Oh well, a girl can hope.

With some gentle encouragement from Advertlets, I went over for a look. The site is not too bad, employing the pop-up book presentation that popped a collage of artwork, photos and animation at you. It’s medieval meets modern - the castle from a bygone era surrounded by buildings with indoor plumbing.  

So the King realises that those horseless carriages create a different sort of poop on the streets of the Distant City of a Distant Land. He appoints a knight (you!) to look into the problem.

Oh look, it’s you inside a tin can that is inside another tin can. Off to save the day.

There is a witch somewhere, and a requisite dragon Guardian whom you will eventually encounter two pages later.

“Ha HAH!” says our valiant knight (you). “Out of my way, foul beast.”

Realising that Monsieur Guardian technically won’t need a can opener, you make your escape. But your horseless carriage is quickly running out of juice and cannot outrun a dragon who knows you’re after his bling.

So our slightly dented and lightly cooked knight (you) does make his escape and end up seeking help from a reclusive engineering genius. 

There is so much steampunk potential in the image above. But alas, fantasy barely makes a dent in mainstream today, so steampunk’s gonna have to wait. Check back in another 10 years. But back to the story.

The guy with the goggles and stuff does have a solution for you - Fuel Efficiency! You return to Monsieur Guardian for a rematch. This is where things start getting fun. It’s game time!

The objective of the game is to outrun Monsieur Guardian. Basic left-right controls, pick up Power Boost for speed, pick up the Toyota logos for extra points, and lose points for hitting rocks.

As far as addictive flash games go, this one helped me discover my uncanny accuracy in hitting every goddamn rock on the road when I’m in Power Boost mode. Oh, the rightmost lane is perfectly free of rocks and logos. You just have to watch out for the dragon. My best score so far is 4100, in one of the rare occasions where I don’t hit as many rocks.

But no matter how crappy your score, you outrun Monsieur Guardian and collect the booty…

…which is Eco-Friendliness! You install it into your tin can steed carry it home to the Distant City of a Distant Land! There is clean air and rejoicing! The King gives you his youngest daughter’s hand in marriage and you both ride off into the sunset!

I guess the moral of the story is that you can’t go wrong with a powerful, fuel efficient, eco-friendly Toyota. But hey, the prize attached to this Toyota Quest For the Fuel-Efficient Engine is pretty tasty too.

Onwards!

See the original entry at:

Toyota Quest For The Fuel Efficient Engine

Thanks Kenny!

See the original entry at:

Traffic spike

Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve written a number of articles about Habitat for Humanity in Kuching. What volunteers tell me got me interested, so I enlisted the KuchingBloggers.com to get together for an experience to blog about.

Frankly I’m disappointed by the response. The friends-of outnumber the actual KB.com members. But whatever lah. I had fun. And those who gave it a chance did too, or at least came and found that it’s not their piece of cake. But I counted 6 out of the 12 who want to do this again.

Anyway I’m sure most of us didn’t expect to accomplish what we did at Kampung Senibong.

We measured and cut reinforcement bars (rebars) the size of your index finger and pinky!

…with shears this big! (Nice gentleman not included.)

We played with power tools!

We built a new work shelter!

(Or at least, they did. I just took photos.)

We bent rebars into rectangle rings!

…At some point with our hands, yo. (Maggie and Gladys were so particular about getting it perfectly straight, it was hilarious.)

We were very happy with our work. I mean, geeky mouse potatoes like this bunch. Who would have thought?

So what previous volunteers said are all true.

1. You see your work come together before your eyes.
2. You completed feats you never imagined you could accomplish.
3. It’s an awesome way of spending time with friends and meeting new ones.
4. You go away knowing that you played one small role in a big task. I mean, building a house. Dude.

Other little revelations include:

• You realise that you have a really good life. You have more than two rooms in your entire house and a flushing toilet, right?
• Some people managed to stay really clean, while others were grubby from head to toe by the end of the day.
• Bending rebars is quite therapeutic. Kinda like sewing but with more muscle groups.
• Some of the girls may look tiny but they actually quite strong.
• We did so much by lunch time. On a normal weekend, I’d still be in bed by lunch time!

