viva espana - euro 2008

Congratulations to Spain for winning the Euro 2008 yesterday! They were considered a team with the potential to win but who always flopped at the big stage. Well, they've fulfilled their potential and proven their critics wrong. And did they deserve to win? Of course they did! They were the only team that played well throughout the tournament, and they also played wonderful with very neat passing. They're not as fast and exciting as the Dutch and Portuguese at times, but overall, they are the worthy champions.

For me, this is the best Euro that I've watched. It's much better than Euro 2004 where a team who played defensively (read: boring) won the tournament. Most of the group matches were very thrilling, especially Group C (Holland, Italy, France, Romania). A lot have changed in 2 years. The previous World Cup finalists, Italy and France, both lost to Holland and drew with Romania. Holland played really well and most of their goals were just fantastic, especially Sneijder's and Robben's. And Boulahrouz played really well at right back. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who played central defence at Chelsea a few years ago.

All the champions of the groups won their first two games and rested most of their first team players during the third one. And all of them, except for Portugal, won their third group match. Now of course it's understandable that the coach would want to rest his first team so that in theory, they'll be less tired in the next games. Also, those on the bench want to play as well. It's great if one is included in a team in the Euros but it'd be better if one could play as well instead of just warming the bench. However, in the quarter-finals, out of all the group champions, only Spain progressed to the semis. Maybe it's because the others lost their momentum? Portugal and Holland didn't play as well as they did in the group stage. There wasn't much flair and the chances that they had were wasted. Croatia played okay, but were beaten by a very determined Turkish team.

Turkey. Wow. I think they're the most hardworking team in the tournament. Their mental strength is damn high. With players injured and suspended, they still played the same way. Be it the first or second team (or the third team if they had one), you can see that they weren't afraid of their opponents and never gave up even though they were behind. The important thing was that they played to win, which means they played attacking football, unlike Italy in the game against Spain, and Germany in all of their games except the one against Portugal. I really think the Turks deserved to win the semi-final match against Germany because of the way they played throughout the game. The Germans rode their luck all the way to the final and hurrah to Spain for beating them.

Now that this Euro is finished, I hope that the next one will be as entertaining, or even better. It's very nice to see a team who play very good football winning the cup, and I hope there's a lot more exciting football matches with plenty of drama in the World Cup in 2010 and Euro 2012.

army of two

Like its name suggests, Army of Two is a game focusing on a team of two people who are private military contractors or mercenaries, Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios. They were in the US 75th Ranger Regiment before joining the Security and Strategy Corporation (SSC), a private military company. Army of Two is a third person shooter game, which for me is much much better than a first person shooter (less pening) and it's especially made to be played by two people. Well, you can play alone because your AI partner is quite ok, as in he won't die easily and he'll follow your commands, but it's a lot more fun playing with a real buddy.

Okay, let me talk about its graphics first. Awesome! It's as nice as Gears of War (and much better than Kane and Lynch). The water texture is beautiful. But of course, you can't just admire the well-designed graphics and drop your gamepad when playing the game, because then you'll get killed by the enemy. Now about the controls, they're a bit slow when aiming but quite okay overall (again, better than Kane and Lynch).

What makes this game very unique is its Aggro. What's Aggro? Basically, it means attention, as in if you're shooting the enemy, then their attention will focus on you, so your Aggro will be higher than your partner. If you have a bigger and more powerful weapon, then your Aggro will be higher as well. There's an Aggro-meter in the screen where you can see how much Aggro you have. Well, what's the fuss about this Aggro thingy? If a player's Aggro is very high, then all the attention will be on him, and his partner will then be 'invisible'. The 'invisible' partner can then sneak up behind the enemy, or snipe them from long range or do any other strategical manoeuvres to defeat them.

help, i need somebody, help, not just anybody, help

If you get shot, you can regenerate your health by staying away from the line of fire. But if you keep getting shot, your screen will turn red and it's very difficult to see your surroundings. Then, you'll 'die' temporarily and you won't be able to move around anymore and your partner needs to come help heal you. He can drag you to a safe place to heal you and while he's doing that, you can still shoot enemies so that your partner doesn't get shot while healing you. If you're dying and you don't have enough time to find cover to regenerate your health, you can feign your death so that the enemy won't shoot you anymore, but if you do it again, they won't be fooled twice and they'll definitely make sure you die.

