Happy New Year 2012

Happy New Year picture on Google homepage

Time sure flies...2011 is about to exit while 2012 is just waiting to enter. Lots of stuff has happened to us all, some good and some bad. Remember the good times and put behind the bad times. Let us look forward and hope that the future ahead is bright.

Happy New Year!

- BuLaDiFu -

Happy Holidays!

'Tis the season to be jolly...For Christmas is just around the corner. Even Google is celebrating the festive season with this interesting picture on their homepage.

But a friendly word of advice for you guys and gals out there who can't wait to PARTY.

Don't Drive to Drink and Don't Drink & Drive

Stay safe for the sake of your loved ones. Happy Holidays!

Robert Noyce's 84th Birthday

Today is Robert Norton Noyce's 84th Birthday. He co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. He also played a part in the invention of the microchip which fueled the personal computer revolution. Without the microchip, we probably wouldn't have computers in our homes today.

Diego Rivera's 125th Birthday

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.

To mark his 125th birthday, Google has placed a drawing of a couple of mural artists painting a wall on its homepage.

Mark Twain's 176th Birthday

Today's the birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). He is better known under the pen name "Mark Twain".

To celebrate his birthday, Google has placed a drawing of a couple of boys painting a fence on its homepage.

Louis Daguerre's 224th Birthday

Today's Google home page shows an old black and white photo of a family in a photo frame. This photograph, a daguerreotype, is to mark Louis Daguerre's 224th birthday.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.

Mask

Mask, is it worn over the face or is it worn over the heart?
Mask, is it worn to deceive others or is it worn to deceive one's heart?
Does one hurt others when wearing a mask or does one hurt their own heart?
Should one be wearing a mask or should one really cast it away?

- BuLaDiFu -

Afterthoughts from an Interesting Quote...

From Kamisama no Memo-chou Episode 12 (Alice): "You see, Narumi, NEETs are not people who can't do anything or don't try to do anything. All that separates them are the rules they follow. With different rules, they can't play the game the same way. The other players become bewildered. They knit their brows in confusion. Thus they rush to label and categorize them, to isolate them, and regain their peace of mind. But NEET is not a label. It's a way of life." From Wikipedia: "NEET is a government acronym for people currently 'not in education, employment, or training'. It was first used in the United Kingdom but its use has spread to other countries, including Japan, China, and South Korea. People under the designation are called NEETs (or Neets)."

Interestingly, this quote from the anime seems to fit well into points highlighted in Hikikomori (Wikipedia).

"Young adults may feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet formulated a sense of personal honne and tatemae – one's 'true self' and one's 'public façade' – necessary to cope with the paradoxes of adulthood."

Perhaps these NEETs, are just people who live or strive to live 'true to themselves'. Wishing to follow upon this rule, they could not fit into our modern society (Not just in Japan but as a whole). Yes, our modern society - a place where one does not or should not show one's true self or ideas to the public, a place where one has to wear a mask in front of others.

Failure to do so, oftentimes result in being alienated, taken advantaged of or worse, being 'backstabbed' in office politics. All because one had chosen to follow his/her own rules and showed one's true self. Perhaps as a result of this or a sum of these, NEETs had chosen to withdraw themselves or even lose their jobs even if they had one and ultimately, being unable to land themselves on a new job.

To add to this, they refuse to let go of their own rules, to assimilate into modern society, probably because doing that might mean that they are defeated by life and that itself would make life meaningless or they would thus lose their sense of direction in life.

They sought for a haven, one where they could live in while being true to themselves. What they have seeked, they found it in 'The Internet'. This place has no barriers, no requirements, no prerequisites. Perhaps because there is no rules, NEETs find that in this place, no one can judge his/her rules to be right or wrong and hence the link between NEETs' so called 'attachment' to the Internet.

On another note, you will probably recognize these traits of NEETs to be found in children. And just so as to speak, these traits are said to be 'cute' or something along that line when referring to children, but when these same traits are found in adults, they become undesirable. Perhaps, it wouldn't be too far from the truth to associate them as 'Children in an Adult Body'? (I'm pretty sure NEETs will often be asked to 'grow up'.)

