Stuffs

Posted by HELiX

Random stuffs as follows.

Apparently, being the first to blog about class chalet gives people ideas and a role model to follow. My genius classmates have decided to follow my lead and decided to give vague lame entries about the class chalet because ‘more info can be found on other classmates’ blogs’.

In other news, I’m trying to do as little as possible to save BPST camp. I mean, really… oh nevermind.

Let’s just hope it turns out great as always. My eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the sc-

I spent the entire of today, nearly 12 hours, doing research on web hosts.

I registered this domain with my current one about a year ago, a day before my birthday I believe, and they’ve been bugging me to pay up to extend my contract with them.

But $60/year… 200MB?!

That’s pretty reasonable for a Singapore local server, so I went ahead with them last year. After an entire day of researching, too.

This year, the slightly smarter me has decided on cheaper servers. Now, the cheapest servers are the ones offered by web hosts in the USA, but that’s just not suitable for my website. This front page alone is rather heavy on content and multimedia and takes forever to load from a US server. A local or regional server would be more forgiveable.

So I decided on Malaysia servers.

My notes after a day:

exabytes 21ms

$86 + $24 for 10GB/50GB
mesrahosting 20ms

$44 + $22 for 10GB/50GB
gethosted 20ms

$73 + $22 for 3GB/30GB
singhost 14ms

$60 for 1GB/20GB (5 MySQL)
$144 for 5GB/75GB

seastarnet.com.sg 15ms

$107 for 3GB/unlimited (2 MySQL)
way2blog 13ms

$72 for 5GB/70gb
newmediaexpress 12ms

$108 + $20 for 2.5GB/25GB (1 MySQL)
maxhub 10ms

$80 + $17 for 1GB/unlimited
megahostworld 22ms

$83 for 800MB/10GB
sparkstation 17ms

$60 for 1GB/10GB
$96 for 2.5GB/25GB
$96 for 5GB/50GB promo
easynet-interactive 22ms

$83 for 2GB/20GB
$52 for 1.5GB/25GB
hive (PHP 4.x.x)

$96 for 10GB/100GB
$58 for 5GB/50GB
datakl 17ms

$57 for 10GB/50GB
coupon ‘webmaster’ -$17
ipserverone ping???

$86 for 100GB/100GB
eternalsolutions 23ms

$43 for 7GB/30GB (2 FTP accounts)
$86 for 2.5GB/25GB
malaysiahoster ping???

$86 for 10GB/110GB
shinjiru ping???

$85 for 50GB/100GB
esurge 21ms -free hosting! + $22-

$87 for 10GB/100GB
netmyx 20ms (lack of info)

$59 for 15GB/150GB
web-hosting.net.my 19ms

$78 for 2GB/50GB
$56 for 2GB/50GB if MERDEKA50
icore

$92 for 15GB/100GB

I’ll be transferring to my new web host shortly :)

And you’ll witness what happiness 10GB can bring to people.

Comments(0) 1:16 AM 11 November 2007

Portal

Posted by HELiX

Now I know I may get flamed for being WOLS or something, but I finally started on Portal yesterday night. And completed, of course.

Because Portal’s gameplay is a miserable 3 hours or so. Probably less if you don’t try stupid stunts like me.

I don’t really know what to say. It’s a pretty awesome game. Very, very, very good, innovative, and… what I like most about it? GLaDOS is funny :D

James showed me this cheap trick to defeat GLaDOS and I’m extremely impressed with this guy’s skillz.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

And I miss my Weighted Companion Cube :( Incinerating it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

But hey, it’s still alive…

“There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I even invited your best friend the companion cube. Of course, he couldn’t come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn’t come either because you don’t have any other friends because of how unlikable you are. Unlikable, it says so here in your file ‘unlikable’ - liked by no one.”

…

…

…

Okay I’ve blabbered enough. Just how many of you understood me? :(

Comments(0) 9:11 PM 11 November 2007

British Petroleum For The Win

Posted by HELiX

Eh. Had to spell out British Petroleum because for once, this isn’t about my alma mater.

