Portal is on Steam for free until May 24th, so I took the opportunity to download all 3.8GB of it. I'm still somewhere in the test chambers, but it's a very interesting (yet creepy) game.

Also on the gaming front, I finally gathered enough courage to play my first placement match in Starcraft II. I did a quick build for a banshee, got one out with a few more on the way, and took out all my opponent's SCVs with my lone banshee. When he realised what was happening, he sent some marines over but I had cloaked it and pretty soon after he quit. Victory was mine!

Yesterday I barely spent any time at home. It was an early start with badminton for an hour with Surya, Tyler and Leighton, a quick lunch at home, then the Wellington Food Show at Westpac Stadium with Mel and John. There was a lot of tasty things to sample, including oils, vinaigrettes, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, pizza, bacon, sausages, smoked chicken, clams, mussels, ice cream, wine, fruit cider, cocktail mixes... We spent around three hours there, tasting and taking pictures, before heading out and going for dinner at this pub on Tinakori Road. Yum!

It has come to my attention that instead of playing "placement" matches, I have been playing "practice" matches.

Epic. Fail.

Sigh. So I have to do all five of my placement matches, which equates to more stress. Aughhh :(

In other news, that damn damage calculator is finally done, with the first iteration going live approximately 1.5 hours ago. The second iteration will include the option to override a Pokemon's type and ability (due to effects from Color Change, Camouflage, Conversion, or Skill Swap, Role Play and Trace), and probably fix whatever bugs people find. It's taken so long, but it looks hot, and the code is pretty damn clean too.

Not many exciting things happening at the moment, but I'll blog anyway for the sake of appearing up-to-date with everything.

Yesterday, at Charlotte's insistence, we went to Animates in Thorndon to admire the adorable animals there. It's weird when she does the baby talk thing to them. They had a few bunny rabbits there, and three kittens. So cute!

On Saturday, I met some workmates for yum char at Majestic Cuisine. I was so thrilled with the food (and uh, the wonderful social aspect, of course) that I forgot to take pictures. But oh well. Seems like everyone enjoyed it, so it might be grounds to organise another one in the future.

I won another Starcraft II game on Saturday night, but I was playing a noob so it wasn't really that satisfying. Playing online is so stressful, especially 1v1. I'm always freaking out over my build orders and what to do and micro-managing everything, I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to such torture everytime I play. Oh well.

Had another round of golf/driving range on Thursday, but I was rather off-form and didn't strike that many good hits this time round. Hopefully this will change for this week.

On the Psypoke front, I'm still trucking away at this damn damage calculator. What used to be three files doing the bulk of the calculation is now just over ten, all in neat classes and database-driven functions. The silhouettes for the three Generation V starters were released today, with the actual pictures suspected to be leaked sometime tomorrow. I'm kind of apathetic to it, but it would be nice to know, I guess.

So I impulsively pre-ordered Starcraft II on Thursday, under much pressure from my workmates, with the justification to myself as "you're going to get it anyway, you might as well get it now and have a free beta key". And yeah, I have a beta key now, so if you're keen for a game, just find me on MSN and I'll let you know my battle account name. Oh yeah, I won my very first game under my own Battle.net account. Kekekeke ^_^

Anyway, we went to the driving range after work on Thursday for some fun and stress-relief. It was good to get back into the swing of things (HAHAHA) but I woke up the next day with a few sore muscles, so hopefully with more practice, it shouldn't happen too often.

And finally, we went to Strawberry Fare last night after I jokingly suggested it at dinner, and I was surprised to see they'd changed their menu again!! They replaced the Lime Tart with a Plum Pie, so I tried that. It was okay, but I would definitely recommend the Lime Tart instead. Such a pity :(

Dave did some fundraising for Shave for a Cure on behalf of the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation. When we met him for dinner last night, we were disappointed he still had hair! So we conspired and pulled some strings (and more money) and offered an extra $100 to shave off the rest of his hair AND wax his eyebrows.

Good on ya, Dave.



See the gallery for more pictures.

A maintenance fault cut power to most of the CBD today, resulting in mass panic and chaos as we could no longer do our work. As a result, I declared marshall law with my nerf gun and went around shooting people, only to face a posse of rogue bandits armed with their own guns. Nevertheless, their inferior spring-loaded guns proved futile against my pump-action gun.

With nothing else to do, we hunted down a ping pong ball, a two paddles, and set up the table on level 9.

People have been giving me a lot of problems lately. Luckily I've managed to cope, but goodness knows how many more I can take. Probably a lot more.

