Clash of Clans

Have been playing Clash of Clans for the past few weeks, and I have to admit it's quite addictive. It started when my wife's cousin was teaching my son how to play the game. He didn't get the finer points of the game, so he simply wasted away his resources, and nothing much was happening after that. So I thought I better play and learn the game myself, so I can teach him. Ended up playing more than him.

There are three ways to play Clash of Clans. In single-player campaign, you attack a series of goblin villages, earning gold and elixir as reward. In multiplayer mode, you are paired with another player within your same league. If your attack is successful, you are rewarded with gold, elixir, and trophies. You can also opt to join a clan, and attack other clans. This involves one day for preparation and another day for the actual clash.

Most of my game time is spent on building/upgrading defences, gold mines, elixir collectors, and storages. With the collected loot, you can train troops, upgrade buildings and walls, etc. Once your troops are ready, you can attack other players for trophies and more gold/elixir. When your phone/tablet is idle, other players can also attack your village. So on and so forth.  Build time takes longer and longer as you level up. It also requires more and more resources to upgrade the same structure.

I guess this is where the appeal of the game comes from. There is an end goal to aspire for, and it takes a lot of effort and resources to achieve, but everything is broken down into levels, so you know where you are in the hierarchy. You train up to see if you have what it takes to beat the next guy. You design and plan your village and defences to see if they can stand up to attackers on their own. So far, I haven't joined any clans because I wanted to see how far I can take my village without resorting to outside help. And no actual money spent on IAPs like gems.

Movie 2014.12.30 - Lucy

Movie is about a woman (by the name of Lucy) who overdoses on synthetic CPH4, and activates 100% of her cerebral capacity. Written and directed by Luc Besson, the movie has great visuals and amazing action sequences, but the storyline is a bit weak. Too much scientific mumbo jumbo, and too much time spent trying to explain said mumbo jumbo to the audience. Also, if you have four pouches of super dope CPH4, would you trust them to random people you picked up from the street? Then go all-in with your whole gang to retrieve them? Why not just cut your losses and cook up a new batch in the lab?

So what can you achieve once you go beyond the standard 10% mental capacity? You can feel everything that happens in your body. You can feel your bones growing, your cells splitting, your body heat being emitted, etc. You can remember everything that has happened to you - all the way back to when you were born. You don't feel pain or desire. You can listen to people's conversations, even at a distance in any language. You can control electronic devices like TV, phones, laptops, etc. You can read people's minds. You can change your hair colour and style at will. At 60%, you can drive like a French cabbie. You can physically control people and inanimate objects (think guns and knives). You can create invisible force fields. At 70%, you can travel through time (backwards only), while sitting on a chair. You can manipulate matter and information. You start to lose yourself and morph into a black supercomputer with lots of spikes. At 100%, you become a USB stick. I wonder what storage capacity it has if it's meant to contain ALL known information in the world.

Swollen Uvula

Woke up with a bad case of swollen uvula. It's that little thing that hangs off the back of your throat. My one was inflamed and a bit swollen and elongated that it's actually touching my tongue. Every time I have to talk or swallow, it gives me such pain. Too cheap and/or lazy to go to the GP, I consulted the health experts on the interwebs instead. No shortage of that.

They reckon it's a viral/bacterial infection brought about by dehydration. They could be right, as I had some sinus problems some days ago. Lots of websites with different suggestions, but these are what I'm trying out:

• Gargle regularly with warm salt water to clean out excess mucus. Not saltwater from the sea, but ordinary tap water with added salt.
• Drink lots of lemon ginger tea with honey.
• A couple of lozenges (Strepsils) every few hours.
• Cold drinks and ice cream to numb the pain. This I approve.

Movie 2014.12.21 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Another animation franchise given the Michael Bay treatment. No, he didn't direct this movie, but he did produce it. So there.

The action scenes are non-stop and very slick. CGI is top-notch. The animator didn't do a good job with Megan Fox though. Her face looks fake, according to my wife. Me, I didn't notice because I wasn't looking at her face. I was looking at the turtles.

