It has been rather uneventful lately, nothing much significant to blog about. Yawn.

I had my O Levels English Orals on thursday, and as far as I’m bothered to concern about, it went alright, just that I have a weird feeling that I didn’t say enough crap; mainly ‘cos the examiner asked at the end of it whether I have anything to add on, which, I heard, wouldn’t be asked if the examiners had heard enough crap. It wasn’t a fun experience before that either, being locked up in the Waiting Room and falling asleep just before my O Levels. =____=

To add a little more insignificance to this already insignificant entry, I’m bothered about why Mrs 103 incredibly didn’t give any homework this weekend, something which definitely isn’t normal.

Most insignificant of all, was a stick gettin’ heated up and related yada yada. What happened was that, eh, I’m not entirely sure either, but what happened after that was, eh, the stick went overly excited, and in his own terms, he went out of the electron orbital shells, basically leaving astro =___= And insofar as it is possible for a stick to slam a door really loud, he it did just that.

Slightly more significant but still insignificant by all definitions, Prelims Chemistry Practical this coming thursday! *Stares at the dark side status*

Breaking news or not, the tally of planets in our solar system would jump instantly to a dozen under a highly controversial new definition proposed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

To quote a news article, this is what we get:

And if it doesn’t occur to you, it does not make sense to consider Ceres and Charon planets and not call our Moon (which is bigger than both) a planet.

Asteroid Ceres, since it is round, would be considered a planet. Interestingly, Ceres was called a planet when first discovered in 1801, then reclassified. It is just 578 miles in diameter, compared to 1,430 for Pluto and 7,926 for Earth.

And if astronomers determine that asteroids Pallas, Vesta, and Hygeia are also round, they will also have to be considered planets. The IAU proposal suggests (but does not require) that these be called dwarf planets. Pluto could also be considered a dwarf, which the IAU recommends as an informal label.

So to recap: Pluto would be a planet and a pluton and also a dwarf. =___=

IAU members will vote on the proposal Thursday, Aug. 24. And interestingly enough, the discoverer of 2003 UB313, the purposed 12th planet, says, “They are likely vote ‘yes’ because they’re not familiar with the issue and, mostly, because they’re sick of the topic.”

The sec 3s have gone for their OBS camp, and here’s wishing that they get eaten up them GLHF with the sandflies, not that they stand much of a chance tho. Really. Unless within the past year Ubin went through some severe pest control or something.

And yay, canteen will be much less crowded during recess.

And boo, gotta have to plan something for this week’s astro training =___= But really, my prelims starts next week… Blehh.

…

WCG has concluded, which means two things:

1) The results. But unfortunately their website doesn’t have the updates yet, so I can’t really crap much. From what I heard, Singapore Champs ExsequoR (XQR) were unsurprisingly knocked out in the group stages by China team wNv. I mean, that’s the least I could expect from a country who can choose their gamers from a population of over a billion.

And I gotta admit, Singapore is wayyy DotA crazy. There’s no doubt about that. No wonder they decided to include a DOTA tournament to the WCG Asian Championships even if it wasn’t an official game in the World Cyber Games. A lot of teams from Singapore signed up, but the biggest turnout was teams from 4 countries flew in to compete as well. While this might sound quite petty — take note that these teams (Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia) had to shell out their own finances without any sponsorship from the WCG Committee. Plane fares and hotel rooms were not reimbursed at all as compared to the other participants.

Okay, reality check. DotA is a mod of Warcraft III created by some bored guy who couldn’t play Warcraft very well. Not that I wish to flame DotA here, but seriously, DotA isn’t an internationally recognised competitive game, thus its exclusion from the official games of WCG, but apparently the Singapore committee decided to throw it in to suit the local community.

To continue with the new blood tradition that occurred in the Singapore National Finals, another unbeaten team again was knocked out during the DotA qualifiers! Team Zenith never lost a tournament for half a year and was heralded as Singapore’s best DOTA team. On the semi-finals however, they were pitted up against MI2, another Singaporean team. For around an hour and a half, the two teams tried their very best — Zenith to retain their title and MI2 to take down the reigning champ. In the end, MI2 emerged victorious and went to the Finals against Thailand.

OMG, why am I talking about DotA. I gotta start picking up Defense of my O’Levels (DomO?) or something.

2) New blogskin! Yesss, since WCG’s over, this blogskin gonna be awfully out-of-date. Er-um, any inspirations for a new blogskin?

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then I have about 13000 words to say.

The past week was the Singapore Fireworks Festival, and apparently my family find joy in the art of pyrotechnics. Also, it would be a good time to get back to some photography with the DSLR.

On thursday, we had a view from, er, somewhere, but we had a blardy barge as the foreground =__=

[Please click on the images to get the original intended-res, as this downsized res makes the images look ugly and stuffs yeah.]

