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Cool forum thread on SomethingAwful.com on The Most Insignificant Moments In Gaming.
This one from Police Quest 2: The Vengeance, cracked me up:
EGA graphics, check. Mullets, check. Grossly mundane dialogue about going to the office, check.
And I used to play that game too. Ah, the memories.
Check out this awesome case mod for Xbox 360, in honour of Gears of War.
See more photos of the case mod here.
We just got the game ourselves in the studio and hot damn, it is one gorgeous game! For a while, we were looking for something nice to play on our Xbox 360 (we tried a few of the earlier titles and were not impressed at first). Then we started playing Fight Night Round 3, and boxed each other silly. That was good fun.
Then we started playing Burnout Revenge, which is an enjoyable crashing game (I love to crash into stuff and be rewarded for it). Wanton road carnage appeals to me.
Then we bought Gears of War, which totally made the Xbox 360 rock. We have a 42-inch plasma in the office and it looks even better on widescreen. It almost makes us play Soul Caliber 3 on PS2 less.
I took a Silver Arrow cab recently and I have to say, their new Skodas are very nice. They are way more spacious than they look from the outside and the driver who drove me told me something interesting about the cars they use.
Apparently, these Skodas are 2.5 litre diesels with a Turbo engine. You heard right, Turbo. I believe they are the only cabs in town that have a turbocharger.
"Once, there was this Mercedes cab at the airport, cut my lane dangerously, so I overtook him," the driver told me. "He tried to follow, and I let him. Just when he pulled up next to me, I tapped my accelerator and left him eating my dust. Hahaha!"
He went on to tell me how new drivers to the Skodas tend to get caught for speeding, because the cars have so much power and are so fun to drive.
"These days, when other cabs see our silver Skodas coming in their rear view mirrors, when we're on expressways, they just get out of the way, because they know our cars can run."
This morning, they aired our interview on the BBC World Service's Arts and Culture programme, Close Up, at around 10am.
This 30-minute programme is Part 2 of a two-parter about creativity on the internet. Part 1 aired last week on the 17th of November, Friday, with a teaser to tune in this week for Part 2, featuring, amongst others, the mrbrown show.
Their researcher and producers stumbled upon our little podcast in their research for the programme, and wanted to chat with us about the podcasts, which they told us they enjoyed very much.
Popagandhi, Ruby and I spoke to Emily Kasriel from their London studio over an ISDN line from their Singapore bureau's mini studio. After a few hiccups trying to get the ISDN line connected, we finally heard, "Hello, this is London." I still cannot get over the retro mixers made of wood.
You can tune in to the BBC at 88.9FM, or you can listen to Close Up online at its BBC page from the 24th of November till next Friday, the 1st of December 2006.
Just click on the icon on the top left of that page, the one with the triangle and the word "audio" in it.
One word of warning, the online edition requires you to have (wait for it, wait for it... aaaaaarrgh!) Realplayer.
Oh wait, I saw they just added the Download button on the right sidebar too, so you CAN get an mp3 version too. Go listen to it, it's good stuff, and I'm not just saying it because the mrbrown show is in it.
Excerpt:
The internet has changed every aspect of our lives - the way we shop and work, how we communicate and learn about the world. But hidden from the headlines another revolution is underway.
In this two part series presented by Emily Kasriel, we find out how the internet is unleashing a volume of creativity on a scale we have never seen before.
In this week's programme, as consumers become the producers we talk to some of the ordinary people who have risen to fame and whose creative talents have earned them all captive online audiences.
We hear from Singaporean podcasters, animators from Boston, a Shanghai filmmaker and an Icelandic photographer who tell us what the internet has done for their careers. That's all on this week's Close Up on BBC World Service.
Last Saturday, we dressed Faith and Isaac in their overalls because we got tickets (thanks to SDC) to watch Bob the Builder at the Singapore Expo. Isaac is a big Bob fan, and can name all the characters and sing the songs.
When we reached Singapore Expo, the place was unusually packed, with cops directing traffic. Must be the combination of the Bob show, a Buddha relic display, the Asia-Pacific Food Fair and the Penguin Book Fair that night.
I dropped the gang off then went to park the car. The wife told me on the way to Hall 1, Isaac struck up a "conversation" with Gurmit Singh's wife and toddler son. That boy of mine is such a chatterbox.
The show was ok, though a little short. It lasted less than an hour, but I guess it was long enough for the kids. They seemed to enjoy it, though I was a little disappointed that they only had a rather stiff Dizzy the Concrete Mixer (only his eyes moved) on stage, and none of the other well-loved vehicles like Roley, Scoop, Travis and Muck. The anthropomorphised work-vehicles only showed up as video images and not as live-action characters, which I thought was a little lame. Using video screens is a bit the "pian gina" (bluff children) leh. Unlike the Sesame Street one we watched last time, where they had many of the main characters on stage.