"A decade of flat economic indicators and a shaky job market in Japan makes the pre-existing system requiring years of competitive schooling for elite jobs appear like a pointless effort to many."

"After graduating from high school or university, Japanese youth also have to face a very difficult job market in Japan, often finding only part-time employment and ending up as freeters with little income, unable to start a family."

There can only be this many 'elite' jobs and jobs that pay well often requires that one 'own' at least a few 'masks'. Without this ability to don on a different mask depending on the persons your socializing with can be a huge disadvantage. Imagine saying the wrong things during an interview or shooting off remarks that offended your employer's important customers. Just that would be sufficient reasons to cause NEETs to lose their jobs or fail to get one.

All that's left would probably be those jobs that require less or no socializing with others (those part-time jobs or low paying ones), which is growingly becoming impossible to find. As most jobs in our society now requires interactions with others and with interactions there will be friction if one does not own masks (conveniently called 'Socializing skill' or 'Networking'?).

"The Japanese education system, like those found in China, Singapore and South Korea, puts great demands upon youth. A multitude of expectations, high emphasis on competition, and the rote memorization of facts and figures for the purpose of passing entrance exams into the next tier of education in what could be termed a rigid pass-or-fail ideology, induce a high level of stress. Echoing the traditional Confucian values of society, the educational system is still viewed as playing an important part in society's overall productivity and success."

How often have you been told by your parents that education is the key to success? But in reality, is that true? How long does it take to get a 'Degree'? 26 years? So after these 26 years of education, how many of these Bachelors could actually find a job? More often than not, what we're being taught in our education is vastly different from what is required in the actual working world.

And with this massive amount of competition due to our ever growing population, the number of 'decent' jobs vs the number of people who need 'decent' jobs is widening. As with all things that follow the law of supply and demand, its not hard to conclude that the requirements of landing on a particular job gets increasingly demanding. Ten years ago, there are only so many people with a degree and these people will get the 'decent' jobs. Now, there are so many types of degrees out there that practically anyone you grab out on the streets has a degree. So the 'decent' jobs have now 'upgraded' to requiring 'Masters' or multiple degrees. Soon perhaps in ten or twenty years time, they will probably start requiring 'PHDs'. And probably then, some other thingamajig will be cooked up that is of a 'higher' quality than PHD.

To make matters worse, education has deviated from its original path and became more and more 'business-like'. They have been churning out tons and tons of different certificates (There's even now a Bachelor, Masters or even PHD for 'Social Work'. Would that have been imaginable ten or twenty years ago?).

Each and every job that is available in our modern world now requires a person to 'own' a particular type of education to be 'qualified' for that kind of job. From a single person's point of view and with so many different types of certs out there, taking the wrong step and choosing a wrong cert to study for would spell doom. From there on, you would probably have to restudy for another cert, which again might or might not be useful in securing your future and is a 'luxury' that not many can afford. To add to that, the mentality that education is no longer trustworthy becomes etched in the person's mind (a pointless effort). This thus leads us to the point stated below.

"In this social frame, students often face significant pressure from parents and the society in general to conform to its dictates and doctrines. These doctrines, while part of modern Japanese society, are increasingly being rejected by Japanese youth in varying ways such as hikikomori, freeter, NEET (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education, or Training), and parasite singles."

Clearly, with that sort of mentality, the most logical path from then on would be to rebel or reject it. To forge on a brand new path, following a new set of rules, their own rules. And hopefully find a new world, a new future. This of course depends on the particular individual and his/her surroundings. Those whom reject education would turn out to be NEETs, while others who surrender themselves and sink into despair might become something else.

Marie Curie's 144th Birthday

On today's Google home page features a lady sitting beside a work table holding a flask of reagent. Apparently, this lady is Marie Curie and today's her 144th birthday.

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a Polish–French physicist–chemist who was famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity.