There are many instances in the game that require two people to do. There's the step jump, where a player helps his partner get up a wall and once his partner is up, he is then pulled up. There's also the co-op snipe, where the 2 players snipe one or two targets at the same time. This move is cool if you want to take out two guards at once, or if you want to blow up a gas barrel or tank. When parachuting and driving, one player controls the parachute/hovercraft while the other shoots or mans the turret respectively. If you're controlling the parachute, you'll need to stabilize it so that your partner can aim and shoot properly. But sometimes it's still difficult to shoot even though the parachute is very very stable (and somebody learned it the hard way *cough* Marwan [bukan nama sebenar] *cough*).

back to back

The back to back manoeuvre is really cool. It's like that ending scene in Mr. & Mrs. Smith where they're surrounded and they just shoot all their enemies while they're back to back. Well, in the movie they didn't get killed, but in the game, you can get killed if they keep on shooting you. What? You haven't watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith? Then, too bad for you, you now know the ending. Heh.

Another unique thing about the game is its weapons system. You can't pick up weapons as you go along, you can only pick up ammunitions. The weapons need to be bought. There's a wide range of weapons to choose from and they can be upgraded once you buy them. And if you have a lot of money, you can even 'pimp' your gun, which means that your weapon will have a gold/silver coating. Cool. You can also waste your money by buying masks, which doesn't make any difference to your stats. Hyree and I have already pimped many of our weapons and we've also bought masks for our characters. Money wasters!

For me, the bad thing about the game is that most of the enemies are Muslim terrorists. There are even suicide bombers in a mission in Afghanistan. They come barging at you before exploding literally in your face. These terrorists really give Islam a bad name. So sad.

Anyway, we (Hyree, Ammir, Pear and me) have all finished the whole campaign each. Once you've finished, you automatically own all the primary weapons available. Hyree and I have already started playing the game again using the hardest level, Professional. We've finished the third mission and there's three more to go. Oh we've also finished playing Halo 3 last week, or was it the week before. It's a first person shooter game, so I wasn't pretty much interested to play, but main je. The game was quite okay though. Marwan's currently playing Army of Two with Ammir now. He still hasn't finished it yet, but he's nearly there. Hmm, I'd better plug my ears while he's finishing the game. Heh.

let's download firefox 3!

The hugely anticipated Firefox 3 is finally going to be launched on Tuesday 17 June 2008. Let's join the 1.2 million people (so far) that has pledged to download it on its launching day to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. That's right, a world record.

After downloading, you'll be able to tell your mates that you were part of a Guinness World Record. Now ain't that cool. Well, it'll be a little bit less cool if your mates were also part of it. No bragging rights there I'm afraid. Nevertheless, let's download and be a part of it! Just click on the link above or the picture below.

And if you don't understand what the fuss is all about, go read the field guide to Firefox 3. And if you're not already using Firefox, what are you thinking, are you out of your mind??!? Hehe.

*Updated (4 July)* - Congrats to those who downloaded Firefox 3 on Download Day! A Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours was successfully made, with 8,002,530 downloads. And don't forget to download your very own certificate for helping set a Guinness World Record.

oil boil coil foil

So the price of petrol in Malaysia has just gone up by RM0.78 per litre. That's an increase of nearly 40%! I've been monitoring the price of crude oil this past few weeks and it wasn't much of a surprise that the government will reduce the subsidy. Just a couple of weeks ago, the price of crude oil reached an all-time high of $137 per barrel. Currently it's decreased a bit to about $120. This is very high if you consider that just 3-4 years ago, it was just $20-$30 per barrel. All sorts of factors contribute to the price of oil, and I don't really understand much about it. Heck I don't understand much about my course either sometimes but that's another story.

Everywhere in the world people are affected by the increase in oil, so it was inevitable that the price in Malaysia would also increase. However, I believe that the manner that the government handled it was very poor. Very very poor. They keep saying contradicting things. One moment they say that the foreigners will be charged extra for petrol and only in August will there be any changes to the structure of the subsidies, and then *poof* out of nowhere came the news that the price will be increased that very night. But then again, they've done this before. One minute the parliament won't be dissolved tomorrow, and the next minute *drumroll* it will be dissolved tomorrow. Such lies are what we don't need especially now, when there are many economic problems throughout the world. Even the UK and US are feeling a slight pinch.

Somehow these people haven't learned from their past mistakes. How do you expect people to trust you if you keep lying to them? Do we need an indecisive leader or a determined one? Yes, of course humans make mistakes, but if you make too many mistakes in your job, maybe it means you're really not capable of handling it.

