Tag: english

Holy crap

September 29, 2010
valeblog
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In order to provide the Battle.net Service, Blizzard must be entitled to access, monitor and/or review text chat, including private, or “whisper” chat, in the event of complaints from other users or violations of the law. By clicking the check box below, you agree that Blizzard (or one of Blizzard’s affiliates) has the right to monitor and review personal messages you send or receive on the Battle.net Service, or through any game that is playable through the Battle.net Service, to investigate potential violations of the law, the Battle.net Terms of Use, or the Terms of Use agreement specific to any game playable on the Battle.net Service. Blizzard will not use the information for any reason other than pursuing such violations.

Battle.net account registration, chat agreement

I consent to Blizzard monitoring and/or reviewing my personal messages.

I guess i should just move to China. Not much of a difference anyway, living under a communist regime and playing a game on Battle.net. This is so… scary. Especially after reading Little Brother (Cory Doctorow’s)…

StarCraft 2 + Blizzard rant

September 29, 2010
valeblog
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Blizzard pissed me off. Badly. It’s one thing that battle.net redirects me to the korean website, even though my account is south-east asian–apparently all japanese are considered to be able to speak korean too. But whatever, i got used to typing sea.battle.net instead of just battle.net.

Actually it was all fine when i got the game (StarCraft 2 we’re talking about here). I completed the campaign, wrote a blogpost about it and since then played against harder and harder AI’s. Not against humans for the sole reason that the people i would want to play with are in another region. And StarCraft 2 is geo-locked, just like World of Warcraft. Meaning you can’t play with people from other regions, and even if you got access to another region, your achievements and scores will be stored only for the region you got them in. Even better is that although SEA apparently got merged into the north american region, technically the two are still separate, just now i can have a NA character too. Great.

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Third night, Okinawa, etc

September 29, 2010
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I thought this night worths a separate post, it was really funny. I was staying at CamCam, where i returned after i finished my sightseeing trip. That was when i realised that my watch stopped sometime during the day, that’s why the sun was setting at two pm.

But of course when i realised that it’s six pm and not three, i suddenly got hungry. I didn’t feel like going to the same cheap place as the day before, so instead i headed for the main street to eat something with agu, the local pork. But after walking for like ten minutes there, and all restaurants were expensive and the advertisers on the street didn’t even try to invite me in, i got pissed and went to a small famiresu i passed on the way earlier.

I sat down to the great surprise of the owner-bartender and ordered the most filling-looking item from the menu (again to his great surprise that i could read the japanese menu). While i was eating friends of his dropped in and started drinking and talking. I didn’t leave (on intention) after finishing my meal, so it wasn’t long until i was part of the conversation too, and even got snacks and drinks (awamori-water 1:1 mix). It’s always astonishing how quickly japanese can get insanely drunk.

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Funny

September 29, 2010
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It’s always funny when people call me Vale when we meet. For the reason, this name started as my online alias. Not as if i minded being called Vale, i made this name, so i like it. It’s just… strange, when i think about it.

Especially when people ask me how it’s supposed to be pronounced, and i have to admit that i don’t know. “Vale” if looked on as an english word is the same as “vale”, synonymous to valley, and from that point of view should be pronounced as such. But on the other hand, if looking at the evolution of this name, it comes from the tolkienianish “valerauko”, and should be pronounced as such.

Actually, originally it wasn’t meant to be pronounced at all. I used it online, and online means typing for most of the time. But of course i was in contact with real life friends online too, so it wasn’t long before some started calling me Vale offline as well. Some said it this way, some said it the other way. The funniest was my short-time university roommate who pronounced it as Wall-E.

Say it however you want, probably i’ll get it.

The hardest part

September 19, 2010
valeblog
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I’ve started and stopped and restarted and restopped rewriting my blog engine a bunch of times already. Pretty much as soon as i put this one online, i realised it has way too many faults. But i was, to put it simply, lazy to actually finish any other (not as if this one was complete and finished, it has the basicest of basic functionality, and that’s it).

And i can say, every time i develop website code, the hardest part is templating. How to separate content, representation and scripting. I don’t like having unrelated tags and stuff in my raw writings (especially since i got my new keyboard, with which if i use the hungarian layout, it’s a pain in the ass to type < and >) and i don’t like putting php in my template files either.