Geometry Problem

I have a square of size x. Inside the square sits a blue circle of radius x/2, the largest possible circle that sits inside of the square. At the corners, I have four smaller green circles, the largest possible that will fit in the space there. What is the area not covered by a circle (i.e., the red area)?

Timing Problem
I have two lengths of rope. The ropes burn at non-linear rates, but they will each burn entirely in one hour. Using only these ropes and your choice of a tool to ignite them, how do you measure out 45 minutes?

Hat Problem
There's a competition in which you and two friends decide to enter. The prize is $1 million. The rules are as follows:
- Each of you is randomly given a hat which is either red or blue. There are an infinite number of hats so the chance of getting a red or blue hat is exactly 50%.
- You cannot see the hat you are given, but you can see the hats that your two friends have.
- To win $1 million, the three of you must simultaneously call out the colour of the hat on their own head. No other forms of communication (signalling, blinking, pointing, flailing, etc) are permitted.
- You are allowed to pass, however, if all of you pass, you will forfeit. You will also lose if one of you gets it wrong. To pass, you will say "pass" instead of your hat colour.
Now that you know the rules of the competition, you must formulate a strategy that will maximise the chances of you winning the $1 million. You are allowed to discuss this strategy with your friends beforehand. What is the best strategy, and what are your chances of winning?

How to handle grammatical errors on your forum

Signs of Easter approaching were present approximately two months ago, almost immediately after Valentine's Day, when the supermarkets swapped all the pink hearts for hot cross buns and chocolate rabbits. While chocolate, eggs and rabbits are all great things, I wish some people would remember that it's also about Jesus dying on the cross for the world's sin, and about his miraculous resurrection three days later.

Anyway, my parents decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to visit Wellington while I would be away in Auckland, so I epic-cleaned the flat and even bought some air freshner for my room since they said they'd be staying a night at the flat. I met them for one day last week and we went for a really good dinner (La Metropolitain) and dessert (Haha, GUESS), and the next day I was due to fly back to Auckland already while they planned to spend the day around Martinborough.

Thursday came by and I escaped work early with Surya and took the bus to the airport, got to Auckland and picked up the van that Dad had left at long-term parking and met my CompSci friends at Momo's. So awesome catching up with them...and trying to convince them to download my iPhone games ¬.¬ Looks like everyone's in pretty good spirits, except Bob who had been working retardedly long hours and was totally crazy that night.

Was picked up by Reuben on Friday and headed to church to prepare for camp. About an hour later we arrived on site safely, despite having to travel in John's canine-aroma car. The rest of the afternoon was spent in random team building activities, my favourite being the "cross the river" one because I got to boss everyone around. Night time fell and thus began the first few games of Mafia...

Saturday was all about activities. First up for team Lightning Bolt was the confidence course, which was more like an army training run through mud. I'm not phased about getting dirty but I didn't really have enough clothes to change so I was quite hesitant about it, especially the last one which was basically "submerge yourself in a pool of putrid mud". The second activity was climbing a cargo net about 15 meters high, which wasn't too hard, and the third activity for the day was archery.

We had orienteering on Sunday morning and mudsliding on Sunday afternoon, Reuben and I manned the barbeque for dinner and then we had some guy bonding time at night. We built a campfire, debated about Superman and Spiderman, choreographed a tribal dance and had some endurance contests, and when the girls had finished their make-up session, we gathered round the fire and made some smores.

There was much Mafia each night, I must say it's so much more entertaining when there's lots of people, and each session saw at least 20 people playing. I tried out some new rules: a zombie that resurrects after two nights but can be killed again after that, and two lovers (represented by separate cards) who are intertwined in life and death - when one dies, the other does too! Overall, the games were well played with the citizens winning the first few (when there were only 6 mafia) and the mafia winning the final few (when we played with 7 mafia). I have to say though, the last game of Mafia that we played was quite possibly the worst citizens game I've seen - the sniper shot the detective, the angry mob lynched both their doctors and at the end of the game, six of the seven mafia were still alive.

Srs mafia is srs.

Monday was quite rushed, after leaving camp a bit late, we had lunch at church before I caught up with my sister for an hour, then rushed to the airport and made it onto the plane before promptly passing out for 90% of the flight. Safely at home, I made it to 9pm before crashing out for the night.

It's been an awesome Easter weekend. I met some new people and caught up with familiar faces. I bossed people around and held the balance of life and death in my hands as a bloodthirsty overlord. I pushed my endurance to new limits, but probably because I'm more kiasu than anything.

