two weeks.

The Worst App: Vaulty

Vaulty is a small application whose primary purpose is to hide questionable content from your phone's main gallery. At least, that's how I used it. But sadly, it did not do its job well.

First of all, Vaulty works to hide photos and videos from your phone's gallery, where all of your multimedia content is displayed in full glory. It works like this: Pick a couple of photos and/or videos that you would like to hide, and Vaulty will put them in itself, all while removing those photos and/or videos from the gallery and moving them to Vaulty's app folder in your phone memory/SD card. To top all of that, access to the Vaulty...vault is restricted by a password of your choosing.

Seems good enough right? But why is it my worst app for June?

First, moving your files to Vaulty is a tedious process. You can either (1) Do it directly from Vaulty, but Vaulty does not have an option to choose multiple files, so if you got more than 20 files to hide it's gonna take a while. Or (2) You can "send" it to Vaulty by using the Share function in the gallery, which is faster, by the way.

However, once your files are hidden, it's really difficult to navigate through them inside the Vaulty vault. For example, if I hide a manga that's sorted and organized in its own folder in the gallery, and is arranged according to ascending file names, they will most likely be separated if I put them alongside another manga. They will be helplessly jumbled especially if every separate page has a filename like [pagenum].jpg. You put folders in Vaulty, Vaulty lets you see them spread out and cluttered. What shame.

Finally, Vaulty is not really that secure - Vaulty puts your "hidden" files in its folder, which is located in /sdcard/DCIM/vaulty. That means anyone can access your hidden files if they use a file browser like Astro.

A paid version of Vaulty is available, although the only feature it has over the free version is that Vaulty Premium is disguised as a Stocks App. That wouldn't be worth the money especially if you're hanging out with nosy stockbrokers.

What's a better solution for hiding your content from nosy people? Delete them and don't put them on your phone in the first place. However, if you really need to put these on your phone, but just want to hide them from the Gallery, the Gallery has an option to Show/Hide albums from view. This is great especially if you've arranged your questionable photos and videos into separate folders. They are still visible using a file browser though, but at least you're protected from nosy people who aren't that competent with Android phones.

Best Game App: Gun Bros

Gun Bros (pronounced as either Gun Brothers or Gun Brows) is a third-person survival shooter that pits the player against endless waves of monsters. You control one of either of the two Gun brothers, Percy and Francis Gun, the two superhuman members of F.R.A.G.G.E.D. (Freakishly Rugged Advanced Genetics Galatic Enforcement Division), and fight the T.O.O.L. (Tyrannical Oppressors Of Life).

Gun Bros is mainly survival. You are pitted against endless waves of opponents that get stronger and more numerous until your lose by either dying or quitting. As the player increases his level, new weapons and armor are unlocked, giving the player an edge over stronger opponents.

The best part about Gun Bros is its wittiness and humor regarding the age-old genre of shooter games. It has smooth, responsive controls, and every playthrough is bound to be challenging. And what's more, it's free.

Worst Game App: Attack of the Fanboys

Attack of the Fanboys is a survival third person shooter like Gun Bros, the only difference is that instead of being a superhuman fighting evil robots and aliens, you play a superhuman fighting evil fanboy zombies.

While the concept of the game is great, the game appears to be bleak, with its uninspiring level and enemy design. The controls were not very responsive. However, the game did succeed in introducing strategy to the survival shooter genre by adding a limit on ammo - something that Gun Bros did not bother doing.

Books are dying, kept alive by tablets, e-book readers

Books are, in my opinion, one of the best innovations known to man. While many earlier forms of storing information and literature have existed long before people wrote shit on paper then binded them together, books have remained living until today. And by living, I mean it's currently holding on for dear life.

Electronic book technology has allowed people to read works of literature on their shiny tablets, Kindles, iPhones, etc. My Desire HD carries a large collection of ebooks of which I spend an hour or two everyday to read. While I do have a large collection of ebooks, I also have an equally large collection of physical books. You know, those that are written on "paper" and binded together.

Reading on paper is way better than reading on some LCD screen. I've never enjoyed looking at electronic screens anyway. No matter how many innovations in display technology are being made every day, like high resolution LCDs, LED-backlit screens and the like, I just really don't get the hang of reading text on a bright screen. I've even had a hard time writing this post because it appears that my laptop's screen is fucking me with its brightness. And that's why when I read text, I try to invest a lot in anti-aliasing and high resolution displays. Also, something that's not too bright on my eyes.

