Mubarak Still Alive...

Well Mubarak is stronger than I anticipated. He still hasn't resigned!

There's still a lot of protests. The Egyptian army has come into Cairo but has done nothing. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Mubarak is just waiting for more protestors to come and use the army to kill more of them.

The Arab World Crisis

Alright I think everyone has heard the news. You know, the crises in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and all the other Arab World countries. The Tunisian President Zine Bel Ali has already resigned and a new government has been formed. And in Egypt after only 5 days of protest President Mubarak has already appointed a new vice-president and prime minister.

I think that if President Mubarak resigns, instability will consume the Middle East. Egypt has been a moderating effect on other, less stable Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon and Iraq, and both the United States and the EU consider Egypt to be a vital ally. If Egypt tumbles, who knows? Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran could all be drawn into war. Israel is actually much like North Korea on the other side of Asia. If North Korea attacks its southern neighbor, most of Eastern Asia will be drawn into war. Just like Israel's conquests of Syria's Golan Heights and Egypt's Giza Strip.

The Arab World is in a transition period. In the Middle Ages they were the cutting-edge in medicine and science. But now we see terrorism, suicide bombers and war all associated with the Muslim religion. I highly doubt that Islamic culture is like this. I might be mistaken, but doesn't the Koran (the Muslim holy book, for those noobs that don't know) value peace over war? There is fear in their eyes. Fear of Western influences. Fear of the Jews in Israel. Fear that their way of life will be crushed.

Now that I mention it, the West. Egypt's crisis isn't very good for the West. What if Mubarak is overthrown, and some pro-terrorist Taliban takes his place? Egypt could become a second Iraq and Afghanistan. They do share some similarities: Iraq and Afghanistan were once stable, prosperous countries. But then the stern dictatorships of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban take over, and both countries have been plunged into chaos. Egypt could add oil to an already blazing Middle Eastern fire.

Injuries >=(

Alright I am pissed >=(.

I am right in a crunch match for my league in Hattrick this Saturday and now 3 of my BEST players are injured. 2 defenders and 1 forward. And that hurts since I have a profound lack of both.

Luckily, one defender, Garry Poitiers (rated Solid in Defending) recovered today. But the other two are still in the hospital. The other defender, Henrik Stenwald, is one of my best wingbacks (passable in both Defending and Winger) and the forward, Etienne Laviolette is a great multiskilled player (solid Playmaking and Set Pieces, passable Scoring, Defending and Passing) with a Technical specialty to boot.

So I am left with playing Kevin Meyers and Jonathan Coe (both rated inadequate in Defending; Coe has inadequate Winger and Meyers has passable). Yeah not the best defenders in the world. To cap it all off, my goalkeeper Andrea Giaccardi is in weak form and only has inadequate Keeping anyways.

In attack, I play Paul Moore, who also has passable Scoring but is desperately needed to boost my midfield rating. Levent Avunc, originally on the wing, is now suddenly an inner midfielder with inadequate stamina, so I have to sub him off after the second half. On the wing is Amichai Shinfeld, who up until last week was playing for my youth team and only has inadequate Winger.

So I have basically given up for this season. If I lose this game, both Zeal FC (the team I'm facing) will be 6 points above me and the leaders Space Invaders will be 9, unless in the unlikely event that he loses to The Connecticut Elephants whose manager has only joined in December. Even then, the next few games will be against bots and then I'll be facing Space Invaders, who I doubt I can beat.

BLACKPOOL

Hey fellow Premier League watchers! Heard the latest news?

I'm not writing about Darren Bent's 18 million euro transfer (he can go rot in a hole for all I care). I'm not writing about Liverpool's recent resurgence under Kenny Dalglish. I am talking about Blackpool

In this season Blackpool have been quite simply stunning. An opening 4-0 win over Wigan. A miraculous 2-1 win over Liverpool. 8th in the table. And to think they were in League One just a few years ago!

But now they've been fined.

In a 2-3 loss to Aston Villa early in the season, Blackpool manager Ian Holloway, who had led the Tangerines from their League One days, made 10 changes to a side that had tied 2-2 with Everton the previous week. Apparently this is a Premier League offense and Blackpool has been fined 25000 English pounds.

My first reaction was...What the ****?

Why the hell would radically changing a side be noteworthy of a fine?

Alright maybe Blackpool were bribed to lose the match, but they only lost 2-3 to a good side! Why would Aston Villa even waste money to bribe them in the first place?

To make matters even more stupidly ridiculous, Ian Holloway has stated he would quit if charges are fined against the team. Um...overreaction-much? Just because your team got fined 25 grand (which isn't really a big sum in a league where players' salaries average around fifty grand a week) doesn't mean that you should quit and waste all the effort you did over the past few years. It's just like Fergie spazzing at refs when they make a bad offside call or something (but Fergie spazzes are fun =P). Mr. Holloway should NOT let all the crap the FA throws at him get into his head. In fact, he should ignore it and focus more on why his team have now lost 3 games in a row after that marvelous win at Liverpool.

