http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?automodule=blog Community Blog List Syndication Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:35:59 -0500 noreply@neowin.net (Neowin Forums) IP.Blog 60
Creation is such a delicate concept. Indeed even I myself struggled to accept that something could not have come out of nothing. For every product, there is an inventor (or more, statistically speaking). However, all that causality is framed in a psychogenic, humanistic framework. A child comes from, at least, the mother. An item comes from, in part, the manufacturer. A concept originates from, at minimum, an ideologist. "At least, "in part", "at minimum" are cautionary phrases that signify the collaborative efforts of natural or artificial achievements. A woman cannot conceive on her own. A manufacturer cannot produce without a design plan. An ideologist cannot theorise without observations of previous suggestions. All of these tentative examples point to the logic of a supreme Creator that gave birth to the origin of Life, as postulated and cherished by the organised religions of past and present. Something must not come out of nothing. By logical extension, one must query the origin of the Creator as I often posed the question to a religious friend. It is interesting to note, but at large irrelevant to our topic, that despite the differential doctrines of existing religions, the respective followers possess a lot of similar characteristics as well as their answers to fundamental ideas: "God is beyond us so we cannot fully understand Him, let alone ask where He comes from. It is out of the question". It was the answer, to their best effort to call it an "answer", that I was consistently awarded with and often I walked away once again having another enigma that my finite life may not hope to resolve: religious logic is illogical. In favour of their tenets, the religious bodies disparage science as a failure to explain the origin of the universe and never fail to perpetuate the notion of everything has a creator. Yet they are happy to accept to the Creator of the Creator is out of the question. For all it's worth, it is an insult to our intellect.

While organised religions were, are and will never be able to impress me with their so-called "truths", science itself ironically offers the insights into the existence of God that I have ardently desired to observe, at least conceptually. The early trigger was the astronomical detection of "dark matter". For a high school student such as myself at the time, it was an easy thing to absorb the gist of the problem. It was a compelling proof that there was something really beyond us because dark matter did not interact with our known matter. Thus my firm grip on atheism loosened. It only took a few tertiary years in science to annihilate my atheist soul. Life began to unfold in a more complex and meaningful manner but its source is a strikingly and intrinsically simple mechanism: Life is not deterministically but probabilistically driven. This notion was first explicitly endorsed by quantum mechanics. Then extending this concept to biology, I discovered that evolution also confirmed the principle. Afterwards, upon applying this belief on the finite areas of various scientific disciplines, it became increasingly convincing. Even in daily life, for the things that are deterministic in classical mechanics and even in human perception, probability is the underlying force: when you push a ball with the best possible accuracy and dexterity, there is a low probability that it will stray out of the intended course (the ball collapsed due to a previously punctured hole, for example); when you cook rice, it won't definitely turn out right for consumption - what happens is that the probability for it to be appropriate for our meal is very high although there is a minor chance that it won't (a malfunction in the rice cooker, for instance). In unifying this principle with the theory of Big Bang, my idealism about Life was complete at least in its basic structure: at the beginning of time (and it is nonsense to ask what happened before time began just like you don't ask what an item looked like and behaved before it was actually conceived, designed and manufactured), the Big Bang occurred (the physics at and some fraction of a second after this will need to be solved by experts) and Life evolved in the currently accepted manner. The first organism on Earth (without dwelling too much into the "extraterrestrial aliens' visit" theory) was a successful integration of various biochemical signals after a long series of trials (much like in a culture dish, if you put two biological compounds together, they might interact in a way that is not normally expected like the discovery of penicillin). Darwinian evolution immediately took place and led to our current state of existence.

Quite surprisingly, my belief actually has a name which I've recently discovered: naturalistic pantheism. Therefore God to me is just a notion. The Creator is the underlying mechanism of life itself. I tend to dislike oversimplification but this simplistic ideals are attractive in numerous senses. The extradimensional space, the unexplored matter, etc. are just consequences of an intrinsic evolution of Life with its mechanistic drives. That Life itself is God.]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:35:49 -0500 lassekongo has been a prominent name in my list. I like his skills, his products and his inspirations. However, at times I want a visual style that has the right number of colours, the right kind of integrated "look and feel". In short, it am attracted to a flawless, colourful scheme. If you are a fan of tornado5 (formerly em3), you know what I am alluding to: it is his last attempt in the Luna Element series - the beautiful v5.1 Blue.

I am aware that tornado5 is also a Neowin member so if you're reading this, I would like to thank you for your marvellous work. Every time I find a new attraction, I always find myself revert back to the good old LE 5.1 Blue in the end. I don't know why. Perhaps I couldn't find a single flaw in the design. Perhaps I love the colours, the glassy but not overbearing tone. Even though I am quite disappointed by Ambient because it is simply too bright for my desktop (tornado5 has a good reason for this), I have to admit that LE 5.1 Blue is rightly the best custom visual style for the aging Windows XP. I don't expect to find his inputs in the Win7 skinning arena soon because I am considering Linux for my daily computing and WinXP to run legacy programs such as the games I am currently playing. But time will tell. I might obtain Win7 in the future and stumble upon his name once more. For all I know, I already have a definitive choice to customise the look of my WinXP desktop after every reformatting. Choices are great and I am glad I found the best.]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:38:34 -0500
The campaign, is probably the best it has been throughout all other Call of Duty's. I find the missions very clever and always something new, except for the odd scene that I apparently played twice? (the scene where you are inside of the downed chopper).

