Mixed weekend

The weekend marked a good rest for me as I had plenty of free time to catch up on my sleep as well as learn a little bit more mandarin on Saturday morning. Basically, my entire Saturday afternoon was used to chill out and relax a little after an extremely hectic week at work but in the evening there were mixed joy and sadness. Sad because Liverpool drew 2-2 away while happy that Manchester United lost at home against Blackburn. Although Liverpool may be undefeated, I hardly call 1 win and 4 draws something to be proud of. Already shaky at the start of the season, I really do wonder how will they fair off in the Champions League trying to defend their title.

Sunday on the other hand was more fun because I caught "Flight Plan" at TGV in 1 Utama, don't ask me why I went to TGV. Ok I bought some coupons last time during their 10th Anniversary promotion which were going pretty cheap and GSC was totally packed. I blame that due to my last minute decision to catch a movie. The movie was a good thriller and I really didn't manage to guess the outcome of the show, for once. Usually most shows offer the same cliche style ending or storyline but I was caught a little off guard there.

Sunday evening was my highlight of the weekend. It was the Sheffield Alumni reception to celebrate The University of Sheffield's centenary year. Held at the luxurious Shangri-la hotel, the event was fun because it was a time of catching up and learning more about friends whom I have lost touch with. Everyone seemed to be fine and enjoying themselves, some of the bumming around and some of them reaching high points of their careers. The food was excellent and I guess everyone enjoyed the free flow of wine, beer and soft drinks. After chatting with old friends, I thought that how nice it would be to meet up again after 5 years. If only the Malaysian Sheffield Alumni would be a little more active, maybe I might have to do something about that.

Time to vote!

Just vote, instructions are shown on the picture.

Kids, don't try this at home

Or anywhere else for that matter. What am I absolutely blabbing about? Very simple, weird flavoured mooncakes. I had the opportunity of trying out a blueberry mooncake last night and it tasted absolutely horrible. Seriously, they taste just like medicine. It was so bad that I couldn't even finish a quarter of the mooncake and it was already relatively smaller than the usual mooncakes. Funniest thing was that I tried to force Chuen into eating them but after tasting it myself, I wouldn't even give them to my enemies.

Also my colleague saw another flavour of mooncake at work, raspberry and cheese. Its like eating cough medicine flavoured mooncakes. Give me pandan, lotus paste or redbean anytime, no weird tasting, funny looking mooncakes for me. I truly wonder where this mooncake business is going to end up next. Satay flavoured mooncakes? Or maybe wasabi mooncakes? Who knows?

Surfing around the web earlier and I chanced upon some very nice pictures of the upcoming Windows Vista. Personally, it looks like a cross between how the Apple interface looks like together with a dash of Windows XP styling. The button designs look quite similar to that of Firefox though. Plenty of sites out there offering a lot of screenshots of Windows Vista. I'll just post some of them on my site.

-source: PCMAG.COM



-source: TheStar.com.my

Personally I think they look great. Can't wait for the actual version to be released soon and it also gives me a chance to upgrade to a 64-bit computer. But as usual, I would expect it to have plenty of bugs.

The reality of life...

Is SMS voting the most popular thing going on right now? I mean its everywhere in almost every contest recent reality television show such as Malaysian Idol, Fantasia Akademi and others. In true honesty it is out of sheer brilliance that this concept was thought up because not only does the voters get to be part of the contest but the amount of cash generated by these votes provide a hefty profit to the creators.

Recently in the newspapers, there is talk that there will be a voting competition to decide the next Malaysian up in space. Already receiving sarcastic remarks from the media regarding sending our favourite "roti canai" into space, this will definitely grab the headlines of every major media company by offering a SMS vote-in for the first Malaysian astronaut.

I think it is absolutely absurd that such a thing should occur because in reality, SMS voting is largely dependent on popularity and money. Even the guys at Rudy and JJ of the Hitz.fm morning crew agree on that. Whoever has more money can afford to send in more text votes for himself/herself. I don't want a Malaysian to make a fool of himself in space because of he/she won a popularity contest, I want one that will do this nation proud, someone who is qualified, humble and willing to do anything to make his/her country proud. That is who we should send into space, not some bozo who can smile great in front of a camera and spends thousands of dollars on SMSes. I am sure either Maxis, Celcom or Digi will be glad because of all the business that bozo is giving to them.

