Talking c*ck on TV

On his nationally televised talk show, Mr Letterman confesses his indiscretions and the consequences are a nasty letter from NOW, and an angry wife and co-workers to whom he makes a public apology. On another talk show halfway around the world, Mr Abdul-Jawad "brags" about his exploits on national TV and gets handed a 5-year jail sentence and 1000 lashes.

When are East and West ever going to find any common ground from which even the faintest glimmer of hope for peace between the two can spark? Not in this lifetime, anyway.

Gaming and youth

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And S'pore kids too, apparently. lolz.

MUA2 side mission tips (spoiler alert)

I hate to brag, but I can be justifiably proud of myself for unlocking the entire team roster in MUA2 on Hard mode. On the Wii, that means completing all the Bonus Missions within the time limit and garnering a quota of points after which the character becomes playable as a team member in the main quest.

The more challenging missions are the solo ones, so I'll share the secrets of some of my successes here.

Jean Grey: use telekenesis (hold B) to slam those cranky bipedal bombs into the cars, thus clearing them easily and quickly so there's more time to devote to the battle with the Grey Gargoyle.

Gambit: use 52 Pickup liberally to break open boxes, junk and hidden rooms hiding those pesky hard-to-find data disks.

Thing: stun everybody with Hand Clap. 'nuff said.

Green Goblin: Spinning Blades is insanely lethal. Repeatedly 1-shot kill respawing Negative Zone guards until very close to quota, then after setting a bomb in the middle of the irritating electrified room, run for cover and stand at the exit doorway, continuing to kill guards until the exit door opens. As long as Gobby remains in the doorway, he can't be electrocuted.

Venom: Same mission as Gobby, except without the bomb setting task. Venom is easier because the mission allows a full team complement. Just keep killing respawning guards until quota.

Songbird: The most challenging thing is to keep the scientists she is escorting alive through the whole mission. Cast Sonic-Scream Shield and refresh often to keep her healthy and enemies weak. When she gets to a door, use Crushing Discord BEFORE opening it to kill enemies on the other side. She can hit them through the door, but they can't hit her. While Crushing Discord is good to use on Light mutants, Shrieking Slice works better on Heavies and Moonstone (Boss). Alternate the attacks when facing Moonstone 'cos Light mutants are attcking the scientists at the same time.

So, getting the whole team was do-able after all. Now the next challenge is to attain the Gold bonuses: same missions, higher quota of points to aim for.

Edit 01:

Huh! Been put in my place by the ST reviewer. Game is too easy, he says. So what? I like easy games.

Fishing for ideas

Gained a little insight into the kids' thought processes as they select essay questions. Facing 12 possible questions, they brainstorm as many anecdotal examples as they can think of per question, thus eliminating the questions they have no examples for. This wouldn't be a bad way to narrow 12 choices if not for the fact that most of the time they end up eliminating all 12, leaving the final option of 'whatever' which they then proceed to write -- example after example after example randomly associated with the topic area in question but with no regard to the question itself.

The kids are puzzled because they are not getting the rewards they think they are entitled to just because they've been able to re-tell several brain-cell killing pointless anecdotes they've forced themselves to study. They did study, didn't they? So why aren't they scoring like they expect? Simple, examples don't answer questions, no matter how long the list. I mean, examples are a fine and necessary thing, it's just that they alone are not the answer we're looking for.

If the question is "why?" the answer is "because." If the question is "should?" the answer is "why (or why not)." If the question is "how far" the answer is "under these specific conditions." If we think about answering the question, paying respect to its particular demands, then from a list of 12 questions, we have 12 options from which to choose our favourite.

By addressing the question, the relevant supporting evidence will surface without much effort. That is, as long as the kids have been keeping up with their daily readings. That's because the right context will locate the appropriate content. It's the difference between fishing in the ocean with random bait and fishing in a fish farm with a net. Ocean fishing is fun, but if we don't use the right bait we have no idea what we're going to catch, if anything at all. Fish farm fishing is hardly sporting, but we know what we're fishing for every time and we'll catch what we want.

GP is different. Unlike the other content subjects, we don't care what you KNOW. We care about what you THINK and if you have good reasons for thinking that way. Which is why our kids are still all lost at sea.

