A Trekkie I Was Til A Threshold I Crossed

30 September 2006 | Hisham | | Misc Sci-Fi, TV
 

I used to religiously catch every episode of Star Trek whenever it was on the air to watch episodes a couple of times. The Original Series. The Next Generation. Deep Space Nine. They were all my regular TV consumption.

Even when I was working in the East Coast and out of the station's broadcast area, Atok Irfan - long before he was designated Atok Irfan - taped the shows for me for my viewing when I was on my 5 days off period from work.

It was during the middle of the second season of Star Trek: Voyager that I finally realised something.

 

Bread 2006 (January through April)

29 September 2006 | sila | | Food
 

It's time for more bread! Continuing the adventures of bread that began with my birthday present from last year, and the breads of the second half of last year, here's some more roti roti roti.

Pain Ordinaire Careme
 

Really All It's Quacked Up To Be

27 September 2006 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games
 

So what's one animal you can think of that's not a maneater, can't overrun the entire world and physically incapable of killing humans on this planet?

I'm thinking... ducks.

So it came to pass I started thinking of a silly RPG sourcebook which will be available for free download named The Apocalyptic Invasion of Flesh-eating Mutant Ducks RPG, which will employ West End Games' D6 game engine which was used for its old Star Wars RPG system.

 

Satellite Photos of the Tenth Floor

24 September 2006 | Hisham | | Trawling The Net
 

Once upon a time I checked what the Google Maps' satellite photos had of Kuala Lumpur. They weren't pretty impressive at low resolution.

Today I checked them again and I found that this is no longer the case. It's possible to even see individual cars on the highway. Click on the thumbnail below for a picture of our apartment building and its surrounding environment.

Pandan Indah and such

Take a look below for a close up of our building, which is the one on the left. You can even make out the swimming pool on the left side of the building.

 

Exactly Four Years Ago Today...

21 September 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics
 

Once upon a time...... Irfan Shafiq was born just before 5 p.m. in the maternity ward at Kuala Lumpur Hospital.

He caused his mother to be stuck at the hospital for almost 12 hours before finally decided it was time to pop out.

I was right there with Ain when he popped out. When the nurse handed him to me he gave me his best "Hey... can you tell me what the heck's going on around here" look.

Atok and Opah arrived from Sitiawan today to celebrate the occasion with Irfan, after which Opah made nasi ayam for dinner.

There was cake with candles (a hit with Irfan for some reason) and the photos were taken by Atok. We had dinner when Mak Long and Ayah Long came a-calling. I noticed that Irfan was sleepy by 8pm but he fought his drooping eyes until it was after 11pm, because of the occasion.

I can't believe he used to be as small as the picture to the left. He looks like he's seven, and many people have told us they thought he was seven. Compare the photo with the ones below.

 

Damage Report

20 September 2006 | Hisham | | Rants
 

As much as I'm extremely happy there's roof over our heads (and ten floors plus change beneath us), I am very much zonked out by the accumulating damages in our house for the sole reason that the building was 10 years old when we moved in. It's a great place to be, but we need to move out of here so we don't spend a bomb monthly on fuel costs and waste hours every day travelling to work, which is right across the city.

But before we can move out, we'll have to sell the place cause we can't really spend on rent on our income. (Not to mention transporting our stuff would also cost us some money.)

And before we can sell the place there are a few things on the wishlist that need to be addressed.

 

Spending Nothing For RPGs

18 September 2006 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games
 

The best things on the net are free!

Well, not exactly true but roaming the internet I did come across a list of 500 free role playing games. Some are dead links. Some are very lean. Some are PDF, some are HTML and some are Word files. Some are official free products from RPG companies.

I'm going through the entire list on my own t...

Ooo, lookit... the out-of-print Time Lord RPG. Be right back.

 

28 Days Later... A Review

16 September 2006 | Hisham | | Movie Review
 

Jim guesses he shouldn't have farted that loudly
I never fail to wince watching Danny Boyle's movies. So far I've seen a couple. I winced when watching Trainspotting. I winced watching Shallow Grave. (I've never seen Pillow Book or A Life Less Ordinary so I can't comment on those.)

And certainly there are many wince-inducing scenes in 28 Days Later.

 

Toy Robots In Disguise

12 September 2006 | Hisham | | Transformers
 

Once upon a time in my early teens I had to save my weekly allowance for a couple of months before I could buy an original Transformers G1 toy. I only managed to save enough to buy two: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Then later when I was overseas, I bought Wheeljack which I was unable to find when I returned back to Malaysia.