Basically, behind all that charisma, Ian Holloway is still a person and Blackpool are just still a team. =)

Chelsea's Unfortunate Revival

Oh noes! Chelsea just regained their form! =S

For those noobs who don't know, Chelsea FC is a soccer club in London, England and great rivals to my fave team Manchester United in the English Premier League. They had a great start to the 2010-11 season, winning 8 out of their first 10 games and scoring 25 out of a possible 30 points. Man Utd, meanwhile, had rather absymal performances like tying 2-2 with 16th place Fulham and a 3-3 tie with Everton, who were 15th at the time.

But suddenly Chelsea collapsed. Maybe it was a 0-2 loss at Liverpool that screwed them up, because after that the Blues only got 1 win in their next 7 matches. Man Utd, despite tying a lot more matches (around 8), crucially never lost and soon cemented their place at the top of the table.

Sadly, Chelsea seemed to have rebounded after a 7-0 demolition of Championship side Ipswich Town and now, after beating Bolton Wanderers 4-0, looked to have regained their form.

But Manchester United will beat them!

Do You Like Waffles? Or Muffins? Or Potatoes?

K I'm bored. =P

TV Shows and Why They're Failing

I just watched an Asian drama! =D.

It was actually a movie about that old Chinese story of the orphan of Zhao, when some evil insane guy kills all of the family of Zhao except one baby survives and that baby grows up and kills that evil guy. Typical good vs. evil story.

Except that the movie made it even simpler and unrealistic. Instead of the orphan hating the evil guy, he grows to view him as a father figure and still ends up killing him just to resolve the plot =/.

Don't you just hate it when a movie scraps a perfectly good story for some flashy special effects and a chance for celebs to show themselves? Well, if you don't, you should.

Like the Twilight Saga movies. I've personally never read the Twilight books, but I heard they were really good. Over the summer, I did watch Eclipse and it was the worst movie ever: the only good part was when Jacob says to Edward "I'm obviously hotter than you." which, I admit, cracked me up. But other than that it was a disastrous excuse of a movie.

Oh and what about The Golden Compass? It actually had something resembling a plot, but in the end the movie ends on a cliffhanger when Lyra mentions a "war" and then.....the credits roll.

-.- Yeah not the best ending you'll ever see.

Harry Potter was among the better books-turned-movies. The first, second and third ones were all very enjoyable, but in the fourth one (Goblet of Fire, for the noobs who don't know) Dobby the epic house-elf doesn't even get mentioned. He even gives Harry the Gillyweed for the Second Task! There were more inaccuracies, and from there, the franchise went on a nosedive that only revived itself in Deathly Hallows Part 1, and even then they add random crap that wasn't even in the book (like Harry and Hermione dancing, for example).

My opinion concerning books-turned-movies are: the more you stick to the plot, the better. But sadly the Hollywood guys don't agree and scrap excellent stories that are bound to captivate audiences into just a random husk of a plot plus some 54th-generation special effects.

The rot has even got into TV shows. Like, for instance, Global TV's Survivor. I started watching Survivor in season 19: Samoa, where Russell Hantz just bossed the entire game and should have won over that dumb blonde Natalie. I thought it was pretty good, but when I went on YouTube to watch some old season 4 episodes, I was shocked to see how more realistic they were. The old Survivor was about, well, survival plus some awesome strategy and blindsides. The modern Survivor is just about strategy and blindsides. Russell is just a prime example of this. You never see him chopping wood and providing for his tribe, but you always see him strategizing with everyone and trying to further his own game.

Don't get me wrong, TV's not entirely fake. There are just some fine specimens of shows out there. On Global TV there was this epicly amazing show called 24, with all the action happening in one day and even a clock to show the exact time. But 24 got cancelled after its 8th season, and I can't really think of a replacement for it.

So basically this is why TV is falling and the computer is rising. The TV shows are all just some flashy special effects and no storyline at all. They aren't real. Computers, meanwhile, allow you to create something real, so that's why they're on the rise. So soon all TV will be good for is watching the World Cup once every four years and some other sports games.

Or playing video games =D.

Don't You Hate It When...

1, You realize you forget your homework right when you get to school?

2. You get stuck with some stupid guy for a project and you end up doing 98% of the work?

3. The aforementioned stupid guy tells your teacher that HE did all the work and you end up getting a bad mark?

4. You finish typing a 10-page essay and then your computer crashes?

5. Somebody calls you a "geek" just because you know the 13th digit of pi? (it's 9, by the way)

6. People think...

6.1. Mac is better than Windows?

6.2. Xbox is better than PlayStation?

7. Somebody hates on you for no reason?

8. Fingernails screech against blackboards?

Yeah just a short incomplete list of my pet hates =)

MAINSTREAMAAAAS

If you don't know that I'm gifted right now then you are at the same intelligence level as an ant.

And the mainstreamers in our school are so weird!

For example, they don't know how to play pen-and-paper Battleship (they think they can split up the ship -,-#) and their teachers interact with them in a much more casual way than our teacher does with us -,-.

Like our teacher forbids us from calling those kids as "mainstreamers" but the mainstreamer teachers allow them to call us "gifted kids" and "smart people" and another dozen that I'm too lazy to name.

