Death Note

((( "GENIUS VS GENIUS" )))

It's already a new year. Maybe I should introduce to everyone a new addiction for 2007. It is known as Death Note, definitely one of the best storylines I have come across. The movies are out but I would recommend anyone to watch the anime too, because it's more detailed and exciting, and also the movie version was slightly altered & missed out quite alot of tricks & explanation.

VS
====== "KIRA" ====== >+< ========== "L" ==========

Its about a battle of wits between 2 geniuses, Light vs L. Light is genius-level top college law student who happens to chance upon a supernatural artefact, a Death Note, whereby anyone's name written in it, shall die. Naturally, seeing that the world is still filled with injustice, Light uses the Death Note to kill criminals one by one with unexplained heart attacks. Soon, people took notice of this weird deaths phenomenon and sense that someone is responsible, giving him a name, Kira. Nobody knows who Kira is. There are supporters of Kira but there are also those who disagree with his actions, among them are the police. And leading the police in this investigation is the genius detective L. L directed a challenge at Kira on LIVE TV, but Light cannot kill L since he doesn't know L's name and face. And so begins the showdown, the first to narrow down and find the other one out wins!

Both Light & L are extremely smart, you will be amazed by their thought patterns and reasoning abilities. The creator of this storyline, whether it is just 1 person or a group of people, at least 1 of them has to have an IQ significantly above average to come up with a story like that. The only factor that affects, is time. How long did he/they take to come up with this story? Because of the fact that the creator is able to think brilliantly from both the perspective of Kira & L, and also from the perspective of the reader/viewer by what makes a story interesting, the creator is smart. If you noticed, the storyline naturally have most of the elements that would make a story interesting: uniqueness, talents, challenges, schemes, mind games, confrontation, love. And not to forget the nice theme songs and mood setting soundtrack too.

To watch the anime, follow these links, the other episodes can be found by searching within YouTube.
Episode 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHNqMxaA_uA
Episode 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMRIyO2a00
Episode 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sODsBSlCENo

If you wanna jump straight to the exciting part, watch Episode 2.

7 Hand Poker (MSN Messenger)

WOW! Time passes so fast... it's been a month+ since I came here LOL. I discovered a great game recently, it's called 7 Hand Poker. It's right in your MSN Messenger (you can play it from version 7.0 onwards), just press Alt-G when you are chatting with a friend online and you will find it. For those who likes to play Big2 (Daidee), you will absolutely love this game too. It has one advantage over Big2 though, 7 Hand Poker needs only 2 players while Big2 needs 4. It's very simple to play, as long as you know the basic poker rules of which is bigger, you already know 80% of the game. But yet, it's a devious game which involves strategy, planning, psychology, trickery, situational reaction and some luck, all packed into one game. As you all know, I'd always liked thinking games, and this is definitely a great one. I am still trying to improve my 80+% win rate.

The rules are so simple, heck I will just type them out for you.


1) See 7 coins? To win, you just need 4 coins or 3 adjacent coins (3-in-a-row)
2) You choose 1 - 5 cards to place face down, your opponent chooses which coin to place your cards at, and vice versa
3) Regardless of how many cards u used, u get 3 fresh cards


4) To win a coin, the coin must be challenged by placing cards on a coin which already has your opponent cards . Then the cards on both sides will be opened and the higher side will win the coin


5) 4 coins & 3-in-a-row! Satisfies both the victory conditions (You just need to satisfy either one)

The Trial Of Mind (Character)

12 Aug 2006: This is by far the most interesting test I had taken. It's called the 5-Factor IPIP Personality Test which have a history of 70 years of research. This model is also referred to as OCEAN, which represents the 5 factors Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Negative emotionality. It identifies the most important ways in which individuals differ across an infinite possibility of difference. The 5 main factors can each in turn be broken down into 6 sub-traits.