At one point, you could even see a triangle Play icon on the top left hand corner of the giant screens when a new video sequence containing the vehicles were cued to play. Eh, liddat how to suspension of disbelief?
Only Bob, Wendy (with Pilchard) and Spud the Scarecrow were on stage with two human characters in overalls I have never seen on the TV show. One was a girl called Prissy and the guy was called Harry the Handyman.
Ya, I can almost hear you asking that important question: "Who the heck is Harry the Handyman?"
Beats me, but I guess it was easier to have him around than building a live Roley or Muck.
But the kids didn't seem to mind. Faith bobbed to the tunes. The kids around me, my Isaac included, danced and sang along to the songs, right to the the finale, which was the Bob the Builder theme song. Even I sang that one. Who can resist shouting "Can we fix it?" and "Yes we can!"
We had plenty of time after the show (less than an hour, remember?) so we dropped by the merchandise store and I picked out a Roley diecast piece for Isaac and a VCD. Then we strolled over to the Asia-Pacific Food Fair and picked up some drinks and snacks. The hall was like a giant food court with all kinds of cooked and uncooked food for sale. We gave up waiting for the few miserable tables they set up inside, and ate standing up. By the time we left for home, we all smelled like a coffee shop, the Expo Hall's smells clinging to our clothes.
There was a minor commotion in the car ride home when Joy decided that she liked to play with the Isaac's new Roley too.
Maybe I should start teaching the boy a new song, "Can we share it?"
"Yes, we can!"
Via Digg:
Some poor sap spent 900 dollars on 3 original playstations NOT Three Playstation 3's. No Controllers or Games included. This seller has no soul. This buyer has no brains.
Poor fella. The seller damn evil, man. I love the copy at the bottom of the ebay page:
You're bidding on Sony Playstations, 3 of them.
Bid with confidence.
No Games on Controllers included. systems only.
And that hook:
HOT ITEM! Not PRE-ORDERED..HAVE IN HAND...All are American Systems
THERE IS NOWHERE TO FIND EVEN THE 20GB SYSTEMS THIS CHEAP....BUY THESE INSTEAD!
Sad. Just sad.
I was wondering where the traffic was coming from and why comments started appearing on an old post on the BBC Guy Goma incident, amd did a little checking. Turns out that PC World was running a piece entitled The 13 Most Embarrassing Web Moments and linked to my post on that funny incident.
So, welcome, readers from PC World!
Last week, Faith's class on the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Young Children (EIPIC) graduated. She had been in the program since she was two, and was the youngest kid in the school when she first joined the pioneer batch for the program. Now it was time to move up to the regular Special Education programme.
This was the first graduation ceremony we've ever attended for any one of our kids.
It was with mixed feelings that we watched the whole affair. Sure, we were proud of her, but we also knew she was not graduating in the strictest sense of the word. We doubt if we would ever see her graduate in the way regular kids do, and the ceremony was a sober reminder of this.
In many ways, children who attend our "many helping hands" (and "no central government hand") special school system just barely get by. When you reach 18, as a special needs person, you leave the system, and you're on your own.
My mom once asked the father of one of the older kids, "So what is your son going to do now that he is 18 and no longer able to attend Special School?"
"Stay home, lor," said the father, with a shrug.
Faith is still 13 years away from this fate, and hopefully, things will change by then. For now, we mark her education milestones differently, aiming for functional skills.
It is not for that A1 in the exams we look for, but little signs of victory, like learning to suck a straw (which is key to developing speech), dragging the maid by the finger to lead her to the toilet at 4am in the morning (the first signs of toilet training) and asking for her water by pointing (joint attention).
Mommy brought Faith backstage to get her into her robes and mortar board. Faith was in a giggly mood, which is how she deals with the sensory overload of the event.
"She cannot help herself, ok? Remember that, " I said to a slightly annoyed Mommy, as she struggled to dress Faith.
The mortar board did not fit her, it was too big and they only had one size.
One size obviously did not fit all.
Even the velcro did not help. The hat kept falling off her head. In the end, Mommy had to press down on Faith's head to keep the hat in place, holding it all the way till it was her turn to get her present from the school principal. The mortar board still fell off in the end, and we just laughed it off.
Still, the ceremony was an important symbol for most of the parents there. It brought some sense of closure for their special children, a milestone of sorts. And we were here to celebrate that.
There was a party after the ceremony, and while they were playing games in the auditorium, I waited with Faith near her favourite place in the whole school, the Hydrotherapy Pool, where she gets to swim once a week.
I looked at the water with Faith, then found myself whispering, almost to myself, "You know, Papa is very proud of you today."
Faith looked at me with a big grin on her face, and then burst out laughing, sending a few pieces of the char siew pau she was eating in my direction.
I picked off the white pieces of bun from my shirt, hair and face and laughed along with my little graduate, thankful for little mercies.
(A small Flickr set of the day)
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