Last weekend back in Sitiawan I finally found Wheeljack somewhere in one of the cupboards, so I put the three of them together for a photo shoot.

 

Makan Angin Puerto Rico Bab 4

09 September 2006 | sila | | Family Pics
 

OK So I realize it's been weeks since we went to Puerto Rico, but work is pretty crazy busy lately and I haven't been able to finish my final Bab of Makan Angin Puerto Rico. In fact I was planning to write this blog in Malay and publish it on August 31st (Malaysia's Independence Day). Since I have missed that deadline, I will just go ahead and write the entry in English so as not to show the world that my Bahasa Malaysia (or is it Bahasa Melayu now?) has really gone down the drain since secondary school.

This entry is a bit more random and rambly than usual. Sorry!

 

Kachow!

09 September 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics
 

After months of using other vehicles as substitute of Lightning McQueen from his favourite movie when playing with his toys, Irfan will finally get the real deal thanks to his Atok & Opah. Atok took these pictures and emailed them to us and Irfan was really excited looking at them. (So I'm told, cause I was wiped out before 9 pm thanks to the fever I was wracked with last night.)

He's already got Mater and Snot Rod Rip Stick Racer toys in his collection. I guess Irfan can't wait to go to Sitiawan and get his hands on it.

Lightning McQueen
Lightning McQueen

This is the 300th entry for this weblog, by the way.

 

A Colonial Viper Pilot in d20

07 September 2006 | Hisham | | Misc Sci-Fi, Role Playing Games
 

d20My friend Shane Welin is now in a d20 game with a difference. The rules might be powered by the run-of-the-mill d20 Modern / Future engine but I believe this is the first time I know of a campaign set in the world of Battlestar Galactica whose third season will be aired this next month.

His player character stats is listed below, but I'll see about getting stats for Vipers (Mark IIs and Mark VIIs), Raptors and Raiders up here as well.

Anyway, here's Shane's Hal Rogero (still no callsign) in d20:

 

Desperate Prevention of Dilution

05 September 2006 | Hisham | | Food
 

This was conceived untold years ago by me, but I forgot about it until recently, and most especially last night when we had teh ais to drink for dinner. Teh ais translates directly into iced tea, but it's not exactly that. It's more to the tune of tea with thick sweetened condensed milk in warm water, mixed with ice cubes or ice tubes.

Some restaurants serve teh ais with a lot of ice rather than tea, which leads to very diluted tea if you leave it on the table for too long. This would also lead to a very annoyed Hisham.

What I propose is this:

Hours before taking orders for teh ais (or Nescafe ais or Milo ais for that matter) brew a ton of the drink, pour the liquid onto ice cube trays and freeze the lot of them. When someone orders a teh ais, put the ice cubes from the freezer tray into the glass. That way when the ice melts the teh ais doesn't get diluted by plain water from normal melting ice cubes.

And in the end Hisham doesn't get annoyed, which is a good deal for me.

 

BU-77, Advanced Recon Clone

03 September 2006 | Hisham | | Role Playing Games, Star Wars
 

Here are the stats and capsule for BU-77, the ARC trooper I played with Team Sabredart on IRC. The game was run by Simon Taylor using the old West End Games' D6 system. I had a ball playing this character, as you can see by the actual ad lib quotes which was spoken (or typed in) during course the game sessions.

Too bad we didn't play out the character until the Order 66 massacre. It would have been interesting to see what he would do to Raeree Giin, their Jedi team leader.

He used to have a DC-15A blaster rifle, which for the D6 stats I used the official stats of the BlasTech T-21 light repeating blaster, but it was confiscated when they were all arrested for insubordination.

 

In Front of Pandan Capital

02 September 2006 | Hisham | | Recent News
 

So the other day I walked from the house all the way across Pandan Indah to the MPAJ (Ampang Jaya Municipal Council) building to pay property tax over the counter.

One weird thing about this house is that the mailing address has it in Kuala Lumpur with a KL postcode. The phone line is part of the Cheras - Pandan Jaya local prefix, which also puts it in Kuala Lumpur's network. But we have to pay property tax to Ampang Jaya, which is part of the state of Selangor.

Meanwhile, behind us is Cempaka, which is Ampang, and in front of us is Pandan Indah central, which is also Ampang. It seems like we're trapped in a thin peninsular of Kuala Lumpur, trapped between alien territories.

Anyway here are some photos I took of the street in front of the MPAJ building.