Values: Willingness to change your values in reaction to new experiences
Fantasy: Imagination & Daydreaming
Feelings: Attention you pay to feelings, yours & others
Ideas: Curiosity, Exploration of ideas & new thoughts
Actions: Extent to which you seek new & unusual experiences (as opposed to sticking to what you know you like or familiar with)
Aesthetics: Extent to which you appreciate beauty (as opposed to practicability)


Delibration: How much you weigh the pros & cons and think things through before deciding/acting
Achievement-Striving: How much you care about your achievements
Order: How organized are you
Competence: How much you know what you are doing, able to do what you need to do, and do it well
Dutifulness: How much you follow through obligations & Reliability
Self-Discipline: How much do you stick to your original intention (as opposed to being side-tracked by something more tempting)


Warmth: Friendliness
Excitement-Seeking: The desire to search for new thrills
Positive-Emotions: How good & positive do you feel about your life
Assertiveness: How much you share your opinions & speak up for yourself
Activity: The need to feel that you are doing something instead of relaxing
Gregariousness: How sociable are you


Straightforwardness: How direct are you
Trust: How much you view people as well-intentioned and give people the benefit of doubt (as opposed to viewing people as dishonest or ill-intentioned)
Altruism: Extent to which you will go in helping others
Tender-Mindedness: How much do you support others emotionally (as opposed to supporting by rationality)
Compliance: Tendency to go along with things, even if it is something you do not agree/prefer, just to avoid creating resistance
Modesty: How humble are you and how much you can keep quiet about the things you are proud of


Self-consciousness: Tendency to avoid attention
Discouragement: How much will you doubt your own beliefs in the face of criticisms
Worry: How much do you tend to worry
Vulnerability: How unstable will you become in the face of high stress
Anger: How quick is your temper
Impulsiveness: How rash are you

Yahtzee (free online game)

(Right click on title above to open in a new window)

If you are looking for a fun, free & quick online game, without the hazzle of downloading, plus skill rating tracking, then Yahtzee is the game for you. Its a great game to play with your friends. 1 game of it lasts like 5 mins. Here, let me show you what it looks like:


Noticed there is a list showing 13 rows with black words. Each player has his own list. The aim of the game, is the fill up all the 13 rows with as much score as possible, so that you beat your opponent's score. You have only 13 rounds, each round u can have 3 rolls, of which you can "lock" certain dice. The "locked" dice are place under Keepers and you can remove or add in any dice, anytime you wish. After a round, you got to choose a row. The black numbers beside the words indicates that you have chosen that row previously and you cannot choose it anymore, meaning the score there is counted and locked for the rest of the game. Fives means the total of all 5s, if he hadn't choose the row before, it will be 20 in green, but because he had chosen it previously, the score is already locked. Fortunately, he can choose other rows like "3 of a Kind" or "4 of a Kind", which his dices meet the requirements. As the game moves towards Round 13 (end game), you may come to a situation where you don't meet the requirements for any of your leftover rolls, in that case, since you need to choose a row after every round, you have to choose a zero score. This is the classic Yahtzee, as you get the hang of the game, you definitely would want to try Painted Yahtzee shown below:


Painted Yahtzee adds another dimension into play, which is colours. It's more complicated, but it's more fun and requires better planning, situation reacting, decision making & probability calculation skills. Noticed that the 1st & 2nd sections of the list have a BONUS column. If you can get total score of 63 and above for each of the sections, you get a bonus of 35 points, which means you need to think more & decide better. In this example, his dices would qualify for Rainbow & Full House. But since he had already secured Rainbow, he would most probably choose the Full House or try to roll for more Fives. To save you the trouble of reading the rules, I will explain the specific Yahtzee terms.
Sm Straight = 4 consecutive numbers
Lg Straight = Straight = 5 consecutive numbers
Yahtzee = All same number
Chance = Palette = Simply just add up all your dices
Painted House = Similar to Full House but in terms of colours
Flush = All same colour
Note that for "X of a kind/colour" and Chance/Palette, the score is calculated by adding up the dices, for the rest in the final section, the scores are fixed values. Enjoy your game!