I had a great time, and I'm sad that it was all over so quickly.

On an administrative note, I've included a button to share my blog posts and gallery pictures on That Site Which I Refuse To Join.

I'm sitting here in front of my computer, making the most of what little time I have left before Friday appears.

Now I'm all for Fridays, Friday is the best day of the working week (apart from Spicy Food Tuesday, but anyway), last Friday we did the weekly Starcraft II Beta Key draw and I won! It means I got a Beta Key to use, for a week, so I could play online with all the gosu Korean people. And while my winning record wasn't too flash, I learned heaps and got a real feel of this Battle.net stuff (It scares me). Friday has just ticked over and it means I have to get up for work in 8 hours.

Anyway, in the past week, there was the Rugby League 3 launch party at the regular Sidhe alcohol establishment, the Red Square, where we had set up three Wii consoles with the greatest game of all on each of them. I'm very proud of it, and I played it a few times...and even taught other people how to play. And yes, I did point out the things I did, and I even got a picture with my RL3 self (I look nothing like me).

Sunday was Surya's birthday dinner, which was a simple meal at Arashi, followed by dessert at Strawberry Fare (sound familiar? deja vu?), where I finally got that Chocolate Bleeding Heart and oh it was so good, the warmth and deliciousness just melted down your oesophagus omnomnomnom.

Busy weekend as well coming up. Crashtopher is visiting from Brisbane, so it'll be good to catch up with him, Pete's alcohol-fuelled birthday extravaganza is on as well, and finally it's only a week before I'm up in Auckland for Easter. Yay!

Firstly, the fabled remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver are out in the US today with the Australian and New Zealand release 10 days later. Of course this means it's busy time for me and the Psypoke staff Mike and Stephen. In the past few days, our HeartGold/SoulSilver section has had several guides added to it, including game maps, TM/HM locations, a walkthrough for 16 badges, and touched up a lot of naming changes to various pages around the place. It has been a very productive weekend!



Shatter, Sidhe's revolutionary brick-breaking game, is out on Steam, with my name making a brief cameo under the Special Thanks to the original Shatter team. Go and get it!



And finally, on Thursday, the long awaited Rugby League 3 is out for the Nintendo Wii. Featuring slick menus, awesome player and team customisation, and of course some classic rugby league action using the totally unembarassing Wii Remote controls, why WOULDN'T you want this game? (sorry Americans, this game is not for you)

Should have sent a poet. T_T

(I'm playing the beta if you haven't figured it out)

The Eigenvalue is off!

Today is the 15th and final day of Chinese New Year, and I thought it would be appropriate to share a soppy love song at church this morning, so two weeks ago I recruited Jono and phonetically taught him some Mandarin and today, with all our friends watching eagerly and the church congregation not knowing what to expect, the two of us sang Tong Hua.

So nervewracking. I actually stuffed up in the middle of the song but thank goodness I managed to hit the right note to keep going.

Anyway, last night we were at Arashi celebrating the "end of Chinese New Year" ¬_¬ and it was just great for everyone to get together and catch up over a nice meal and an awesome dessert.

Strawberry Fare has three new desserts on their menu! I wanted to try the Chocolate Bleeding Heart which was chocolate pudding with Baileys in the centre, but unfortunately they had run out so I tried the Lime Tart which was absolutely delicious. Beth tried the Flourless Cake, which was a gluten free chocolate cake with some berries, much like the Raspberry Drenched Cake.

We were approached by a lady from a nearby Hen's Night table who was seeking a random guy for the bride-to-be to kiss and Dave volunteered, with hilarious results. We continued to analyse Dave's love life using the wine bottles, wine glasses and salt and pepper shakers to illustrate various people.

Last weekend I was up in Auckland for Hsin-Yao's wedding, so it was really good catching up with all my school mates at the same time. I figured I would leave the people photos for someone else to handle (I'm looking at you, Mat) so all you will see on my blog are food photos. You'll also notice we went to Sylvia Park to kill time between the church service and the reception, and I stumbled upon EB's shelf of Rugby League 3 games! \o/

On Sunday, I randomly turned up at KCC and attended the young adults bible study, before having Chinese New Year dinner with family and friends, before an 11 hour bus back to Wellington...

