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 -