MUA2 comes up short

The Wii version of MUA2 has less going for it than the PS3/360 version. I was wrong about alternate costumes -- there aren't any. Likewise, there aren't any special team bonuses for particular quartet combinations. And no special dialogues between particular character combinations. There are fewer cutscenes and storyline missions too. Overall, the game (regardless of whether we're playing Pro or Anti Registration) is short, lacking the cosmological scope of the previous MUA. :P

These little features don't really add all that much to the overall gameplay, but they are nice little touches, like garnish on meat and potatoes. The meal is still quite substantial, but the presentation doesn't make us go 'wow'. If the previous MUA didn't have them, I wouldn't have been looking for them in this one. But to remove them from the follow up is short-changing us players on quality while substituting it with, um... nothing. Well, the control system is easier to use, I'll give them that.

Ok, anyway, I think the best characters to have on the team are either Iceman or the Invisible Woman for powerful ranged attacks, a psionic like Jean Grey or Psylocke who can fusion with a bruiser like the Thing or the Hulk for a player-guided "Billiard Ball" attack (creates a hamsterball around said bruiser who then charges masses of enemies for huge damage -- even bosses don't stand up to this kind of assault for long). The fourth member can be just about anyone else, 'cos they're just coming along for the ride.

Don't get me wrong. I am having loads of fun with MUA2 as it is. There are still lots of team combinations and fusions I have yet to try out, and side-quests yet to conquer. They haven't taken the best bits out of the game, but it could have been so much tastier.

Talented and bemused

These are the days of messing around with a video camera and shooting my friends and colleagues for a short little thing that will soon see the light of day.

We're shooting under very tight constraints, yet I've amazed myself in being able to capture the primary footage as of yesterday evening, and already get the rushes edited by this evening.

Wish I could say more about the final product, but there's still some post-production left to be done. The good news is that despite my deadline worries, I will deliver to my client on time after all. No extensions necessary.

Couldn't have done it without the cooperation of my talented and bemused co-workers who lent their faces and bodies to the shoot. I made them do things even though they didn't have much clue how my directions could possibly have made sense, especially since I involved different people in only different fragments of the shoot. Thanks for the trust, people!

Domestic violence

Woke up past midnight from a commotion in the house. There was the sound of scampering feet and unusual vocalizations that were quite unnerving. Turns out that Q-tip had been caught in the act of sniffing around the cats' feeding area, probably trying her luck scrounging for leftovers, and got a pummelling for her indiscretion. Chasing her off apparently wasn't enough. Whoever it was kept taking swipes at Q-tip's retreating behind all the way back to her territory, our bedroom.

When cats take swipes, they do it with claws extended. We found a spot of blood on Q-tip but when we cleaned the wound we found lots more scratches all over her butt and back. She looked like Wolverine had tried to shave her, quite ineptly too.

Back at the crime scene, we examined each cat's claws for blood trace, but the perfect crime had been committed. No blood to be found anywhere to indicate which suspect was the perp. Regardless, each of them will get their claws trimmed today, just to be safe.

98 years old

Been going to the vet's over the last couple of days. Mimi is 14 years old, and though she doesn't look or behave like it, her age is taking its toll. We took her in yesterday for a urinary tract infection and Dr Kasey advised spaying while treating this uncomfortable symptom.

Spaying, as I understand it now, amounts to a hysterectomy and Mimi's womb clearly needed removal. The infection had swollen her womb to several times its normal size, weighing in at 600g. That contributes to quite a sizeable percentage of her total body weight, considering she's quite a small dog to begin with.

Mimi's doing fine as of our visit tonight. She's no longer in an anaesthetized stupor but was very happy to see us. She wolfed down the chix leg we brought for her and paced her cage, barking weakly the whole time, clearly wanting us to take her home. But she needs one more night of observation before she can be discharged. That should be tomorrow night.

Dr Kasey also showed us some other areas of concern including her weakened heart and worrisome-looking liver, and informed us that he was putting her on long-term medication for those problems. But going by her reception of us tonight, there's still a lot of fight in the old girl yet.

Lunchtime toast

There were four of us at Charco's for an off-campus lunch: me with Dee, HP and Jojo. Don't know if she was inspired by Mel singing drinking songs she'd learned in the UK (Mel firmly believes in an all-rounded education) but in the middle of lunch, Jojo raised a glass and offered a toast to our workplace for being the happiest workplace she's ever worked in.

Hear, hear! For those of us who have worked elsewhere before, we can really appreciate the faculty life on our campus. It may not be so obvious to newbie employees who arrive fresh on our doorstep yearning to spread their wings further afield, but to us battle-scarred veterans of the corporate trenches, even amidst the chaos and hubbub of JC academia, I honestly number ourselves among the lucky few who've made it back to Old Blighty.