Scream

I scream at the top of my voice, but no sound can be heard
I scream at the top of my voice, but no words can come out
No sentences can convey what I am feeling inside
No solution that I can see to guide me to my journey's end

- BuLaDiFu -

Onward Struggle

After working hard on building up my blog, I have managed to fulfill the six month content requirement. Immediately, I tried to reapply for my adsense account to see if I can get it. (Note that on top of the six month content requirement, there is a need to place a privacy policy for your site too.)

Within hours of sending the application, I received an email confirmation of a partial account approval. After getting to this stage, I went into my blog account's monetize tab and went through the easy steps to place ad units to my blog.

Initially, these ad units are blank spaces which blend with my blog design. But because they were blank, I couldn't really tell whether I did the right thing. Did I place them correctly and will my account be fully approved? These sort of things went through my head.

Next I logged into the Adsense account to have a look and saw tons of options to click. Its pretty overwhelming to me as a newbie to this whole thing. Trying to understand what I am getting myself into, I started plowing through those articles in the Adsense Help section.

Reading the help section is actually a pretty good idea. It took my mind off the unnecessary thoughts about whether my account will get approved or not. In addition, it gave me some important information regarding ad units, link units, adsense for content, feed and search.

From what I read, each page can only hold 3 ad units, 3 link units and 2 customized searches. After some digging of articles and trying around with those ad units, link units and stuff, this is what I've learnt.

For blogspot bloggers, if for example, we placed 2 ad units on the home page (under design tab), no matter which page or post we go to, these 2 ad units will always be shown and therefore takes up 2 out of the 3 ad units limit.

And if you selected the option to show ad units within posts via the inline ads, then you will inevitably overshoot the 3 ad units limit in certain situations and on certain pages depending on how often an ad is shown in between posts. To avoid this, I personally feel it would be better to omit the inline ads option and then place them within your posts yourself. (Besides...using the inline ads option, it will place your ad unit at the very bottom of your post's page...which is a pretty lousy position for an ad anyway.)

If you choose to place the final ad unit in your posts, then you will have to make sure that on your home page, the ad unit won't show up in multiple posts and make you go over the 3 ad units limit on your home page. (I'm guessing that you will have to make use of the jump breaks.)

After deciding on the placement of ad units, I wanted to try out the link units. But as soon as I put a link unit onto the home page, I discovered that one of the ad units became blank. It doesn't show up even after refreshing. I only found out that this was due to the blogger system, while observing the adsense limits, somehow counts link units together with ad units towards the same limit.

Well...since placing 3 ad units & 3 link units onto a page would make it too crowded with ads (considering that I use some amazon banners too), I've decided to just settle with using 3 ad units plus perhaps some amazon banners. I guess I will probably play around with the positioning of amazon banners and ad unit within posts.

I've also managed to set up my customized search engine and feed with ads from adsense, but am not sure whether they are properly linked to my adsense account. Only time will tell me this I guess. (If you are having some problems with setting them up, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to guide you on how to redirect your feed to that from adsense for feed. Though I'm not sure how helpful I will be to you with my newbie knowledge...)

Anyway, roughly two days after I had placed ad units on my blog, I found that ads from google started to appear in those previously blank spaces. So I guess my adsense account finally got approved. Hurray... ^^;

Okay...I've got my Adsense account...now what?

Now that I've gotten my adsense account, things won't end here...I'll probably put in more effort and focus on filling up my blog with content and information that readers would want to know. Its gonna be one uphill climb from here.

- BuLaDiFu -

A Journey Long Overdued

Many a times, we fail to remind ourselves that we are not perfect...
Man was never perfect...

In our strife for perfectionism, we unrealistically aimed to do everything in one take...
In our quest to not make a mistake, fear starts to set in...

And from this fear, we lose our courage to take that much needed step forward...
A step towards our own future...

- BuLaDiFu -

Mary Blair's 100th Birthday

Today, Google pays tribute to Mary Blair on the 100th anniversary of her birth with a doodle on their homepage.