Found this picture among my other documents rather randomly.

Anyway, have a look at this ultimate ironical screenshot [click to enlarge]:

Comments(0) 10:36 PM 11 November 2007

Class Chalet

Posted by HELiX

My online absence has always been known to be impossible without any valid reason; And hell, it is. So for those of you who found it amazingly weird how Derek disappeared from the surface of the Earth over the past 2/3 days, this phenomena shall be explained.

CLASS CHALET.

But don’t worry. I won’t blog about it… that much. Because,

1) You can read all about it, in an uninteresting, informal and typical Singaporean blogger tone on my, uhm, otherclassmates’blogs. Oops.

2) Every chalet is probably the about same. It’s… well, fun, tiring, fun… er- tiring. Fun. Tiring. Fun.

You get the idea. My class chalet was typically, like this: Check into bungalow, beach, throw people into water, volleyball, throw water into people (???), eat, Risk (board game), mahjong, movies, PS2, Time Crisis, Pro Evolution Soccer, Fatal Frame (in place of horror movies cos we didn’t bring any), ‘Tai Ti’, sleep, order McDonald’s and Pizza Hut delivery, cycle, walk, East Coast Park, BBQ, playground, and err… go home.

So I shall share with you the more interesting details. Or slightly more interesting.

So, the day of the class chalet, I had a boring, somewhat useless yet useful, SSEF Project Presentation talk at the Science Center. Kok brilliantly suggested that we wear casual clothes, and so we did. We entered the lecture room and… Ugh.

And because of the talk, I missed the 1.30pm meeting time with my classmates. Endured the horrible hour-plus long journey to Tanah Merah, where I had to follow further vague instructions to get to the bungalow chalet. The shuttle service to the National Service Resort and Country Club was roughly every hour, and I waited for the one at 7.30pm. I was told that the bus leaves exactly on time. So I waited… and waited… and when it was 7.28pm, I was really getting worried that I’m missing out something. Turns out, the bus comes EXACTLY at 7.30pm, at a non-fixed location, and leaves about 10 seconds later. No waiting. Even for people who have their heads turned for 10 seconds.

Cycling was rather stupid, too. We went to the resort/country club reception to rent bicycles, but there weren’t enough. Soe Min claimed that East Coast Park was nearby and we could rent bicycles from there. Cheaper. Turns out, East Coast Park was indeed nearby, just right next to the resort. We happily walked on… and on… and on… and on… and arrived at the first bicycle rental shop after an hour and fifteen minutes of continuous walking. Rented the bicycle for an hour, and walked another hour and fifteen minutes back. So… we spent more than 2/3 of our cycling time, uhm, walking.

And then we had our little own innovations. These acts of stupidity may be why ACSians turn out to be great (or miserable) businessmen in the future. Or at least if history is of any indication. If not, we can still be great opposition leaders; Another trend of ACSians, it seems.

First, the Mahjong Jenga.

Second… have you ever been irritated by the tedious job of keeping the BBQ pit warm with lots of healthy oxygen?

I think this post should suffice, for now.

I have lots to do for the holidays. Seriously.

Comments(0) 5:14 PM 11 November 2007

KOK of a time

Posted by HELiX

What does KOK stand for?

…

KOK, abbreviation for:

King Of Kocks.

Note: We have 11 other definitions for KOK in our Acronym Attic!

…

When: When I just reached, 10.10 am

Where: Bowling Alley

-Kok returns from throwing his, uhm, ball down the bowling lane, into the gutter-

Me: “Happy birthday, Kok.”

Kok: “Fuck you.”

…

And time for quotable quotes!

When: Later in the day, over lunch at Burger King

Where: I said Burger King didn’t I

“BIG FUCK?”
- Kok, on the significance of birthdays

…

Ahaha.

Happy birthday, KOK!

