The venue is, as always, NG Galleria. The format, Standard. I was playing Mike Flores’ “Legends of Team CMU” – the Mishra/Korlash aggro/control/combo deck that placed seventh in New Jersey Regionals, with a modified sideboard since I couldn’t get all of the cards in time. Flores discusses the deck in detail here (requries a Premium SCG.com account)
Round 1 0-2 Loss vs GUB NarcoBridge (Dregde combo)
Round 2 2-1 Win vs Mono-black Rack
Blog: A blog is a website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries, typically displayed in reverse chronlogical order. A single entry is called a blog post. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this list.
Jun 2007
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Based on my last.fm profile, at least, I am only around 13.94% mainstream
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Edit: After a WordPress upgrade, this post was messing up the layout. Changed to link to youtube video instead of embedding. Trailer is here
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The saga of the mightiest deck in the universe continues. My previous outing showed me a solid control matchup and maybe 60% aggro matchup. I tweaked the sideboard to improve the aggro game post-board, dropping the useless Yixlid Jailers for 4 Last Gasps. Here’s how I did: Round 1 2-0 win vs MGA Round 2 0-2 loss vs RUW control (no angels) Round 3 2-0 win vs RGW mid-range aggro (elephants/avalanche riders)
May 2007
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Amazingly, I went more than two whole months using only Ubuntu at home since one of my RAM sticks got busted and Windows refused to boot. Luckily, I have a dual boot computer, with Ubuntu as my alternative OS. Ubuntu is pretty awesome. As a Windows replacement, it does most of the things you need without much problem. It has two distinct advantages over Windows: The Debian package distribution mechanism is just great.
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(edit 24-Dec-2008: Imported decklist from the wiki, removed the dead link below, anchor tag retained for posterity) Lands 20 Swamp 3 Blood Crypt Creatures 4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade 4 Dimir House Guard 4 Dark Confidant 3 Withered Wretch 2 Detritivore Spells 2 Grim Harvest 3 Damnation 1 Persecute 2 Demonfire 4 Tendrils of Corruption 4 Sudden Death 4 Rakdos Signet Bearing the deck I’ve named “the mightiest deck in the universe”, I got the following results:
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Before actually going to the elections last Monday, I played some Limited-format Magic last Sunday at Galleria. The format was Time Spiral Block Sealed, and I was feeling good. I opened a card pool with no outstanding rares. The only real bomb was the red uncommon Pyrohemia. Spotting the Deep-Sea Kraken and wanting to play it, I decided to go red-blue. I tested the build for a few minutes before realizing it completely stunk and had very few creatures.
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Ban the distribution of sample ballots and election paraphernalia on election day within the vicinity of voting precincts. Seriously, check out the amount of trash generated on election day near the precinct: And I noted that the current level of trash is already an improvement from last year! In Quezon City at least, the local government seems to have been able to keep people from plastering campaign posters all over the place (relatively), so banning campaign materials on election day should not be too much of a stretch.
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I still don’t know how I am voting on Monday. Or even if I am voting at all. I’m thinking of voting for those 3 guys from Kapatiran, simply to reward the sheer chutzpah of their candidacies. The GO and TU coalitions seem largely irrelevant to me, you can be fairly sure those coalitions won’t mean squat after the elections, so all these surveys keeping score of administration vs opposition seem a bit useless.
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I bought a new phone yesterday. At the recommendation of my brother, I got one from the Nokia N-series, the Nokia N73. As a relatively recent smartphone release, it cost quite a chunk of cash. I was having second thoughts for a while, because I’m almost never comfortable parting with a significant amount of cash. If I’m going to spend more than a week’s salary on something, it better provide me with a decent amount of entertainment
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Pretty good movie, as expected. The story is what you’d expect from a comic-book movie, but the mid-air fight scenes are really great. The whole Sandman thing is basically fluff, the movie could have been done without him. He was like a cheap pop to make the whole “dark side” thing easier to start off, but then they had trouble resolving his story. It’s not like he’s a major Spidey villain anyway.
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So, I was there in the taxi with my youngest brother Brian. And I brought up the topic of the noontime TV show Wowowee, which we had just seen about half an hour of before we got in the taxi. I told him that I thought of it as a really terrible show. Sure, poor people win relatively-large cash prizes and stuff from it, but it feels so exploitative. Hundreds, maybe thousands of poor folk from god-knows-how-far-away queue up outside the studios every day hoping to get into the studio audience to participate in the cash giveaways.
Apr 2007
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No matter how much of an optimist I am, I have to admit all people will have down cycles. The last few days seem to be one of mine. Health-wise: My stomach has been in a rebellious mood for the past three or four days, I actually went to work with a fever last Friday. Also, it seems my blood pressure was a bit high since yesterday. I’m thinking about going in for a checkup within the next week or so, depending on how my condition changes.
