Granado Espada - Getting rid of high-level spinelles

One of the things that some high-level players like to do, but yet is very irritating to lower-level players, is the releasing of powerful monsters. These monsters are released through something called a "spinelle". It's supposed to be some sort of gem with a monster trapped inside, and the monster is usually a "normal" one (ie, not those chieftains or bosses). Usually, lower-level players can't even scratch them. You'll see a bunch of players just shooting, slashing or casting spells on them but all the attacks will simply miss. They are truly a bane to us.

I used to flee when I see them, but yesterday I got an inspiration from a friend and tried to get rid of them. Here, my party of a wizard, a scout and a fighter takes on a level 64 wolf. That's about 20 levels more than me. As you can see, I've managed to hurt it quite a bit.


Dealing more damage to it....


And good-bye!


 I've replicated the method with huge success on other monsters, including those level 70 and level 80 monsters! How's that for a little of David and Goliath? Hahha

Granado Espada in Singapore's education system

Was surfing the web for Granado Espada related stuff, when I found out that the game is being integrated into Singapore's educational programmes. The piece of news can be found on Today and ChannelNewsAsia, though somewhat dated. Quoting the report:

SINGAPORE: So, you think your child is spending too much time on computer games at home. What if he tells you he'll be playing them at school too - with his teacher's permission?

Next month, at least two schools here are expected to pilot a unique initiative to introduce students, teachers and principals to the world of online gaming as part of the curriculum.

None of the schools have been identified yet as plans are still being fine-tuned and awaiting the authorities' endorsement.

Then again, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the drive to harness IT to the Singapore school experience turned to the powerful influence of role-playing games (RPG) among the young.

The initiative represents a "shift" in direction for the education system, said Assistant Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education.

"I see gaming as a new and broadened platform for learning, and by making it interesting to students, it will help motivate them to learn new skills," Prof Muhammad Faishal, who was pleased to learn that teachers would be around to guide the youngsters, told TODAY.

Is that cool or what? I wouldn't mind playing Granado Espada as part of the school programme if I'm still a teenage gamer. What I'm really curious about is what kind of skills they hope the students can pick up or how it can enhance their learning experience.

Granado Espada - a suitable game for this experiment?

First, the game has an awkward number of mis-spellings when it was ported over to English from Korea, not sure if the English teachers are gonna sit up and complain.

Second off I'm not sure why Granado Espada was chosen over other games such as The Sims, Second Life, Command and Conquer or something. Yeah sure the game has great visuals and music, but I'm not sure it has much depth. From my point of view, the game involves a lot of grinding. If you are going to get students deeply involved in it, they will be spending vast amounts of time leveling up or completing quests. I have my doubts about the life-skills and decision-making insight they will reap from the game, despite what the report says:

Following focus group discussions with principals, teachers, students, academics and counsellors, the RPG Granado Espada was "carefully selected" to have its colourful fantasy characters introduced into the school curriculum.

Mr Thomas Chong, director of education initiatives at Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which is spearheading the initiative, said it was "not your typical slash-and-kill" game, but one that can help players learn life-skills such as decision-making and problem-solving.

"This is not an educational game dressed up as an MMOG (massively-multi-player online game). Rather, we want to ask students whether, say, a war can be won without fighting, but instead by signing a treaty? We want them to see the merits of discussion, strategising, and coming up with alternative ideas," he said.

Singapore is believed to be the first country in the world planning to use Grenado Espada as a learning tool. And lest parents are worried it might open the school doors to other addictive RPGs, the online games operator gave the assurance that any future games introduced would undergo the same strict selection process.

Granado Espada in National Education - GENE

This is pretty interesting to me. Remember the videos Singapore in Clay Art and Singapore in Sand Art? Those were the videos shown by the PM during the last National Day Rally speech when he talked about making National Education less boring. Now, there is contest for producing a machinima (machine animation) for National Education using Granado Espada. The themes are "Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong", "We must preserve racial and religious harmony", and such. I'm guessing we may get to see the winning entries during the National Day Rally this year. A sample is included here.

For the potential of using Granado Espada machinima in story-telling, take a look at the rather famous Lonely Hearts Club clip.

Part 1

[youtube]QgdXhZvJylc[/youtube]
Part 2

[youtube]NMpiENuQD3g[/youtube]

Thoughts on Li Hongyi's email and the "Chain of Command"

Was surfing the net just now when I came across this on tomorrow.sg.This 2LT Li Hongyi apparently emailed a letter of complaint to some some people who had no business knowing it, and the recipients included some big shots like the Defence Minister, Chief of Defence and Chief of Army. Then I realised that this was on the news yesterday. Well, jumping the chain of command is something we do hear of now and then during our time in NS, so it's nothing earth-shattering. We're frequently reminded not to do it, so it must take something extra to send the email to the people in the top echelon of SAF. Either you've got extra guts, or you're extra stupid, or you're extra equal. As it turns out, Li Hongyi is PM Lee Hsien Loong's second son. That complicates matters somewhat.

He did the right thing
The letter, with important names and details blanked out out, are reproduced on The States Times and Simply Jean , among other blogs. My first thought is, he did the right thing. He saw the injustice in his unit and he took action to correct it. Even if he did it because he was aggrieved, there is no doubt what LTA X did, or that his superiors trying to cover up for LTA X, were wrong. I think a lot of us have witnessed unjust acts during our NS stints, but were impeded by powerlessness or fear of retribution, so we did not report it.