This kind of ranting is strange to hear from someone who spends his time in front of screens of all sizes, be it dark UNIX terminals on my laptop or my phone. But seriously, nothing beats the sensation of reading a physical book in the presence soft light. There's even the aroma of aged paper that pulls you in to read further. Additionally, while reading physical books, there's the strange effect where you won't try to skim the story or skip parts the first time you read it. In reading text in screens, your TL;DR instincts start to kick in. With physical literature, the concept of TL;DR simply could not exist (unless you're reading a shitty book).

I know this ranting makes me sound like I'm sixty years old, but honestly I'm not even of legal age yet. But it really sucks that lots of people (old folks included) begin to favor ebooks over the original, physical ones we've been enjoying for more than a thousand and a half years. But then again, who reads ebooks? The longest piece of literature the majority of people read today is probably a Facebook status message. And statistically, 99.99999% of Facebook statuses don't even count as literature. "Random shit jumbled into decipherable words" would be a more appropriate term for it.

TL;DR: E-books suck.

HTC Desire HD Review

I have recently acquired a kickass HTC Desire HD, for reasons I won't divulge here, but let's just say that I've decided to dump iOS and give Android a try. Particularly because anything bearing the Apple logo (with the exception of my IBM Thinkpad X60s, I sarcastically stuck an Apple logo on its front) means it can be used by kids and will only be used by kids, or old people. Also, they can cost a whole semester's tuition or two. Since I do not fit in either demographic, and is not the kind who wastes money on shiny crap, I've decided to give Android a try with the HTC Desire HD.

The phone set me back Php26,700 (roughly US$ 603). It wasn't part of any postpaid plan, just bought it open line (meaning it's not stuck to any network), and set it for prepaid. When compared to the rest of the world, the system is pretty different in the Philippines, prepaid network services are available here in this country, which means you don't have to be prisoner to a network provider, and SIM cards are easily bought and used anonymously.

This review won't be that comprehensive. I won't go and discuss the insides of the phone, its technical specifications that much. I'll usually only review the essentials, and I've categorized them into categories courtesy of myself.

Performance

Speed is of the essence.

The HTC Desire HD is the fastest phone I've ever handled, thanks to its Qualcomm MSM 8255 1Ghz Scorpion processor. By the time I'm writing this review, 1Ghz smartphone processors are apparently the norm, and the world is currently bracing itself for the hour when dual core phones are distributed on the market. Also, the Desire HD's 768MB of memory allows me to multitask to my heart's content, although it poses some disadvantages (see below). Finally, Android 2.2 (Froyo) is faster and snappier here than its predecessor and the iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G. Comparing the iPhone 3G's performance to the Desire HD would be like comparing the performance of a bicycle with broken gears with a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS.

Concerning storage capacity, the Desire HD carries a disappointing amount of internal space - just about a gigabyte, but you can add in a microSD card with a size up to 32GB, which is probably more than adequate.

Score: 9/10

Market

While the Apple App Store itself is pretty huge and filled with millions of useless apps like flashlights, compatibility machines and Tap Tap Revenge, the Android Market is pretty much the same, albeit smaller, and does not include Tap Tap Revenge. Unlike the App Store though, the Android Market is a complete mess. While some apps on the iPhone are completely free on the Android (one example is Angry Birds), some weren't, a striking example is Remember the Milk, which is pretty disappoint since me and my friends use RTM to organize ourselves. I think the reason for this is that most developers who write for the iPhone first must have rewritten the app for the Android as an afterthought. Consequently, this led to generally bad ported apps.

Also, since Android phones have a lot of performance differences with each other, particularly with screen size, processor speed, memory and whatnot, some apps are optimized for slow phones, others for fast phones such as the Desire HD. Not like I'm complaining, because [1] My phone is fast, and [2] There were a lot of game apps in the App Store which ran horrendously slow on my iPhone 3G.

Score: 6.5/10

Syncing

Since Android phones don't usually come with magical and painfully slow software like iTunes, the Desire HD can be quite a bitch to sync, especially when your music collection is in question. Android phones, however, are associated with your Google account, which means your contacts, calendar, etc. are all synced with your Google account. Winamp is currently touting its ability to sync to Android phones, however, my Winamp doesn't really store any local media in its library, it only imported itself from iTunes. Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party syncing applications available on the Web, some are even able to integrate itself with iTunes (if slow media players are your forte), and there is a chance that your phone's manufacturer bundled your phone with their own syncing tools, that usually suck like shit (according to my experience with such software).