Here are the other peeps who went (can’t find all the links. pls comment with your url.):

• Irene
• Jimmy
• Gladys
• Jean
• Peggy
• Maggie
• Loy
• Calvin
• Cecilia
• Michael
• Justin

Here are other entries about this outing:

• Irene
• Jimmy
• Calvin
• KuchingBloggers.com
• Michael

See the original entry at:

Bloggers can do manual labour also

I picked Edwin up because we live in the same area and I didn’t want to drive all that way alone. He ended up buying dinner because I could not find a working ATM that evening.

A few hours before the meet, he called me up saying that Irene asked us to pick the King and Queen of the night. We also got to decide the criteria. Since it’s obvious that we’re not judging them by their blogging, we had to come up with something else. Friendliness and accessibility became the main factor, although when we talked about it,  it sounded more like “must make effort to talk to everyone” and “if stick to table with own gang, cannot lah”.

It means we had to try and talk to as many people as we can.

When we got there, Irene said we’re sharing the duties with Rose, JF and Paul. This was good. More people to spread around and compare notes with.

I’m an introvert and aspiring crazy cat lady, but you can’t really tell that night. I mingled like crazy. I talked to anyone who was responsive. There were a few people who absolutely refused to meet my eye even when I was standing right there, like they’re terrified I’d start talking to them and want to avoid the possibility at all cost.

Weird fact: the guys outnumbered the girls. There was easily twice as many guys. (Why is this weird? I organise all sorts shit and the girls always outgun the guys.)

So at the end, we came out with Wombok and Effa.

Wombok is the Darth Vader guy in your MyBlogLog. He stayed in the headgear for so long, we were starting to wonder if we’ll ever get to see what he looks like. It appealed to my whimsical side.

Effa is warm and friendly and stood out… maybe because she’s quite tall as well! I like her vibe and style.

I’m glad I had something to do, otherwise I’d be the one hiding in a corner somewhere! But I really had nothing left to say when a small group went off for drinks at Starbucks later. Rambo entertained us with jokes, and I find it really sweet of him to tell it English so I (the only one who didn’t speak Mandarin) was in on it, although he would be more comfortable telling it in Chinese!

I think I might be getting used to the fact that I get “recognised” when people put a face to the name. I enjoy the “never thought I’d get to meet you” surprise, although I no longer enjoy the reason why they even know my name in the first place.

I did not take any photos, except for my dinner. See other people’s photos here.

Officially, this is is probably my 5th or 6th bloggers meet (in which complete strangers from the Internet are in attendance). The first one was way back in May 2004 when most of you are still in your short pants. Two guys and 6 girls.

See the original entry at:

Kuching Bloggers Meet @ Sharing Planet

A few hours ago, a friend on Facebook reported that she was being redirected to another site when she tried accessing this blog. I mentioned this problem briefly here. I endorse no such tactics, so I set out to track down the problem.

I recently added a new ad thingy from GrabMyAds, so I automatically assumed that it was the cause of the problem and took the code off. It still did the redirecting thing, so I took the entire ad section down. It stopped. I really hated the idea that Advertlets.com was the problem so I decided not to make any such declaration till I can be sure.

Obviously I was too busy with another post tonight to think about this.

Then my brother IMed to ask if I discovered the problem. Turned out his blog was doing the same thing - redirecting to another site that sells domain names. What he did notice is that it was related to Advertlets.com. Going to the site gets you this:

Click for full size

Going to a few blogs that I knew carried the Advertlets.com gave the same results. The only way to stop it is to take down the code for now.

Update: According to Irene, Josh has renewed it, but it’s taking some time to kick in on our side. Sit tight everyone, and don’t bug Josh. He knows!

See the original entry at:

Advertlets.com expired?!