Oops, I mean-

Comments(0) 9:26 PM 11 November 2007

Bioshock & Recurrences

Posted by HELiX

…what can I say?

More Iron than Iron Man.

BIOSHOCK IS AWESOME.

Kinda.

Okay so when my brother was away at NUS yesterday, I gamed the entire day and night away. Started on Bioshock at 2pm, and completed at 2am. 12 hours gameplay! Quite fortunate I didn’t visit my blog to have Wei Rong spoil it all for me.

It’s a pretty innovative, weird game. A good balance of gore, scares, fun, and story. No surprises it’s speculated to win Game of the Year.

I won’t disagree with Wei Rong that it got boring sometime into the game, and all you desire is to complete the damn game to uncover the story. BUT SERIOUSLY, doesn’t that apply to every single player game with more than 10 hours of gameplay?

There’s a certain time, the sweet spot, around 6-8 hours into the game, when you’re so used to it that the novelty wears off. You don’t enjoy it as much, and you’re simply doing the same stuffs (shooting and killing over and over again). All that’s different is that the enemies get tougher, you get weaker and…

Ahh whatever, it’s a great game nonetheless!

Also, I’ve discovered the unbelievable power of the phrase “Would you kindly…?”. I mean, look. You’re a near super soldier in the game, and this boss guy pushes you around, controlling your mind with those three words. More powerful than “I hate you”; Less powerful than “I love you”. Would you kindly agree?

Would you kindly?

Would you kindly?

Would you kindly?

Would you kindly?

…

Through Bioshock I suddenly noticed the recurrences of… things. In entertainment. A few examples for you.

Let’s examine two top shooter games, Bioshock and FEAR — They exploit little girls.

No, not that I’m gonna whack something like this to them.

Although she might be referring to you.

Because, these two games use little girls to inject horror. And mind you, they work. On me.

Let’s refer to my entry on FEAR a long time ago… here.

Little girl who’s supposed to be your, uhm, mom. In the game of course.

That’s the little one who scares you in FEAR.

Now let’s have a look at Bioshock.

The one on the right. Sweet little thing ain’t she?

So, now, don’t mind me if I keep my distance from girls… sometimes. Stupid games…

…

And then I also noticed, while watching Season 2 of Heroes now (yes, downloaded, duh), that along with Prison Break, these well-known TV series use the same… choice of names.

They both have some group of people labelled as ‘The Company’.

The Company, or um, Companies, share the following characteristics:

1) Powerful
2) Secretive
3) Mysterious
4) Evil
5) Cunning
6) Bound to be taken down by one guy
7) Fishy
8) Someone inside will betray them
9) And probably more!

But seriously, isn’t it getting a bit boring?

Can’t they come up with something like… The Order of the U.S. Secret Agents. Or The Heroic Knights. Or something spectacular while sounding as lame as The Company.

Comments(0) 8:52 PM 11 November 2007

BIODUMBSHITSHOCK

Posted by HELiX

I’m here to rant. If you’re uninterested… good for you.

It’s about Bioshock. Yes, that Game of the Year for 2007. Rated 95+++/100 by just about every single gaming critic. Easily beats blockbuster Halo 3, swallows World in Conflict and makes Portal a lie.

And it’s one helluva screwed up game.

…

Look, it all started about 24 hours ago. I completed Halo 2, was like WEEE~HA! and went on to open Bioshock.

Problem #1:

The process bioshock.exe launches. Visible in Task Manager. But there’s nothing at all! As in, it launches, you can see it chewing away your resources in Task Manager, but nothing appears. The system doesn’t even appear to be loading anything.

So I went to google. After a while, someone somewhere said it had to do with Bioshock’s copyright protection, Securom, which everyone should know, isn’t really doing it’s job because I’m playing, eh, unoriginal Bioshock. And what’s better, there’s no solution to this problem as Securom doesn’t really care.

