Suikoden V is hands-down the best game in the Suikoden series.
In almost all respects, it beats out the previous best game of the series (Suikoden 2): The story manages to follow the old pattern of “oh I need to flee my home and now I’m leading a band of rebels in a civil war!” but infuses with a lot of new elements: usurpers to the throne, historical wars of succession, threats of foreign invasion.
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.
May 2006
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There’s only one thing I have to say about the third X-men movie: Totally unexpected. Comic book series fans will enjoy it more, as it fundamentally screws with what such a fan would expect from an X-men movie. Good stuff.
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I always have a hard time assessing fellow developers. For one thing, I’m never sure whether it’s fair to apply to other people the same internal standard I have for myself. Some people might say, “of course it’s fair to expect as much from other people as yourself!”, but the fact is that I’m not even sure if I expect too much from myself. I may like to project and arrogant and prideful exterior, but I’m extremely self-critical.
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Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user roytang on 2006-05-17 Google Web Toolkit — Tagged as: development framework web
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I’m not sure what some Church leaders are thinking. Calling for an outright ban on The DaVinci Code movie just makes it more popular. At the very least, it’s insulting to the intelligence of their flock – are they saying Catholics don’t have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction by themselves? But then again, this is a nation of Catholics who tend to elect action stars to high office because of all the goody-goody roles they portray in the movies, so maybe the priests have some sort of point.
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Whenever I’m at other people’s houses, I often think their toilets are better than the ones we have at home. Don’t get me wrong, our toilets are nice enough; good, decent middle class toilets. But some people’s toilets look like they’ve never been used at all.
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Sometimes it’s frightening to consider the existent of how much popular culture consumes our time. Most weekends I usually manage to reserve some time for some sort of learning, but over the last 48 hours, aside from work, my time has been swallowed by: Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett Episode 21 of Smallville Season 5 Episodes 18 and 19 of Simpsons Season 17 8 hours of Suikoden V gameplay … and probably 2-3 odd hours of watching random cartoons or wrestling on TV Hmm… I forgot to watch a movie though.
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A very nice person handed me a CD with four episodes of Takeshi’s Castle on it, and I had to keep myself from watching them while at work, as I was getting my officemates distracted. If you’ve never seen samples of wacky Japanese TV before, Takeshi’s Castle is a good start. This wacky Japanese show throws a bunch of a hundred or so contestants into a series of ridiculous games, each one hoping to make it to the end to defeat Count Takeshi and win one million yen!
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I feel compelled to post this, in case I ever need to remember. We spent last Sunday and Monday (Labor Day holiday) at a five-star hotel in Manila. My mom works there and she earned a free night’s stay; so we took advantage of her employee discount as well. Not really very exciting for me, as there’s seldom much to do in a hotel except to enjoy the air-conditioned room and watch TV.
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So I was at work, and one of the HK guys asks me if we can have a themed button for the file input control in one of our screens. So, I’m all “alpha geek” and stuff, and I go: “No we can’t. We can’t style the ‘Browse’ button directly, and IE will throw an Access Denied error on submit if we invoke the click() method using Javascript.” But HK guy replies: “Gee, I wonder how GMail does it then.
Apr 2006
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I tried the new Yahoo Mail Beta for a while, but I decided to switch back just now. Short review: it’s nice looking, but feels a tad sluggish. Well, sluggish compared to gmail at least. The biggest problem is that scrollbar in the message list. It’s like promising that you can scroll through all your messages, but when you try to scroll to a far away part of the list, you just get a lot of “Loading… " text.
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Usually, whenever a Catholic priest gives a homily during Mass, he stands behind a pulpit and generally act like they’re making a speech. At the place where I go to Mass, the priests prefer to stand in front of the altar, closer to the audience, holding a microphone in their hands and pacing around a bit during the homily. I remarked to my brother during the Easter Sunday mass: “I bet priests would make great stand-up comics.
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the four agreements, don miguel ruiz book – a code for life and personal development agreement 1 Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. agreement 2 Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you.
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There are a handful of issues that would influence the general direction of the human race in years to come. Terrorism, oil scarcity, trade imbalances and worldwide poverty come to mind, and these are the ones most commonly discussed in mainstream media. There is however, another important battle being waged that is far removed from the minds of the everyday person. That battle is Recording Industry vs The People. Some of the posts at the above blog are awesome reads and point to an alarming pattern of abuse of the United States’ judicial system by large corporations with armies of lawyers at their disposal waging a war against ordinary American citizens.
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I wonder if the Catholic Church considers piracy as a sin… at least one that I should be confessing to a priest during er… confession. If so, I suppose I have more than ten years’ worth of piracy-related sins to confess. Yeah, I go to confession. Once a year, around the Holy Week period usually. Once a year is the minimum frequency required by the Catholic Church, but I wonder how many observe it?
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One would think it an unfair comparision, seeing as how BG2 is at least 5 years older that Suiko5. But BG2 holds up pretty well, I end having a mental coin toss as to which game I will play at any one time. They both have their merits. Suiko5 Pros: Awesome story, lots of background and character depth. Cons: Extremely narrow gameplay, heavily scripted. Hero looks girly. Status: 12 hours in.
