Author Archives: Derek

The War Beneath Our Feet

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I have never been a fan of tactical games, because for me those kinds of games just gives me headache. I mean, I am playing a game to relax right? Why would I stress myself more by thinking strategies to win a game? This is why most of my games are childish, and probably why I make my recent career decisions as such.

But enough about me (or at least the decision thing). I just finished playing Where’s my Water and I was already looking for another game to play while waiting for my dish to cook on Zombie Cafe. I saw this game in App Store and after watching the gameplay on YouTube, I immediately bought it without thinking that “hey, this is a tactical game you idiot. Do you really know what you’re doing with your money?” But then it was already too late when I realized that. It is with great relief that after playing the game for about 15-30 minutes, my interest on the game never faded. I didn’t even realize that I was already playing for almost an hour with this!

The main goal of the game is to protect the ant hill from lurking bugs. The player would lead the worker ants to the food that the queen needed to generate soldiers, spitters (shooters) and bombers that would help you shield your colony against enemies. Well you do that by leading the ants to their tactical position to kill enemies and feed the carcasses to their queen. Who would have thought that a war is raging beneath our feet?

The objective sounds simple enough to understand, but of course just like other games, it always goes down to what the situation will be. Are there going to be some stack food that could help generate the enough defense? Or I have only one worker and a leaf of food?

My favorite type of ant so far is the bomber. WIth the bomber you can fly on the enemies and drop explosives on them. Imagine if you have 20 bombers or more! The blanket of explosions relaxes my mood, which is quite weird at times.

I really hate those bugs that shoot stuff from afar, because it really makes it hard to reach and kill them. You really have to send like a swarm of bombers just to finish the job. My favorite bugs on the other hand was those lady bugs that does nothing but present themselves as food. Ha! Can’t love them more.

To all iOS users out there, this game is a must have. Well at least if you are into strategy games such as this. This game is awesome.

Thanks to Image & Form for this wonderful game. Go to the game’s website for more details.

Mental Note to Self: Stop purchasing anything for a month please.

Private Pensieve

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A journal a day keeps bad vibes away.

After one month of having an iPhone, I have bought my first app. But no, it’s not a journal logging application (in case you’re wondering what is my first app purchase, it’s Where’s My Water?). My second app purchase was the Day One app, which is a journal logging application. Gee, two app purchases in just one day? I hope I’ll be able to control myself with these impulsive purchases.

So why do I need to keep another journal? After years of blogging, I found out that as much as you want to say and publish everything in your blog, you’ll find yourself restricted most of the time. What if someone you’re referring to your blog reads it? What would he/she feel? What if your thoughts written and published might damage someone in any possible way? Spewing bad thoughts doesn’t have to hit someone else. But then, keeping those thoughts inside you won’t help you either. For so many days I’ve always been bugged with these negative brain farts that keep messing up in my head. I find it hard to think when I have these baggages wanting to get kicked out of my system. I tried blogging these thoughts, but then I’d found myself deleting them afterwards (the shortest timespan between clicking Publish and Delete buttons is one hour so far – which I think is the only thing quicker than Kim Kardashian’s marriages). It’s like spewing something and eating it back again (ewwness overload, I know, but there’s no better metaphor to describe it).

Then I saw this app that you could use and keep privately. Imagine all of your thoughts locked inside an app. You can create an entry anytime anywhere, and still be assured that no one will be able to read it. There’s no nagging sensation in your head thinking infinite “what if” questions. Just you and yourself.

Making a journal about everything privately brings out the honesty in you. Why would you choose your words if only you can read it? Why bother saying the polite words when no one’s gonna be offended? I must say that just moments after posting some entries I find them a little bit corny, but I must restrain myself from deleting them and writing a new one. It would just defeat the purpose, and at the same time cost me two dollars for nothing.

I’ll be doing this experiment and see if my mind would be clearer in the coming days. Thanks to Dumbledore for the idea of a pensieve. A place where you could store memories privately unless you show them voluntarily (or maybe under duress? But who would threat me for my journal’s contents? The antagonists in Mara Clara?).

Sherlock is Epic.

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The second series of Sherlock is epic.

That’s what I would say to you if you’d ask me what I felt after watching the second series of BBC’s Sherlock, a contemporary update to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth.

After watching the first series of episodes last 2010, I know that two years is a long wait. But when I saw all the episodes of the second series aired just this month, I am stunned. It was worth the wait.

It’s good though that the writers promised to bring Sherlock back a bit sooner than before. Honestly I almost thought the series was dead when I heard the news on the first quarter of 2011 that they won’t be airing any episodes until 2012! Two years is a bit long, but look at what they gave us. Pure awesomeness.

Don’t you worry Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Take your time. As long as the episodes are perfect according to your tastes, waiting wouldn’t be a problem.

See you soon Sherlock. You better explain how you pull that one off.

Reboot

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I haven’t posted anything since the New Year came to us, so technically this is my first post for 2012. I thought this is the best opportunity to start anew, so I moved my old posts on a separate folder, set up a new blog and post this customary first post. I have rebooted, so to speak.

I am a very childish decision maker. I change themes all the time like it holds no importance to the direction of my blog and then I activate the old themes again, I switch blogging styles from traditional lengthy posts to tumblr-like microblogging. Most of the time I spend twitching the back-end of this blog without giving much importance on what really matters the most: the content. And when I do the content, it sucks. So my New Year’s resolution is hopefully I’ll be able to produce more quality posts this year, and make less eye candy.

So what’s the topic, you’d ask. Well, I have done some keen observations of myself lately, and I found out that I really am an attention whore. I initially thought I was just exaggerating when I branded myself like that, but when I paid attention to what I do say in a conversation, regardless of to whom I am speaking, it’s always about me. I always talk about me. I never cared to listen to other people and what they wanted to say. I never became so interested about them. Socially speaking that’s not so good. So instead of doing that thing in real life, I’ll be talking more about me here instead. So basically nothing’s changed, since my past posts have always been about me, myself and I. I just hope that this new mentality would suck the selfish jerk out of me when I am having actual conversations with people.

Unlike before I may not be able to post that frequent if I want to keep my promise for this year. But then again, my posts aren’t that frequent anymore, so there’s nothing new with that. I will also disable the comments until further notice, since no one’s leaving a comment anyway. Notice that I am not finalizing anything on this, because my future self might do something stupid, making my present- (and eventually, past-) self look silly.

I know this is a bit late, but let me say it anyway. Welcome 2012. Let’s go.