Anyhow, recently after all the AP issue being brought up all over Malaysia, Miss Rafidah is back again but this time I am for her. This time it is about power issues and how a lot of companies have been complaining to her regarding losses incurred by these companies due to power failures and blackouts. Despite paying all their bills and settling any monetary issues, why is it that us consumers are receiving sub-standard services?

I particular like this bit. (source: Thestar.com.my)

This came about when Bruce Anson, chief operating officer of Quantum Structural Membranes Sdn Bhd, told her that his factory in Ayer Keroh Industrial Area was still without

power supply despite paying RM36,200 in deposits and other required costs.

“The answer given to us by TNB is that they have no budget for pipes,” Anson told Rafidah.

The minister immediately asked a TNB officer for an explanation.

However, he was from Johor, so he could not provide an answer.

When Rafidah asked how much profit Tenaga made last year, the officer replied: “RM1.4bil.”

Wow, a profit of RM1.4bil and no budget to layout pipes. I won't say anything else. I leave it all for Malaysians to decide. It is so evident that these kind of things happen, if that is so how are we suppose to attract foreign investors into our country? Maybe we should use this sort of advertisement since we are trying to establish more research here in Malaysia.

WANTED: R&D Investors

Field of study:
To research on the power networks set up in Malaysia, to figure out why the circuit breakers do not function in time and why backups are not reliable and that certain areas do not receive any electricity.

Resources:
Plenty of unreliable power networks with plenty of real life situations to research on.

This will definitely bring in those investors!

Maybe now we can see what happens when companies are allowed to monopolize the market. So much so that I am afraid that the resultant of that would lead to sub-standard customer service and preferrence and all concentration would be focused on profits rather than us consumers. There should never be a single monopoly in any market, competition is healthy and beneficial for everyone in the long run. Without wars and competition, the human race would never have advanced this much technologically, and thats true.

Lack of funds

In about a months time, http://www.markleo.com will not be running anymore due to lack of funds. I can't really afford to pay for those forwarding services anymore. Anyway to view this site just use the original address, http://markleo.blogspot.com.

For those of you who have blogs that include links to this page, kindly switch from http://www.markleo.com to http://markleo.blogspot.com. Really sorry for any inconvenience caused. Thank you for your cooperation.

Have a wonderful Monday today!

My passion

Its not everyday that I actually spill out my secret desire of playing DOTA all the time but until recently when I just read this post on another blog, man, it really made my day haha.

In case you are rather lazy to click on the link, I'll just post the entire post here.

Friday, August 26, 2005
NOOBS! I AM MORE PRO THAN YUO!11

Sometimes, I don't understand what is the big deal about 'not wanting to lose'. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a good idea to have a 'wanting to lose' attitude, and I'm not saying that winning is a bad thing either. But what's the big deal with 'winning' over something.

Just what is there to proove?

Recently, I observed an in-game argument between two Singaporeans in a pubbie. They were both on the same team (the enemy team in fact) and apparently, one of them was getting pissed at the other guy because he kept feeding. Of course, this depends on how you view it. My team, which apparently composed of some pretty decent players, had been executing some well set up good gang bangs sessions. To his team, he's probably feeding because he keeps dying to the opposite side, whereas on our end, he HAD to die no matter what. This can be very obvious, because it's not everyday 5 heroes corner you down at your tower, tear you to pieces before your teammates can even react.

We were targeting this particular player because he was using a Naix, and we all shared the same opinion that a fat Naix, is a fat chance of us winning. And so, we continuously struck at him during the early game phase, resulting in him getting 10 deaths before anyone even hit level 11. Note that this is a very bad idea when facing a well-managed team because leaving your lanes to take out opponent heroes can be more harmful to your game than it would help you. Fortunately, the other team (although decent players themselves) failed to capitalize on our weakness and instead blamed the poor Naix player for this.

