The Most Annoying Ad
Most people dismiss evil, dark lord, Sauron, the dark one, or whatever else it may be called in different places as fictional and non-existent. Believe me when I tell you it exists! Evil walks among us and takes many shapes. Using various means and enticements to lure the unawares to the dark side. It has but one single purpose: to drive into our heart extreme unhappiness and despair.
Such as this ill-disposed and most aggravating but unrelenting brutal assault to our sanity: The University of Phoenix Online Course. The high-volume noisy annoying sound! And there is no stop or mute button either. Here's an example of evil at work. It's the Phoenix (read as: pain-in-the-necks) ad at the top of the page (for a painful experience, hover your mouse on it). Created using Macromedia Flash for the sole purpose of bringing the innocents into the world of madness. It's loud and tasteless. In a word, annyoing.
Congratulations, University of Phoenix, you are the winner of The Most Annoying Internet Advertising Award. Warning: entry restricted to the creative genius behind that ad. Enjoy your well deserved award.
Realms Devlogs
Created a development logs for Realms.
Initially, I wanted to use WordPress to do the job but too lazy to do it. :D Besides, better use the precious few space quota offered by exetel for the real contents.
Trillian to the Rescue
Cerulean Studios has released a patch to 'fix' Yahoo!'s instant messaging mess. We all can now resume using Trillian to connect to Yahoo!.
Lame Yahoo!
Yahoo! is dying. Yahoo! is desperate. Yahoo! is panicking. The result is, Yahoo! adopting Microsoft's monopolistic strategy. Once they might had been the biggest, but now just trying to survive.
It is official that from now on Yahoo! will take an active stance to ensure anyone that uses Yahoo! instant messaging will do so using their client program. This is done by frequently changing the protocols and even inserting random number sequences in the header to confuse third party clients, such as Trillian and Easy Message.
Honestly, Yahoo! Messenger's features do not impress me. The most popular (among my friends) are Games and Voice Conference. We can go to Yahoo! Games site directly and ICQ had been offering voice conference since time immemorial. I can't see the benefits of having any of those.
Yahoo! is adopting Microsoft strategy of trying to monopolize anything they can get their hands on. Recently they tried to hold the interest on their webmail accounts by increasing storage limit to 100 MB, in response to Gmail's genereous 1000 MB offer. And yet, it seems that their desperate effort to stem the tide is failing. Gmail account is held in high regard anywhere. Almost like an icon for achievement.
First, it's the web search and site directory services that was under attack by competitors, the biggest being no other than Google. Yahoo! search engine frequently returns poor results. Not to mention from very limited sources, compared to Google's. Microsoft's games Zone detract Yahoo! Games appeal to gamers community, especially for the retail game products. When MSN Messenger, ICQLite and third party messenger clients entered the arena, they pushed Yahoo! Messenger off almost to oblivion. Gmail's shocking 1000 MB offering put the last nail.
Yahoo! must have realized that their end is coming fast. They are doing whatever they can to prevent the inevitable. Would it be enough? Time will tell. Personally, I don't think it will.
They forget, are ignorant to the fact, or even worse do not care that people use third party clients because installing and running several messenger clients at the same time is annoying. The primary and most important purpose of messenger is to -- Yahoo!, take note! -- deliver and receive messages. Plain and simple but it's surprising how many people just can't seem to understand.
People don't like to constrain themselves to one particular instant messaging service. Be it personal preferences, because they are used to one and others another, or it's the first messenger they use and see no reason to change. We had been in the situation years ago, where friends couldn't communicate with each other because they were on different services. One with MSN, the other one uses ICQ, yet other likes Yahoo!, another only knows AOL Instant Messenger.
Third party messengers fill the role as bridge of communications. Instead of multitude of messengers from all different services, you can use only one and talk with all your collegues. That's the purpose and nature of these messengers.
Yahoo! in their arrogants try to deny us users this.
Well if they won't let me use other clients to connect then I won't use Yahoo! instant messaging at all. That is why I urge my friends to have at least two messenger services. Now that Yahoo! has closed the door, we will see sudden rise of registrations at MSN and reactivation of old ICQ accounts.
Yahoo! is not the only service out there.
Instant-Noodle Porridge
Have you ever seen this ... special dish? Have ever taste its ... delicate flavour? I have and I have.