Score: 7/10

Battery Life

As with all smartphones (especially Androids), the Desire HD's battery life is a lot shorter than the lifespan of a domestic house fly, especially if the phone is running on 3G signals all the time. While the solution for this is simple (don't use 3G, goddamnit), the Desire HD, along with other phones not created by Apple give you the ability to change your phone's battery without taking it to some shiny, white shop to be replaced. However, the phone's powerful processor and continuous multitasking, together with its huge 4.3" screen can drain the battery quickly. Some apps even quietly but quickly drain your battery in the background because some of them go on recursive loops trying to refresh itself (even when there is no Internet connection), so there.

Score: 6/10

Media

One of the key selling points of the Desire HD is its oversized 4.3" SuperLCD screen, so no wonder HTC decided to add "HD" to this phone's name, right? I find it great to watch videos of all sorts on the Desire HD, even Youtube videos (provided that I don't get the read the comments). Also, its 480x800 (218 ppi) makes reading e-books and manga very comfortable. Sound quality is excellent too, with its built-in Dolby Mobile surround system and SRS effects, which can be greatly improved more if you have the proper sound output gear (such as good noise-cancelling headphones or a true 5.1 surround sound system).

Score: 9/10

Uniqueness

While the Desire HD follows the design guidelines of Android phones (huge screen, four navigation buttons below), it does stand out from the rest with its non-physical navigation keys and its "totally-not-ripped-off-from-the-iPhone" appearance. The backside of the phone is in matte, unlike most other phones who imitate the iPhone's glossy finish.

The Desire HD is also highly customizable on the inside. You can use live wallpapers (something my iPhone did not have), have several home screens, and other customizable features common to Android phones. While customizing your Android is a little on par with customizing an iPhone, Androids are easier to customize than iPhones since you don't have to jailbreak your phone to have a totally different look. Unless flashing a new ROM is your thing.

Score: 8/10

Misc

There's one thing Google overlooked in Android. There's NO fucking proxy configuration support for wireless networks. Sure, my Desire HD is fast, not too shiny, but it's unable to connect to proxy servers. This sucks, because I spend the majority of my time in DLSU, where our wireless network there is protected by a proxy server. The only option to have proxy configurations is by gaining root (super user) access to the phone, or installing a new ROM (particularly Cyanogenmod), both of which will instantly void my phone's 1 year warranty. I don't really need warranty that much, since I can pretty much fix problems myself, but I think I'll wait a good two weeks first and see if the phone has any defects before I decide to fiddle with it.

Waiting for Gingerbread (Android 2.3) to be supported by HTC would be useless since apparently, from what I've heard from some comments, Google continues to flip the bird at corporate users by ignoring the requests (no, demands is a better term) for proxy support.

Score: 0/10

Verdict

The Desire HD is overall a great phone for media enthusiasts and those who thinks performance-wise in the phone while also being conscious about his budget, since it costs less than an iPhone 3G (at least in my country). It's also a great way to stay away from those kids who got those iPhones that all look alike, without sacrificing your dignity.

Overall: 8/10

The worst part in riding a bus

I love buses. I love them as much as I love my computer for always screwing up on me during some times when I needed it most. I am bound by forced love for buses because that’s the only mode of transportation that efficiently gets me from home to school and vice versa.

For our international readers, Philippine buses work a little differently than your bus lines. In the Philippines, we do not buy tickets before we enter the bus, we buy them once we get in. And those who sell tickets are not referred to as “ticket salesmen” but conductors, not the kind you see who waves a stick around in front of musicians but the kickass one who can withstand inertial forces in a bus while immediately computing the fare of the 40-53 sitting passengers, plus the unfortunate twenty or so who are standing on the aisle of the bus. Can you keep yourself cool and balanced while computing the fare of one passenger mentally while keeping track of the people who just walked in and are ticket-less? If you can’t, you’re not fit to be a Philippine bus conductor.

Another difference between Philippine  buses and international standards is that we rarely have bus stops. Bus stops in the Philippines are self-established by the passengers themselves. A bus stop in the Philippines is somewhere where there’s a lot of people waiting for a bus and there’s no MMDA traffic enforcers nearby who are in the mood for ticketing buses.

That’s how the system works here in the Philippines. Like most other systems, this one has its flaws. Besides having completely undocumented, clueless, and unplanned routes that could kill somebody inexperienced in Philippine commuting, there’s also another flaw: the standing room.