After pointless attempts at launching the game, I managed to have it to actually really launch once every few times (say, 4 or 5) I open Bioshock. That’s an improvement…

Then I was faced with this.

Problem #2:

Bioshock splash screen logo appears. It’s loading alright. Surely it is… Then…

“Bioshock.exe has stopped working”

And that usual Error Report message.

Retarded.

Great. I’ve seen about 2 seconds of Bioshock before that happens.

So I googled for a bit, and tried this fix:

Originally Posted by AinmerI was having the crash immediately after the Bioshock logo. I used Procmon to determine that immediately prior to the crash, it was accessing audio code. From there, I narrowed it down to the FMOD sound system.

To fix -

Edit your default.ini. Put a semi-colon in front of AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem, and add the following line right after it:
AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

After edits, that part of the config file should look like this:

;AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem
AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

Yay! I finally get to play!

I am using Realtek AC’97 Audio, fyi.

And holy crap! It launches! And goes past the splash screen! For once!

I reached the game’s main menu. A bloody achievement I must say.

Then I went to click New Game, select the Difficulty Level… New Game Loads… and it crashes again, giving that “Bioshock.exe has stopped working” error message.

Seriously, what the hell.

Problem #3

Game crashes at New Game. I haven’t played a single second of proper in-game gameplay. Haven’t.

Googled around more, and more out that Bioshock does not support Shader Model 2.0 graphics card. Which means, my ATI X800 doesn’t work. Yes, my $400 graphics card doesn’t work!

I chanced upon a SM2.0 Fix for Bioshock. Downloaded it, installed it, didn’t work. Apparently, they are a few people working on such a fix, so I tried the others. Downloaded it, installed it, didn’t work.

Idiot.

So then, by now, I decided that my computer could do with a change of graphics card to one that supports SM3.0. I asked my Dad for a spare X1600Pro he had lying around, and although my card was… somewhat still better, I went ahead to shut down my computer completed, pull out the graphics card and replace it. Closed my computer again, and plugged everything back in…

Then problem #2 repeats.

Bioshock splash screen logo appears. It’s loading alright. Surely it is… Then…

“Bioshock.exe has stopped working”

And that usual Error Report message.

Now, I searched up more about this problem, and tried various suggested solutions.

1. Reinstalled the latest ATI graphics card driver. Twice.
2. Uninstalled ATI graphics card driver. Thrice.
3. Use the Windows Vista provided driver.
4. Installed a Catalyst hot fix for Bioshock. Twice. Because a solution mentioned:

Problem
Game runs with grpahical corruption or poor perfomance on Vista with a DirectX 10 Card.Possible Workaround
Update Driver with ATI Hot Fix, or Run in DirectX 9 Mode, link to knowledgebase article:

BioShock: I have an ATI card and Direct X10 and am getting graphical corruption.

5. Reinstalled DirectX 9.0c/10. 5 or 6 times.
6. Reinstalled Visual C++ Redistributable. 5 or 6 times. Because a solution stated:

Problem
…Bioshock.exe - This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. …

Possible Solution
Install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86), link in the first post of this thread.

Original Thread http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6327

7. Ran registry crack again and again. 4 times.
8. Opened Bioshock.exe under Windows XP compatibility mode.
9. Open Bioshock.exe with Run as Adminstrator.
10. Open Bioshock,exe with a shortcut with the -dx9 because a solution stated:

Playing in BioShock in DirectX 9 Mode:On Windows Vista you can right click on the icon in the Games explorer and choose Play-Dirext9. On Windows

XP, and probably Vista as well, create a shortcut and add -dx9 after the exe name.

11. Search registry for a codec called msaud32_divx.ac, because:

Originally Posted by Ainmer

…a codec called msaud32_divx.acm, which is what is blowing it all up. Go to the registry, and navigate to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

Delete the value called msacm.divxa32.

Give it a shot.

