Oct

30

Blue jerseys, red faces

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Edwin van der Sar was quoted as saying United’s next few games, beginning with the one against Middlesbrough, would determine the course of the team’s season. If that indeed is the case then United fans had best brace themselves for disappointment.

United started the first of their “season-deciding” matches in their blue away strip but ended the match red-faced as they succumbed meekly 1-4 to Boro (BBC, Soccernet, Guardian, ManUtd.com). What was particularly dismaying was the manner in which United allowed themselves to be dominated by McClaren’s team. This United team never really looked like they were going to battle their way back into contention in this match.

United had problems all over the pitch but the game was lost in the middle of the field. United’s central midfield pairing of Scholes and Smith were outclassed at every turn by Mendieta, Boateng and Rochemback. Smith may have Keane’s fire, grit and determination but not his footballing brain and as a ball-winner, the ex-forward leaves a lot to be desired. Scholes is merely going through the motions this season and it must be only a matter of time before the manager relegates the stand-in captain to a well-deserved stint on the substitutes’ bench.

It’s always painful to see the Red Devils lose but it’s a lot more painful to watch them play like this. Where did the confident swashbuckling attacking style disappear to? We’ve only seen it sporadically this season and it wasn’t regularly evident last season either. The last occasion I can remember being thrilled by United’s attacking play was in the first half of the match against Fulham. The measured approach with pragmatic, conservative play geared towards earning 1-0 wins doesn’t really suit a club with United’s attacking tradition.

There’s little indication United will be able to inflict upon Chelsea their first Premiership defeat of the season next Sunday. Indeed, it is entirely likely United will be humiliated yet again.

There’s still some reason for optimism, though. It’s possible United will once again rise to the occasion. The pundits may all speak of Chelsea’s invincibility now but most pundits were still saying the title was Arsenal’s to lose last season until United beat Wenger’s “Invincibles” home and away in the Premiership.

Oct

30

Elsewhere on the web

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Microman Saint Seiya.
Fan-custom ideas using Microman Material Force figures and Saint Seiya plastic model kits.

Compoboy.
Someone tell Engadget Soundwave and Soundblaster were based on Microman Microchange MC-10 CassetteMan and in a more Engadget-relevant geek note, Microchange MC-21 Radicasse Robo featured a working AM radio.

Sony’s MMOG trojan horse.
The undescribed game will be free without a subscription-fee and gamers will only have to pay for expansions or items.

The power of myth. [via]
“Like art, mythology was the product of the creative imagination; it transfigured our fragmented, tragic world and helped to glimpse new possibilities.”

Best band names.
“Jesus Chrysler Supercar” and “Sweep the Leg Johnny” cracked me up.

Oct

28

Impulse buy

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MMMGQ Sword Impulse Gundam

The Metal Material Model Gundam Quality Sword Impulse Gundam is the kind of toy design I’ve been hoping for years to see in the Gundam franchise.

This is a thoughtfully-designed figure for adult toy fans. It’s a joy to handle and a delight to look at. Nowhere near as fragile as model kits and much more satisfying than the cheap (and cheap-feeling) MSIA figures, the MMMGQ Sword Impulse Gundam is sufficiently articulated to earn the mobile in “Mobile Suit” and on top of that, the figure comes with enough well-produced accessories to increase the cool factor even further.

It’s not flawless but on the whole, it’s a fantastic figure and well-worth the asking price of 5500 yen.

A long, rambling review will be coming.

Oct

26

Yaaargh

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Back-ups. You know you should do them but you never do. Or perhaps you once did but since nothing untoward happened for months or years, you became complacent.

And, of course, that’s when A Serious Problem rears its head and bites you in the ass.

Well, A Serious Problem reared its head today when I attempted to update the Tripod mirror of my blog with Blog. I had trouble publishing to my site because BitTornado was sucking up my bandwidth so I decided to try again later and aborted the Blog publishing attempt by hitting the Close icon on the Blog window.

It turns out this was a vewwy, vewwy bad idea.

Thanks to a rare bug, Blog deleted all my blog data. It has no record whatsoever of my 1600-plus entries or the templates I use to create the site.

Fortunately, I had back-ups up to October.

Unfortunately, it’s October 2003.

That’s over 900 entries ago.

So now you know why I have A Serious Problem-sized chunk of my ass missing.

The problem isn’t as bad as it might seem. For one thing, the site itself is fine. The only problem is Blog itself has no record of the site. It would be simple enough to fix this if Blog had a way of importing HTML files on the site into its record database but alas and alack, it doesn’t.

I have no intention whatsoever of manually copying, pasting and reediting 1600-plus entries in Blog but I think there might be an inelegant workaround. I’m not sure if I can actually pull it off but regardless, there might not be any updates on the Tripod site for awhile.

Oct

25

Chaos reigns

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I got Warcraft III Battle Chest a few weeks ago and it’s been occupying most of my gaming time.

I got the compilation mainly for the strategy guides but I was disappointed with their quality. The binding on the guides is awful and several pages have already come loose. The content is similarly unimpressive. The guides devote most of their pages to the campaigns and I found the numerous FAQs on GameFAQs much more useful for gleaning general strategy.

As for the game itself, I’m very impressed with Blizzard’s fantastic post-release support. Bugfixes are being released more than three years after the original game was first released and on top of that, Blizzard has also continued to release additional content in the form of bonus maps. This is all the more impressive considering the situation with the competition.

I’m concentrating on skirmish games against a computer opponent right now. Games on a small skirmish map typically take about 20 to 30 minutes to run their course and at the moment, the typical outcome is my defeat.

My opening moves seem okay but everything quickly goes to hell during the first battle. The computer opponent almost always comes out on top in the first encounter and goes on to win the game. Impressively, this is accomplished without cheating. The computer opponent is just very efficient economically and sound tactically. I fared no better against a human opponent; I’ve tried two 1v1 games online and managed to lose on both occasions.

The key to winning in Warcraft III lies in micromanaging units during the heat of battle and I’m not very good at the tactical decision-making aspect of the game right now. Fortunately, Blizzard has included the ability to save and watch replays of games so players can discover where, when and how they erred.

(The downside of replays is I have a sneaking suspicion replays of my online battles are being used as comedy relief somewhere.)

It’s been awhile since I’ve had to work this hard at improving at a game but I am enjoying the challenge.

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