When you step in the bus and all the seats are taken, would you [A] Get out and wait for another bus, preferably one with seats or [B] Stay? If you chose the latter, you’re gonna have to stand, sucker. Move over to the back so we can try to squeeze others in this standing room orgy.

So I made a comic depicting what I feel when I’m that unlucky person who gets to stand first.

Screw you, Philippine buses.

Cherry Mobile Q5i: A review

I forgot to tell everybody about my new phone, the Cherry Mobile Q5i. I just bought it a week and a half ago and forgot to write a review for it because I lost track of time and I was having too much fun (aka procrastinating). Read long and find out why I prefer to call this phone the “poor man’s smartphone”.

The Phone

Overview

The Cherry Mobile Q5i is a Philippine phone with Filipinos in mind, but apparently has borrowed ideas from the big mobile phone players in the world. To keep up with today’s trends, it is equipped with a smooth physical QWERTY keyboard, similar to those of a Blackberry’s. It comes in four colors: Solid yellow w/black back, solid red w/black back, black w/blue back and trim (this is what I got) and black w/white back and trim.

Model

The Q5i is part of the Q series, which is, a bunch of phones who share a common trait – QWERTY keyboards. The Q5i is not really one of the newest and state of the art releases in its family, but it is one of the most reliable. Its successors include the Trident (triple SIM capability), and various other Q series phones.

Features

The phone itself is very feature packed. Here are some of them:

• Dual SIM capabilities. Every local phone has to have this, since most Filipinos are part of at least two cellular networks.
• Mobile Web Browsing. The Q5i handles true websites very poorly, because it can only use a GPRS connection and it has a very basic browser built mainly for mobile websites. However, it does its job pretty well.
• Touchpad control. The phone uses a touchpad instead of buttons to navigate through the interface. Touchpads are similar to those used in iPods other than the iPod touch.
• Java support. Not all local phones are capable of basic Java programs, but the Q5i is different. There are three Java applications installed by default – a mobile browser, a Yahoo! Messenger app, a MSN Messenger app, plus a couple of games.
• Improved audio. The Wolfson audio chipset used in the Q5i is similar to those found in the previous generation of iPods. It allows for clearer audio and support for a 3.5mm audio jack, instead of some proprietary jack.
• Dual MicroSD slots. The phone has two slots for MicroSD flash memory cards. Currently I’m using two 2GB MicroSD cards, however, I have no idea if the phone supports MicroSDHC (MSD High Capacity) cards (4GB and higher).
• Other features such as FM radio, a 2MP camera, a video camera, video playback support, image viewing, and no TV (whew).

Interface

The interface is speedier and prettier than my previous Cherry Mobile D15. It has simple transitions that makes you feel that the phone isn’t slowing down on you. Also, the colors are smooth and easy to the eyes.

Portability

The phone is wider than my previous D15, due to the fact that it possesses a QWERTY keybaord, but the Q5i is very lightweight for its size. It fits in most pockets, and can be easily fished out if needed.

Its battery capacity is quite high, a natural trait for local phones. The battery stays alive for at least five days with constant audio playback using headphones. I’m guessing it should last a week if its just on standby and you’re using it just for texting and calling.

Durability

The phone’s exterior is very durable, as, contrary to popular belief, it can resist falls and shock without much permanent damage. The pins and sockets of the phone however, are susceptible to damage under pressure, I’ll explain more of that later.

My phone (no, I meant the Q5i I have, not the other Pinoy phone brand)

My Q5i has been in my possession and care for about one and a half weeks, and so far the only problem I had with it is that the 3.5mm jack socket got busted, and all the time the phone thinks that a headset is connected to my phone.

This problem is not a nuisance. It has very huge implications on the phone’s capablities. Since it thinks that there is a headset attached to the phone even though there wasn’t, it will always rely on its imaginary headset to transmit audio from the handset whenever you make or receive calls, which sucks, since you won’t hear the other person on the line unless you have earphones connected and using the loudspeaker is just too awkward in public.

How I fixed the problem

I would have sent my phone to a Cherry Mobile technician, but the place is too far away and I’m too lazy to go there. So, I sent it to the numerous cellphone repair “technicians” (read: people who think they can fix things because they can handle opening up stuff and soldering shit) who refuses to touch my phone because all they touch are Nokias, Sony-Ericssons, Motorolas, etc. Thankfully there’s a guy who managed to man up and tried to fix my problem, but to no avail. So we simply just cut off the connection between the port and the system board of the phone. Sometimes amputation of a certain part is just the only way to cure another.