12. Disabled High Shader Details in game options. Because:

Turn off the advanced shader effects. My card supports them, but since I have a laptop I can’t get the beta drivers for the game and I suppose that ****s it all up. But I just turned off the advanced shaders, and the game now runs like a charm. No crashing, no stuttering, nothing.

The game runs with advanced shaders on, but it randomly crashes/hangs.

Hope this helps!

AND

Hey guys. This fix was posted before, so I can’t take credit for it. It worked for me so I’ll post it again for anyone interested.

go to C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release where “C:” is your harrddrive (duh )

once in the release folder, open “default” in notepad and scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen. Change the script line “HighDetailShaders=True” to “HighDetailShaders=False”. Do this because the Shadow creater drivers in the game do not work well with series 6 or 7 Nvidia cards EVEN IF you update all your card drivers.

If you do this “fix” it should fix all the crashes in-game and load crashes due to the fact that the Level3 shaders are on by default. Also, the game will not look near as nice as it should, however it IS stable and the framerates are quite good for me. It’s a band-aid fix, I know, until 2K Games hopefully releases it’s patch. I hope this helps most people still having trouble.

13. Delete the Bioshock folder from AppData.
14. Updated Realtek Audio drivers. Because:

I know this is a tech support room, but I had to share my joy. I FINALLY got this damn game to run with the sound completely on.

Realtek released version 1.74 drivers today. Although I think it’s dated the 22nd or something in the device manager. Anyway after upgrading to these new drivers, I tinkered around more with the game settings and FINALLY with EAX turned off, Reverb turned on, running in Stereo sound (although I have a 7.1 setup), and in XP compatability mode…..THE GAME WORKED!!! YES!!! I won’t complain about the widescreen issue since I can at least play. Just wanted to share my story with others having similar issues. You may wanna give that a shot. I got the realtek drivers from their site…. http://www.realtek.com.tw

15. Changed boot up hard disk. I have 3 windows installations on my computer. Two Vista’s, one XP. Ran with the Vista one same problem. Ran with XP, same problem.
16. Went to Programs and Features, Turn Windows Features on or off, and disable Tablet PC Optional Components.
17. Ran msconfig. Disabled all stupid start up stuffs unnecesary.

And none of these helped.

By now, already about 10 hours has been spent in trying to play the Game of the Year. Maybe they meant, it’d take a year of fixing to play this game.

By then, it was near 4 AM so I went to sleep. Continued on the next day.

I was so, uh… the only word I can use here is vulgar. But anyway, I decided to format my installation of XP, and install the bare minimum drivers needed, and ran Bioshock.

AND IT WORKED. Kinda.

I played the first level. Which was simply, swimming around a plane crash and learning to, er, walk around.

And then the game crashed upon loading the second level. WTF.

At least that was about 5 mins of stupid dumbass game tutorial gameplay.

Fixed it with:

18. Ran the game in Windowed mode.

Yes, I know how awful that looks, a 1024×768 window in your 1280×1024 screen, but I had to do it. And it works!

Second level, finally I had some taste of zapping monsters and shooting zombies. I have no idea why WR thinks they aren’t alien-ish in any way. They look alien… unearthly, basically.

And upon loading the third level, it crashed. Again. WTF.

Searched online for another good 3 more hours before finally telling my brother: “Tomorrow you’ll be at NUS right? Lemme play Bioshock on your computer.”

Ahh, I can’t believe I’m playing the Game of the Year on my brother’s computer. Different mouse, different keyboard, different sound system (headphones vs speakers), different screen size, different CPU… okay I’m making a big fuss outta this.

But seriously? WTF.

I hate this.

Plus, other stuffs I’ve learned…

I’m on the verge of using the f-word but shan’t.

Whatever the case, conclusion of this entry is:

…

…

…

I’ve spent nearly 16 hours trying to play Bioshock, and I’ve had about 20 minutes of gameplay so far.

What an utterly retarded way to spend your holidays. Retarded.

Comments(0) 8:56 PM 11 November 2007