I think the comedy started around the 8th time we had just gang banged the Naix. Our poison commandos (PA and Venom) had just stung Naix to a point where his Crystal Maiden teammate was yelling "B LA YOU NOOB" on the public channel because the Naix was still hanging around with less than 100 health. Everyone was so focussed on the Naix that the other team's Zeus failed to realize my Bounty Hunter had disappeared from his lane and was waiting by the 2nd tower for Naix to turn around. He appeared on queue and I took him out with just a hit. To add fuel, the game announcer promptly screamed out M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL and that's when one of them (the Sven) started cussing on the public channel.

Sven: ****ING SH** OUR NAIX IS A FEEDER

Venom: good! keep it up!

Sven: **CK YOU A**HOLE! U SEE IF HE IS ON YOUR TEAM U LIKE OR NOT

Me: *To Team* ehh guys, don provoke them.. it's not even midgame. I wanna get at least my sheep stick before they quit.

Venom: *To Team*Kih kih kih. But they are such noobs

Me: *To Team* noobs or not... we don't want to jeopardize the game

It was a good thing though, that my opponents had been farming relatively well, (since most of us were off our lanes most of the time) and I didn't think Sven would want to quit since he's already got his Mask Of Madness and was halfway to getting a Black King Bar.

Up till then, the Naix had been keeping quiet (or perhaps keeping to Teamchat) until the Sven, being overly confident with his Mask Of Madness and God Strength decided to push his luck and chase after my team's Tinker who had been down to half his health, not realizing that a sneaky Bounty Hunter was closing up on him from behind. As he let loose his Storm Bolt, thinking that he had secured the kill, our Tinker let loose his rocket at the same time as I popped up from behind, giving him a good taste of digitally rendered steel.

There was a moments silence, here I can only fathom whatever went on in the other team's chat, when all of a sudden a flurry of messages started streaming down the bottom left side of my screen which went something like this:

Sven: AHAHAHAHA NOOB

Sven: OH YEAH?

Sven: NOT LIKE YOU NOOB FEEDER

At this point, Naix too began expressing his love on the channel.

Naix: f*** you think you are so great but still die like some noob yourself

Naix: who thinks Sven is a noob, move your mouse.

Sven: WHO THINKS THIS NOOB NAIX IS A RETARD HOLD YOUR POSITION

Sven: EVEN MY MOTHER CAN PLAY BETTER THAN YOU NOOB

Naix: your mother plays dota? no wonder he kid is such a geek

Sven: WTF NOOB DONT BRING MY MOTHER INTO THIS

Me: *To Team* Actually.. he brought his mother into this first...-_-"

Naix: f*** you la. i can play a better sven than you anytime

Sven: NOOB COME 1V1 LA IF U THINK U ARE SO PRO

Naix: come la, you think i scared?

Sven: OK NOOB BRING IT ON HAHAHAHAHAHA

Naix: ***ker STOP CALLING ME NOOB, NOOB!

Ah, the joys of being young, and stupid. Then things began to get ugly.

Sven: OK GAMEANEM IS NAIXTHENOOB COME IN 5 MINUTES

Sven: PREPARE TO GET PAWNED NOOB. I AM MORE PRO THAN YOU

Me: *WTF!* what the hell! where do you think you're going!

********* has left the game.

Everyone: !!!@?!?!?11!oneone1!!?slashoneone?!!???111

Ok, so what's the point, guys? I know there's alot at stake in a game of DOTA, even if it IS just a game, but what I can never really understand is why of all things would someone want to play 1on1 against each other. What's there to proove?

Let's do abit of a study on this. I've joined 1v1 games myself out of purely academic purposes, and what I discovered is that I'm only allowed to play on one lane, usually just the middle one. If that's the case, we can rule out strategic decision making and tactical macro-management since you're only pushing on one lane, which will always be occupied.

Most hero spells in DOTA (or at least the popular heroes) are primarily target based so this means we're not really testing out each other's ability to aim and target well as is the case of FPS games like Quake or Unreal. (With the exception of perhaps the Keeper of the Light or Sand King of course, but meh, who really uses Keeper of the Light in 1v1s anyway? I know there'll be someone out there who'll proove me wrong but STFU dude, I'm just trying to make a point!) I can't say DOTA doesn't require micro skills, but it's certainly not as micro intensive as a normal melee game, (Again with the exception of heroes like the KOTL, but talk to the Hand..|.. if you have a problem with what I write-_-") so I don't think it's about matching micro abilities either.