It is just really really really annoying that they can say "Going to do some math?" while we can't say "Shut up dumb****!".

>:|

Hattrick

Yay! The first post about my life =).

Hattrick is an online football (or soccer, for you North Americans) management game. Founded in 1997, it used to be the standard for most online football managements. At its peak in 2005, Hattrick had nearly 800 000 users and some GMs (Game Moderators) were so busy that it was almost a month before most users received their team. Since then, numbers have fallen, as recent rivals such as PowerChallenge's ManagerZone have become extremely popular and give Hattrick much competition. Hattrick now has around 750 000 users, and is in it's 43rd season.

I joined Hattrick in August 2010, midway through its 42nd season. As a beginner I found this game complicated and confusing, but help from the Hattrick Wiki and some experienced users helped my team avoid relegation (demotion to a lower league) and I came 3rd out of 8 teams.

From my perspective, Hattrick is a great game for patient people. For those people who want instant action or technical epicness, Hattrick is not the game for you. There is only one league match per week, on Sunday, and one cup/friendly game on Wednesday. The way Hattrick plays its games is by a system called HT-Live, which lets you follow your games minute-by-minute in text format. If you actually want to see your players kick the ball, I recommend the aforementioned ManagerZone, which lets you see your match in a 3d match engine. However, I had a bad feeling about games that PowerChallenge made, as I used to play a game, Power Soccer, by that company but that basically ended in frustration.

Hattrick is not a game for people looking for big exciting things. There is no booming crowd sounds when a goal is scored, no goal being scored and the ref calling offside. Hattrick is a game for people that give it a chance. I thought about quitting the first day I signed up, but I decided to actually wait a few days. The presentation is terrible, the forum looks like it was from the Stone Age, and overall the site basically begs for modernization.

However, Hattrick is an extremely fun game to play. It takes a lot of thinking putting your player in the perfect position and your team with the best tactic to counter your opponent's strengths and exploit his weaknesses. And it feels great when you see your tactics pay off and you get a win. It is always exciting when you enter a bidding war for a new world class goalie and feel as if you got the final bid until your bidding rival suddenly tops it. And it is tense when you and your opponent are tied late on for a crucial league match and satisfying to say the least when your star forward suddenly scores an 89th minute winner.

Hattrick is a great game. The site could use some modernization, the rules and laws of the game might give you headaches and sometimes the forum users are less-than-friendly but if you can handle all that, Hattrick is the game for you.

Here's the link: www.hattrick.org

Crisis!

Wow! Already there is a crisis going on in my blog! =O

My fellow admin Matthew, who has been responsible for all the great looks and makeovers in this blog, told me today that his grandma had an accident which landed her in hospital. Matthew and his family are probably going to see her in Hong Kong for a few weeks, and not expected to go on Blogger =(. That leaves me all alone ='(.

I want to wish Matthew's grandma luck in her upcoming ordeal!

Best Game Evaaar: Big Rigs Over the Road Racing

Well I was surfing the Internet and I decided to search the worst video games of all time. Most of them were apparently extremely poor, but one REALLY stood out: Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

Big Rigs is a truck-racing game made in 2003. The options are really shallow: there are only 5 tracks (one of which will cause the game to crash), only 2 trucks can race at a time and there is no multiplayer. It just seemed one of those generic video games that you can get for $1.95, right?

Think again....

The main thing about Big Rigs is the gameplay. And the main thing about the gameplay is that there isn't any. The truck you race against won't even move, so you'll win basically every race. Although Stellar Stone, the company that released Big Rigs, soon released a patch that actually allows your opponent to move, he'll just stop right before the finish line, so you'll still win every race. Upon winning, you are presented with a 3-handled trophy with the lines "You're Winner!" as apparently Stellar Stone's programmers don't know good grammar. Even more stupidly, the game occasionally cannot distinguish whether you just passed the finish line or not, so sometimes you will be awarded the cup within seconds of starting a game.

Amazingly, the things don't stop there. Big Rigs defies all the laws of physics: your truck can go through houses and trees, fall underneath bridges and even be able to go up 90 degree slopes and off roads without any change in speed. There is absolutely no boundaries for your truck: it can go anywhere, even outside the map. If you do, you'll just simply find yourself floating in a grey/black void and your truck will just randomly jerk until you somehow get back into the map.

Well at least your truck is still realistic, right? Wrong. The backlights in Big Rigs' trucks actually aren't on the truck: they are floating behind it. If you make an abrupt turn, you'll see that the lights aren't connected. Another issue is that if your truck goes in reverse, it can accelerate almost indefinitely but will instantly go back to 0kmph when you release the key.

Obviously, the gaming websites were merciless. On average, the game received an average of 8% and some websites even revamped their whole system in order to give this game a 0/whatever. However, Big Rigs was still sold well, despite (or maybe because of) the glitches.

Don't believe me?

New Author

Now, introducing my slave faithful friend Matthew Poon! He will be an author and help me with all this fancy blog designing stuff: I'm a noob of the internet, after all =P!

Hello World!

Alright so this is my first time blogging =). Don't be too harsh on me and all that stuff.