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Crusader Kings 2: a new high! (Part 1)

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I recently concluded another campaign in Crusader Kings 2 and this time I did better than my previous best score and my previous campaign with the largest realm . With a score of 178,253, it easily beat the highest benchmark of 100,000 by the House of Capet. There were 24 rulers, all male (easily explained by choice of succession laws) with King Mernix II the Magnaminous having the longest rule (50 years) and Emperor Somerled the Great having the highest individual score (18,037). At the end of it, I was Emperor of Alba, Emperor of Hispania, King of Scotland and King of Mauretania. There were many more kingdoms I could have created but chose not to (e.g. Wales, Ireland, Portucale, Arabia, Greece, Anatolia, Cyprus) to avoid adverse consequences emanating from succession laws. I was liege to King of Andalusia, Castille, England, Galacia, Leon, Lithuania, Syria and 20+ dukes! As soon as I could affect the succession law, I switched to Tanistry. From the outset, I had been ...

Damn OneDrive

OneDrive is a Microsoft software that allows you to backup files to their cloud server. It was pre-installed in my laptop and I left it as it was because I thought it was a good idea to have backup. However, recently I realised that it had its own Documents folder i.e. it wasn't backing up files from my the user's Documents folder where my important files are. A quick search on the internet revealed that, stupidly, OneDrive doesn't allow you to select which folders you want it to backup. Then I found a workaround here  given by Matthew Broady: " A Workaround easiest, although it would be a useful feature. Find the Address of the folder you want to be synced. (ie. C:\Games\). Copy it. Find the OneDrive location you wish for it to sync to. Hold shift and right click. On the context menu, click open command window here. In it type "mklink /j "YourCustomFolderName" "Address of Location(i.e. C:\Games\)"", without the outer punctuation ...

Food trucks in KL

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This is my first time seeing so many food trucks in one place: Know which is truck was the most popular? The one that sold chips. I've always though that food trucks are a foreign concept but then again we all along have those in Malaysia that sell chendol, rojak and burgers, right? I know they started off as stalls decades ago but more and more have switched to trucks.

Atlas Reactor: all frontliners

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Someone in my group wanted to play Phaedra to complete a mission. I wanted to play Rampart (also a frontliner) for the same reason. So I asked the group whether they are ok with that or they prefer me playing another role. Someone told me to play what I wanted but immediately followed by someone else's suggestion for all members to player frontliners. That got spontaneous approval from the other 2 who promptly changed to that role, leaving me still trying to lock in my choice lol. At their urging, I did choose Rampart and here's the resulting crazy match: I don't usually play Rampart. In fact, I believed he is my least played freelancer. The current set of mods I'm using are (loadout points in bracket): (1) Radamantium flurry: Battle rush (1) Because of the mods I chose for ability 2, 4 and 5, it's either this mod or Area Suppression (simply due to leftover loadout point). I don't like the latter. Decently skilled enemies wouldn't be surrou...

Rare treat

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My mum rarely cooked these years because of chronic illnesses. So it's always a treat when she feels up to it. During the recent CNY celebration at my sister's place, my mum cooked this: It is nasi lemak with yellow curry chicken. She even made the sambal. The banana leaves were obtained from neighbour. It was delicious, as usual with all her cooking, but in truth I would prefer spicier chicken dish. I do understand though the chicken was cooked this way so that my young nephew and niece could have them too and, yes, they enjoyed it too :) It was a resounding success since the young and old loved it :) Thanks mum!

Undisclosed information

Due to logistic issue, I suggested to my parents come over to KL to have an early lunch celebration of my dad's birthday. After going through a few options, we settled on Fish & Co. The last time they dined at an outlet was decades ago in Singapore with one of my close friends (the first friend I made there :) ). In any case, my parents had long forgotten the food there and in fact, my dad couldn't even recall dining there at all hehehe. So we met Ban (I drove my parents) at the restaurant's outlet at Paradigm Mall. I guessed, and turned out to be correct, that my dad would enjoy sharing with me a seafood platter because of its variety of food. My mum chose creamy mushroom and chicken pasta (she's allergic to seafood...currently) while Ban had grilled fish with coriander. We shared a garden salad. The order consisted of 2 lunch sets and 2 ala carte food. Bear in mind that the cost of the ala carte food was about twice of that of the lunch sets. This is quite relev...

Within

About a year after I straightened out, I came back to America and wound up writing a couple of books with a novelist named Peter Straub. These were called Koko and Mystery , and maybe you read them. It's okay if you didn't. - "The Throat" by Peter Straub. N.B: Peter is the author of Koko and Mystery haha.