Some of the scenery of the maps was very, very well done with full detail. Some of the stages just looked amazing on HDTV, while others were decent.

I found the campaign a little too easy, way easier than World at War, which took me almost 2 weeks to complete veteran, but I am still stuck on one map to finish the game.

I found myself "cheating" on all of the maps, finding a glitch in the game that allows you to basically run through veteran. The trick is just to run as far as you can, and basically the enemies will disappear.

With that done, I was able to run through the campaign on veteran in a total of two days, making this one of the easiest games to complete.

The special ops portion of the game was a great addition, making for a great replacement for "Nazi Zombies", something I wish they actually copied over, just because of how fun that was. The special ops, difficult at parts was interesting to do something different for a chance, but actually beat this in a day. I found it funny that all of the "Echo" (Heavy) category missions were possibly the easiest compared to others.

The multiplayer is fun, don't get me wrong, but I feel as if something is missing from the game... There seems to be a little too much added to the game, there always seems to be something in the air, making this game almost impossible to be tactical. This game basically turned into a run and hip-fire game (Spray and Pray).

I don't know what it is, something i can't quite put my finger on just yet, but the game is missing something that is taking away from me absolutely loving the game. I hope you all enjoy the game, I just hope that multiplayer changes some how, because I almost prefer to go back to World at War for the online aspect of it.


With that being said, I am a 20 or so intel items away from unlocking all 1000 gamer points.



I give Call of Duty: Modern Warfare a 9/10 ]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:52:35 -0500
So, we are taking control of our computing, and going an embedded route, where we have the OS loaded on a CF card (not prone to vibrations and such) and can be easily pre-setup by us, rather than a standard PC OEM install with Google toolbar and other such unnecessary annoyances. Our software will be already set up on it, and ready to go when we receive the units from our integrator.

There are other changes I would like to implement to remove the need for licensing (and accompanying restrictions) with Microsoft. But that is lower on my priority list at the moment. Sort of a "phase 2", if you will.]]> Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:17:27 -0500 Is it me or is the Pope a modern Pharaoh? Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:30:27 -0500
For the past few days, I have committed most of my time to the world of MMORPG. Leaving aside the fact that I was procrastinating in face of the two exams looming on the horizon, I was able to maintain an appreciable amount of general and specialised reading. However, when I started to compose a short response on this board, I found myself at a loss for expressions. After I successfully amalgamated the fragments of vocabulary and literary cohesion, the results were sadly not very different from something of an inchoate attempt at coherence. It struck me that I haven't written anything constructive for a while: my recent writing was symptomatic of a rudimentary form of literature.

Like most humans, I instantly associated this debacle to my excessive gaming. To illustrate the point, whenever I started to formulate a sentence, my mind quickly dissolved into a void where thoughts were scarce while the images of the game I played were abundant. Added to the detriment was the chase for the right words in the right context. At the time of writing this blog entry, I sometimes still feel the vacuous mind of yesterday.

Habitually, I sat down and pondered about the other possibilities. It dawned on me after a few laborious minutes of mental analysis: the fact that I haven't reinforced my writing through practice. It was quite amusing when that conclusion arose, partly because I quickly blamed the gaming instead of my lack of commitment to refining my writing skills, partly because I equally moved to establish a more direct, plausible causation of my dilemma.

"More direct and plausible" because a neurological function improves with habituation. The absence of reinforcement drives the system downwards and eventually eliminates the signals that sustain the function. In this case, it is the ordered, logical and highly coherent writing that I failed to endorse by virtue of negligence. The activity of gaming in itself is an indirect cause as it favours the absence of practice. In a sense, it is acceptable to say that online gaming can impair my literary aptitude but a precise treatment of the situation is manifested in "lack of practice due to online gaming impairs my writing ability".

Nevertheless, it is an awful simplification of the scenario. I do find it probable that online gaming can act in a way to diminish my writing capacity. While the game itself provides a chat box which I love to spam, most of the game relies on visual and motor coordination. What this could do (I think) is avert my neurological mode from expressive literature such as writing to a visual art form such as examining the animated images and its related elements. It is tempting to hypothesise that one's brain assumes a certain mode when an imposing task is presented. With the habituation theory, I could say that the prolonged exposure to the visual art dominates the region of my brain that is responsible for switching on the appropriate pathway in order to meet a specific task. Thus, when writing is called into demand, the system is slow to act because of the residual commands of the visual art mode. How this might work at the molecular level is beyond me and as far as I know, no one has fully worked out the underlying mechanism of the formation of percepts and concepts.

