All posts by Wan Kong Yew

Personal Life, Politics

Solomon Islands Riots Photos

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I finally got around to uploading the photos that I have of the riots in the Solomon Islands in 2006, as previously promised. I didn’t have a camera handy during the 2000 riots, which was a real shame, since groups of guys toting huge guns all over Honiara would have made for more spectacular sights, and even in 2006, I wasn’t about to take any silly risks, so these are really just photos of the aftermath. You can get much better photos of the whole thing from the BBC. I also won’t really go into the specific details of the political situation since that’s been covered by much better writers than myself.

The riots in 2006 happened after general elections that eventually put Snyder Rini into the Prime Minister’s seat. Mr. Rini had a rather unsavoury reputation, particular after his earlier stint as Finance Minister, so the word on the street was that as Prime Minister, he would be susceptible to bribes from the Chinese businessmen active locally. Or more susceptible that the norm in the Solomon Islands. Anyway, a crowd had been gathering near Parliament House to hear who would be the new Prime Minister, and when they heard that it would be Snyder Rini, they turned nasty and after being turned away by the Australian-led and supported police, descended onto the nearby Chinatown.

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Games, Politics

Obama Ads in Game?

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In-game advertising are nothing new now. In fact, my very first experience with MMO games was with Anarchy Online’s Free Play program in 2004. It was one of the first experiments of this type and offered free accounts in exchange for being shown advertisement posters and billboards in the game. However, this is the first time that I’ve heard of a political campaign buying advertisements in a game, in this case, the console racing game Burnout Paradise.

As the site notes, it’s not sure whether this is legitimate yet and may simply be a case of good photoshopping skills. But if it is true, it speaks volumes of Senator Obama’s savvyness. He’s also bought a half-hour of network primetime to speak directly to U.S. audiences on the 29th October. What’s surprising is that I think a lot of Americans are going to tune in to listen to him. When is Malaysia going to get a politician this cool?

News & Politics

Financial Meltdown

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This is as good a time as any to post a link to Sad Guys on Trading Floors, a photo collection of traders’ reactions to the continuing financial meltdown. The U.S. Federal Reserve just dropped the federal funds rate by 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent, while central banks around the world followed suit, and the markets still dropped. The U.S. Treasury stated that it might have to take ownership of U.S. banks and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced a proposal for yet another stimulus package worth US$150 billion to be spent in a Keynesian attempt to jump start the American economy. All of that is just today’s news.

Remember how AIG was bailed out by the U.S. government to the tune of US$85 billion just a couple of weeks ago and needed another US$37.8 billion yesterday? A report today details a week long “conference” organized by the world’s largest insurer for its top agents at a five-star resort in California costing more than US$400,000.00 just a few days after the first bailout. As the saying goes, we live in interesting times.

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Fun

Purging of the English Language

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Check out this list of English words that the editors of the Collins English Dictionary wants to purge to make room for new words and the accompanying article. As it notes, some words that are common in mainstream usage are nonetheless useful in particular communities. As a gamer, I’ve collected my fair share of Periapts of Wisdoms across many different Dungeons & Dragons-based computer games, so I should know!

Then again, while it’s understandable that a dead tree version dictionary wants to drop words because you can only fit in so many in a single volume and still have it at a manageable size, in the Internet age that we live in, these words will never truly be gone. Furthermore by singling out these particular words, the editors have simply given them a short-lived notoriety that will effectively grant them a new lease on life.

Fun

Game Grub

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Spotted this on the Quartertothree forums. Gamer Grub, performance snack food for gamers! Available in four flavours (“Action Pizza”, “Strategy Chocolate”, “Racing Wasabi” and “Sports PB&J”) and laced with special health supplements designed to make gamers better at playing games! All that, and be edible without forcing the player to stop playing too! Ok, all of that is bunch of crock but at least the manufacturer’s website lists all the talking points with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humour.

This is nothing more than a novelty gag item, but give the creator props for daring to try something so wacky!

Games

Racism and Nationalism in Medieval 2

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I’ve been playing Medieval 2 Total War for a while now. I’d passed on it when it was first released in late 2006 and only bought the Gold edition including the Kingdoms expansion earlier this year. Easily the most popular choice of nation when playing the Medieval games is England, partly due to a combination of cultural familiarity, its easily defensible starting location and the excellence of English longbowmen. I tried my first game with the Venetians who start out with a great navy but whose provinces are actually separated from one another but couldn’t make much progress. Venetians get hemmed in too much by their Italian cousins, the Milanese and the Sicilians, as well as the powerful Holy Roman Empire to the northwest and the Byzantine Empire to the east, so I ended up having to restart my game as the English in which I’m handily conquering the whole map.

One of my favourite things about this new version of Medieval are the pre-battle speeches that your generals make. The speeches made their debut in Creative Assembly’s previous game Rome Total War, but they’ve been greatly expanded here. Each major nation now has a different way of insulting each other and the personality traits of the general making the speech also influences what gets said. Check out the YouTube video I linked to for a great selection of these speeches. Playing as the English, my generals have called the French wine-sodden and arrogant, the Germans pox-ridden, the Sicilians sons of Satan and the Danish “scrofulous”, whatever that means. It’s awesome and doubly hilarious when a drunken or even outright insane general spouts off some utterly nonsensical stuff.

On a vaguely related note, here’s an Ebay listing for what must be the coolest auction ever. For the princely sum of least twenty five thousand British pounds, you can own a full size replica of a Roman siege catapult. It was built for a television show and now doesn’t fire, but it would be the perfect lawn ornament if you happen to live in a castle!

Personal Life

Spidey All Tied Up

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My wife and I have been experimenting with putting videos up on YouTube. Unfortunately since we’re only taking them using our old digital camera, the results aren’t really great, and they seem to be darkened after YouTube finishes with processing them. Here’s a video that we took when Spidey was smaller.

One of our worries about leaving for Kuala Lumpur was what to do with her. We wanted to put her in a dog boarding school here in Kota Kinabalu but didn’t have enough time to arrange for that. My wife’s parents happened to be here so we had to let them take care of Spidey instead. As expected, Spidey had to sleep outdoors for most of the week. She was naturally delighted to see us when we got back, but we discovered that she had developed some itchy sores on her belly.

The local vet here wasn’t open due to the Hari Raya holidays but we managed to call him and he said it might be a fungal infection. Since she’s back to sleeping in the room with us, the sores have dried up a bit, but we still need to be careful that her belly doesn’t stay wet for too long.