So my Q5i has lost its main feature that’s very rare among China and local phones. I guess I’m going back to my shitty iPod.

Conclusion

Pros

• Dual SIM capability
• QWERTYY keyboard
• You can attach any standard pair of head/ear phones to it
• Mobile web browsing
• Facebook capabilities

Cons

• Ports can break if you’re not careful
• Touchpad can be a pain in the ass to use for maneuvering the interface
• QWERTY keyboard has a slightly steep learning curve for those who are not familiar with them.

Overall, the Q5i is a great phone, hands down. For Php3,499.00 (US$79.00), you can get a sweet QWERTY phone that can fit any lifestyle. Just please don’t mess up its audio port, as it’s quite fragile.

Our parents are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction: Why video games and television doesn’t lower our attention span

Long title today. Ok, let’s get this started.

There are recent articles circulating on the Internet claiming that the reason for the diminishing attention span of people today is due to excessive video games and television.

In my own honest opinion, I believe that the statement above isn’t true. Yes, video games and television does contribute to the lower standards of attention span today, but they’re not the only ones that are responsible. The convenience of modern life today is most likely the main culprit in this growing problem.

Let’s compare how people get their news 100 years ago to how they do that today. A century ago, when people wanted to get their news, they would get out of their homes, go to the nearest store that sells newspapers, buy them, and take them home for them to read. Seeing that having to stand up and walk outside is quite a hassle, society invented convenience – instead of having customers go to the stores and buy newspapers, newspapers hired young children to deliver newspapers to those who subscribe to the service. When child labor was considered illegal, newspapers then resorted on news stands, a slower but less slave-labor’ey than using children for the job.

Right now, if you still wake up every morning, open your front door, and pick up that dirty slab of paper on your porch to read its contents, you’re most likely above 35 years of age. We just don’t do that anymore. It’s a hassle.

That’s just about it. Because technology moved towards speeding things up – making things easier, quicker and with less waiting times, we are forced to keep up with it, or at least encouraged to. Who needs snail mail when you’ve got email? Better yet, why use email when you could instantly contact anybody who’s online using the many instant messaging platforms available on the Internet?

We’ve got way too many stuff to make us lazy – televisions eliminate the need to go to an event and watch, phones and Internet communication eliminate the need to actually go to a friend’s house and have a chat, and we have the food delivery industry because most people are too fat to move their fatasses around just to get to the nearest McDonalds that they need to have people fetch food for them. People even came up and made the Segway, probably one of the those early spawns from hell that spells doom for humanity. It eliminates the need to do the one thing we have been doing since accomplishing bipedalism – walking. Walking. You’ve learned that when you were one to three years old. Why would you give up now?

Not trying to sound like a 60 year old deranged beardy man who constantly yells at children on the street to get off his “lawn”, but in my honest opinion, technology is really making us lazy. We’re even lazy to listen to people because we’re accustomed to just exchanging thoughts with each other through text messages and tweets that are less than 140 letters in length.

Did you read all of that? Good, you’re probably in your late thirties or more. If you just scrolled all the way down here and didn’t bother reading, get out of here, kthxbai.

Why the games of tomorrow suck, and why we should stick to the classics

Let’s face it – the future sucks. Being so obese that you can’t lift your fat ass off your seat will be so commonly accepted. Robots will be left to do the dirty work, and that isn’t cool because, unlike the sweatshop workers of today, they don’t look sad and you can’t laugh at them. Robots are programmed to be happy while they do menial tasks, which sucks.

The future of gaming is even more bleak. Ever since Nintendo attempted to touch the more unfortunate side of the gaming society (aka old people), with their devices of doom called the Nintendo Wii, everyone, even non-gaming companies, have tried to follow suit to make digital life better for people over 40. Apple, for instance, created the iPhone and the iPad because they knew old people would go all sorts of crazy with keypad buttons, and that they would love a device that resembles their fantasies of the future during the 60’s.

Sony and Microsoft have tried to appeal to the much older community too, because apparently Nintendo has made a lot of money selling gaming consoles with remotes that were accidentally thrown into flat screen TVs, smashing them in the process, because they thought you have to throw the controller forwards when you’re playing Wii Bowling. They wanted to produce the same effect of making you look stupid while you’re playing (which has been the standard for the whole gaming era), sans the weird looking controllers we have been with since the beginning.