And so we returned on Saturday to get a better view for the photography shots. This time, we were on the Sheares Bridge, which has one of the best view for photography as the background was the entire city landscape. We reached there even before the Sun set, and we had an entire one and a half hour to rot away on the bridge. And even though we were damn early, it was already blardily crowded =__= However, the irony was that as the VIPs were sitted somewhere near the Fullerton Hotel, the view from the Sheares Bridge was actually the side view of the fireworks, so the intended visuals weren’t perfect. But well, it was still beautiful!

Panoramas of the City!

Yesterday, I sacrificed my sleep the same way I do likewise to attend school every weekday — Pointless you might call it. Well, it isn’t as bad as school, considering that I woke up at 10am and it was for a much better purpose.

Eh, ‘kay… That isn’t my point here.

Anyways, me and 4 other friends went through the irritatingly long MRT train ride again to Suntec, to take part in the Quake 4 5vs5 tournament at the WCG Intel Booth. Considering that last year the prizes were processors, cameras and motherboards for the similar competition, we assumed that the prizes were gonna be as good. And boy, we were wrong, damn wrong. (And I won’t touch on it)

Eh, let’s just skip all these insignificant crap…

…And so the Quake 4 5vs5 compy commenced. Well, it was supposedly a Team Deathmatch with a team of 5 on another team of 5, but apparently, Intel doods don’t know how to do server settings, and it ended up as a Free For All game, with the top 5 highest scorers winning.

I started off the game pretty badly, struggling at the bottom of the 10. Somehow, somehow, I don’t know how, but I managed to work my up to mid-table, fluctuating in and out of the top 5. At that point, dxdt (XJ) had a 9 point lead over me at the top with 18 frags, while I was miserably with my 9 frags. =___= Interestingly enough, this “somehow” magic worked again, and somehow this 9 frags lead was reduced to 2 frags with me at a somehow 2nd position. Somehow, really.

And for the rest of the game, me and dxdt made it a personal battle at the top of game, making the frags difference from us and the rest significantly large. But well, I don’t stand much chance against such a sick l33t gamer, so eventually, he extended his lead to 6 points T___T And the commentator was blardy irritating;

Commentator: “Ohh and HELiX got dxdt good! dxdt is definitely looking for his revenge right now!”

Meh. Made me worry for no reason, ‘cos dxdt was on the other side of the map =___=

But at the end of the 15 mins game, amazingly, exactly all 5 of us were in the top 5! w00ts!

Team BP lol

Well, after the competition it was mostly rotting away gaming and stuffs, and onstage events included CosCon and DotA Asian Championships. And I got bored enough to join the Quake 4 FFA (yesss, not 5vs5) tourny again =___=

To start off with, I used the nick “lol” instead of “HELiX”, in high hopes that the commentator won’t recognise me as a 2nd-time competitor =___= And apparently, he didn’t. lol.

And without dxdt to compete with me, needless to say, I had helluva fun. I started the game with my frags doubled that of the 2nd fellow. And then I decided to play around. Using the melee weapon, Gauntlet, I went around to humiliate 2 people. Wowee! And the commentator was referring to me as, “Laughing out loud”. Not catchy enough for me, so I decided to change my nick mid-game to “lawl”. And the commentator was like, “And Laughing out loud has changed his name to lawl! Sorry, I didn’t know it was meant to be read like that! Lawl has such a big lead in the game that he could even relax and take time to change his name!” Indeed, LOL! And the game ended with me having 7 Excellents, 3 Impressives and 2 Humiliations =P

World Cyber Games 2006 commenced today!

And of course, being the gamer that I am, everything along the lines of homework and school were ignored. Then again… what’s new?

So, me and my friends decided to go there together and after an irritatingly long ride on the MRT (yess, this is what happens when you’re spoilt by private transport), we reached (duh? =__=). Well, obviously it was much smaller-scale that last year’s WCG Grand Finals, but well, it was still quite fun! But unfortunately, all the lucky draws were missing… =(

And by the time we decided to join the 5v5 Quake 4 tournament organised by Intel, the registration slots were full for the day =___= So we decided to sign up in advance for the 5v5 Quake 4 tournament on Saturday, and we’re also planning to do the same for the 6v6 Counter Strike tournament. Maybe it’s just me, but somehow I’ve got this feeling that the prizes gonna suck compared to the previous year. Bleh.

And also, we caught the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne tournament on the big projector screen onstage! Well, I don’t think it’s right for me to irrelevantly flame DotA now, so I’m just gonna say that the Warcraft III (not DotA pls) players are downright sick. The top Singapore players click their mouse and use hotkeys something like 120 times a min, or in WC3 terms, 120 apm (actions per min). And the last I heard, the world top players have something like 200 apm. That’s 200 button presses on your keyboard and mouse in a minute throughout the game =___= And their reflexes were so damn sick that their mouse cursor simply flies flawlessly around the screen, and you can’t really see it. As I said, sick people.

Gonna have to train my Quake 4 for this saturday! Weeeeeee….! =)