For several reasons I forgot cooking an instant noodle. Many minutes had passed before I remembered about the boiling supposed-to-be-delicious meal in the pan. Alright maybe not delicious but at least palatable. Anyway what I found was a sticky ... something. It looked like noodles that is well on its way on the not-so-natural (de-)evolutionary path of becoming some species of porridge.
The bottom part was burnt and the smell was .... Hmmm actually it didn't smell so bad. Or was it just my hungry stomach?
Waste not, want not.
There was still some recognizable taste of noodle. Yes, I ate it. Not just a spoon (couldn't use fork or chopsticks on it) or two, I actually finished it. Luckily I had a bottle of Coca Cola to wash it all down.
New Layout
Yeah it's a new look, yet again. :D
The top left image was created by Ayame Fataru titled Memories of a Martyr. Beautiful isn't it. And she's still 17 years old! Kids nowadays are so talented. Ohh I feel old. :(
Shrek 2 Fever
For me it's a different fever. Shrek 2
Alright some people say it's not as adventurous as the first Shrek yet still I laughed some many times. It's much funnier and wittier than its predecessor. It has shifted to a more mature audiences with 'adult jokes' but I bet kids love every second of it. Well maybe not the credits section.
Will buy the DVD when it comes out. Am terribly tempted to watch it the second time. Must ... not ... fall to ... the ... dark side.
Heheheh see this picture. It's cute!
BTW, maybe it's only me. I think Princess Fiona is more attractive than Cameron Diaz. When she's in human form, not ogre!
Gmail Fever
You won't believe what I've been offered for a Gmail invitation. From books to 3-MP Digicam. :O
I know it's 1000 MB but surely sooner or later Google is going to open registration to publics.
Some people save the invitations and registers cools addresses to sell later on. Hmm maybe I should be doing that. :D
Nahhhh. It's not fair to others. O:)
Webmail War
Well well well. Yahoo! Mail has increased space quota given to (free) accounts from 5 MB to 100 MB; following Gmail's offer of 1000 MB. The maximum size a mail can have has also jumped to 10 MB, the same with Gmail's.
So far Hotmail hasn't done anything and still persist with their 2 MB.
Oh and it seems there is adverstising on Gmail. Text only, however, and not too intrusive and annoying.
Now which would I pick? Oh what a choice, what a choice. Which one is it. Oooh I can't do this.
Bah. Yes I can. Easily.
Gmail wins by a long shot. Come on, 1000 MB is 1000 MB. Where can you get that generous offer. Even most webhosts don't offer that much. Not to mention the search engine and chat-like interface.
I've heard and read some concerns about privacy issues with Gmail. People are worried that since they wouldn't delete their mails for some time (1000 MB is a lot of room to store mails you know) Gmail (i.e. Google) can make profiles out of it.
Honestly people. If you're that paranoid with privacy and intrusion, you shouldn't connect to internet. Better yet, live in the jungle. You think that water account, electricity account, gas account, health card, green card, and so many others don't carry your personal information?
Heck, people write their diaries on the internet nowadays.
If you don't want others to know about your habit of visiting porn sites, then don't. Go to work. Feed the birds. Spend time with your family. Or some other productive activities.
My Own Gmail
Ohoo I got my own Gmail account thanks to William.
The amazing features: 1 Gigabytes and search engine. Yes that's 1,000 megabytes! By far the most generous storage space every offered for free. With 10 megabytes maximum size of each message.
Mails are linked together to seem like a conversation messages. There is not a single advertising. Hopefully it won't be flooded by spams and junks like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail
Niceee.... Me happy. :D
Realms: Uploaded
Alright I've decided to upload it anyway even though. Not finished yet but why not.
http://home.exetel.com.au/cyberia/realms/
Realms: Almost There
Yeaahhh it's finished. Almost. :D
The engine is ready but the presentation still lacking. Mostly in text and looks ugly. But hey, I can already see the light at the end.
Anyway it won't be totally finished. It can be. I would constantly improve on it. If I have the time of course. :D
Still, wohooo.
It will be at the webspace from ISP: http://home.exetel.com.au/cyberia/
The Not So Cute
Cutie
My mind is blank. Absolutely no idea what to write for the last several days. Might as well put up a picture.
Cute isn't she? :D
That's Tomiko Van if anyone wants to know.