But it is an interesting thought. Perhaps someone has explored this idea already, as in the case of naturalistic pantheism which I happened to conceive on my own a while back only to find out it's a century old concept.

Have a nice day~
(and don't forget to set the alarm if you have work the next day)]]> Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:55:37 -0500
I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes.  We are going to wait a few years until she is done with college, or I deploy.  I can't wait for that day to come.  So far, that has been the best part of my life, asking her and her saying yes.

I got rid of my 1987 Toyota Supra Turbo, finally.  I had it posted on a local automotive website and a guy asked if I would trade it for a 1993 Subaru Impreza.  I took the trade and could not have been happier.  I now own two practical vehicles.

I've been pretty much on active duty orders since I graduated from tech school, I've barely been home 4 weeks total since I graduated.  And now I was just offered 60 days of active duty orders to fill in for a civilian until they find a replacement, so that's on my mind tonight.  I don't have a full time job in the civilian world so I've been taking as many orders for days working for my unit so I have money to live on when I'm not on base.

]]> Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:09:45 -0400 this article which is sort of nothing new to us these days.

In a novel sense, this piece of news no longer levitates the transient, radical Islam dislike in me. Instead, it makes me think of the reality: the waves of hostility that are targeted at Muslims. These extremists constantly use their God (Allah) as a way to associate the "calamities" to divine punishment on the "filthy" people of the West. In this particular article, the accused didn't think twice about his example of the Black Saturday which claimed well over 100 innocent people who never supported the war in the Middle East and yet had to die at young ages, and their relatives scarred and now struggling to rebuild new lives. What is devastating is that his single voice, not that of the Muslims who truly want to have a peaceful life, echoes in the media. For every radical claim comes a radical reaction. The result is less than desirable: Muslims are generally victimised by their own fundamental minority.

What constitutes the blasphemy is precisely this statement that originates in Christianity, but for the religious realm, the idea is universal: Thou Shall Not Take the Name of Thy God in Vain.

Whatever the purpose, whatever the intention, whatever the justification, their claim that Allah punished the people of the Black Saturday directly demonises the name of their own God in the faith of the worldwide community at large. A benevolent God does not punish people who want to live in peace.]]> Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:37:31 -0400
I hope you like it.

====================

“There is a wall, reinforced by alloys of the toughest kind, planted in the sturdiest soil, literally unthinkable to make even a small scratch on. There is a spear, made out of the strongest material, veneered by the rarest cloth, literally unbreakable. On a solemn day, one attempts to drive the spear through the wall. One of them breaks.

The wall is fate and the spear is love.”



The moon has set sail a mile across the starry sky. The whisperings of spring have slowly faded away. The sights of lively beings have started to blur. Leaves fold, flowers cease to bud, leaving the cold air whipping wildly like a caged animal running astray. Silence soon overtakes the vicinity of the pond whose surface remains calm, yet occasionally disturbed by the haphazard draughts coursing in the night. Along the rim of the water, a figure quietly traces its boundary. That it seems, as the attentive eye will vigorously affirm, the water grows larger by a drop with each step the girl takes. It’s been a long night, not in terms of hours, but months, or years. There have never been days for so long. Ah, she remembers them, though. Just faintly. Then nothing. It turns into the night again.

A chilly wind races past, chased by a trail of petals weaving scrupulously into a strip of bright pink lining the dark sky above her. As she raises her eyes to see, her skin cringes, her heart pounds hastily. An air of warmth surges from behind, then wraps around her body.

“Promised and waiting to be forgiven”, the voice blows gently into her ear.

Like a dream, or perhaps it really is. The distant pasts begin to creep back into her mind. She didn’t like him then. It was someone else that she pursued. For years, he never gave up. So one day, she decided to give him a chance. A chance well bought. It was a decision she never regretted. Then he had to leave, into the war that craved for lives and nourished deaths. In the final kiss that saw his departure, the man made a promise to return to her. They were young and so was their hope. As fate would have it, they were rewarded for their perseverance. When they again met, after five long years, her tears of joy burst into the searing drops of heartache. He was engaged to a wealthy young girl. It was his parents’ dying wish – the wish that was made while he was in battle. Once more, he made her a promise – the same promise five years earlier. She stayed silent, then wiped off the tears bleeding from her heart and replied understandingly: “You have kept your promise. You have returned safely”. As she turned away, the footsteps grew heavier each time their distance increased. He didn’t chase after her. She didn’t look back. The sun had set, consigning her life to an eternal stretch of night.

Waking up from the dream, she turns to catch the voice that was the missing melody of the fading tune of her heart. Their eyes meet, once more, both weathered by grief and pain yet sustained by hope and desire. The gap between their eyes shrinks further until their lips touch. Tears stream down their cheeks and fuse into one before hitting the ground.

Above them, the strip of petals disperses, revealing the full moon that lights up the night.

It is night no more.

Lam Nguyen, 2009

]]> Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:12:44 -0400
Why do we have to be limited to 24 hours??!?]]> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:57:49 -0400