Art Clokey's 90th Birthday

Today on Google's homepage features a toy block with the letter 'G' and some clay balls. Apparently, today is Art Clokey's birthday and since he was a prominent figure in stop motion clay animation, thus the clay balls.

If you click on one of the clay balls, you will start an animation of that clay ball. The following is a shot taken after clicking on all of them in quick succession.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs...

Today, on the homepage of Google, there's no flashy pictures, no fancy flash animation. All there is are these few simple words and a link to Apple's homepage.

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Following the link to Apple, you will find these:

Today, we mark the loss of a great talent. One who changed the world...
My condolences to his family and friends. Be strong.

Seasons of Google

Google's 13th Birthday

Just for the heck of it, I've decided to start taking screenshots of each and every change in Google's homepage that I come across...to capture its 'Seasons'.

I'm pretty sure you all know how much of an effort they put in to decorate the 'Google' ever so often. Thus I feel that its kind of a waste if they aren't documented.

Problem with the Search box

Tried doing a search using the search box on All You Need to Know About Games this morning and realised that it doesn't work properly. The search query returns no results although I am sure that the word searched can be found within my blog articles. Once again, a new problem arises....hahaha.

Anyway, I did a search on google and found that this problem first started in 2009 and then somehow until now, it still isn't really fixed. This problem has something to do with the "Search Function" via the navigation bar.

What my search box does is append a "/search?q=keywords" into the navigation bar and hit 'submit'.
Example:
Restricted Instance
Legendary
And the results if found is returned to the searcher.

As you can see in the examples, the search function returned a "No posts matching the query: restricted instance." result in the first example, while it worked with the second example.

Although I liked how the search result is returned within my blog and adhering to the format, clearly its not doing a good job on searching.

My temporary solution to it now is these 2 custom search boxes, the google custom search engine and the search box widget.

I first found out about this "Google Custom Search Engine" via A Custom Search Engine for Blogger. Using the information in the article, I modified my old search box code with the customised one from Google. It now lies right where my old search box was, using the same design and format.

In my opinion, it does a pretty decent job in searching, although some rubbish does turn up owing to the "Labels" column in my blog and thus might mess up the user's search for articles. In addition, I dislike the way that it turns the user over to another page with a different design and then turn them back here to my blog via the search results. Perhaps much more playing around with the Google Custom Search Engine might be in order.

Due to the above-mentioned flaw, I have added the Search box widget at the right hand column of my blog. This widget does a nifty job of returning search results within my blog (to my liking), however the format it presents itself in is a mis-match to my blog's format. I have yet found a way to customise its appearance. What's worse is that it does a poor search job for articles within my site. Although I kind of like the added function of searching for articles within the sites that I've linked to or added to my list.

Therefore, these two search boxes will be here to stay until I can find a better solution to this search box problem.

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

After discovering this article being posted on the yahoo front page, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Is it about how marvelous technology is, that allows us to detect and understand things that are so far away? Or perhaps it is about how amazing the universe and all the exotic kinds of creations that can be found within it?

Sadly, for me, the first thing that comes to my mind is this...
IF there was ever a way for humans to have the technology to reach that planet and come back within say a year or two, then that planet is as good as gone. It is almost certain that some unscrupulous people will think of ways to try and mine those diamonds just for profit.

Am I the only one thinking like that? If you disagree, why not leave a comment about what you think then?

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

But men are so full of greed today, they'll sell anything for a little piece of money.

- Little Richard

Dreams and Reality

Just woke up having a weird dream. In this dream, I vaguely remember running around an abandoned building hiding from something and then encountering two girls around my age during the run. I think that one of them was spunky and the other was sick. I can't remember much of the stuff that's happened in this part. Maybe because it was the first part of the dream and most people can only remember details about the parts closer to when they woke. 