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I feel like I should be used to it, but summer seems a lot more intense this year.
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(My previous practice was never to post an entry about a game until I’d finished it. This was a good idea during those days that I had a lot of free time and could finish the average RPG in a week. I haven’t been in that state for four years.) My brother warned me that according to reviews, the first eight hours or so of Suikoden V were quite draggy. When I thought about it, that should be expected.
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Screenshot 01-Apr-2006 (Click to view full-size) Screenshot 01-Apr-2006 2 Apr 2006 7:01amView postClose I’m getting a lot more comfortable with Ubuntu… I spent about half an hour today customizing the environment and setting up some stuff. I can do my downloading in Ubuntu now; I just need to set up some sort of shared FAT32 partition that both WinXP and Ubuntu can access for easy transfer between the two OS.
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Yesterday, the guard at my office building pissed me off quite a bit. He refused to let me in because I was wearing slippers! Since we dress casually on Saturdays, very so often I like to wear slippers to work, especially when I’m feeling too lazy to put on socks. They never gave me any trouble before, so I argued with the guard for a bit. Stubborn-headed, he still wouldn’t let me in.
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I’ve always been suspicious of radio station top ten lists, assuming they are predetermined marketing scams and not really based on actual listener requests. When I was in high school I wanted to put this theory to the test by having a whole lot of people call one station and request a really old song – my choice at the time was “Hey Jude” by the Beatles. Unfortunately, my plan fell through because I could not gather the critical mass needed to accomplish it.
Mar 2006
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Ballmer, Bemused – Forbes.com An interview with Steve Ballmer – a lot of “Microsoft is cool” gibberish, but one nice quote stands out for me: Forbes.com: Right now, I can go out and get a free alternative to just about every product Microsoft sells. Why do people keep paying you for something they could get free? Ballmer: One, people value their time. Our stuff does more, and they like that.
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I attended Grand Prix Manila last March 17, 2006, and the event was jam-packed with people. Can you find me in the picture? (Click to view full-size) I attended Grand Prix Manila last March 17, 2006, and the event was jam-packed with people. Can you find me in the picture? 26 Mar 2006 12:42amView postClose Maybe it's just me, but Wizard's coverage of Grand Prix Manila last weekend seems just a tad condescending to Filipino Magic players.
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Books I’ve finished reading in the past few months: Rapid Development by Steve McConnell – I was browsing through my company’s small library of development books and found this little gem among the usual language-specific tomes. A bit old, but I know from Code Complete that Steve McConnell really hits in the mark with regard to software best practices. This book is aimed mainly at technical leads — coincidentally, that was my role at the time.
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I think I’m starting to get the hang of this :p This whole thing with Kubuntu, where I have to use Adept to install stuff is really weirding out my Windows-geek tendencies. For today, all I wanted was to get some mp3s playing on Kubuntu. Unfortunately, the default included players (Kaffeine and Amarok) were giving me trouble, claiming they could not play mp3s! I asked around for some help, and read some FAQs, but I kept getting errors trying to download and install gstreamer-mad 0.
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Full description Edit 2018: The old link was broken because the site in question changed their format. Here’s a fixed link.
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World Public Opinion Check out the link, apparently the Philippines is the United States’ #1 fan.
Feb 2006
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Previously: I installed Kubuntu, but failed to get the internet working. But now, since we got a router to service our home network (whereas previously we were using a cross-cable directly connecting two computers), I decided to give it another shot. Apparently, if I have a router between my PC and the DSL line, I can use something called DHCP to automatically configure my ethernet connection. And I did that! Woohoo, and now I’m posting from Linux!
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Wooo! I’m not sure how to begin; my brothers and I have been wrestling fans for almost twenty years now, and as far as I can remember this was the only time that the WWE ever came to the Philippines. The last time was a long time ago, and although I wanted to see it, there was no way I could convince my parents then that the largish amount of cash needed to go was worth it.
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Lest I be accused of avoiding the real world by writing about TV shows while events start to unfold which may or may not plunge our nation into chaos, I suppose I should put my two cents into the matter. For those who read this text in the future at a time when all these links are broken, the current President of the Phillipines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has declared a state of national emergency today, claiming that a broad alliance encompassing traditional oppostion groups and the far left and the far right are trying to bring her down.
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I figure there are three reasons why people continue to watch Smallville: We want to see Clark become Superman (and Lex become… Lex) We want to see all the cool comic-book references and cameos We actually like all the drama and though we know otherwise, we harbor some sort of hope that maybe Clark and Lana will still get together anyhow As a comic geek, I guess I’m more inclined toward the first two.
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I am a Light Cycle. I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game Character Are You?
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… or so he claimed. The conversation started off easily enough, he said the MMDA over at Megamall were staring him down for daring to wait for me to run up to his cab. For some reason, he soon digressed into how earlier that day he had witnessed a man snatch a cellphone from a young woman inside a jeepney. The young woman was of course dumbstruck as the perp made his escape.
