Archives - October 2009
October 29th, 2009 - SWF '09 Time Change Reminder
For those coming for my panel,
"Our Local Superhero",
this Sunday at the Art's House,
here are the details again.
1 November 2009
12:30 - 1:30 PM
Venue: Earshot
Also, I don't really give talks.
I have conversations.
So come ready to have a chat,
otherwise it'll be just
a handful of people
staring at one another.
(Tumbleweed from stage
left to right...)
October 23rd, 2009 - SWF'09 Opening Night!
The Singapore Writer's Festival
is upon us and tonight
was opening night.
I went.
I was really underdressed,
as always.
But it's all part of
staying in character.
I received a goodie bag of sorts...
What's that sticking out of it?
NO WAY!!!
Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress!!!!
The final Beatmania IIDX release
on the PS2!
Packed with over 180 songs on 2 discs,
with mega options paying tribute to
all PS2 releases from 3rd Style
to DJ Troopers!
Thank you National Arts Council
for getting me this!
And all in good time too,
since my PS3 is out of commission.
Happy. Loti-happy.
(P.S. The goodie bag did not
contain Beatmania.)
October 18th, 2009 - Singapore Writer's Festival '09 - UPDATED!
Hi, it appears that I've been
invited to a panel at this year's
Singapore Writer's Festival.
This is pretty amazing considering
I've been unemployed for close to
3 years now. Bums have hope!
I'll be in the panel with Sonny Liew
entitled Local Super Heroes which,
if you're a long time reader of TRT,
is quite an irony.
Most of you are probably going for
the Neil Gaiman events so if you've
got extra time, perhaps you'd like
to come to ours? It's free!
UPDATE!!
Please note the new time slot for the panel:
1 November 2009
12:30 - 1:30 PM
Venue: Earshot
Also, Sonny Liew will not be attending
the panel because of a scheduling conflict.
So it's just gonna be me solo.
(I hope that doesn't cause attendance to drop...)
Anyway, I'll see you all then!
October 13th, 2009 - The PS3 Is Dead...Again
See that XMB up there?
There's a disc inside,
but the PS3 won't read anything.
Guess, it's dead...again.
It happened less than a
year ago, when the same
fault occurred. It was still
under warranty then,
so at least, it was free.
But it sounds like a $175
repair job now.
Which brings me to the
jokes I always make in TRT
and Loti about how warranties
don't seem to mean much these days.
Shortened warranty coverage
and almost guaranteed failures
outside of the warranty period
suggests that either things
are just made poorly or
companies simply factor this
into their product life cycle
(i.e. planned obsolescence and
planned product failure).
I believe it's a combination
of both of the above.
This disc read error is
quite common. Almost everyone
I know with a PS3 has had
this happen at some point.
If yours hasn't failed yet,
my guess is you haven't been
playing much, which is a shame.
The fact that a replacement
pretty much fails a year into
its life makes me hesitant to
send it in for repairs and consider
getting the new slim PS3 since it's
only $300 more (wow, sounds like I am
playing right into the trap!).
Two other friends have had
double failures of the same time.
I'm not even going to go into
the X360's red ring of death.
But that opens a whole can of
worms on why Microsoft is going down
the drain and Steve Ballmer is on drugs.
Are we doomed to medicore products
with higher failure rates that
people won't ever exprerience coz they
toss their phones and gadgetry
to get new ones before they fail?
Also, anyone dare to join me in
saying that the "Made In China"
tag contributes to this?
On the bright side, I can
get more work done.
But that's not the point.
October 7th, 2009 - Nirin & Lost Arcade Games
Have you noticed that
there aren't many motorcycle
racing games in the arcades
these days?
Namco was supposed to fill
that void with Nirin,
a motorcycle game that
plays like Maximum Tune on bikes.
Well, not quite.
You race on city streets
in traffic at insane speeds
and can boost once in a while.
There's no customization
and the tracks are loops.
The title screen reads
2008 Namco Bandai Games
and we only found it a week ago
at...Parkway Parade's Timezone
of all places!
We went back to play it today
and it's decent fun.
When you crash into a car at 200km/h,
you just bounce back a bit
and continue riding.
Awesome!
Did you know that
other arcade games like
Hummer and Sega Rally 3
actually made it into Singapore
as well over the last 6 months?
Do you know where we found them?
October 3rd, 2009 - Spam Is...
This site is no stranger
to spam.
We get about 50 a day.
Thank goodness for filters.
But sometimes,
we
turn them off and read spam.
Look at how one of these
spam bots is phrasing its comments!
Also, why are we heavily
linked to a russian brides website
according to our site traffic?
We miss good old porn links.
