Waxin’ Lyrical

So I’ve been following the whole Anon Vs Scientology thing, and I’m throughly fascinated. If anyone ever doubted that the Internet was Serious Business, this is your wakeup call. Them angry kids on the Internet have spilled out onto the streets and demand to be heard.

I remember reading a while back a column about someone criticising our generation as the “I’m so angry I’ll go post on my blog and leave comments on YouTube” generation, denouncing our lack of drive and resolution. Well now, while it seems like we’re not gathering in flocks to dress in ridiculous floral print shirts and smoking weed to protest a war, I can’t see how this isn’t a stark demonstration of the will the youth of today have. This is made all the more so startling as the Internet has truly been harnessed as a medium to communicate, plan and faciliitate these protests, and a call to arms has been answered in force by like-minded people around the world.

We live in interesting times.

For those of you interested, here’s some interesting background material.

And, just to make sure we’re not totally off topic, here’s the latest video from Anonymous Japan and a translation for the speech:

At the present time, we believe that there are many of you out there who do not clearly understand what Anonymous is, and why we are doing these actions.

Unlike what the media would have you believe, Anonymous is not simply a group of hackers.

Anonymous is a private organization, that holds the beliefs that we must do what is right, that we must bring light into the darkness, and that we must open the eyes of the public who have been sleeping for so very long.

Among us are lawyers, parents, IT professionals, policemen, college students, veterinarians , people of all professions and all ages.

Anonymous is everyone. And Anonymous is everywhere.

We have no one commanding us, let alone a leader. The only thing directing our actions is our personal outrage.

We would like to inform you of how dangerous Scientology is.

Please, open your eyes to the violation of human rights committed by this cult.

Please, open your eyes to the case of Lisa McPherson.

Please, open your eyes to the existence of the Sea Org, the private navy of the Church of Scientology, where former members were forced to get abortions so they could continue with their work in the Sea Org.

Please, open your eyes to Scientology’s practices of child labor and appropriation of property by force.

Please, open your eyes to the case of “Operation Freakout”, and to what happened to Paulette Cooper.

Please, open your eyes to the case of “Operation Snow White”, and to the secret infiltration of the United States Government perpetrated by the Church of Scientology.

We would like you all to understand all these facts as a truth that has lied buried in the darkness for ages.

The information is out there.

The information is right there for you to do as you please.

Arm yourself with knowledge.

Be vigilant on the 15th of March.

We of Anonymous call for unity in participation of our event.

Under the flag of freedom, for the sake of free speech, human rights, and to protect our families, let us fight together.

Together with Anonymous, as a form of resistance, please, gather in front of Centers of Scientology around the world.

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Our voice will only grow louder.

Await us.

…and I am sitting in front of my PC in Singapore, contemplating what to do with the last few minutes of my time at home.

What comes to mind is how I’ve transferred almost all my stuff off my hard disk, and how the vast expanses of my home desktop storage, a mere husk of what it once used to store, looks lonely, if such a thing may be said for electronic storage.

I’ve put my favourite mouse in my luggage, and it’s been replaced with a new one for my sister.

All that’s left in my cupboard are my old threads - familiar and comfortable, but too worn out to bring with me to where I’m going.

Everyone who knows me will know how much I keep going on about “getting out”, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t miss my place here.

And this stanza from Sakamoto Maaya’s okitegami feels oddly appropriate, so I’ll put it here.

ひとりで勝手に決めてごめんなさい
だけど昨日でも明日でもなくて
今日はその時だった

I’m sorry for deciding on this all by myself
The time for this wasn’t yesterday, nor tomorrow
because today is the day I leave

I appreciate all the send-offs, everyone!

I got Hunter Rank 6 a while ago, and just today…

I finally, finally finished the entire Rin-Ha set! I am of course most happy to inform anyone not in the know that this necessarily entails the defeat of Lao Shan Long, Teo Teskatorl, Kushadaora, Reolia, Gravimos, and procuring a rare Monoboros heart. Also note the Gunchariot I wield, crafted from the tails of Silver Reolia. Ferocious beasts, all of them, which I gallantly bested with my strong swordarm and stalwart resolve.

On my PSP, at any rate.

I finally made HR5!

Edit: And I’m playing on Xlink too!

I bought a laptop a while ago to prepare for my exchange to Japan - the Acer Aspire 5920 “Gemstone”.

She’s a nice laptop, with all the Santa Rosa bells and whistles, if a bit on the heavy side (3.0kg), and pretty fast too, considering the 3.2~3.4k 3dmark06 score (my desktop PC scores a piddly 1.4k). However, Vista, which came bundled with the laptop itself, wasn’t exactly as snappy as I liked it even after I removed all the cruft that Acer put in, and I found using Vista itself to be pretty unwieldy.

