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Tomb Raider celebrates its 10th anniversary!

Sara, Njer, Me and Cart says hello!!!

This is a picture of Saravanan, Njer, Cart and me chilling out at our Secondlife house in Arcata. Prior to that, there was a Secondlife Singapore meet, where Vantan has wonderfully narrated.

It was really lovely – with us relaxed, chatting, getting to know each other. A pleasant surprise for me to actually hear conversations punctuated with our Singaporean colloquialisms after hearing virtually none for years.

Secondlife is such a facinating place.

Reflecting back, I think I’ve been fascinated in 3D environments even before the days of Secondlife, There, Activeworlds, Cybertown, and the other 3D communities that we have now.

Meet the original Lara Croft from Tomb Raider:

Angelina Smangelina

The first time I downloaded the demo from Gamecenter (a popular Cnet affiliate during its heydays) and played it, I was completely enthralled.

Although I had to fight against wild beasts in the caves of Qualopec, I had joy exploring every nook and crannies looking for hidden secrets and clues. Though the quality of the graphics weren’t comparable to what we have now, I completely enjoyed looking at the different sceneries. Mentally I pieced the route that I’ve been into a map.

Countless nights I’ve spent in the games. Looking at this clip below brings many memories

It’s hard to imagine that Tomb Raider is having its 10th anniversary already. It seems not too long ago that it was 1997 and I was back in school, stayed up nights playing and being zombified in class the next day.

Time flies by too quickly.

Hmm … I wonder if someone would be crazy enough to make a Tomb Raider sim in Secondlife.

Must see – One of the best Tomb Raider fan vids I’ve seen in youtube

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Girdles are an instrument of a woman’s torture

I usually wear a pair of trousers when I ride on my scooter. But I’m more of a skirt person. I’ve always worn and feel comfortable wearing skirts since for a very long time since skirts fit me better than pants.

Now the front of a Vespa has an open area for the rider to rest their legs together, which makes it suitable for lady riders in skirts. There are even some ladies who are comfortable while riding their scooters in extremely short skirts.

picture of a crazy woman

People around me would always comment, “Aren’t you scared of wearing skirts?” But so far, days has passed by without anything out of the ordinary happening.

Till one day while I was riding along path to the car-park when a sudden gust of wind blew my skirt up. I could not slow down to pull it down. How embarassing! But I feel more sorry for the astonished uncle whom was unfortunately nearby. His face turned a shade darker and then he looked straight down for the rest of his journey – I think he was more embarrassed by it than I was!

But people learn from mistakes. I told myself that the next time that I wear dresses or skirts, I’ll wear a pair of tights underneath.

I chanced upon this pair of tights while walking in Sim Lim Square the other day:

oink oink

The lady manning the store said that wearing a pair would allow someone to burn more calories as opposed to not wearing it. Wow, I thought to myself. 2 in 1! I could have a pair of tights, *and* lose weight at the same time.

The next morning, it took me a good 5 minutes just struggling to put it on. When I was done, the tights clung tenaciously. It wasn’t painful, just a bit uncomfortable and I passed through the entire day with it on.

So lets see. I had it on from 8 am – 6 pm. So that’s 10 hours.

10 x 430 = 4300 calories. I burned 4300 calories! Hooray!

But wait a minute, I still feel the same. I still look the same. I’m not even tired. Most importantly, why am I’m not dead yet? A typical person would burn 2500 calories a day. Too many calories burnt would mean severe exhaustion.

Perhaps I need to wear it long term. But I can’t as the pair of tights wasn’t as strong as I expected and got ripped on the very first day I got it.

So I hunted for another pair of tights. A knee high one this time. After searching unsuccessfully in the entire mall for a pair, I stopped by Minoshe, one of my favourite lingerie shops. I examined and flipped through the rows of black and browns.

“Ooh, this isn’t exactly what I wanted but this will do fine, I think. What is it?”

“This is a girdle“, The shop assistant answered.

“Huh?”

“A girdle is a pair of underwear which you put on to lift your butt and tuck in your tummy”.

“Oh”

“We have two types here. A hard one made of wire and plastic. And the soft one, made of elastic and rubber. The hard one tucks in more, but it’s uncomfortable. The soft one is more comfortable, but it doesnt tuck in as much”

“Oh”

“Why dont you get one and try out?”

“Ok”

Wearing them makes me more self confident while riding my scooter in skirts. I dont worry so much when the wind blows. It looks like I’m wearing a pair of knee high tights.

But one thing is, I dont think it really does tuck in all that much.

Jennifer Lopez will be jealous of me

Looks pretty much the same to me.

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Sick Season is here

Been sick these last few days. Spent the last few days cocooning on my bed that I thought I’d go into a state of metamorphosis and turn into Jeff Goldblum.

When mum found out that I was ill, she diagnosed me as having “love sickness” and decided to make this concoction of water mixed with chopped sirih leaves, rice and chopped onion(!)

I could smell it from across the room.

“Whats this? It smells horrible!” I croaked.

“This is traditional medicine. The sirih leaves will revitalise, the rice will cool your fever and the onion will stimulate your blood flow”

“At the same time, this is for me to spread on you to marinate before cooking you! HAHAHAHA!” She cackled.

I think I was so horrified by the entire olfactory experience that I passed out. But when I woke up shortly after, I felt significantly better.

I looked at myself. No, I did not turn into Jeff Goldblum. However, my entire bed and floor was covered with tiny green leaves as if a giant passed by, flaking green, leafy dandruff.

Sigh. What an eye sore.

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But on another note, I’m helping Geri to advertise for loving new owners for an adorable 5 month old Labrador/Retriever puppy.

Nike the puppy

Responsible people only please! 🙂

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Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go sleep the remainder of my fever away in my uh … secret garden.

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I love open source

With all the different expensive software out there, it’s still nice to know that there are alternatives, where most of them are free.

These are called open source – whereby software is made public to the general and allows users to create and improve on it. So far I’ve used quite a few of these software.

One of them is Openoffice, by Sun Microsystem . This is a free alternative to a popular office software. Like its peer, it includes the tools which were are familliar with.

pic of the writer software from sun microsystem

pic of the impress software from sun microsystem

Although there are some miniscule kinks around, it was still very good, user friendly and gets the job done. This is something hard to beat for gratis.

I’ve been using Audacity for my podcasts. This software is a competent editor for voice recording, editing, and effects and it doesn’t have such a steep learning curve as compared to many other voice editors.

pic of the interface of the audacity software

To my amazement, there is even a free software to capture clips from 3D applications. As my secondlife video record function went bonkers, I needed to find alternative ways.

I stumbled upon the software Taksi quite by chance from the Secondlife forums, tried it and I find it a rather competent software. It isn’t as well developed as fraps, which I find is a very good 3D capture software. But I think Taksi be better in time. This is a short clip I recorded in Secondlife using Taksi

And as you read this post, this blog is using the wordpress platform and written in blogdesk. And the gallery where I place my photos and digital art, uses coppermine.

In time perhaps, I might be brave enough to change my operating system altogether. From what I’ve seen in Ubuntu, Linux is very user friendly and is bundled with many useful and free software inside. I really didn’t have much problems in manoeuvring.

Open source really isn’t that difficult to use. Why not give it a try and see what treasures that you could find from out there. 🙂