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Showing posts from May, 2017

Ikan Ayam

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Ikan atau ayam? (Fish or chicken). When asked, my dad said this fish tastes like chicken. What??? @@

Photo album

Recently I cleared my room back at my parents' place (since they'll be relocating soon) and came across long forgotten photo albums. Photos before the advent of digital camera and camera phone. My initial thought was to throw them away because I hadn't looked through them for years (about 7 years) and so why make space for something you don't even make use of? William suggested digitising them. At first I thought this was a good idea but now less so because I don't even look at the digital photos I have on my laptop. A few more people, mostly my family, asked me to keep it for memory...for them, I supposed, since, like I've said, I don't look at the photos. Honestly, I'm a little surprised at myself since the fact that I kept them in the first place (and some of them I brought all the way from Singapore) meant that I valued them in the past. I guess I'm for living in the present and plan for the future. I supposed that things I remember matter ...

Paladins: some stats

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Here are interesting stats, with some commentary, of a few games: Normally, team without at least a tank loses but the enemy team made up for it by playing so much better than our team, overall. Miraculously, we were on the verge of wining: we just needed to push the payload for like maybe 3 more seconds. I remember I had to use my escape ability (as Seris) because was under fire. I went behind the enemies and noticed that they were focusing on keeping my team mates from advancing. Soon our tank, Torvald, died. However, there were no enemies at the payload. So I took advantage of my 5 seconds of stealth and invulnerability to push the payload to victory :) This time my team did so well that I didn't die at all hehehe. In fact, I dealt the most damage, as Torvald, and had the joint most eliminations. As you can see, enemies put out stupendous amount of damage and high number of eliminations. At first, I tried to stay reasonably close to Makoa and Seris. Later, I tri...

Kimi-Ya & Inside Scoop

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I almost forgot I had these photos and so by no I remember very little details about the food @@. William and Derek arranged to meet Ban, Simonlover and I for dinner at Kimi-Ya chiefly because they couldn't make it for my birthday dinner. It was quite an expensive Japanese restaurant but the food was good. Sorry, forgot what I had haha. Then we went next door to have ice-cream. Apparently it's established by an actuary! Unfortunately they didn't have any sort of coffee ice-cream. I ended choosing 2 scoops of 2 different flavour, recommended by a staff there. I like them but would have preferred coffee ice-cream hehehe.

Atlas Reactor: Garrison 2

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It's been nearly a year since I blogged about this freelancer. Since then, I have experimented a few combination of mods and my current favourite loadout is as follows: (please refer to this Wikia for more details on his abilities and mods) (1) Piston Punch - Force Capacitor (3 loadout points) Haste on an ability with no cd! Great for FL to chase down enemies since most FLs *cough* except Brynn *cough* have very short range on their primary abilities. (2) Hand Cannon - unequipped Unfortunately, there are no more loadout points left for this ability. Even Tracker Rounds would have been good. Also, with haste on primary, it's less of a problem to hit at least an enemy and so even though Big Shot is still a good mod, it's less important here. (3) Missile Barrage - Double Trouble (3 loadout points) Increased chance of hitting a few enemies. Often, I think, get more energy too. (4) Heavy Metal - Frontline (2 loadout points) 25 shields until end of next turn is...

Some breathing space

It's been about 9 months since the last false alarm . Yes, that's 9 months of missing rent! As briefly mentioned here , I finally have a tenant who not only signed a 2-year tenancy agreement but also at a rental rate that's slightly above the minimum rent that my agent and I agreed upon. However, there are a few caveats: (1) 6-month diplomatic clause (2) Bidet spray in each of the 2 bathrooms (3) New TV (which I've always wanted to replace anyway) (4) One stand fan (5) Replacement of an old single-bed mattress (6) Tenant is required to service aircon once every 4 months, instead of once every 3 months, because they claim they won't be using much of it (there's just no easy way to check this, is there?) Well, at least for the next 6 months, I will have rental income. I've asked my agent to continue to look for buyer though. Earning rental income is not worth it given the non-resident tax rate. In any case, all along I aim to start looking to sell i...

Paladins: Grohk 2

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I rarely get Top Play and yet each time it happened, I almost always forgot to record it. The first time I remember was when I was playing Grohk . The next time I remember was exactly a week later when I was playing...Grohk too hahaha: This time, however, I used a different build: (for details on the abilities and cards, please refer to Paladins Wiki ) Build name: Gale - main aim is to reduce cd of Healing Totem Wraith legendary card - for survivability because, frankly, the default Ghost Walk is not enough Gale IV Healing Rain IV Outreach II Totemic Rescue I Haunting 1 To make up for the lack of healing (because not using Totemic Ward legendary card), I used Healing Rain IV. Outreach II is to cover a larger area. Haunting I is to reduce cd on Ghost Walk so that it's available again to be used to save myself as well as reduce cd of Healing Totem. Totemic Rescue I is survivability. Notably, I dropped Crackle because usually the increased duration does no...

Paladins: Grohk

Grohk was either the first or second champion (mixed up with Seris hehehe) that I unlocked using in-game gold currency. He is now currently level 7. The reason why I'm blogging about him instead of Seris (which I believed is a slightly better healer) is because I have only one video clip recorded and that's of him. For details on his abilities, please refer to this information from Paladins Wiki. My default build is as follows: (1) Build name: Totemic Ward - main aim of this build is to heal Totemic Ward legendary card - mainly for the increased amount of healing - the 2s cc is a bonus Outreach IV - totem is always placed at your feet i.e. you can't just lob it to heal an ally in a distance - this card is useful to increase the chance of  healing as many allies as possible - also useful when you want to move back a little away from any intense exchange at the front and shoot from a safer distance Crackle II - more healing via increased duration Sham...

Paladins, Champions of the Realm

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Recently, my online friend from Atlas Reactor, TheJoker , asked me to try playing Paladins. It's a game similar to Overwatch but with cards to customise the champion's playstyle (similar to Atlas Reactor's mod feature). It has a free-to-play version where 8 champions are unlocked at the start. They are: Fernando (front line) Cassie (damage) Drogoz (damage) Kinessa (damage) Tyra (damage) Viktor (damage) Pip (support) Skye (flank) You can then use in-game currency (gold), earned in game, to unlock other champions. You can also buy the game and unlock all current and future champions. Here are the official website of Paladins , a wiki website I often refer to, and a deckbuilding website . I like the game as much as Overwatch i.e. as much as a non-fps player would like :) It then comes to no surprise that, like Overwatch, I gravitate towards champions who do not require good aiming. One such champion, which I often play, is Grohk (support). Here's my fir...

NVIDIA GPU not detected!

One day, my laptop inexplicably had BSOD (blue screen of death). Unfortunately, by now I have forgotten what the error code was @@. Later, when I wanted to record a gameplay with GeForce Experience, I was told that a NVIDIA graphics card was needed. I was confused, of course, because my laptop has it! So I brought up Device Manager and there was no NVIDIA card among the display adapters! What's going on @@ So I performed a stress test using Dell's Support Assist and, as expected, everything was ok. Using their website, I was told all drivers were up to date. I tried this and this set of steps that worked for others but not for me. In fact, the BIOS could not detect any discrete graphics card. I thought maybe the graphics card had loosen and so just needed to be pushed back in. Unfortunately, I learned that for Alienware 14, it is soldered onto the motherboard @@. I had no choice but to ask Dell for help via e-mail. However, I can't remember how or why, I dec...