China For Life

Halloween Special!
Many of you might not have heard of this story. The front man of modern rock band My Chemical Romance is actually a former cartoonist - in fact, that was his dream as a young man. As a singer and songwriter, he still often, in his spare time, create awesome cartoons of the dreadful (emo) stories in his head.

Don't be mistaken, this doesn't mean that they are not enjoyable. His debut comic, The Umbrella Academy, features a group of seven disbanded superheroes who re-unit after death, re-train, and save the world (much like fantastic 4 or the league of extraordinary gentlemen) . Yes Gerard! We needed something with "death" sooner or later. "Death" is always such a useful catchphrase. The heroes are all seemingly lively, hard to say if they will be original though (all forms of super power have been exploited in the past..). The leader of the gang is Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a renown scientist and inventor. The main antagonist is the Conductor of The Black Orchestra. I'm really liking these names; Gerard has a natural talent with language.

An art school graduate might give it all to start another MCR, but Gerard's passion for art still resides despite his grand success in music (impressive.. celebrities writing comics...). His new comic will fuel the struggling comic industry and quench the thirst of many MCR fans. It will be interesting to see how well his comic will do when it comes out later this year or early next year. Gee, why wait until the madness, preorder one today!

At a mere distance of 20 light years away, a faint red dwarf star Gliese 581 shines in the Libra constellation. On April, 2007, Switz scientists have made a breakthrough with the discovery of the earth-like planet Gliese 581c in the star's orbit. Unlike other super-earths, Gliese 581c is extremely near, and possibly the closest we can get to our sci-fi fictions.

Gliese 581c is the first extrasolar planet that scientists believe to have conditions similar to Earth. The planet's diameter is approximately 1.5 times larger than Earth. Depending on whether the planet is mainly ice/water or rocks, the gravity is can range from 1.25 to 2.25 than that of Earth's (still OK). It orbits closer to its sun so that there are only 13 days in a year, but since Gliese 581 gives off only half the energy of what our sun gives off, the planet's temperature varies from 0 to 40C. It is definitely possible that there is an atmosphere, water, and life on this planet. Furthermore, humans can live on it.

It's funny, Gliese 581c's galaxy is 4.3 billion years old. Our solar system is just 4.5 billion years old.

There is one threat to this planet: green house effect. Due to its potentially strong gravity, it might turn into a hot-pot and boil up. It is true! Look at what happened to Venus!

As for now, no direct evidence have been found regarding liquids or lifeforms on this planet (because we just discovered it!). It is, though, the main target for the search of extraterrestrial life for many years to come. To determine whether life exists over there will take years, but this will at least be possible since the distance is small enough to send over an interstellar probe.

Vocaloid is a software where you can enter the lyrics, it will then sync it to the music, and the anime singer will sing it for you! Too bad it is only fully supported in Japanese at the moment; though there is an English version that sounds terrible. It features a female singer named Meiko, and a lesser known male singer Kaito. I haven't found a way to legally download this yet, so I can't really try it out for myself. There are tons of vocaloid videos on youtube though! Check them out, you'll be surprised at how cute, and/or corny (hilarious) some of them are.

An Example In Japanese


An Example In English (Omg...)

This will be a brief post base on the war in Iraq. As a Canadian, I don't feel as strongly about this issue as many Americans do. Though it was saddening to see that instead of being our aegis, the Americans slaughtered quite a few Canadians with friendly fire, and though it is sneaky of Bush to decrease the dollar's value to pay back national debts (we really did trust America as a fine fiduciary... not anymore), I still feel strongly about the fact that money is being burned and lives are being taken for a mission that has long since lost its purpose.

And so I have added a link on the right dedicated to the war in Iraq. Personally, I believe men have had enough evolution to realize that there are bigger issues at hand - such as how are we going to survive the next century if we keep lavishly supplying fossil fuel to wage war?

*warning - contains minor spoiler*
This movie is now in theaters everywhere!

Five minutes into "Into the Wild", I predicted it to be an average biography of a man touring the world. At the end, it turned out to be the most meaningful 2h20m of my life. Supertramp is not just any tramp, or just any man. He is on the same level as Jesus, Buddha, and all those good folks. Yet, he is not, because he is very human, and easy to relate to - that is why this movie can convey so many messages that religion can't. I found it to be both touching and terrifying, but overall powerful, brilliant, and connects well with the audience; there are just too few of these films, or else it should deserve its own sub-genre of drama.

The film is based on the true life story of Christopher McCandless, an astute college graduate who have lived through so much pain as a child that he decided to abandon the future of a "normal" life and start his own spiritual journey as a tramp (hence his nickname Supertramp). As a young man, his original motivation was anger and frustration, but this soon grew into something greater, and he was on his quest for the truth of happiness. While he traveled through numerous cities he was enlightened by the people around him, and through self-discovery and catharsis he did, in the end, discovered the truth of happiness (I found "the truth" very touching - and trust me I don't find a lot of things touching).

Some quotes from this movie are very insightful, so I found myself the effort here to include some.

...how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong... but to feel strong.

...If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibilities of life are destroyed.

...I think careers is a 20th century invention, and I don't want one...

Here is a simple (and actually quite old) trick that I've used to hack flash games. Now you too can achieve ridiculously high scores on online flash games!

For this tutorial, I will be using the famous "Bloons Tower Defense 2".

The single tool you need is Cheat Engine. After installing, simply open the software.

If it prompt you for a tutorial, choose no. When you are on the main screen, click on the flashing button that looks like a magnifier over a computer, and choose the browser that you are running the game in, and click Ok (don't touch anything else). For me, it would be firefox.exe

Now, in the "Value" box, you may input a value to search for. All values for a program is stored in a distinct address (ok this is not always true, but we'll stick to the basics). In flash though, all values must be multiplied by 8. For example:

I would like to change my "Money". It is currently at 650 (I chose medium-mode in game).





Now I must find the address for money, so I would search... let's see... 650 * 8 = 5200... I would search 5200!







A little note about the search options: First scan is obviously the first scan. Next scan can be used after each scan to filter results. The scan type is pretty much self - explanatory. The value type ranges from the smallest to be biggest as you go down the list. All the ones starting with "b" is an integer, float and double are numbers with decimals, and array of bytes is a list of bytes. If you didn't understand this, it's ok. Move on.

After I click "First scan", a bunch of addys (addresses) will pop out on the left hand side table.











One of them is the right one, but which one is it? The easiest way to find out is to changed its value inside the game. So I go back my game and buys a "Dart Monkey". My "Money" should drop, so should the value inside the addy box in cheat engine.














Hey look, 07CAFFA8 has changed! This must be the addy we need. Double click it to add it to the table below. Now you can modify it by double clicking on the Value column, and giving it a value. Here I will set it to 80000.




Now the final step is to trigger this addy in game - do anything to affect this address, and the value you entered will pop out. I simply bought another "Dart Monkey", and my "Money" skyrocketed.




You can use this method to change nearly all numerical values in a flash game. In normal windows games, you can use this method too, just don't multiply all the search values by 8. This works for minesweeper, Age of Empires, Sims - any game you can think of.

If you want to hack mmorpgs or change something that's not a numerical value, it becomes much more complicated. Of course why make your life so complicated? This neat little trick will go a long way. Go now and impress your friends and relatives with your uber pro hax skillz.