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A bit lazy today, just a quick summary. As usual for a prerelease, lots of people at NG yesterday. I got there before Galleria opened and whiled away time on the DS. The NG staff was a lot more efficient today, they were able to start the first 3 flights as early as 10:30. I got on flight C, and proceeded to open one of the most mediocre card pools I’ve ever seen.
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I scrubbed out of the last 3 TSP-TSP-PLC drafts, how annoying. :/ I tend to make bad plays at the worst possible time, and also don’t mulligan very well. If I’m not good at it, I suppose I should stop. Maybe I’ll get better once Future Sight comes out.
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At work, especially during assessment time, they often ask me if I have any concerns or needs or suggestions that I want to raise to management. And I never have any answers. So I thought about it today, and I realized why I seldom have complaints: I’m a simple person. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, and I figure I’m already ahead of the curve anyway. I have a fairly good paycheck, I like my job (more or less), I like the people I work with, and they recognize and respect me for my contributions.
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Due to pressing work concerns, I was unable to go to confession for Holy Week this year. So much for being a devout Catholic. As is tradition, most of the long weekend was spent watching a whole lot of stuff: 24 I’ve been keeping pace with the episodes so far. The thing about 24: people die. A lot of them. And amazingly, Jack Bauer gets off every single time. They should have a season where Jack Bauer dies around episode ten or something (or at least gets hospitalized and taken out of the game) That would shock people.
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I obviously don’t have much time for gaming if it takes me more than a month to finish a “simple” choose-your-own-adventure style game like Phoenix Wright. Very entertaining game, it puts you in the shoes of a novice defense attorney, Phoenix Wright and your adventures in trying to uncover the truth behind several murder cases. The gameplay is composed of two parts: investigative sequences where you go around various locations gathering information and evidence, and the actual trial part where you have to spot contradictions in witness testimonies and prove your clients to be innocent.
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if you’ve ever lived in the Philippines during the summer months, you’re well aware of the sweltering heat. Not being in the mood to feel like french toast during this Sunday noontime, my brothers and I decided to troop to the nearby mall and catch a movie – in this case the return of those childhood stalwarts the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the big screen. Now, as my youngest brother asked, what were we doing there?
Mar 2007
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So yeah, it was a Two-Headed Giant Limited PTQ at NG Galleria yesterday. I played with my friend Paul, and we had a rather good sealed pool, coming up with a pair of decks that had the basic strategy of “Do not block!” Unfortunately, we were only able to go 5-2, ending up as the team in 10th place. Well, it’s not like we would’ve been able to go to San Diego, but still the 750USD would have been nice.
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Under Development Standard @ NG Galleria 24-Mar-2007 Lands 4 Breeding Pool 3 Stomping Ground 1 Steam Vents 2 Mountain 7 Island 5 Forest 1 Skargg, the Rage Pits Creatures 3 Plaxmanta 3 Sulfur Elemental 3 Giant Solifuge 4 Fathom Seer 2 Mystic Snake 2 Vesuvan Shapeshifter 1 Brine Elemental Spells 2 Demonfire 3 Research // Development 3 Search for Tomorrow 4 Farseek 3 Think Twice 4 Remand Sideboard 3 Krosan Grip 2 Detritivore 2 Tormod's Crypt 2 Electrolyze 2 Serrated Arrows 2 Pyroclasm This deck is named “Under Development” because I basically threw it together two days ago with almost no playtesting.
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Mostly due to my antisocial nature and my laziness, I haven’t actually seen a movie in a theater since… forever. I broke that fast mostly because of the hype surround 300, the movie based on Frank Miller’s comic book retelling of the Battle at Thermopylae. Everyone who’s seen the movie has the same thing to say: it’s really good. So I went to see it with a brother of mine. And it was good.
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My computer died last night, refusing to boot. Ubuntu would complain of being unable to read the root filesystem. Windows XP would say that there’s a corrupted DLL. I immediately arranged to borrow both an Ubuntu LiveCD and a Windows XP install disk the next day to help check the problem. When I got home today, the computer had been miraculously fixed. My brother said he’d been using it no problem.
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I’m sure a lot of people have experienced it, the feeling of being adrift, directionless. Just living your life day in and day out not knowing where you’re going or why. Maybe not everybody though, as I’ve met quite a few people who seem quite content with the monotony of their lives, doing the same thing day in and day out, never bothering to overcome the inertia of their daily lives.