Then the scene switches to another location. I was with my family and in my hands were some cards. Looking at one of them, it showed a "0.9% First place" in the top left hand corner of the rectangular card. It was the "results" for my math exams and I showed the card to my family. The result for my math exam placed me in the top 0.9% of some cohort I guess and thus gotten myself in first place. Naturally, my family was proud of me in that scene...even my "grandmother". A thought ran through my mind at that point though, about how having good results might not translate into having a job and securing a bright future. Well...it is at this point that I woke up. Hahaha.

The exact details aren't really clear and its becoming more and more fuzzy as time passes from when i woke.

The reason why I'm rambling about this isn't to tell you about my dream, but rather about what it set me thinking after I woke...

Why was I running around in an abandoned building? What was I running from? I've never met those two persons before...so why them? (Not that I remember what they looked like...)

As far as I know, I'm way past the "exams and results" stage...so why dream about them now? My grandmother passed away long ago, but in that dream, she was still alive... And finally, why exactly did that thought crossed my mind? (Although the present me will agree with it.)

Just what exactly are dreams? Are they just a figment of our imaginations brought about by what we were doing and thinking during the day? Or perhaps they were our temporary "synchronisation" with our other selves in parallel worlds or parallel timelines?

What do you think?

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

New Problem Faced With My Blog

After posting this extremely long post, Galaxy Online II: Skill Commanders, I discovered that my main page, All You Need to Know About Games, refused to finish loading. It only loaded part of it and then it stopped. The post beneath it didn't load out and the page navigation didn't either. The part which loaded out worked okay though...so I guess it might have something to do with the very long post i just did.

So I googled about solutions to extremely long posts and found out about the "jump break" thingy. I inserted it into my post and it fixed the problem. My main page finished loading and worked like normal again. However, to my dismay, it added an additional "read more >>" right beneath "Posted in: Galaxy Online II". Since I have no idea how to fix the loading without putting in the jump breaker, I decided to leave it there.

Next, when I double checked the post to see if everything is still intact, I noticed that my right column got shifted all the way to the bottom of the page instead of displaying at the right hand corner like all the other pages. Thus, I went into my post and checked the html code. Somehow, by a stroke of luck, I noticed that a part of my text wasn't closed properly with the "</div>" tag and when i properly closed it, my right column got shifted back to normal.

Thinking that it might be because of this improper closure that my main page didn't finish loading in the first place, I tried removing the jump breaker and hoped that I didn't need to use it. Well, I was partially right. Even though my main page loaded "properly" and the additional "read more" is gone, however, my post beneath it "disappeared". The "RIFT" post is no longer shown on the main page even though I can still go to the page via the labels.

Out of options, I placed back the jump breaker into the post and checked my main page again. The "RIFT" post is back and so is the additional "read more". -_-;

Since I no longer know what else I could do, I decided to leave it there.

Spent the whole evening trying to figure out the solution and in the end, I'm back to square one. Darn.

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

Building a Blog is Hard...

Building one's own blog is a pretty challenging and daunting task.

When I first started out trying to build one...I named it purely as "BuLaDiFu's Adventures". The purpose of it was just to post my own views about the online mmo games that I have played myself. At that time, I was playing Entropia Universe for quite a while...about 2 years I believe.

So naturally, Entropia Universe was my first post on the blog. Being my first post, I feel that it is a bit coarse and unrefined. Up until now, I still think it is and have yet found a way to refine it, to make it more professional.

After that first post, I stopped...real life matters kicked in I guess...or perhaps I just didn't have enough perseverance.

One year later now, I stumbled back upon the blog. Still unsure how to build it, I decided to just try posting more and see how it progresses. One post by one post, I started writing. First it was League of Legends, then a post about a guide and skin customisation site to League of Legends, then Arma 2: Free and now Galaxy Online II Part One, Galaxy Online II Part Two and Galaxy Online II Part Three.

As you can see, the more I posted, the more it appeared to me that I've "lost" myself. The posts seemed to have turned from posting my views to becoming more like a guide.

At that point, I stopped and started surfing around for ideas or solutions to my problem. I've thought about making the blog both a place for guides and reviews, thus I renamed my blog to what is it now "All You Need to Know About Games". Though somehow, in terms of layout, I have yet to figure out how to incorporate both into the same blog.

