Not(e) Worth It

Kinda reviving my blog...but this is not going to be a substantial post. I've been collecting quite a bit of a gaming backlog over the years since I've started working, and since I'm quite bad at reducing it, I'm planning to do some short posts to track my progress. It's already halfway through August, but with a public holiday next week and a long weekend at the end of the month, hopefully I can put some gaming hours in. Games of the month: Persona 4 Golden (Vita) Mario + Rabbids (Switch) Especially Persona 4 Golden, I've already identified the culprit and am close to the boss fight, let's get on with it so that I can reach the story parts that I care more about, heh. Mario + Rabbids is for the times when I want a quick session, still at World 1 so there's a long way to go. Really fun and surprisingly quite deep in strategy, and much more colorful than X-COM. Now if only I can play X-COM on the Switch too...

Are you trying to up your Japanese reading skills? Have a set of electronic reading materials, but don't know which one to start with? One way to rate them is by how easy they would be for you to read, so you can pick the level you're comfortable with. To do that, you'll first need a text list of words you already know, and then use that as an input file to the Japanese Text Frequency Analyzer tool. An easy way to get the list is to use the Morphman plugin in Anki (I'm assuming you're using Anki. Find out how to export the list if you use another SRS/flashcard system). What you'll need: Anki Morphman Anki Plugin cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool Steps: 1. Ensure your database of known words is up to date by forcing a Morphman Recalc. You can do this by using the Anki tools menu or the default shortcut Ctrl+M. If there are words you already know that are not in Anki, see this section of MorphMan Wiki . To make things easier for m...

I've been trying to self-study Japanese recently by immersing myself in a Japanese game/book. There are various study strategies out there, mine is learning vocabulary strategically before playing/reading. By strategic, I mean I only learn a handful of vocab that is frequently used - any other vocab I'll attempt to pick up when I see them. This should enable me to understand a significant chunk of the game/book with minimal time spent studying. There are tons of forum threads on doing this, but I couldn't find a comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorial while I struggled with the tools, so I decided to write my own flow down for future reference. Bonus points if this helps anyone else reading this ;) What you'll need: Anki Morphman Anki Plugin cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool AntConc  Epwing2Anki Brief steps: Find the text scripts of the game. Usually <game> 台詞集 / セリフ集 will give you results. Save the game scripts as txt. Recommended to encode in...

Have you ever had situation where you copied something (usually from a command line terminal) that's aligned and paste it, and find that it's not aligned anymore?   This is because command line terminals usually use a fixed-width font, but the default font in Windows is usually not. A fixed-width font (also called monospaced font ) means that every character in the font will always have the same width. Hence, lines would always align.    See this example where 10 '.' and 10 numbers are used: Fixed-width (Consolas) .......... 0123456789 Non fixed-width (Arial) .......... 0123456789 So the simple solution for the aforementioned scenario is just to change the font where you paste it and viola, your text is aligned again.   A few of my favourite fixed w idth fonts: Consolas (comes with Windows), Bitstream Vera Sans Mono . Also notable: Courier New, Ubuntu Sans Mono , Inconsolata .

If you're a PC gamer it's almost inconceivable you don't have Steam. Did you know it's actually skinnable? My favourite is the Metro for Steam skin. Give it a try if you like the look, it's very easy to use and the download website also offers customization options. (click on the images for larger version)  Library screen Download screen   Small Mode

Just a quick update - in the months since I've last posted here, I've managed to obtain a new laptop*, a Kindle Paperwhite, access to a Raspberry Pi, and also flashed my Android phone to a custom ROM running the latest Jelly Bean. In short, I have a ton of things to write about =) I'm going to try and post more by writing shorter posts, let's see how that works out. *to be exact, a touch screen convertible Ultrabook

I'm not a serious gamer, and little did I know that one day I would actually use a wireless gaming controller actively. Most of the time it's not for playing games though - I'm using it as a partial replacement of the keyboard and mouse, by mapping custom commands to the buttons. Shortcuts without even touching the keyboard? Bringing keyboard ninja skills to the next level ;) The wireless controller I use - Logitech F710 It all began when I started experiencing some pain in my wrist from too much mouse use. A friend loaned me a Logitech F710 wireless game controller*, and to my delight, I found that Logitech provides software to map the buttons to keystrokes and the analog sticks to the mouse. Since I use a lot a lot of keyboard shortcuts in my everyday computing, it was a great solution. Now I usually have my hands comfortably on the controller, only leaving it occasionally to type or when I need precision mousing. I even mapped Aero Flip so I could switch between d...