Happy Chinese New Year to you all, and wishing you wealth and prosperity in the year of the tiger! A bunch of us from Sidhe had yum cha at where else but Majestic Cuisine, where we proceeded to devour plates of dumplings, rice noodles, tarts and buns. Of course, I made everyone have the durian tart, and much to their surprise, it was tolerable! It was unlike anything else they had ever eaten...

It was good that Chinese New Year was yesterday and not today, because today was Epic Fail Monday. Fail #1: car rear ends another car in moderately heavy traffic outside the bus stop. Fail #2: I spent the entire day trying to get a build done to our level designer, only to have the machine have a major spazz and refuse to work. Sigh.

Nevertheless, I did manage to complete a build and deliver it, at approximately 6.45pm. It means I wasted the whole day on this instead of finishing my prototype which needs to be done by Friday... SIGH.

Last weekend was the famous Wellington Rugby Sevens tournament, so of course the city was buzzing with lunatics in crazy costumes and whatnot - fortunately I boarded myself up at home like the antisocial programmer I am, and had a quiet weekend.

Best Sevens costume I saw:



It almost felt like summer on Sunday, so we went up to beach at Waikanae and had a jumping good time.



In other news, Flick Kick Field Goal, which is an American Football-themed version of Flick Kick Rugby and Aussie Rules was put on the free app list to coincide with the Super Bowl in the United States. Downloads skyrocketed, with the game reaching #2 in both the US and New Zealand top free apps! That's the one where I'm listed as the only programmer ^_^

Whew.

I showed off my holiday photos at work on Friday, before rushing off to meet Chris at the library to embark on our seven hour journey across the North Island. We only just missed the curfew at Mystery Creek, but we were fortunate to have accomodation in nearby Cambridge for Friday night. We set out for Parachute early on Saturday morning to make it for morning worship.

The weather was fantastic on Saturday, with a light breeze and plenty of cloud cover to shelter us from the blazing sun. It was still very warm but pleasantly so, unlike many Parachute weekends before. Nevertheless, I made the most of the heat and purchased two Danish ice creams that day. Awesome.

Saturday night's big line up included the eccentric Family Force Five and the popular Switchfoot, before the birthday celebrations of the 20th Parachute festival began. There were free drinks and ice creams, fireworks, lots of singing and dancing, and the atmosphere was wild and electrifying. We decided to skip Underoath for Nathan King in the Palladium, a decision I did not regret after hearing some feedback about the type of music Underoath play.

And then on Sunday morning...it began. The rain came and drenched the entire campsite, causing some minor floods. Fortunately, none of the tents took on major water, but the huge inconvenience of having everything soaking wet was a pain. We attended morning worship armed with umbrellas, and retreated hastily to the tents after the sermon.

We only emerged later for Late 80s, and they were fantastic - finally playing some songs I knew (I'm Yours <3333) as well as some classics like Zoot Suit Riot and Living on a Prayer. It was still raining at the end of Late 80s, so we congregated in one tent and played Mafia (YAY) until dinner time, when we equipped ourselves with wet-weather gear once more and headed to the mainstage for the epic Sunday night show.

And epic it was. The rain cleared slightly, allowing us to enjoy such acts as Steve Apirana who was clearly the most unexpected outstanding musician that weekend. As the Parachute Band took stage again, the rain intensified and the crowd began to diminish, but the strong endured until Hillsong United appeared on stage.

I was pretty sulky all this time because I didn't really know many of the songs, and I'm not the biggest fan of Hillsong songs because of the repetition, and it was pouring wet and I was cold. But as Joel Houston began singing... "A thousand times I've failed", I stood to my feet, defying the wind and the rain (and the lightning) and joined the crowd in singing From The Inside Out.

It was epic.

There is something about singing at the top of your voice with a thousand-strong crowd in stormy weather. I can't think of any other word to describe it. It was epic. The adrenaline of standing against the elements of nature coupled with the power of the song and the resonance of the crowd...simply epic.

We were blessed to have a fine day on Monday to pack up our gear. We had lunch at the infamous 4th-form-camp Burger King where I unexpectedly met somewhere whom I have not seen in eight years, before departing for our seven hour journey back to Wellington.

When I look back over the weekend's events, I think of how there are so many people who are ten years younger than me, I think of the crazy messages you hear from speakers, I think about the excessive choruses that worship bands sing and of course the retarded weather.

But despite all of this, I had a really good time. Thanks for a great weekend, Parachute.

A Flash Puzzle Platformer that Bob linked me to while I was bored. Pretty cool idea.

My thoughts on Avatar.

Warning: spoilers follow. If you wish to proceed, click here.