Like I said before, the price increase is unavoidable, but 78 sen is just too much and too sudden. No steps have been taken to let the rakyat prepare for what was going to hit them. Is this a ‘padan muka sapa suruh x undi kitorg majoriti time pilihanraya dulu’ gesture? If they do want to increase it by that much, they should've done so gradually, little by little. This abrupt news caused massive traffic jams at the petrol stations. And people even got angry with the petrol pumps that were closed due to them being out of oil, accusing them of hiding petrol so that they could sell them at a higher price. How chaotic.

The government should also ensure that our public transport system is quite efficient and covers the routes conveniently. If people complain about the Underground trains in London, then I couldn't imagine how they'd react to the KTM Komuter in Malaysia. Now don't even mention the buses.

It's very frustrating when the government tell us not to waste our money, to spend wisely etc, but at the same time, they're not doing what they preach. Having private jets to take them anywhere they want, spending a lot of money and sending a lot of people to unnecessary ‘study’ trips abroad and other absurd expenditures. I'm not saying we shouldn't learn from others, but do it wisely and remember that you're using the people's money.

In saying all this, I do not agree with people who think that Petronas has a right to subsidise petrol, that most of their profit should be spent on the people. Yes, Petronas is drilling oil in Malaysia, and yes, Petronas is a Malaysian company. However, they do need to pay those who work their socks off for them as well. Even Petronas's employees are affected by the price hike, well not the very high-ranked ones of course. Now let's not talk about the money getting into some politicians' pockets because that would just drag this entry. It's Petronas's profit and they have the right to use them as they please. To put it in a rude way, ingat Petronas ni syarikat bapak kau ke? Well, maybe there's an act somewhere that says Petronas is the company of everyone's fathers or something along that line. If that's the case, then I humbly apologize.

There's no doubt that this price increase will have a domino effect on all the price of goods since everyone is dependant on the fuel to power their means of transportation. I just hope that those in power know what they're doing and help those that will really be affected by all this. On the positive side, at least there'll be a little bit less pollution if many people don't use their vehicles if it's really not necessary to do so. But hey, I'm just hoping.

poynt wezt

Ammir and I bought Marvel: Ultimate Alliance about a couple of weeks ago. It's an action role-playing game (RPG). If you don't know what RPG is, don't worry. Xde masuk exam pun. If you don't know and still wanna know, there's always Answers.com. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a game where you control Marvel Comics superheroes to perform missions in order to defeat the evil Dr Doom's team of supervillains, the Masters of Evil.

The good news for us (me, Ammir, Hyree and Pear) is up to four players can play the game at the same time. It's played on one full screen, which means the TV screen isn't split into how many people are playing. But the bad news was we only had three controllers, so there was usually one observer.

mari kita belasah orang jahat ni beramai2

In the game, you can have your own team of superheroes, where you can increase your team's performance based on the points that you collect. After experimenting with different characters, we chose Wolverine, Human Torch, Deadpool and Captain America as our team members. It was time to pick the team name...

Ammir: “Chamberlain United dah ada. Point West la pulak.”
Hyree: “I tukar la jadi Y dalam Point.”
Ammir: “Gedik nya.”
Fadhli: “Alang2 nak gedik, tukar S jadik Z dalam West tu.”
Pear: (Hanya mampu pandang slack dan ketawa.)

So there it was, Poynt Wezt. Make sure you pronounce it properly: “Poynt Wezzzzzzzzzzt”.

poynt wezt (from left): wolverine, ghost rider, the human torch, deadpool. captain america and thor were busy fighting bad guys while this photo was taken.

As we progressed, we added Ghost Rider and Thor to our gedik squad. You have to make sure that your team has a good balance of different powers to ensure that the whole team don't die easily. I usually used Wolverine because he heals quickly and his melee attacks using his claws are cool, and the Human Torch because he could fly and has a controllable fire projectile. Pear liked Deadpool, Hyree used Captain America and Ghost Rider, while Ammir preferred Thor.

We had already finished the game last week. It's kind of open-ended, meaning certain choices that you make during the game have their own consequences. Pear has just bought a new blue controller, so boleh la main 4 orang skrg, try characters lain pulak, and main the 'hard' level.