What remains is either using search-and-replace on a lame formatting language i make up for this purpose, but it usually ends up just as complicated as if i used php. I do know a good solution, and that’s xslt. I would’ve trusted that if Blizzard used user-side XSLT on the StarCraft 2 website (well, the previous one at least) it’s supported enough, and it seems it is on desktop browsers, but not so much on mobiles. And i myself have a phone with a quite picky browser (NetFront), yet intend to use my blog from that. (Though i still have to figure out how would i input hungarian accented characters with a japanese phone…)

The problem is, server-side xslt seems to have performance issues. Although i haven’t tested it (yet), everywhere i read how slow php’s xslt transformations are. And though that would most probably mean a few hundredth of a second, i’d rather check it before writing an implementation. An implementation, which would make my developing life loads easier, by the way.

If you have any data on php xslt speeds i’d really appreciate it.

Okinawa, day two

September 17, 2010
valeblog
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Not really separated from day one, but since unlike me the world around started a new day, i count it as such as well. I looked for a place to stay as i realised that i seriously needed some sleep. Not much luck. Using my phone’s net i managed to find a relatively cheap place hidden somewhere in the labyrinths of the tiny alleys of Naha, and i was looking at a streetmap at a crossing when a helpful japanese asked if he could help. He could.

I made it to the place, but it was like five in the morning, so of course i couldn’t check in.

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Starbucks Anniversary blend

September 17, 2010
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First impression: “what the heck, is there pipe tobacco in this thing?” Because as i opened the package, beside the (judging by the smell) dark roasted coffee aroma came a sweet scent that i can only associate with pipe tobacco. I like it. The fresh brew doesn’t have any special scent to it, not until you are about to drink it, because then something sweet and bold appears out of nowhere.

And of course, the packaging does not lie when it has “extra bold” written on it. Indeed, it is well roasted, dark and if it wasn’t a drink i’d say crunchy. But it’s also smooth, which would make a really nice, almost poetic confusion there. The point is, it’s a nice coffee. Multi-layered taste and dark boldness, just how i like it.

Okinawa, here i come

September 17, 2010
valeblog
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… and two hours later i did close my door behind me and left for Okinawa, without forgetting anything–or if i did forget something, i forgot forgetting it. I parked my bicycle in front of the post office nearest to the station, where i was sure it wouldn’t be towed away, bought the usual entry ticket for the train, and got on the first express train towards Himeji (that’s where pretty much all the express trains are going from here in the direction of the Kansai cities).

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Charts 2

September 16, 2010
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There are plenty of post and pass on memes out there, but i usually quietly stay out of them. But now i’ve been asked to post fifteen music albums i’ll probably always remember. Fifteen.

  • The Gathering – if_then_else
  • Gojira – From Mars to Sirius
  • Macskanadrág – Modern Szerenád
  • Pain of Salvation – Be
  • Sentenced – The Funeral Album
  • Rammstein – Reise, Reise
  • Opeth – The Roundhouse Tapes
  • The Toy Dolls – our last album?
  • Ленинград – Хлеб
  • Amorf Ördögök – Molylepke Minibár
  • Iron Maiden – Dance of Death
  • Blind Guardian – Nightfall in Middle-Earth
  • Helloween – Master of Rings
  • In Flames – Reroute to Remain
  • Dream Theater – Systematic Chaos

I guess this is fifteen. Nothing surprising, is there? And it took less than fifteen minutes to compile. Though i’m not sure i’ll agree with this my own list just tomorrow. Or an hour from now. Nevertheless.

Also, i’m not passing the game on. Do it if you want. Fifteen albums “that will stay with you forever”, in less than fifteen minutes.

Charts 1

September 16, 2010
valeblog
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But before i begin my eternal long chain of posts on my past three weeks, i felt like posting a last.fm milestone list here. Seeing Sesam’s is what poked me to post mine. It can’t fetch my oldest plays (before the 10000th), so these are the prime-thousand-th plays from that point. Here you go.

This with 85094 plays right now, and as far as i can tell the only song appearing twice on the 1000th-milestones chart more than once is Opeth’s Reverie/Harlequin Forest (twice). Yeah, i do love that song.

Also interesting is that back in 2008 it took a month or so to get 1000 plays, while nowadays i get that in less than a week.