I'm sure by now everybody already knows how the TMNT and Splinter came to be. The Foot Clan and Shredder is out to release some toxis across NYC. The plan is to contaminate everyone, then Sacks come in with the antidote, using mutagen he extracted from the turtles. Profit. April and Vern take on Sacks, while the turtles duke it out with Shredder. Shredder takes a massive fall from the Sacks Tower, but not before he dabs his finger on some spilled mutagen. I smell a sequel.

Movie 2014.12.20 - The Maze Runner

Another film adaptation of a young-adult book. A mix of Lord of the Flies, Lost, The Hunger Games, and a few others.

You have a bunch of boys trapped inside a walled glade. They don't remember who they are or how they ended up in the glade. Every month, an elevator rises up from the ground with some supplies and another boy. Every morning, a door opens up leading into a maze, then closes at night. Runners go inside the maze to try to find a way out. If you don't get out of the maze by the time the door closes, robotic spiders called Grievers hunt you down and kill you.

This time, the elevator comes up with a boy named Thomas. He's a bit special because during his first time in the maze, he manages to destroy a Griever. This ruffles the feathers of some old-timers, and the group is split into two loyalties. In the end, Thomas convinces the group that facing the deadly Grievers, and going through the maze is their only chance of getting out. They get lucky and stumbles into the control room. A woman in a video explains that most of the global population was wiped out by a worldwide catastrophe. Her group called the World Catastrophe Killzone Department (WKCD) is monitoring the kids' brains in order to find a cure. (Okay...) In the background of the video, we can see some soldiers rushing into the room, and the woman shoots herself in the head. Then, the same soldiers rush into the same room (again), and whisks off the kids in helicopters.

In the final scene, we see that the woman is alive, and wiping off fake blood from her forehead. Come back again for the sequel.

Movie 2012.12.14 - The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

Movie is based on the 2007 kiddie book by G. P. Taylor, Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box. The movie doesn't break new grounds, simply following the formula for safe kiddie movies. You have the resourceful boy/teenage adventurer, the suffering leading lady, the dastardly villain, a mysterious island with a monster, an ancient relic, etc.

The movie in general feels slow and plodding, with exciting moments coming in spurts. At the end of the movie, I still don't know what the Midas Box is for. Does it turn objects placed inside into gold? Is it the one that powers the healing waters of the hotel's pools? Or is it merely a gun that disintegrates people? Guess I have to read the book to know for sure. As usual, more sequels to come.

Modify Screensaver Settings Via Registry

Not able to modify your screensaver settings due to group policy? If there's a will, there's a way.

If your sysad haven't disabled your access to the Registry Editor:

1. Run regedit fro the command prompt.
2. Browse to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop"
3. Create/Edit the following registry values:
• ScreenSaveActive (1 to activate)
• SCRNSAVE.EXE (should point to the SCR file you want to use)
• ScreenSaveTimeOut (timeout in number of seconds)
• ScreenSaverIsSecure (0 to disable password check when session is resumed)

If you want to make use of your own SCR, copy the files to C:\Windows\SysWOW64

If you don't have the rights to run Registry Editor, simple create a plaintext REG file with the following lines inside:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveActive"="1"
"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="0"
"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="300"
"SCRNSAVE.EXE"="Mystify.scr"

VOB to MP4

In my previous post, I made use of DVD Decrypter and AutoGK to make DVD backups. People on the forums have been saying the those two software applications are quite outdated already. It's true that DVD Decrypter haven't seen a new version for years now, but that doesn't make it less capable. For most DVDs out there, it should still be able to rip them with no problems. As for the encoder, I've switched from AutoGK to Handbrake. Its UI is pretty intuitive, and my needs are simple. If the DVD is not copy-protected, Handbrake can even use it as source, although this is not recommended.

So, select a VOB file that was ripped by DVD Decrypter. Set the output directory and filename. Click Start. The software analyzes the source file and applies some automatic tweaks (cropping and scaling) to the output. If you have other VOB files, you can queue them up. Default containter is mp4 (m4v) and constant quality set to 20. Encoding is very quick - just a matter of minutes for a half-hour video. It does help to use a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core laptop with 8GB of RAM.