Undo the damage

There is a very compelling reason why we need to undo the damage to the quality of spoken English around here. I mean, Singlish is fine for friendly, personal, letting-yourself-go social conversation. This localized lingo is one form of culture we can truly say developed naturally from our little island, and is a touchstone of our identity at home and abroad, but it simply won't do as a medium of academic discourse. Especially if the local version of the language is the only one we use, but our written secondary and post-secondary language exams are set and graded by language academics in Cambridge, England.

But exam grades are just one little thing. Rubrics and tolerances balance each other out and collectively, grades simply point which direction the wind is generally blowing. What matters more is the level of engagement our kids have with texts that are not primarily written in the local vernacular and responding to them at the same level.

It's not a matter of which version is 'superior' or 'inferior' but rather whether one's command of language either facilitates or impedes understanding between people trying to communicate with one another. If there is no or little understanding, then there is a failure to communicate. In school terms, either the text is not getting through to the candidate, or the candidate isn't getting through to the marker, or both. Whichever, that is what the 'FAIL' grade pragmatically represents.

But that's just the grade. On the grander scale, too many people stuck in Singlish mode, unable to code-switch to the standard English of academic and intellectual discourse means too many Singaporeans being unable to participate in and contribute to complex and abstract thought.

If this is true, then our Colonial Masters haven't really left. We've just made it easier for them to give us our orders because we're proud to have 'upgraded' ourselves to speak a little more like them. But with this level of language ability, we are still unable to view them on equal terms.

Outside my window

Look at the time. 0213 hrs. I don't have a good reason for being up this late. Nevertheless, here I am sitting on my horrifically clawed sofa and listening the the howl of the wind just outside my apartment windows. And now the rain has just started to come down in large splashy drops. There is going to be such a storm tonight, once the lightning and thunder get going. I'm actually tempted to just stare outside and witness what looks to be a very dramatic climactic event. Maybe I'll do that for five minutes, then try to go to sleep.

Cognitive catatonia

Help! Swamped under with prelim grading. Dunno why it's taking so long. Maybe I'm thinking too hard and being too careful with each question, causing bouts of cognitive catatonia between answer scripts. In that kind of mental state, somnolence sneaks up like a ninja in bedroom slippers and delivers a chop to the back of the neck for the coup de grace.

Cannot. Deadline is too close to fool around. Focus. Focus...

A major change of policy

The industry is putting more emphasis on speech as our new policy for teaching the languages. Hopefully, that will translate into more in-class talk to train more articulate kids. The idea is, I suppose, to avoid further embarrassments when our people get interviewed by the media and the video goes viral over the 'net.

This policy will be interesting to implement in primary and secondary schools. For far too long, too many of them have been tending to operate on the policy of "shut up".

Hopefully, now things will change and in a few years down the road, by the time they get to JC the kids will have been more acculturated to seminar-style discussions in tutorials with more participants contributing views than just the tutor. We've long been waiting for the day.

I no can has faceburger?

So much for vaunted Japanese hospitality. A bear goes berserk sampling tourist-y fare at a bus station in scenic Takayama. It is then herded into a souvenir shop where the employees hold it against its will until in the end, it gets shot dead. Talk about pressure sales tactics! I've heard of tourist traps, but this is ridiculous.

We be travellin'

Yarr tharr, me hearties, an' welcome aboard! Here be ye bucket an' mop; I want me deck swabbed spotless by the time I be done entertainin' ye with me salty sea story. Ok, it be not much, really, but it'll take ye mind off ye sore back and knees fer a wee bit.

We be plannin' a little voyage, the woman and I. Right 'round the Christmas season, ay? We set course as we've always done. Covered up me good eye with me eyepatch an' put a dagger through the old sea chart. Arr... Chiang Mai. Exotic enough for ye, lad? Shut yer hole an' keep swabbin'.

So today we gathers up the last of our doubloons, to pay off our creditors (blood-suckin' scallywags, every last one of them, they be) an' spent -- nay -- invested the remainder on a seaworthy bark an' crew. We be hoistin' the Jolly Roger at the next high tide.

I'm done tellin' me tale, but what's this? Ye missed a spot, lad, ye missed a spot! Lily-livered landlubber, walkin' the plank's too good fer the likes of ye! Be off me deck before Davey Jones hisself comes a'callin' for ye scurvy rum-soaked soul!

In case you haven't figured it out, happy Talk Like a Pirate Day 2009!

Sheepish

This post is late because I done something I don't want to talk about just yet. Let's see how it actually works first before I review whether it sucks or blows. Whichever, all I'm gonna say right now is that perhaps I paid a bit more than was wise. So what else is new?

BFC ventures afield

This is to record the first off-campus meeting of the BFC. This was quite an accomplishment, to get representatives from most of our departments to meet at the local McD's for breakfast before the start of the school day.