At the same time, this surfing brought my attention to another problem.

"My blog looks kind of lame..."

So I looked around for a customisation to fix it. I found a pretty cool template and tried it immediately. It looked cool, but somehow didn't quite fit what I have. There were useless options in it. To make things worse, I'm no coder and have no clue how to read the xml coding. What I do have is some "hello world" basics for C and java. Using that and killing quite a few of my brain cells, I spent some time going through the code to remove the useless options (by trial and error).

When I finally finished doing it, I noticed another problem given by the free template. It had a bugged paging navigation. It only showed "Pages 1 of 2   1   2   Next" when it is supposed to show 4 pages (2 posts per page). I wanted to give up and revert back to the old lame look, but decided to try and google for a solution before I give up. I tried the coding given by websites that I found, but most didn't work. Eventually, one did though and in the form of a javascript widget. You should have seen how elated I was, having fixed the problem and keep this customisation.

However, now I still have to face the problem of determining the direction my blog should head, refining the style and layout of the blog and making the blog a useful and informative site for its readers.

All in all, it is a very tough task to build a blog from scratch. Hopefully things will become clearer as I make more posts.

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

The Internet is Full of Garbage

As I was surfing the Internet, I came across 4 of these web articles at 4 different sites. At first glance, you would feel that there is nothing wrong with each of the articles, but upon closer inspection, you will find that the articles are creepily similar.

Website 1

Website 2

Website 3

Website 4

Just focusing on the highlighted part of all 4 articles, you can find that they are
worded similarly with just changes to some words. No need to say any further, the rest of the article is just about the same too, except for some points being switched out...probably with another website that I might not have come across yet.

In essence, it is just a mix and match. Do they think that just switching points here and there can make it "unique"? In my opinion, these articles are just garbage...they do not in any way "inform" people. There is no difference made to the person, before and after reading the articles. Probably only killed some of his brain cells and wasted some of his time.

And this is just one case of it. Many a times, we have gone searching the Internet for information to aid us in a particular subject only to spend time clicking on websites that "looked" like what we are searching for, but ended up being junk and useless or filled with keywords but nothing intelligent.

If more and more of this garbage is produced on the Internet, then one day we might end up being forced to fall back on books, newspapers and magazines in the library for our information rather than wasting time finding it on the WEB. It will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

- Is going after the SEO ranking and generating backlinks for the sake of money really that important until people ignore the need for an article to "inform" people? -

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

Déjà vu

Déjà vu, according to Wikipedia, is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined.

Have you ever had this feeling of déjà vu?

When you walked into a room during a certain occasion, you stood there feeling that the scenery and atmosphere is awfully familiar even though you are sure you had not been to this place before.

When you were about to do something, you paused and asked yourself...Have I done this before?

Well, I sure did...

The following are two occasions when this occurred to me.

I was attending a company annual dinner one day and it was held at this ballroom in a certain hotel. I had never visited this hotel before, but when i entered the room, I had this feeling that the surroundings was familiar....like I had been here before.

The other occasion was when I had to authenticate myself through the phone. I had to read a line of digits to an automated machine. No matter how slowly and loudly, digit by digit, I spoke to the machine, it kept failing me and refused to pass the authentication. This continued for a couple of times until I suddenly had a vision of when something vaguely similar happened. In that vision, I saw myself reading out the digits as fast as I could but loudly to the phone. I immediately tried it on the automated machine and...amazingly, it worked. The stupid machine passed me.

As you would expect, these two occasions should be totally new to me, but yet there was this sense of familiarity...

Where did the experience come from? Was it just my imagination? The exact circumstances of the vision I recall is unknown...just that particular scene or feeling is recalled clearly. Did any of you out there experienced something like this before? What is the logic behind it, if any?

From,
- BuLaDiFu -

Successful vs Unsuccessful

The difference between a successful person and one who is not does not lie in how impossible their dreams are...

It lies in their perseverance to make that dream come true...

- BuLaDiFu -