I’ve seen a whole lot of “pet mods” – dressing, trimming, and coloring of pets by their disrespectful owners. Pretty much always those experiments turn out bad, and if pets could speak or understand the humiliation that were put through, I’m sure they would eat their owners alive. Or something horrible like that. Tiger dog – is the first mod that I can remember ever that actually looks pretty cool. Daily Mail reports on Chinese company that runs the business.
Via ffffound.com.
While being common knowledge between people who work on water (life guards, maritime professionals, etc), this still might be quite a shock for all the rest – drowning doesn’t look like drowning. Most drownings you saw in movies and on TV are nothing like what a real thing is. Here is a quote from the article that you should definitely read:
The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening.
Via kottke.org.
I don’t think I have a list of things that I wouldn’t do, but if I had, I’d put “never go swimming in the pool of Marina Bay Sands resort that just opened in Singapore” somewhere high up that list. As high up, in fact, as this pool.
I’m too afraid of heights, even if it said that the pool is perfectly safe.
But swimming to the edge won’t be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.
Update (July 29th, 2010): more pictures of this resort are available here.
Often, when I talk to my friends abroad, I hear that we have it too good here, in Cyprus. As one of the example, they say that everyone has a car. And while I don’t disagree – the life in Cyprus is good indeed – I often find it hard to explain that a car here is more than just a convenience. It’s a necessity.
I also understand why it is difficult to grasp the idea for those who’ve never been in Cyprus. Many of them can’t imagine a city with no public transport at all. Public transport is a norm pretty much everywhere you go. But not in Cyprus.
Finally, I now have a link to send to those friends of mine, who find it difficult to believe me. Cyprus Mail runs an article with some statistics. These are Nicosia-based, but I don’t think Limassol or any other city on the island would be much different.
Nicosia also stood out with 84 per cent of respondents saying they never used public transport. Only a minority – four per cent – used public transport to commute in Nicosia with 91 per cent travelling by car or motorcycle. Just five per cent walked or cycled to work.
I am back in Quake 3. It all happened very fast and very unexpected. I used to play Quake 3 about five years ago, and I have to tell you, we had plenty of fun back then. But one thing led to another and I dropped out. I haven’t heard anything about Quake 3, haven’t watched any demos, or haven’t even talked about Quake 3 in the last 5 years or so.
A few days ago I noticed a colleague of mine spending his lunch break chasing someone in pro-q3dm6 map. I got a overwhelmed by a wave of memories and forgotten feelings and I asked him if I could play a round on his computer. He agreed. It turned out, he was playing against my own brother. My brother, being a mean chap as he is, started playing Quake 3 too, with some guys from the college, but never pushed me to return. Now that I was chased by him around the arena, I remembered that he mentioned his comeback once or twice.
Anyway, the quick match showed that my Quake 3 skills were gone. All of them. Even despite playing on somebody else’s computer, using half-baked configuration, and playing over 150+ ms ping, I still could feel how bad I am in the game.
In a quick chat after the game, my brother mentioned that my laptop should be fast enough to run Quake 3. Of course, it’s not a gaming station by any means, but it should be sufficient to handle a game written a decade ago or so. He was right. I fetched a dusty CD-ROM and installed the game. A quick Google search over my blog archives helped me to get back my old config file. And I started practicing with the bots a bit.
Boy, was I ashamed. Bots were killing me with any weapon on any map in any position on any level of difficulty. It was almost unbelievable. Everything was gone. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t aim. I forgot the maps. I forgot the controls. My hands were getting tired after just a few minutes… It was like I never played Quake 3 in my life, but worse.
Anyway, I got interested in getting back what I once had. I was never by any means a top player or a particularly skillful one, but I could run around properly and kill a few people even. I wanted my skills back.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one. I quickly found another three or four people who wanted to play some proper Quake 3. We played a few matches on our own server. It was slow and laggy, but it felt good non-the-less.
I jumped on my connections to find out what happened to the old servers and old people that used to play. Surprisingly, the server is still up, and there is another new one brought up just a couple of days ago, and there seem to be some interest – a few people play on a daily basis. Wow! That was much more than I hoped for.
Today I truly got back into Quake 3. I played for three hours, and I played with some people who I haven’t seen for the last five years. I was surprised to see that they remember me, and that they missed me and all that… So, what have changed? Here is a briefing:
A few things changed. But the main one is still there. Quake 3 is still a lot of fun.  The years that passed by, the new technologies, the life changing experiences that happened, none of these changed the my attitude towards Quake 3. And I feel that I am not alone… and it feels like Quake 3 is not just a game, but a lifestyle.
You will probably hear more about my Quake 3 adventures on this blog in the near future. Until then, happy fragging!