I'm clearing my bookshelf, so I'm putting up these books for adoption. Let me know if you want these books.
- The Last Days of William Shakespeare - Vlady Kociancich - Cal - Bernard Mac Laverty - Lamb - Bernard Mac Laverty - Babyhood - Paul Reiser - The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins - Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson - e-mail: A Love Story - Stephanie D Fletcher - Come Together - Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees - 1985 - Anthony Burgess - Naked Beneath My Clothes - Rita Rudner
- The Moonstone - Wilke Collins - Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Hard Times - Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Nostromo - Joseph Conrad - The White Company - Arthur Conan Doyle - Stories for Summer (Collection of 14 short stories by F Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, etc) - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce - Sons and Lovers - D H Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover - D H Lawrence
3 Volumes of The Complete Sherlock Holmes - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle - The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle - The Return of SHerlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
This Ping.fm thingy is rather useful, but confusing. Confusing because I'm wondering if there'll be multi-postings that ends up all over the place. That will be really annoying.
I first heard of the band in 1990 when I was still in JC. I bought Pretty Hate Machine on cassette and its industrial rock sound gave me a reason to rock out during those years as a late teen. Never in my wildest dream would I have dreamt that I would actually be able to see Trent Reznor actually perform live, but I did, when he was here in Singapore. Playing at Fort Canning Park, the gig was suppose to be part of his last tour before he goes on hiatus as NIN. Due to personal things happening in my life, I didn't thought of going, but at the last minute, I decided that I must go, else it will be a missed opportunity of a lifetime. And boy was I glad I went. Watching NIN play Head Like A Hole and Terrible Lie made me incredibly nostalgic. Ah, those industrial metal years... and what a high it was to hear thousands of people singing the words to Closer - "I want to fuck you like an animal!"
I've also manage to capture some vids from the concert. The bad thing was that since I was so close to the stage and due to the crappy mic on my compact camera, the sound in these clips are really bad. Visuals are great though. Sadly, the only song where the sound is just (but only just) acceptable is the song Hurt.
Overall, the band was tight. Trent did not interact much with the crowd, but he doesn't need to. He makes it up by playing a set that is possibly contains some of his best works. It's worth noting that the Trent Reznor may not be the lean, mean, rocker during his younger days. He may look "bigger", but his attitude and power on stage is still something to behold.
At one point in the concert, Trent dived into the audience. But it seems that the crowd couldn't give him a proper bodysurfing experience. Epic fail for the folks right at the front. :P
"What have I become? My sweetest friend Everyone I know Goes away in the end" - Hurt
A fitting goodbye. Even if NIN may be going away, I'm pretty sure that this won't be the last we hear of Trent.
It's been really long since my last post. Originally, one of the reason for this blog is to clip some of the interesting stories that I found on the Net. Since then, Web 2.0 tech has developed that there are not better ways of clipping interesting stuff. One way is using Digg, but that too got rather old. Now, I'm simply using the "star" function on Google Reader. That has been really useful to keep track of interesting posts.
Well, since not many people read this blog anyway, it's time to sign off... till the next post.
Nico Bellic is not the only star in GTA4. Liberty City itself, which is a replica of New York City, is also the key attraction in the game. Flickr user Matthew Johnston has done up a series of pictures comparing actual buildings in NY and screenshots of the same locations found in the game. The similarity is simply astonishing. If you're a fan of the game, you have to check out the Flickr photoset.
Blog It by TypePad seems to be a pretty useful app. With it, you can use Facebook to post to several blogs at once, and also update status on multiple locations. I'm trying it out with my Blogger, Vox, and Twitter account. I wonder if it works on mobile.
I just read from a Slashdot post that Gary Gygax, the creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game has passed away. This news filled me with sadness and a great sense of nostalgia. The influence of D&D is without a doubt far-reaching. Computer games won't be what it is today without the influence of the tabletop game. Come to think of it, would games like Baldur's Gate, Oblivion, and many other gaming classics be without D&D?
I played D&D during my secondary school days. In those days, I had little money to buy the player's handbooks. I borrowed them from my friends, photocopied them, and saved up so that I could buy a set of crystal blue dice. Those were the times when some alarmist folks would view D&D as a "satanic" game. Me? I just thought it was really fun to play a tough fighter or a powerful magic-user.
My fondest memory of a D&D gaming session was one where after battling some enemy (which I can't remember), there was a magical sword set in stone calling out to me. The greedy loot-grabber that I played as, my fighter reached out to grab the sword. Alas, it was a cursed sword and it was stuck to my hands! I then made a decision to actually chopped off my hands so that I won't be penalised with all the "minus" modifiers that came with this cursed sword. Ah, good times!
I would say that D&D contributed to my love of games, sci-fi and fantasy... mainly geeky stuff. It also got me interested in technology because computers started to have RPGs.
Goodbye Mr. Gygax! Thanks for all the dice-rolling memories.
I saw this on Boing Boing, and since it's the Year of the Rat, it's just so appropriate.
What you see here is known as a Rat King. According to Wikipedia, it's
said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, and excrement. The animals consequently grow together while joined at the tails, which are often broken.