Enter the Kinect and the Move. Created by Microsoft and Sony respectively, these accessories will be available shortly to the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Both have been featured in the recent E3 2010, where nerds and gaming enthusiasts have gathered to watch the impending horror of the death of the gaming industry before their very eyes, in a fancy and exciting convention.

Both of these motion controllers, which feature state of the art sensors (I won’t go into any details here, go Google for it yourself) that somehow intelligently perceives your motion in front of it. This allows games like dancing to be more “dance-like” without the use of a heavy metal pad with four direction buttons on it. Boxing and fighting games wouldn’t need a badly designed glove-like accessory or a platform with infrared sensors that does the contrary to feel realistic. Driving is probably the worse – instead of using an already awkward-to-use steering wheel and pedals, you now just have to raise your hands in the air, grip and imaginary steering wheel, and you’re good to go. It’s like reliving what you were doing in your childhood again.

There’s also new ways of manipulating this new technology, like using it for simulation games like having a pet tiger in a jungle. With these new toys you can actually own a virtual pet tiger that you can feed, pet, and punch in the face by just letting your hands do the action in front of the motion sensors. Of course, all this does is just doom children when they realize that tigers don’t like being fed, pet, or punched in the face when they grow up as adults.

If there’s such thing as too much technology, it’s very apparent for the coming years of the gaming industry. This makes me want to throw away all my new games away and just start playing games that were made prior to 2008. Those were all better than most, if not all the new games we have now.

Quotes I like to ponder deeply about

I love quotes. I read at least five everyday. I have a Quote Reader in my desktop thanks to Rainmeter. I read through famous quotes by famous people, infamous quotes by infamous people, and sometimes not-really-famous quotes by not-really-famous people. Some quotes have the power to shape minds and civilizations, while others only send people clutching their ears because, well, it’s horrible.

Yet there are some quotes I come across that have some rather strange implications. These are quotes that have double meanings, or can imply something weird when you give examples based from it. Like for example:

You are what you eat.

Let’s take this literally. The person who spoke this (I forgot who) says that whatever you eat is you. Now for example I eat chicken. Does that make me a chicken? I eat pork. Does that make me a pig? I eat fish, etc. and so on.

But who wants to be an animal? Every human wants to be just as what he is – human. If people follow that quote above and wants to be human, guess what would be the trend?

Cannibalism. Pure and simple.

Here’s another one I like:

X to Y, Y to X.

Assume X and Y are variables referring to something in particular. Usually this widely-recycled quote is used with “Live” as X and a profession, practice, ambition, sport, etc. as Y. Like, “Live to race, race to live”, or “Live to steal, steal to live”, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Why does technology evolve too fast?

Why does technology evolve too fast?

- Me

That question has haunted me so many times. It has appeared in many inconvenient places, in my solitude, in my dreams, while I’m working in front of my computer, even when I’m writing this blog post (obviously).

It’s been a year since I have built my desktop. In fact, it just had its birthday less than a month ago. But look at it now. It’s now old by a gamer’s standard. The once powerful Intel Core 2 Quad is now overshadowed by Intel Core i7 Processors, while my ATI Radeon HD4870 is now the new HD5870’s bitch. Also, there are a number of games now that I could not max the settings on without my game slowing down to the speed of a 40’s film.

Even my laptop feels its quick aging. The proud ultraportable Lenovo Thinkpad X60s is now a weeping pile of shame as my battery – well, died out. Hopefully it will get fixed, however.

There is one way to smile despite these however – by looking at other people.

Take a look at those computers in derelict computer shops scattered around the Philippines. The computers are equipped with nine year old Intel Celerons and Nvidia GeForce 4400s that they couldn’t even run Warcraft III. I think my laptop even does a better job.

In addition to that fact, despite my laptop’s portability being very crippled due to its dead battery, it still manages to go through some world standards. Its size is pretty small, the 11” notebook is near the netbook 10” size, but manages to pack an Intel Core Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, features most netbooks and entry-level laptops do not possess. It’s also much snappier and cleaner than other notebooks, because its proud owner has done a lot to keep it oiled and powerful.

So that’s it. Even though my equipment are quite a bit old, they still manage to kick some ass, if not all of them.

The joys (and pains) of public transportation

I am now officially enrolled and studying in De La Salle University – Manila, following a successful entrance exam, payment of my tuition for my first term and attendance of the recent LaSalle Personal Effectiveness Program (LPEP), a two-day program focused on getting the “froshies” (their fancy term for freshmen) on the right track. I just finished the LPEP earlier this day, after plenty of tiring activities, lectures and performances.