So just, what are you trying to proove? FFS, DOTA is a team game. I've stressed this so many times in the DOTA forum that it's not even funny anymore whenever I see someone getting a hero like say... Phantom Assassin, and telling the rest of the team, don't worry, we'll win because I have the PA. Five deaths later, that Phantom Assassin players leaves the game.

But you should already know that, don't you? This is after all DOTASG, and it's catered to all you pro-gamer wannabes. Well, at least I hope you do. It's better to flush that "I'm more pro than you because I can win you in 1v1 dota!" mentality out of your systems.

So anyway, to conclude the story:

*Game continues for another 15 minutes*

Me: *Eh.. strange..* Uh.. Naix, you're still here?

Naix: why? you want me to leave isit?

Me: *ACK!* Oh nonononoono, stay. by all means. please:):):)

Naix: that Sven is still pestering me to join his game

Naix: as if i'm that dumb. i just wanted his items.

Naix: i told him i go toilet for a moment first. wonder how long he's going to wait there.

Me: AHAHAHAH! OMG ROFTLOL! PAWNED!

Naix: indeed.

And thus, Naix did indeed take the Sven's MOM and BKB, and proceeded to pwn my team regardless of how well we did at the start of the game. 5 on 1 all die.

The moral of this story?

KNNMCB... Naix is bloody imbalanced. Dammit they should do something about Naix

- source, DOTA SINGAPORE

Now doesn't that tell us something about our friendly neighbours down south. But in true honesty, I really suspect that Sven player is a Malaysian. Mind you, I get that same kind of stuff everytime playing on our local BlueServer. Well you can't really blame it on us, some of the players are just kids or teens who want to vent all of their anger out.

As for me, work has been piling up like crazy and I am definitely lacking in sleep, I think. Anyhow a good cup of nescafe keeps me up throughout the day and my daily two meetings so its not really a problem. Right now my desk at work seems rather clean, well sort of. Only reason why it looks neat is that my lightbox is with the production group together with my trusty 14" hi-resolution monitor. My soldering irons lie on one end of the table while notes and paperwork continue to pile on my in-tray. Noticed that I never did mention an out tray haha. My two 80mm fans brought from home humms through the noisy office, yeah I am using it because it gets rather hot sometimes. All I need to do is hook them up to my DC Regulator supply and voila, instant cool breeze.

Great quotes!

Are all choices good?
If your father is a poor man,
it is your fate but,
if your father-in-law is a poor man,
it's your stupidity.

How smart are we?
I was born intelligent -
education ruined me.

Something to tell your coach
Practice makes perfect.....
But nobody's perfect......
so why practice?

Reality stinks! Don't you think so?
If it's true that we are here to help others,
then what exactly are the others here for?

Man I got to try using this phrase
Since light travels faster than sound,
people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Unsolved mysteries
How come "abbreviated" is such a long word?

Common phrase thanks to their adverts
Money is not everything.
There's Mastercard & Visa.

Yumm, my favourite. Try saying this to the WWF
One should love animals.
They are so tasty.

Okay, not that true...
Behind every successful man, there is a woman
And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.

Do all man agree on this? I don't think so
Every man should marry.
After all, happiness is not the only thing in
life.

Now this is funny!
The wise never marry.
and when they marry they become otherwise.

So true and so real
Success is a relative term.
It brings so many relatives.

Its called time management
Never put off the work till tomorrow
what you can put off today.

A common practice during meetings
"Your future depends on your dreams"
So go to sleep

Maybe breakfast in bed, no?
There should be a better way to start a day
Than waking up every morning

Prevention is better than cure
"Hard work never killed anybody"
But why take the risk

Haha, my favourite
"Work fascinates me"
I can look at it for hours

So much for good family
God made relatives;
Thank God we can choose our friends.

Kids, don't try this at home
The more you learn, the more you know,
The more you know, the more you forget
The more you forget, the less you know
So.. why learn.

My dream come true...
A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk, I have a work station....
what more can I say........