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I am honored, I am now worthy of being comment-spammed. Made me sign up for a WordPress.com account so I could activate Akismet.
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Spent a good amount of time today tidying up the desktop. Check it out! Wallpaper is from Everyday Icons
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I remembered that I haven’t written an About page yet. This post will go there. The Blogger profile describes me as a “Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.” Let’s break that down, shall we? Programmer : Since January of 2003 I’ve been working as a software developer for the RP office of a Hong Kong-based company. I’m no Computer Science graduate, but I did manage to fake it well enough to pass the JITSE certification exams.
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Some people I know enjoy puzzles. (So do I.) Here’s a neat one: 85 37 655321 64389000 466 64 24601 101 980 95 057 42799 6 The only hint provided is: It’s not something you’ll figure out by just thinking about it, but with some creative Googling you can get it.
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pamie.com: Open Up and Say Yumburger. Awesome, awesome blog post about some “Ugly Americans” and their um… “unique” experience dining at Jollibee. Highlights the world of difference between the American palette and the Filipino one. While they make a good point that Jollibee is the “crappy burger joint food” of the Philippines as compared to McDonald’s which is the “crappy burger joint food” of the US, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any Filipino reference Jollibee food in any such disparaging manner.
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Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user roytang on 2006-02-15 Yahoo! UI Library — Tagged as: coding web Online test based on Jung – Myers-Briggs typology — Tagged as: myers-briggs psychology tools Japanese Wallpaper Site — Tagged as: wallpapers TTCS OSSWIN CD – open source software for Windows — Tagged as: freeware software Video of a Real Transformer — Tagged as: cool tech transformers
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On our way down the mountain from Batangas, we stopped in a small, quaint town filled with old-fashioned simple folk. For some reason, I took the opportunity to vanish into the shadows and watch as the buses left me behind. I roamed around the small town, hoping to find some sort of means with which I could escape my mundane life and start over in a some other paradise. Twice people from the company came back, looking for someone, but apparently not me.
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(Click to view full-size) 13 Feb 2006 6:58amClose This is the photo I decided to put on the front page of http://roytang.net while I wasn't sure yet what to put there. We were at Punta Fuego in Batangas last Jan 30-31 for our coincidentally-coinciding-with-the-HK-Chinese-New Year-weekend annual company outing. Those who know me in person might be aware that I'm not really big on out-of-town trips.
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The response of the western world to the recent backlash against published cartoon depictions of mohammed could be described as the unavoidable result of two completely distinct cultures clashing against each other. On one hand, Islam dictates that any such depiction of the prophet Mohammed are considered as blasphemy; on the other hand, Western media views it as a free speech issue; since every other religion in the world tolerates media lampooning, why shouldn’t Islam?
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This was Scott Adams’ first non-Dilbert book. If you’re used to reading Adams go on about Induhviduals and stupid managers, or if you’ve never read Adams trying / pretending to sound philosophical in one of his books, then this isn’t what you’d expect. Adams describes it as a “thought experiment” of sorts, one where he tries to provide some sort of explanation for basically life, the universe and everything. Although it’s a work of fiction, it sounds like Adams is trying to see how people will react to his form of philosophy — it seems to be one of his favorite things to do something just to provoke reactions.
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Hopefully for the last time ^_^ http://roytang.net/blog Farewell blogger!
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In a few months people will forget anyway. Yesterday 74 people died in a tragic stampede. The reason? Crowding to get into the one-year anniversary show of a local noontime variety show. Wowowee. This is ridiculous, an obvious barometer showing how desperate many of our countrymen have become. The show was offering prizes in the form of raffle draws and contests, and many were hoping to win a house and lot or at least some cash to help them get by.
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Yeah, so I was bored and went ahead and got a domain name. ^_^I’m wondering if I’ve wasted money, but webhosting is really cheap nowadays anyway. Thanks to the nice folks at pinoywebhosting.com for their quick service! Anyway, I hope you’ll pardon me if some parts of the site aren’t fully up-and-running (the about page is still the wordpress template for one), I haven’t had much time to play around with wordpress yet.
Jan 2006
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Today’s Dilbert takes the old programming truism to an extreme – “Users don’t know what they want.”
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Yeah, I haven’t been posting lately. I still have a lot of thoughts running around my head, and often throughout the day I find myself thinking, “I should post an entry about this.” But at the end of the day, I’m tired and I’m exhausted from thinking about two hundred different issues and juggling twenty different priorities, so I don’t post about it. I note it somewhere and sooner or later it becomes irrelevant and I forget why I wanted to post it in the first place.
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So yeah, out of a strange mix of adventurism, inertia, coincidence and plan old boredom, I decided to install linux on this machine. At first I just wanted to see how easy the install would be, but after I nuked my Windows XP install I sort of had no turning back. (-_-!) Anyway, I went for a dual boot of Windows XP and Kubuntu, supposedly an easy-to-use Linux distro. So yeah, I even watched this video online that showed how to do the installs.
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… but what the hell. I will try more new things this year.