Everyone is still talking about the modded GTA.

Someone asked my what I think about Jack Thompson. This is what I think.

This is gonna be a long story, I tell you. People keep on jumping in the wagon to have some ride.

I don’t want to say anything more. I just want to point out some interesting facts that I found along this hot discussion:

• The talked about game is now rated AO (Adult Only) instead of MA (Mature Audiences). AO is for people age 18+, MA is for 17+. Of course, you wonder what the heck is the real difference? How much maturity can you possibly gain in 1 year? No one really cares. The very important difference is: Most of major retailers do not have AO titles on their shelves. Means they will withdraw all existing stock and therefore limiting the sale of this game significantly.
• Australia does not have AO rating *_*. The highest one is M for 15+. This country does not allow adult games. The retailers now put R rating sticker on the existing stock (R is 17+ for Movie). Is it the time for us to revise our game rating?

You know you’re addicted to coding if….

These are my favourites (read: happening to me):

• You’re pressing CTRL+S every 5 minutes, in every application
• You know the following sequence by heart: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65536 131072
  Okay, for me it stops at 4096
• you start to comment out your thoughts
• When you take a break from programming, and program
  This is freakishly not a joke for a lot of programmers
• When you feel sorry for people coding in VB
• You go to bed and close your eyes you still see the IDE as it is permanently etched into your retina
• You wake up a few hours later with the solution to your coding problem
• You type faster than you talk
  I just said this to one of the artist before I read the thread.
• To you, programming is a form of art
• you try to move the cursor off screen to copy a piece of text from a paper on your desk

And some additional ones personally from me:

• You don’t think VB is a programming language
• You wish you can press ctrl-Z and undo the stupid thing you just did in real life
• You recognize your friends by their email addresses or login names, and sometimes can’t remember their real names
• You type faster without looking at the keyboard
• You would rather memorize all the Windows and application shortcuts than moving your hand a few inches to the right and using mouse
• You can find bugs whereever you go and whatever you do
• Whenever you take a break, go to lunch, go back home, you always obsessively think about the coding problem you’re having until you get to the computer again to try it out and prove it working

I’m sure there are more, but I would stop now..

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” - Winston Churchill

“The difference between men and boys is the size of their toys.”

Old quote, but still sounds very true ;)

Everyone’s been talking about the modded/hacked GTA: San Andreas

Well just in case you’re not a crazy follower of game news, a quick summary of the problem is: there’s an M rated game (for adults only with strong violence and strong sexual content) that’s modded, opening a locked sex mini game. And now the politicians (mostly represented by Hillary Clinton) and activists are screaming for more control over the rating system of games by enforcing fines and so on.

The thing is, games do have a rating system, and the game in discussion is clearly rated as M. So people are just fighting over of who to blame had this modded game goes to minor. The developers who left the code behind? The modder who unlocked forbidden part of the game? The shops that sell this game to minor? The parents who are ignorant of the rating system? Society? Government? Everyone? :)

One thing to keep in mind is, really, parents, please start accepting the facts that games are no longer toys for boys. No longer it’s only about saving the princess, jumping over obstacles, and fighting the bad guys in cartoony images.

Some pretty recent games for example, have realistic scenes of character grabbing the hair of half monster half woman and banging her off the rocks over and over, character stealing cars - having sex with a hooker and beating her to death, and you becoming a playboy mansion owners having nude models all around your palace. Moreover, these are high profile games. The games that everyone knows and everyone talks about. Top rated games.

So there is really no other option. More attention is needed here to prevent your precious getting the reality that they’re not ready for. Just as with all other media. The world is just not that safe of a place.

Psstt.. I have a new blog going on. (WHAT?! AGAIN?! WTF?!).

It’s more for the non-geek side of me. So it’s forbidden for my technical visitors. My geek audiences please stay with me here.

We’ve been really busy here. I had my first time to work on weekend and overtime up until 11pm. Not that fun I say *_*. But the fact that we’re working and testing game HELPS a lot. I can’t imagine if I have to spend that much of extra time working on a business app. At least if we’re feeling a bit worn out, we could sit back and thump a play station controller, killing those green purple creatures for a while.

Also, the girls here had to say good bye to our beloved toilets. If you follow some of my posts, you’ll know by now that toilets can be considered pretty important for girls ;). A girl programmer just needs a super computer, a comfy chair, and a nice clean toilet to be perfectly happy. (Let me talk about the chair story next time)

Anyway, the two main big toilets are now reserved for the guys (all 60 something of them) and the 1 cubicle disabled toilet for the girls (all 3 of us). We made a bargain and let go our main toilet only if we can have the disabled toilet for only the girls. It’s almost inevitable actually, because apparently sharing a few toilets for 60 men are a disaster. Everyone from the managers to the cleaner complained. So by having more toilets available, people expect them to be cleaner and more civilized.

They even changed the sign on the door to make sure we understand that our toilets are now officially taken :(. So if you happen to go pass by our floor, you will find two main toilets with non-skirt dummy on the doors (each has about 2-3 cubicles), and 1 disabled toilet with gender neutral sign (both skirt and non-skirt dummies).

To make sure that the guys won’t trespass our territory even further, we put a warning paper *behind* our toilet door. (So only them who actually use the toilet can see, and not people from outside :) with the following text:

This is ladies toilet. If you have some dark secret, you can tell us - really, we’re open minded. Otherwise please use the men toilets next door.

BubbleBombable - BubbleBombable - BubbleBombable

Try to say it a few times to have some tounge twister ;)

Oh and don’t bother to find it in dictionary if you’re not sure what it means. It’s one of the new words that we accidentally create every once in a while.

I haven’t blogwalked for a while. Today I found 2 memorable posts :)

those were the times

when we were just two pretty little girls

those were the times

when the wounds were too small for us to feel

those were the times

when we never asked ourselves whether we were happy

those were the times

when we played pretend but we never had to pretend

those were the times

when we started to lose it all.

~by verypurpleperson

and

Being a true friend is a decision of your inner self. I may not always be there. We may not talk everyday. We may not see each other for quite a while or have never met face to face before. I may never tell, but if I think of you and hoped the best of you, I know I’m your friend. I know that when you are in my mind, God is telling me to pray for you. You may never know, but I’m standing in the “gap” for you. I thank God for knowing you.

Perhaps if you never think of anybody and never thought you have a true friend… it’s okay.. you will always have a true friend out there (who God already appointed to be your true friend). You may never expect to have one, but believe me, you will never be alone. That someone, could be your old childhood friend, a long lost friend 1000 miles away from you, your boss at work, a burger flipper who you just met, that old man reading his newspaper besides you, …me, or if you are still not sure, Jesus him self is your true friend, guaranteed.

~by AOey

Before I drew and doodled a lot during my spare time. Then read comics, books, hung out with my best friends, fooled around, joked, did something crazy, stupid, fun. It was as if the whole world just stopped and you could live there happily forever.

Right now I work my ass off more than one third of my time, always think about money going in, money going out, savings, bills, responsibilities, things I must do, knowledge I must gain, future I must build. No matter how much I do in a faster way possible, time feels never enough. It always outruns me.

Today I promise myself that I will work really hard in these 2 years, and then have a good break for a few months and do whatever other things I like to do and have abandoned. (Well, if you get a dollar every time you hear this promise, you’ll be pretty rich by now. At least you could have that holiday I’ve been promising myself for.)

Anyone that reads this post and find myself not doing it, could you do me a favor and just slap me on the face?