DLSU Manila is not located in a convenient distance from my home. I have to cross borders of two regions, since I live in CALABARZON and DLSU is in Manila.

To get there, I have to rely on public transportation. I don’t want my parents getting me to school, I’m old enough to go out myself. So it is public transit or nothing.

The Bus

The major form of public transportation that I will have to take is the bus. Sure, to reach the bus routes I will have to get to the highways they travel onto through a tricycle ride, but the bus is one of the most important modes of transportation for me to get to DLSU. Buses offer trips from provinces to Buendia Ave., where most provincial buses now stay and turn around because apparently they aren’t allowed to roam around Metro Manila anymore except from there to the Baclaran area.

A standard bus fare costs an average of Php25.00. If I find a bus at Gahak rather than the Aguinaldo Highway, the costs goes up to Php30.00. Obviously, I’m put at some sort of disadvantage, since it’s more expensive and the bus does not go inside Buendia Avenue. At least I have a larger chance to sit down on this bus line.

The Light Rail Transit (LRT)

The Light Rail Transit, more popularly known as the LRT, is an elevated train network that travels around various parts of Metro Manila. The first and often used line is the one that travels along Taft Ave., but there are also other rail lines that travel along other parts of Metro Manila such as Quezon City. The first line is, obviously, what I take to get to DLSU.

A LRT ticket costs only Php12.00 since I only travel no farther than Vito Cruz to Libertad. Sure, the jeepneys offer a cheaper fare of Php7.50 from Gil Puyat to DLSU, but jeepneys are usually more crowded, slower, and, more importantly, much more dangerous. They do not have security personnel on watch, unlike the LRT.

Verdict

Public transportation in the Philippines is risky, crowded, and at most times slow and congested, but it is a must to learn and experience if you plan to stay in the country for a long time. There will be times when private transportation is unavailable, and you will have to commute. As I have learned through my past experiences, mastering the ways of Philippine public transportation requires trial and error. There are no updated and regulated transit maps in the country, as transit routes are regularly changing and inconsistent. The only information you can rely on is from others, your research of the area, and your experiences where you struggle to find a PUJ that goes through that place you really don’t know where.

A strong piece of advice, if you do not have the courage to ride with strangers in packed conditions as if you’re inside a can of sardines with wheels, don’t use public transportation. Get someone to pick you up, or hail a cab, instead.

The countless incompetent people of the 2010 Philippine National Elections

There are incompetent people everywhere. They could be your friends, your boss, or even yourself. Incompetence is born out of nowhere, and attacks without consent, and leaves quite some damage and angry people pumping their fists up in the air.

Yet in something as important and groundbreaking as the first automated Philippine elections, incompetent people are around, and they are as numerous as ever. People like…

The PCOS machines

The little counting machines that resemble small printers are used in the 2010 RP elections in order to accurately tally up the ballots fed into it. It works with such accuracy that it nullifies the 90% chance of a failed election through manual counting because 90% of Filipinos could not count well (even I couldn’t).

Like most other machines created by man, these PCOS machines have one flaw: they fragile, and will bitch you endlessly to either fix or replace it once it starts to break.

The thing is, the voters are too astonished with the primitive 20 year old technology of the PCOS machines, that they step up and, shall I say, touch it indefinitely. This includes inserting their ballots wrong, placing their index finger instead of their thumb when prompted with the thumb scanning process (mostly because they do not know what the thumb is), or just plain bashing the machine because they believe it’s a devilish contraption of Satan. Which brings us to…

The voters

It’s 11 o’clock in the morning, and you’re in a line chock full of people who’d like to either pleasure themselves by touching the PCOS machines or destroy it. Temperatures soon reach ape-shit insanely-high, and the tension is getting worse. What’s the best thing to do? If you thought, beating the shit of everyone you see, then you are truly a Filipino.

You see, heat has been scientifically proven by a bunch of old people in white suits living in sterile places to be quite a downturn for many a person’s mood. That’s why when cartoons want to portray someone being pissed, they draw the character fuming.

But hell, that’s probably natural, considering the long heat wave that’s terrorizing the country longer than the NPA or the Abu-Sayyaf. Speaking of terrorists, let’s go to…

The Security Personnel

Boom! Did you hear that? It sounds like a, wait a minute, an improvised explosive device! What do you do? If you decided just sitting back and watch people chunks flying all over the place from massive explosions, welcome to the Philippine Armed Forces!