While some have offered the view that Li Hongyi might have breached the Official Secrets Act (OSA), but I'm not sure about that. It is grossly inappropriate to email the Defence Minister or Chief of Defence Force, but they belong to the same branch in the hierarchy, hence it is not outside of their authority. Jumping the chain of command, but there's nothing else there. On the other hand, he did email to a whole lot of other people as well. Who they are, I can't tell, but with this kind of letter, you'll suppose he'll be wiser not to mass-mail loads of people about it. But the leaking of this email to the public definitely amounts to a breach of the OSA. I'm sure SAF is conducting an internal investigation about this leak right now.

Chain of command suppresses the reporting of problems
The whole idea of this chain of command thing reinforces the perception that you'll have to work your way up the chain to air your grievance, and if somewhere along the chain some superior judges that your case is frivolous or something, you'll meet with some undesirable consequences. Given that there is little information about what proper channels are available (especially for the those not in leadership positions), and that there is a lot of hearsay about the ineffectiveness of things like the SAF hotline and being blacklisted for reporting certain stuff, it's no surprise that a lot of servicemen face a lot of problems but don't voice out, due to ignorance and fear.

An important issue is the attitude of the commanders in leading their men. Can they command the trust of the men? How serious do they view the problems reported to them? From a typical , corporal-and-below point-of-view the whole channel of redressing grievances fail when one or two commanders in the chain belittle or mishandle your problem. If your commander fails you, are you confident that your problem will be given different treatment from another commander whom you always see him hanging around with in the officer mess or at the canteen?

Check your recipient list and think twice before hitting the SEND button
It's very easy to just add people to the recipient list and send the emails out to them, but it's very easy to come back and haunt you as well. Some of my camp-mates sent out emails complaining about some other people just before they ORD, and some of these emails were circulated like crazy. We do bitch a lot among ourselves about people who slack or don't do their area cleaning or some problem with our superiors, but it's a different matter to put it down in writing. And once it's written, digitally or otherwise, you'll want it to reach the hands of the right people, not people who treat it as something to talk about over canteen break.

Trying out Joost - the new, free way to watch TV over the internet

I've finally got an email from Joost telling me I can download the program and use it. What is Joost?

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

Or so we're told. After installing and starting the program, the first thing you'll notice about Joost is it's user interface. It's simple, but it's slick. It's quite easy on the eyes, with the translucent menus and large rounded buttons. In general, it's quite easy to get around, and most things can be achieved by clicking the left mouse button.

To start watching videos, you can access them through the channel catalogue. It's pretty well-organized and lets you pick the channels from sorted by popularity or recency or staff recommendations
You can also search for particular videos.



Once you've found a video, you can click on the triangular "Play" button on the right-hand side of the entry to start watching. At full-screen, the video quality is watchable, it's somewhat better than Youtub, but not by a lot. You can reduce the size of the screen by clicking on it, and you'll notice the images are a lot sharper.



You can bring up the control panel by moving the mouse about when the video is playing, which allows you to pause, fast-forward or rewind, among other things.


A neat feature for bloggers is that there is an integrated function for blogging from within Joost. Not sure if it provides any value for me, but it seems useful for the multi-taskers who can watch the streams and blog at the same time.


Joost also lets you critique the shows by allowing you to rate it. The lowest one star means terrible and the max of five means awesome. It's a bit crude as there is nowhere to place your comments on why you think it sucks or shines. Anyway, here's what I think of "2005 Making of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit".


If you decide Joost is something you can recommend to your friends, you can send them an invite.



Is Joost worthy of the attention it's getting?

The user interface is well-done, but ultimately content is still king. There's some interesting content out there, including documentaries and sports and music videos, but I don't think there is enough. And I've been getting the following messages when I try to open a few videos, which is pretty annoying. Other times, clicking on the "Play" button simply has no effect.

Excellent 11 year-old guitarist

Was looking for a specific song on Youtube when I came across this video clip. I'm totally impressed by his skill. Take a look at what he can do on the guitar!

[youtube]HsthlD-nMIg[/youtube]

Clearing the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam

It has nearly been 1 year since I bought the exam voucher for the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) exam, and today I've finally passed it! Overall, I think I've become more knowledgeable about what Java programming is about. It's definitely more in-depth and more challenging than what I had expected, even though I've been at it for a few years.

And with the advent of Java 5 and the host of new features it boasts, I definitely felt the need to upgrade myself. Moreover, my present scope of work doesn't really let me gain as much exposure or knowledge about Java than I had expected.

Preparing for the exam

You've got to be armed with a few resources to help you tackle the exam. My recommendations for books are:
SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055) (Certification Press Study Guides)
This is an excellent book. Incredibly informative and insightful, it is full of  relevant examples and peppered with some surprises about Java 5 that I felt were quite bewildering initially. The book explains the concepts well and if there is only one book to get for SCJP, it is this one. A big plus point with this book is the way the authors have imbued it with humour, making it a joy (sort of) to read.
SCJP Exam for J2SE 5: A Concise and Comprehensive Study Guide for The Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam
More of a supplementary text, it's as it's title states: concise and comprehensive. Not enough by itself, nonetheless it's pretty well-organized and certain chapters are quite well done, for example the chapters on enums and exception handling.
And here are some sites with some interesting test questions pertaining to Java,  though not necessarily Java 5.
JavaRanch
You'll want to play the Rules Roundup Game and reinforce some Java concepts. Get all your cows in the pen! No Java 5 stuff though, but it's good for the rest of SCJP.
Java Black Belt
Neatly organized site with all sorts of Java-related questions, including Hibernate and Struts. Look out for those related to the Java 5 features.

And with the passing of the SCJP, at least I've fulfilled one of my resolutions this year.