Sangokushi Taisen (based on Romance Of The Three Kingdoms)

(Right click on the title above to open in a new window. Note that this is not the official site but still it's a good introductory site. The official site is http://www.sangokushi-taisen.com in Japanese)

That's my favourite hobby as of now. Basically, it's a game at the arcades, but it's not just any game. It's a masterpiece of strategy games. It's very different from other games I have played. To play, you need cards which will be the equivalent of your armies. You will be commanding your armies simply by moving the cards on the sensor board on the arcade machine. The position of your cards will correspond to the position of the armies on the game screen. Cool idea huh? Each card have a cost ranging from 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 points. Before play, you have to decide which cards to bring into battle, the maximum total points that you can bring being 8, this is called a DECK. If you had played Magic The Gathering, this game is similar to it in certain ways. The objective of the game, is just to siege down the opponent's castle or damage his castle more than yours when time runs out, as simple as that. The best thing about this game, is that you can play versus another human, which makes it very fun & challenging. Its brings out the best in tactics, planning & strategy. At the time of this writing, this game in Singapore in under online trial which will last for a week. This means that we can pit our skills against players in Hong Kong & Japan. When I spectate matches of Singapore players vs Hong Kong players, our players are good, so that's one more thing Singapore can be proud of. Furthermore, it's National Day today, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY SINGAPORE!

I am a visual learner, so I understand how does a visual learner learns. Take a look at these:


1) This is the order of events when you play 1 game


2) This is what you should do during a battle


3) This is how the game machine looks like, and the buttons on it


4) This is describing the sensor board and the various information on your card. Power is the raw strength of your unit. Intelligence affects lethality/duration of Special Tactics & ambushes. What makes the game more interesting are Special Skills like Ambush & Fence. Ambush makes your unit invisible to the enemy but upon contact, you will deal an ambush damage to them based on the difference in Intelligence. Fence create a fence in front of the unit at the start of the battle, the opponent will need to choose to detour it or to knock it down (both methods delays time, and time is crucial) Imagine if you used 4 cards all with the Fence ability, if you placed your fence formation properly with archers behind them, your opponent will have a very hard time even reaching your castle. This game is all about offense & defence, when to do which.


5) This is describing the various information on the game interface and the mini map


6) This is like the scissors, paper, stone of troop types


7) This describes the usage of morale. It is like mana or spellpoints which regenerates over time. The beauty of this game is that there are 200+ over different cards and each card have a unique special tactic, although some special tactics are repeated in more than 1 card. Nevertheless, the huge diversity of special tactics made it possible for you to tailor-make your deck to your own style of play.


8) This is your ultimate skill, which can be used only once in a battle, at any time which you think is most suitable. This contributes to the diversity of playing styles

There are currently 6 "kingdoms" of cards (red, green, blue, yellow, grey, purple) and each kingdom has its own unique skills, advantages & disadvantages. For example, red has good cavalry, green has good pikemen, blue has good archers, yellow has good infantry. You can play a pure DECK (all your cards from a colour) or a mixed DECK (in which you will suffer a slight disadvantage depending on how much u mixed).

This game is often tournamented in any country which has them, because it is simply the best 1-vs-1 game in my opinion. To see an actual battle replay, click here: http://sega.jp/segachan/ch_sangokushi/3goku2_hongkong.html

Interested parties can visit http://www.sgmagic.com/viewforum.php?f=22 where most of the Singapore Sangokushi players converge.

To watch replays of a Japan tournament, click here: http://www.famitsu.com/sp/s_taisen/
and scroll to the middle of the page to click on the asx links.

If you had played KOEI Three Kingdoms games or Dynasty Warriors before, you might be interested to know the history of the Three Kingdoms set in around 200 AD. The good news is, there is a very good site in English for you to read the history, just click here: http://www.threekingdoms.com
Zhuge Liang appears in Chapter 36, this is what his card looks like:

The Trial Of Earth (Strength)

06 Aug 2006: 84% Masculine & 16% Feminine, but it's weird they present it this way

The Trial Of Heart (Passion)

30 Jul 2006: LOL... I thought I am only good at chasing girls

The Trial Of Wind (Charisma)

26 Jul 2006: Admit it, you guys love me haha

The Trial Of Water (Flexibility)

26 Jul 2006: I am proud to be a Balanced Visual Learner, movies!

The 3rd Trial Of Fire (Intelligence)

26 Jul 2006: Somehow I can't get the report for this

The 2nd Trial Of Fire (Intelligence)

23 Jul 2006: Now that's more like me. I got 1 out of 54 wrong

The 1st Trial Of Fire (Intelligence)

21 Jul 2006: I have got 4 out of 40 wrong. Bad day?