As of the Philippine election day, all active military staff are reques…no, ordered to stand guard and make sure that the elections moves smoothly. Reserve forces are also deployed to make sure (almost) nothing goes wrong. But they’re doing a shitty job. Rivalries between political clans block the voters from doing their duties, while some freaks circumvent the delivery of the ballots and tries to take them away and burn them because, well, you guessed it, they think they’re the papers of the Devil.

Now there are these uniformed people with guns they call soldiers. They’re supposed to keep the situation safe by any means possible, just to make sure that the elections don’t get derailed faster than an coke-obsessed generic celebrity from Hollywood. Some dicks decided to sabotage the elections by blocking the voters. What do you do? Stand by and watch? What the hell is wrong with you soldier? You have a weapon, go and use it, shoot the bastards.

Verdict

The Philippine 2010 National Elections resembles what it seems to be some sort of city where you try to get to work to feed the mouths of your hungry children when some dick decides to steal your money in exchange for not getting stabbed in the gut. In the elections, you do your best to perform your duties as a member of a democratic nation, but there are just these people who, voluntarily or not, make the job more difficult than usual.

Why Earth hour is kinda not worth it

Earth Hour is about to commence worldwide tonight whenever eight and a half in the evening strikes at your timezone, and ends an hour later. In case you are either living under the rock or someone who thinks environmentalism is all hippy nonsense (good for you by the way), Earth Hour is a worldwide cultist environmentalist procession held every 27th of March. During this particular hour in the Earth time, some millions of retards who think the world is dying because of all the "greenhouse gases" and methane we fart out everyday is increasing exponentially.

Greenhouse gases in action.

While you were lost in my words, you are probably asking, "Why did people think of this idea?".

Some four years ago, a bunch of hippies environmentalists emerged from their 60's style cocoons called "Traveller" or "Stargazer" or whatever cheesy name pot-fueled individuals give to old Volkswagen vans painted with psychedelic colors. Emerging from their cramped homes, they looked up and were immediately blinded by the bright city lights. Shielding and averting their eyes from the barrage of lighting, they make a gesture of contact to whatever deity they made up and say, "Holy shit, that's bright! Need to do something about this..."

My eyes! They burn!

These environmentalists then packed together and thought of plans concerning this "problem". After paying various media companies with endless supplies of pot and manipulating their own media network, the National Geographic Network, they broadcasted mass propaganda of plans about turning off lights for a day on a particular day (March 27th), which they dubbed, "Turn the lights off for Christ's sake" hour.

Of course, people protested for turning lights off for 24 hours would be like forcing the US military to put their weapons down and let the terrorists ram suicide planes up their asses. The allotted time period for light-killing was reduced to 12 hours, then 6, then 3, and finally, they gave up and settled on an hour of darkness. Additionally, they changed the name of the said procession to "Earth Hour", because the previous name was inappropriate because of the vast variety of religions worldwide. People had to create variations for their respective faiths, which spawned horrible names such as "Turn the lights off for Mohammed's sake" and "Turn the lights off for my mom's sake".

One of the pioneers who penned the "Turn the lights off for my mom's sake" variation of Earth hour.

So why is it not worth it? Well the system of creating power goes this way: Power plants create power, distributors store them and send them to people. Now when you turn off every electrical device in your home for some time, the distributor will stop charging (no pun intended) you your electrical needs and will store the remaining charges (again, no pun intended) somewhere else. But the power producers and their power plants will not stop creating electricity, and will continue to burn fossil fuels (most of the time) and pump shit into the air.

Pumping shit into the air at its finest.

To make it simpler, it's only a handful of people who practice Earth Hour, and there are still people out there who needs the juice, maybe to engage in the lovely activity of Facebooking or the even more lovely activity of watching porn. If total Earth Hour would be implemented, that is, turning off all power production for an hour, the effects would be catastrophic. People who are thinking and denies hippy movements will go into total "holy shit it's dark" disorders and the porn industry will most likely topple for the lack of people watching because they turned off their computers.

My porn! It's gone!

Of course, the idea of total Earth Hour is very unlikely. However, when you examine Earth Hour in the whole, you'll find out that it doesn't do anything for the environment at all, it only makes everything bat-shit dark and may cause an exponential increase in battery, flashlight and mobile data charging sales.

So what will you do? Will you participate? Or not? As for me, I'm going to join in this commotion, since it's a growing trend and all humans (such as yours truly) have the utmost tendency to go where everybody else is at. I'm guessing that's the same reason why a lot of people join Facebook.

Above: Facebook, only less weirder.