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Got a 1-Up two days ago. (Not today, dear friends.) Though most of the fun was yesterday, with the movie and whatnot. Friends make everything fun.

Oh and about At World's End? Don't listen to people who say it had a bad ending. The ending was perfect, because it reassures us that Jack will always be the same, free-spirited soul who's perpetually two steps ahead of everyone else, while simultaneously avoiding a complete and unrealistic happy ending. (Face it, life's tough.) Incidentally, if you ever do go and watch it, wait until the credits are over before leaving. There's an after-credits scene which is fairly important, plot-wise.

On another note, there are some people out there who have apparently forgotten how to have fun in an attempt to be "mature" or "superior" or whatever the elitists call it these days. I sincerely pity them.

Here's to eternal childishness and a love of the sillier things.

What She Said

From the Thursday edition of The Amazing Super Zeroes:


"Well, ever since we got upgrades in our powers, I've been getting these splitting headaches. I only just realized that this was due to me hearing thousands of voices at once."

"For whatever reason, they seem to have subsided, though I doubt it will last for long. Also, Emo is making a lot of noise and it reverberates throughout the entire building. What's up with that? It seems like he never leaves the training room, he just stays in there, blowing up just when I start to go to sleep. Is he in trouble? And I saw Rosetta on the way down... what is up with her new outfit? It's a bit skanky."

"Is Kid around? Somehow, he seems to be able to understand me. Maybe he could translate all this."


Huh. No way, Allie.

Update VI: My Favourite Number is Six

At least, it used to be. You know, back when favourite numbers were important. Nowadays I keep it only through tradition.

I had coffee yesterday - Ice-Blended Mocha from the Café Galilee in the school library - for what will be the last time. Within minutes I had developed symptoms alarmingly close to drunkenness, and felt twitchy all the way until bedtime. This is the second time in a month coffee has caused me to act strangely (the last time it was a can of Nescafé), so I'm officially swearing off the beverage from now on.

The Deegans amuse yet again, with Mrs. Deegan demonstrating that, in spite of her powerful magical abilities and influential post as a school headmistress, she is and always will be a mother. "What have I told you about fights with strange visions?"

My Final Year Project report submission deadline was pushed back today - just when I'd finished it. So all those sacrificed weekends and not posting on BAG and deciding not to take part in the RP comic-strip competition was all to naught.

AAAARGH!

I'm alright now.

To the Invisible People

Dear lurkers,

Please do not act surprised. Of course I know you are there. The distinct scent of invisibility, the winds which shift when there are none to shift them, the inexplicable increases in my profile views - could there be any doubt? But then I am a lurker too, and I understand your ways.

Therefore I dedicate this, my 50th blog post, to you the invisible people, the silent supporters inhabiting the fringes of society. You may be reserved in speech and restrained in action, but it is your quiet approval which suppresses conflict ere it has a chance to begin. It is an important and unfulfilling role you play, and for this I salute you.

Now that's over with... Ditch those shadows already! The world can't talk to you if it doesn't know you exist!

Regards,
Sharkie

Past and Gone

I looked at the bottom of the main forum page at BZP today. So many members turning seventeen. I turned seventeen on the boards two years ago. They would have been fifteen then.

I feel... old.

Goodbye, pillar of the old guard. It won't be the same without you.

Escape the White Chamber

I'd first like to say that the opening date of At World's End is a clear sign from the powers that be that I should buy tickets to watch it, as opposed to waiting for it to come to Star Movies.

My classmates introduced me to the brilliant White Chamber, a point-and-click puzzle game in which you must escape an isolated chamber McGyver-style, using whatever items that may have been carelessly left in the room. Whoever set up the White Chamber must have been particularly careless, because among other things the player can find a crowbar, a mysterious remote control, a manual (with pictures!) and a Yamaha motorcycle.

Part of the challenge with the game is learning the rules. In a real situation if someone were locked in such a room, their first action would be to pick up the table and pitch it through the garage window. Naturally, that is not an option here, and certain items can only interact with each other in certain ways and under certain conditions. The game also contains an element of the supernatural (or perhaps really advanced technology), so there really isn't any way to define what is possible or impossible.

That is not to say that there is no help for the player. Other than the opening scene, the game is marked by almost complete silence, broken only by sounds triggered by certain actions and snatches of an eerie tune which plays only when an important item is present in the scene. Once an item is in the inventory, it can be examined for a short sentence describing it; examining certain areas in the room will also trigger the display of messages, supposedly from the player talking to themselves, which serve as useful hints.

The creator of White Chamber, Toshimitsu Takagi, also created a number of other rooms, including the original Crimson Room, the creepy, grostly Viridian Room, and the simplistic - but no less challenging - Blue Chamber. However, in spite of being the most recent, White Chamber is possibly the easiest - the items which can be picked up interact in the most predictable ways, and there are no items hidden in obscure, hard-to-reach locations as in the Crimson Room. The greatest challenge is in learning how to perform certain actions, but once this is achieved it is merely a matter of putting things together. Perhaps this is what makes this game more successful as a logic puzzle - there is less emphasis on blind luck, and more on thinking things through.

As a whole it's a great game, especially for the puzzle-minded. I'd recommend it to anyone with a few free days to burn - and you'll need those few days, because once you're immersed in the White Chamber, its mysteries will haunt you until you figure the way out.

White Chamber requires the latest version of Adobe Flash Player to run. Get it here.

Update V: Amazing Days

The first "Bionicle Going Downhill" topic which was about the exact opposite.

Absent friends have returned. Here's to their health and happiness.

If "schizont" wasn't so malarial, it would be the most aristocratic word on the planet. Say it now - notice the automatic superior tone when you pronounce the -zont?

Unless of course you're mispronouncing it as "sigont" or "sheejoint," in which case you're entirely missing out on the class. You wouldn't believe the sort of pronunciations my friends come up with. I'd understand with something like trypanosomiases or Plasmodium falciparum, but when we have "yield" turning into "yat"... And how about that classmate whose best rendition of my name was "Primus?"

For the record, my name is not Primus.

Magic Bread!

If I was there, I'm sorry to say I'd laugh too. Poor Saehral.

I wonder how elves live, if all that looks like "magicks". Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Clarke's Third Law), but that implies that one side is relatively lower on the technology tree.

The Toothpick Vampire Candirú

All of a sudden, politeness is no longer the best reason to avoid using the river as a toilet.

Eeew.