So I thought I’d put XP on her too, and jot down over here what it took to get everything going, although hopefully I won’t have to do this again (crosses fingers). Eh, who am I kidding…

1. XP’s installation CD won’t detect the laptop’s HDD, because it’s on SATA. Since the Gemstone doesn’t come with a floppy drive I had to slipstream the SATA drivers onto the CD.
To get the drivers, I had to download the Intel Storage Matrix drivers for the Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset and install them in Vista. This extracts the archive into C:\Programs\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager, and in there there should be a Driver directory with the required drivers. I tried extracting the driver archive with uniextractor and winrar, but this was the only way I could access the stuff in the archive.

1.1 When slipstreaming the SATA driver there’re a few to choose from. The Gemstone uses the ICH8R SATA controller. I also slipstreamed the INF update that was available on the Intel website as well.

2. Install XP as usual on the second partition D:. After installation completes, I can only boot in XP.

3. Restore the Vista bootloader by using VistaBootPRO. Under the System Bootloader tab, select Windows Vista Bootloader (Uninstall Legacy Bootloader) and All Drives. Then, after it’s done, run the diagnostics. If there’s a red entry for “Previous Windows Version”, set the boot drive to the drive that NTLDR is on (C:\). This let me dual-boot Vista and XP.

4. Install drivers for the rest of the hardware.
Video drivers: I used the 162.18 drivers on laptopvideo2go for XP. (Edit: Added the link. Make sure to read the guides on how to install them.)
Sound drivers: Realtek High Definition Audio Codec Drivers.
Network Drivers: Intel Wireless 3945ABG. Wasn’t this supposed to have 4965AGN!?
Webcam Drivers: The “Suyin” directory in C:\Drv contained XP drivers.
Synaptic Touchpad: Again, C:\Drv contained XP drivers for the touchpad, although the directory name slips my mind. This lets the touch media keys work in XP.
Bluetooth Drivers: The “BTW” directory in C:\Drv contained only Vista drivers. However, turning on the Bluetooth and then manually pointing XP to the folder containing the 32-bit drivers installed them succesfully. Preliminary bluetooth communication with my mobile seems ok.
CIR Drivers: The “CIR” directory in C:\Drv contained only Vista drivers. The device in the control panel is the last one that reads “Unknown Device”. Manually updating the driver by pointing XP to the folder installed the succesfully - however, I have the device disabled atm.
Ricoh 5 in 1 Card Reader: Unfortunately I couldn’t find any provided drivers in the Drv directory. However, working drivers can be found on the HP driver website - SP33604.exe.

Modem: I couldn’t be bothered with this and disabled it. This probably uses the Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture Bus Driver.

Maybe someone else’ll find this useful too, heh.

Whyyy Capcom?!

So I started playing PSU again, except this time on the NA servers.

And because I don’t know what else to write here’s a picture of a floating Pannon.

I’m a pretty big fan of the x360 gamepad, it’s built solidly and feels fantastic to use. I’ve used it to play PSU and just about everything on my PC that supports a pad, and with JoyToKey just about everything else (yes indeed! I use my pad to surf the internets so I have one hand fre- ah, I digress.)

Not all is good, though - one thing that’s bugged me is how minimalistic the official drivers are, and most owners of the 360 pad will probably know that there’s a version of the XBCD drivers (originally intended for the first xbox pad) available that’ve been modified to work with the 360 pad. However, the XBCD drivers have a configuration program that’s hard to use and that doesn’t always display the right visual feedback (although it works).

Recently I installed the MS drivers over the XBCD ones again hoping that they’ve added more configurability to the pad (hopefully to the same level as XBCD) but apart from a nice looking panel that pops up (that does nothing) when you press the Xbox Guide button (that previously used to do nothing) nothing seems to have changed.

Now, Monster Hunter Frontier’s technical test starts today, and I really needed a good driver for my otherwise wonderful pad, so I surf around and find this:

Xbox 360 コントローラー用デバイス ドライバ - Unofficial Drivers for Xbox 360 Controller

Which is absolutely fabulous. Automatic Deadzone Configuration, Button remapping, Triggers as Buttons, Trigger Deadzone configuration, Force Feedback levels, everything I was looking for. It doensn’t support X-Input, but hey, which games use x-input anyway?

Monster Hunter Portable 2nd is really good.

That’s all.

So I just finished this, and the first thing that came to mind was how unnecessarily long it is.

The series has a great core story. The last 3 episodes kept me on the edge of my seat.

The problem is, those were the only 3 episodes that did that.

The rest of the episodes were about unrelated people doing unrelated things to other unrelated people.
All the “main” characters did in those episodes were walk around (unnecessarily) and … ask about what the unrelated people did.
Watching people take revenge on other people was novel… for about 3 episodes.
Watching a show that was always bitter-sweet was good… until the same message repeated itself for the 3rd time.

Ai needed more screen time (and no, I don’t mean the screen time where she comes out and does more of the same and sends people to hell.)
Her sidekicks needed more screen time (and no, I don’t mean the screen time where they come out and do more of the same and send people to hell.)

This might’ve very well been 12 episodes, with a lot of the unrelated revenge taken out, and it’d have gone from a decent series to an excellent one.

I find it ironic what’s left of “real” mech-sims is probably only Armored Core.

Mechwarrior, Earthsiege, come back :(