Amazed how organized and committed we were about it, with Wayne sending out an SMS reminder the night before, and even President Tommy making a special effort to wake up early and grace our table with his pre-caffeinated presence.

The only item on our agenda was to eat. AOB was about enjoying each other's company and cracking jokes at Tommy's expense while his brain was still in reboot mode.

MUA2: first impressions

When superheroes split apart, forming opposing factions to fight for the cause they feel is right; when hero battles hero with no quarter given even if they had been the closest of allies before, we have a Civil War on our hands and literally so with "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2" for the Wii.

Gameplay is in a similar format from the original MUA, a 4-hero team of which the player controls one hero, teaming up with the other three to fight waves of enemies. There are basic melee punches and kicks, custom superpowers (special attacks and buffs) for each hero, and the latest addition to the game: "fusion powers" by which team members combine their special abilities in a devastating attack against enemy hoardes. Fusion powers have limited usage, so there's a strategic element in choosing when to use them, and with whom.

The tone of MUA2 seems slightly more serious too. The opening sequences set New York amidst a massive terrorist attack, the perpetrator and her army spouting clearly anti-American sentiments. However, her attack is not unprovoked and this revelation begins unravelling the seam that ties the heroes to a common cause, and sows deep-rooted mistrust against each other.

The player has to choose which side to fight on, Iron-Man's pro-government side or Captain America's personal freedom side. Two sides to choose from allows for two separate story threads with separate missions, and great potential for replayability after playing one story through. Other replayability factors are the vast array of superhero team combinations and their resulting fusion power effects, the strategic use of item buffs (so many items, what's the best combination to use for which situation?) and alternate costumes among the many other unlockables including more heroes to use in the team roster.

Wii controls between MUA and MUA2 are a little different from each other and I have to get used to the new controls. My fingers have to be retrained to use them properly. Less shake for example, and more thumbs-on button mashing.

In MUA2, the isometric perspective brings us a little closer to the action so it's easier to observe character animations, though it's still easy to lose your character in the onscreen chaos. Also for the Wii, activating fusion powers involves pointing the wiimote at the hero you want to "fusion" with and finding the cursor to match with your desired hero can sometimes be a challenge because of the short time limit to "fusion", and sometimes because the hero is out of position for the most effective use of that power. Kids are more likely than grumpy old me to be able to keep track of everything going on at once and make the best of the fusion effect. Me, I'll just do it for the pretty colours.

In between the fighting are cinematic cutscenes that stitch the story together and sets up the next mission. There is decent voice acting, but what I like about the cutscenes, oddly enough, is the superheroes' costumes. The heroes look like they are really wearing clothes and not just having painted-over nude bodies because the artist can't be bothered with such details. The cutscenes make an interesting contrast with the results screens that appear at the end of each mission. The results stats appear on stylized renderings as 2-D artwork which is reminiscent of the comic book medium that inspired the game. Nice touch, I think.

As it is, I've only had time to play through the Prologue. Even then at 'Easy' setting the Boss battle was quite a trial and error -- until I figured out the rules of the game I was supposed to be playing. It was a matter of matching verbal instructions with the automap with the onscreen action, which took my brain a bit more time than usual to process. Duh, slow. But I think I've got the hang of it now.

MUA2 promises to be a fun romp through a dark period in the Marvel archives. I've only scratched the surface of what feels like a ripping story, and there's the other side yet to be explored. That's gonna keep me occupied for a while. 'Arkham Asylum' (released on the same day) will have to wait.

The sky's the limit -- even for student projects

A bit of old news here, but one I stumbled upon only today. It's something to remind me about being open to possibilities rather than pre-conceiving impossibilities when and if I get to supervise another bunch of project groups next year.

What usually holds us back from great projects that work is that we constrain them tightly within the parameters of the exam question, and there we have the edges of the box, clearly defined for us -- the lines we are not supposed to colour outside of. The question then has to be, "how big is your box?" Well, as far as the students involved in the story (above) were concerned, the box was as big as the stratosphere.

Projects don't have to be microscopic for the sake of 'manageability' and 'feasibility'. The beauty of the subject of Project Work is that if the size of the project overflows the box, the project can still take on a life of its own. The important thing is that it's meaningful, it's real, and it's done. And by the time the examination comes around, we'll find that the box is in fact infinitely enlargeable.

Historical interlude

Not much to add for today. Everyone's back at work, including Mel who's finally back from her Dreamtime. Busy, grading prelim papers, and everything else. So I'll let the vid below entertain you for a change. So nostalgic, these scenes of pre-WW2 S'pore. For historical interest only.