On another note, we've finished playing Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, but the game's not worth an entry on its own. Game tu x best. Nak control x best, cerita x best, even the different endings weren't satisfactory. The only good thing about it was its sniper zoom. Memang sedap la guna sniper. But overall, Hyree couldn't wait to finish it so that he could sell it. Heh.

thorpe park

Since our exams were all done and over with, we went to Thorpe Park to chill and have fun. I know, I know, we still have our projects, but rilek dulu, chill dulu. It was a good thing we went on Saturday since it was a good sunny day sandwiched by rainy days. Special thanks to the organizer Siti Sofia. Say thank you everyone! Thanks to Hyree, Pear, both Hanafi's, Syafa, Lai, Sofia, Baya and Ijah for the wonderful time we had (tiru ayat Hyree, but I really do mean it).

logger's leap, basah sikit naik ni

Here are the rides that we went on that day:

1. Quantum
2. Zodiac
3. Vortex
4. Logger's Leap
5. Colossus
6. Chief Rangers Caroussel
7. Nemesis Inferno
8. Rumba Rapids
9. Flying Fish
10. Tidal Wave
11. Stealth
12. X:\No Way Out

If my memory serves me correctly, this is the order that we went on them. The rides in red are the Extreme Thrills, the yellowish brown ones are the Thrilling and Fun rides, while the blue one is, well, ermm, the scariest one of all, the Young Thrill Seekers.

nemesis inferno, adik kepada nemesis at alton towers

The first couple of rides were 'warming up' ones. You can't just go on the 'heavy' ones straight away. Kalau tidak, nanti cramp. Compared to Alton Towers, Thorpe Park is smaller. That's better because it made it quite easy for us to get to the rides that we want to go to. We didn't need to rush.

If you go there, there's this one ride that you shouldn't miss. It makes you dizzy, you'll feel pressure in your stomach and the wind blowing at your face. Which ride am I talking about? The one and only Chief Rangers Caroussel. Heh.

this is the scariest ride ever

There was also a basketball throwing game that I played. I had three shots to get the ball in the basket. Unfortunately, all my throws didn't go in. Dah la Hyree rakam, and he's probably gonna upload it at YouTube (noooooooooo!!!). Haih, how embarrassing! In my defence, the hoop was a bit tall and small (excuses, excuses).

As you all probably can see, we were prepared to pose at the camera at each ride since we knew where they were. Since there were ten of us, we couldn't fit everyone in one picture. The most that you could fit in a ride was 8, and that's on the Rumba Rapids. We had 10 people, so the logical way to split us up into 2 groups is to have a ratio of 5 and 5 right? But somehow it turned out to be 6 and 4. Hmm.. I wonder why.

“(yang kiri) ni boat bdk2 3rd yr. (yang kanan) ni sume bdk2 4th year. hampeh discriminate siot.” - hanafi tony

We prepared our own lunch to eat that day. (All of us except one, that is. Mana burger special?) Thanks to Syafa, Lai and Sofia for the popia, Baya for the pasta and Ijah for the muffins. All were delicious. Sori la our sandwiches takde la sedap mana ye.

The Flying Fish was the only ride that I tanpa segan silu nya seated at the front seats. It was a 'mild' roller coaster. Hyree and I even did sleeping poses in front of the camera, but we didn't buy that photo. Menyesal la pulak. Since we didn't buy it, I've recreated it and now I present to you the Sleeping-on-the-Flying-Fish photo:

oops, wrong photo

Oh sorry, my bad, wrong one. That's the Sleeping-on-the-Train-because-we-were-Tired-after-a-Whole-Day-at-Thorpe-Park photo. Here's the recreated one:

flying fish zzzzz

The Tidal Wave was the wettest ride of all. We knew what we were in for, but we still went for it. Beratur panjang2, lama2, lepas tu naik ride, basah kuyup, siapa punya idea nih? Heh. After getting all our clothes wet, it was really cold waiting to get off the ride. Time tu jugak angin nak tiup kuat2. Freezing.

Some of the high-demand rides had really long queues. Special thanks to our timekeeper Ijah for informing us how long we were in the queues. They usually took 30 to 45 minutes. We even played Old Maid while waiting to get on the rides. Apologies for the gossiping during queueing, especially on the Nemesis Inferno and Stealth lines. Selamba je buat scandal. But what else were we supposed to do. Hehe.

All in all, it was a really fun day. Thanks again everyone! Oh and I'm sorry that the not-speaking-to-Fadhli thing didn't go so well. Better luck next time! Hehe. And here's Hyree's brief post on that day. When's the longer version coming out?

*Update (2 June)* - Hyree's slightly longer version is already out, including some comments regarding what I've written here (oh I agree it's Lai's fault too), and a 10-minute video. How I wish a few minutes of that video would be erased. Heh.