Feb 2007
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Your Entrepreneur Type: The Geek You are smart and insightful and you enjoy solving interesting problems and technology for their own sakes. Entrepreneurial strengths: academic and / or technical brilliance comfortable with the abstract obsession with new technology Entrepreneurial weaknesses: expertise tends to be quite narrow difficulty with people personality may not be forceful enough to lead
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List of games I’m planning (or want) to play: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney (NDS – In progress) Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (NDS) Phoenix Wright, Justice for All (NDS) Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA) Everything on the Top 20 Indie Adventure Games list. Too many games I want to play and not enough time… the story of every gamer-turned-working-man I suppose.
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If you’re not familiar with the series, One Piece is an anime about pirates, the same way Naruto is about ninjas. Like Naruto, they don’t live in a world very different from our own. The One Piece universe is a lot more insane than Naruto’s though. I’ve only watched less than a hundred episodes, but so far the Straw Hat Pirates have encountered giant sea cows, talking reindeer, a guy who can eat anything, a man-shark… too many to mention.
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I’ve been asked if I would be willing to be temporarily posted in another country, halfway across the world, for around half a year. On the surface, it seems like a good idea – I don’t have any definite plans for the next few months, so there’s nothing in the way. It would be new stuff, new places, people, experiences, etc., a most welcome change of pace. But the first emotion that grips me is fear.
Jan 2007
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Post Part I: This being my first week back to work after a month-long hiatus, I inevitably get the usual sort of questions people ask when you get back from a vacation: “Hey, where did you go?” “Do you have any pasalubong?” (souvenirs) “So, what did you do for one month?” I’m amused by how very few people seem to get the fact that I didn’t do “anything” in particular over the break.
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Played yesterday at Galleria. With a whole bunch of people: three from the Zu crowd and I think five or six from the office. Insane number of people, as expected. I got there about ten minutes after the mall opened (I came from work), and I was already preregistered, but I only got to sign up for the sixth flight (Flight F). They had to buy extra tables from a nearby Office Warehouse.
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I’m going to try out a new feed aggregator for a while – NewsHutch. Don’t get me wrong, Bloglines is nice and all, but one gets tired of the UI after a while. NewsHutch looks… nice. And don’t get me started on Google Reader… that one is slow as molasses. (I added it to my Google Customized Homepage though, maybe that makes it better)
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Since I’m going back to work starting on Saturday, I thought I’d try to look for ways to improve my productivity at work. I’ve downloaded a few utilities that I can try at work to see if it can improve my workflow. The first one is SlickRun. Basically it’s a Start -> Run replacement – press a predefined hotkey and a small command line tool appears where I can type shortcut-like commands.
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The original is here. Yeah, I didn’t like the header image so I removed it. I’m tired of moving themes around, so I’ll settle on this for a while. Simple and clean. I’ll just fuss around with the plugins later. And yeah, I’m also changing the categories around. There should be a plugin to search posts and assign multiple posts to new categories at the same time. My vacation time is almost up… I still have too many things to watch…
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I played the same deck again this past weekend, but I forgot to name it “Nameless Deck Wins” this time, so I posted a much worse record. =( I went 2-3-drop, with the losses all going to aggro decks (2 Boros, 1 KarstenBot). The Boros matchup is winnable, but really tight, with no room for error. Anyway, with Planar Chaos coming out, my colors (Red/Green/Black) look like they’re getting a good boost, so hopefully I can further improve this deck.
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I’m testing the Extreme Video Plugin for WordPress, and I thought, what better way to do so than to further propagate the extreme music videos of Ok Go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdbVhBGETQ Some of the new guys at the office performed the above dance as their Christmas initiation… er, presentation, and let me tell you, the audience was on its’ feet. Ok Go is an American band that is known for outrageous live performances like the above.
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I’ve been meaning to write more about my time in Hong Kong. One of the many new things I experienced there was the food. People who’ve eaten out with me on a regular basis know that I’m quite the picky eater. In general, I dislike eating veggies and seafood (yeah, I’m an unhealthy carnivore). In Hong Kong, you cannot avoid vegetables and seafood; every meal comes with some form of green stuff or shrimp or whatnot.
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Wow. It took me three months to finish FF12! Fun game, weak story. No strong lead character to carry the game. Gameplay is very MMORPG-like. The grinding was ok, but they could’ve done some quests like WoW to make it better. I’ll fight the optional bosses someday. Will I play the next FF game? Don’t know. Time is the most difficult factor, as it demands a lot. Took me about 65 hours to finish this one, playing 3-4 hours a day after I came back from Hong Kong.
