When I get the hang of it, I'll make you a ROM named Sandwich.

What.

Old Hardware and Phone

Notable deaths:

• Keyboard: Death from poisoning drowning. A cockroach crawled on it so I sprayed it. And by “sprayed it” I meant I emptied half a bottle of bug spray into it.
• Earphones: Stomped to death. Clean one-hit kill.
• PSU 1.0: Died when I shoved a screwdriver into it. Don’t ask. (This is not PSU 2.0, the one with the fan that died recently. I’m on 3.0 now.)
• Motherboard (micro): Capacitor leaked, motherboard caught fire, panic ensued.
• Floppy disc drive & non-smartphone: I’m too young to know what these are. *blinks*

Most of these were previously seen in the pictures of the 2006 entries Meet the Diablos and Shop-Ping!. Wow. I feel old.

I can’t quite decide whether I love or hate you, Vickie, you moron.

Vickie: What the fuck, Brain?
Brain: What the fuck, Vickie?

Regained composure, googled for fix, downloaded fix, rebooted computer in safe mode, blurry, blurry, blurry, blurry, fell asleep on chair, drooled.

Woke up to a computer free of virus, unused drivers removed, registry cleaned up, beautifully defragged. Blinked.

Vickie: … What the fuck, Brain?!
Brain: What the fuck, Vickie.

Up next some day: the entry on porn that I downloaded a virus for.

Bought an extra pair of yummy 512mb RAM for AMD Diablos! Although they’re completely out of sight (under the wires) in the picture…

Games I should have bought much, much earlier! (Command & Conquer The First Decade + Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence)

Although AMD Diablos still doesn’t like this version of Red Alert 2… (started Windows Installer, ran game compatible to blah blah blah; nothing worked)

But I’m glad she (+ her 7600GS baby) gets along very nicely with Lineage II, at 1280×1024, too.

Overall, these make Vickie a semi-happy gamer and geek (wannabe).

But but but… I really wanted me some old school Apocalypse.

(1) New LCD Monitor Diablos
(2) Poor Laptop Diablos (senior citizen)
(3) Cammie Diablos the webcam
(4) AMD 64-Bit Diablos (teh l33t… or something)
(5) Scanner Diablos
(6) ! I’m my biggest and most loyal reader.
(7) Try not to look here.

Now the only question remains: How the hell do I carry the whole Diablos family on the plane?

Back in the days when I was still doing my A-Levels in the UK, there was this computer guy named Sam a.k.a. only remembered his name because of my old blog post and his whatever his name was, too lazy to look up buddy, who always walked past me with creepy smiles (the guy-equivalent girlish giggles?) as if they knew all my dirty little secrets. And they well did. Ever since that particular incident, I’ve been rather sceptical about computer guys as normal people, as non-weirdos.

For the past half a year, the two computer guys from work had proven my mistrust nonsensical. They were warm, easy to get along, fun people who didn’t seem to be anything like Sam and his buddy. But then there’s always but then; I completely forgot that they’re still computer guys, that computer guys have all your surfing logs.

“Lean forward?” one of them said to the other as he glanced over at his fellow colleague’s screen during lunch.

Riiight.

Silent Hill the movie wasn’t released in Hong Kong until the day before, so naturally I went to the movies with Bro first thing after work that night. We actually made it on time for it (and even had time to be subjected to the torture of slimming product ads before it started), seeing how we didn’t usually get to see the first 10-15 minutes of other films. My first impression of the movie actually had nothing to do with the production itself. Just look at this.

What the hell is up with the Chinese title, “鬼魅山房”? The direct translation of Silent Hill wasn’t powerful enough, so they justify themselves in making up a name that isn’t accurate to the movie or the game, huh? Well, Bro and I already mocked at it enough, so let’s move on to the movie.

It started with the music theme of the first Silent Hill game, audience stirred. Cool, fellow gamers around. Until a few more scenes later, the movie was still forcing music from the games into it at, in my opinion, inappropriate time (or inappropriate choice of clips. Either one). It was as if they were trying too hard to emphasise how they were a movie based on the games. “Hark! Loyal gamers! We’re the Silent Hill movie! We use all the music from the games!” I read later that they did so because they wanted to use the same music tracks at similar scenes of the game. Darlings, what works for a game doesn’t necessarily work for a movie!

While I love it that they kept a few characters and monsters from the game, and understand that they couldn’t just use the exact same story, I didn’t like how they twisted it. It’s similar in a sense (presence of a cult, a few locations, the disfigured corpses, etc.), but the main storyline! Cybil turned a tomboy; Lisa turned into a nameless nurse who didn’t appear until quite the end; Dahlia got split into two characters — “good” Dahlia and Christabella; there was also only one Pyramid Head Red Pyramid who didn’t seem to serve any purpose other than scare factor in the movie compared to the one in the game.

There are some little things I love about the movie, though. For example, I think how Cybil said “what the fuck” instead of “what the hell” was really in-character and appropriate, because that kind of situation deserved something much stronger than a WTH. The “foggy” Silent Hill to alternate Silent Hill transfer was well done as well.

But all in all, with the amount of blood, gore, violence, cleavages and girl power in the movie adapted from a game, what’s not to love about it?

Heh. I almost screamed at a certain guy sitting somewhere behind me. The song “You’re Not Here” played at the credits, and he commented that the song sounded vaguely familiar. Vaguely familiar only?! It was the Silent Hill 3 theme song! Blasphemer! We must burn him! … If only I wasn’t busy singing along.

P.S. I still don’t understand how this movie could be rated Category IIB and not a III.

P.P.S. Bro’s comment on the movie (in Chinese).

They start at a different (or same) starting point, and run at a different speed. However, the cheetah always runs faster than the rabbit, and the rabbit always runs faster than the tortoise.

If the rabbit catches up with the tortoise, it will stop and wait for the cheetah. If they start at the same starting point, the rabbit will not move.

If the cheetah catches up with the rabbit, a murder occurs and the game is over. If they start at the same point, the game is over immediately.

Write a C++ program to compute the time required for the murder to take place. Your program should compute the time required for the cheetah to catch up with the rabbit. Then you should output the time and position of the murder.

Anyone? Please?

Out of the 100% Diarylanders, 95% are active.
Out of the active users, 95% are females.
Out of the females, 90% are teenagers.
Out of the teenagers, 70% keep personal diaries.
Out of those who keep personal diaries, 30% are lesbians.
Out of those lesbians, 10% are Asians.
Out of those Asians, 1% are Chinese.
Out of those Chinese, 1% are from Hong Kong.

In summary, the “active female teenage Chinese lesbians from Hong Kong who keep personal diaries” make about… hmm

(100%)*(0.95)*(0.95)*(0.9)*(0.7)*(0.3)*(0.1)*(0.01)*(0.01)
= 1.705725 x 10^-4%

1.705725 x 10^-4% only! Am I special or what?