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I played the following decklist last Saturday at NG Galleria, giving it the incredibly clever name “Nameless Deck Wins” Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 3 Llanowar Elves 4 Spike Feeder 4 Yavimaya Dryad 3 Giant Solifuge 4 Call of the Herd Spells 3 Demonfire 4 Cryoclasm 4 Mwonvuli Acid-moss 4 Hit // Run 1 Krosan Grip Lands 3 Stomping Ground 3 Overgrown Tomb 3 Blood Crypt 1 Karplusan Forest 1 Molten Slagheap 2 Gemstone Mine 2 Gruul Turf 1 Desert 1 Pendlehaven 5 Forest Sideboard 4 Strangling Soot 2 Fortune Thief 2 Persecute 2 Rain of Gore 2 Krosan Grip 3 Magus of the Scroll The strategy is simple:
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Yeah, I still have quite a bit of vacation to go. Might as well spruce up this website a bit. Move things around here and there, you know the drill. A work in progress of course, as always. I hope I don’t screw things up too badly. Better backup WordPress…
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I upgraded my Kubuntu Linux installation to Edgy Eft during the Christmas break. Some notes: Why can’t there be a one-click install? You know, some pop-up alert bubble in the corner saying “A new version of Kubuntu is available.” I don’t see why the user needs to edit the sources.list file, do the apt-get stuff, etc., when all of this can basically be automated away. Except for one thing, I can do everything I need to do using Kubuntu instead of using Windows.
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This year, I resolve to find more direction. That being said, I’m kind of behind already. I usually manage a total cleanup of all the stuff in my room before the New Year. This year? Not even close. At least I have an additional 3 weeks of vacation to finish everything. Review of last year’s resolution: “I will try more new things this year” : I’d say that’s a resounding success.
Dec 2006
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It’s around 7 PM on the 31st of December. Around this time it starts to become dangerous to walk upon the streets of Metro Manila. In fact, I would never go out on the streets after dark on New Year’s Eve. People are starting to throw their pyrotechnics around, and no matter what community you live in, there’s a chance of some reckless kid carelessly tossing some dangerous firecracker somewhere in your direction.
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I was going through the bookstores at yesterday’s sale day at SM North, hoping to find some bargains. I found a copy of The Rock’s book, The Rock Says going for the bargain basement price of 50 pesos (roughly 1 US dollar). What a steal! In case you’ve been living under, well, a rock, you’re probably aware that The Rock was one of the most popular, most electrifying men in professional wrestling, lovingly termed “sports entertainment.
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One of the nice things about Magic: Online is the concept of “Nix Tix”. Basically, for a few days during holidays, 8-man drafts no longer require the usual 2 tickets to play. You simply need the product used for the draft (3 booster packs) in order to join an 8-man draft. And since the payout is also in booster packs, distributed as 4-3-2-2, you can basically keep playing 8-man drafts for free as long as you get at least two wins per draft.
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My mother told me it’s so they don’t try to take home anything from their shoes. She said she heard it from someone who works at SM, supposed to be some kind of standard procedure in department stores. So yeah, I have no idea if it’s true.
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Via insertcredit.com : Apparently, DQ IX coming out on the DS is a big deal over in the land of the rising sun. And the fact that the combat system will be action-style instead of turn-based. Did they really expect the game to keep doing the same thing again and again forever? Anyway, the DS is a better platform for it… Square-Enix already has one flagship RPG series on the consoles (Final Fantasy), and none yet on handhelds, so why not just move their second-oldest title there?
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Something I didn’t expect from the Youtube phenomenon: apparently, FAQ writers can now link to instructional videos for difficult to describe game walkthroughs. If you don’t have any idea what I mean, an “FAQ” is a document that helps someone to do a particular thing by providing answers to Frequently Asked Questions. In my case, I most often read FAQs for video games to help through the difficult spots, usually from GameFAQs.
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Awesome article in The Escapist titled The Rise and Fall of Troika, which gives a good view of the problems facing game development studios with regards to production/publisher issues. I got the link from the blog at rampantgames.com which I’ve been following for a while now. I find the articles about the indie gaming field very enlightening, and I have to say going the route of an indie game developer is much more appealling to me especially after reading about all the issues game dev studios have with big-time publishers.
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When you’re a kid, the days leading up to Christmas are full of wonder and anticipation, and you eagerly await that time when the gifts under the Christmas tree are finally handed out to the recipients and you tear open those packages with such enthusiasm and disregard for the effort put into wrapping it. As an adult, the days leading up to Christmas are filled up with days of overtime as you struggle to meet year-end targets, constantly having to attend gathering after gathering, and worrying about whether you’ve gotten the right presents for people.
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Today is the first day of my four-week hiatus from week, after an exhausting three-day overtime streak I basically collapsed into bed last night. Over the past week people have been asking me why I would take a month-long break from work. Am I going somewhere out of town? Sightseeing? By sheer coincidence I was also looking over a copy of The Little Prince, and one of the chapters there echoed perfectly my sentiments about all these questions: why are all you grown-ups so worried about so-called “matters of consequence”?