I think (s)he has Vin's nose and cheeks. What do you think? And for those of you going "4D? What's the fourth dimension here?" (because believe me, I asked that question myself). It's time! Video! Teehee! I have to remember how to put videos on here again so I'll put up the video tomorrow. I'm getting too sleepy to figure out the video blogging thing right now.

There were lots of kids looking for jobs in the aviation industry, wearing the wrong clothes for it and with bad haircuts. Needless to say I was a crazy old man with a shotgun yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.

Irfan and his mother and aunts arrive at the booth where I'm working.

Irfan grabs the cyclic stick of this helicopter.

Irfan and Ain at the controls. Hit the deck!

Winking, under the wing of a fighter, at the starboard launch tube before launching of the alert Vipers.

Irfan peeks over the dashboard of this aircraft.

Pictures ordered by receipt date. Mouse over for captions.

Meghan and Lyndsey "strongly encouraged" (read: forced, even going so far as to take me there) to register at Babies R Us and some of the above are directly from that. Thank you everyone! We'll be thanking everyone individually later. I just couldn't help but blog about this. It's just absolutely wonderful, and each gift made me tear up. Also Mak said that Chris C has already dropped off stuff for us, so thanks, Chris! We'll get that when Mak and Abah arrive here in July.

In the meantime, we have reached 30 weeks (as of Monday). 75% of the way there! Woohooo!

DO YOU PREFER…

1. To watch or participate?
Participate, preferably. I hate sitting around while other people do stuff.

2. Malls, catalog shopping, or the Internet?
NEVER Catalog shopping. Malls for clothes (must...try...stuff...on... woi, gua not kurus like last time, ok??), and Internet for other things (Maggi mee, Spices, sometimes books, etc.)

3. A bath or shower?
Shower. I tend to take a shower anyway after a bath - I don't feel clean sitting in the water after a while. And I'm too hyper to be able to enjoy and relax in a hot bath. Sometimes I even work in the shower, that's how hyper I am.

4. To talk to people by telephone, in person or by e-mail?
Depends on who lah! Kidding, kidding. In fact, these days I talk to people mostly by IM since so many of us are hooked up from different time zones and locations. I do a lot of telephone talking for work, and certainly tons of email for both work and fun. Nothing beats hanging out with my friends in person lah, but since it's so hard for all of us to converge somewhere and get together, that is a pleasure that I don't get to enjoy as much as I would like.

5. Typing or writing?
Typing. Always. I complain if I have to fill out a form by hand these days...

Hmmmm... who to tag??

1. PurpleD (kena balik, yo!!)

2. Eliza

3. Simple American

4. PrecioussssPearl

5. Hisham (OK, I don't really read enough blogs to fill this tagging thing and the others that I know have already been tagged!)

Wil says, "Thanks, but I think I'll pass."

Which is the title of his blog post.

But then, I got to thinking.

CSI... in space!

Well, thinking led to another thing and, voila...

_{It wasn't easy coming up with the script. It took me almost 6 hours to come up with something I was moderately satisfied with.}

During my dozens of years (not really, just 2 and a half years) of studying there were many instructors that taught me different aspects of flying machine repairs.

Some taught me metalwork, some taught me electrics, some taught me theory of flight.

One particular person taught me about turbine engines. He was a tall gentleman, he was.

Over the years after I returned home, I've always known from second hand accounts that he's now living in this country. In recent years, I've had the pleasure of meeting up with him again briefly.

Last month, he and his lovely wife came down all the way from Ulu Klang (which is about 10 klicks up the Middle Ring Road) asked me to produce a cover for a science fiction novel that he has written and is about to publish.

So I've used all my turbine engine skills and knowledge* to come up with this following cover:

This is only a draft. It might be used, or it might not. But one thing's for sure, I had a lot of fun conjuring up the painting.

Further details about the novel shall be written as entries unto this website when I get more information about it and its upcoming release.

*_{"...turbine engine skills and knowledge"? Not bloody likely.}

Two of the most iconic Iron Man cover for me is the "Demon in the Bottle" cover and the one where "Stark" in the Stark Enterprises logo is replaced with "Stane".

Earlier tonight, we went to catch Iron Man (on opening day) at Cineleisure. I'm not going to talk about the plot of the movie. It's a basic origins movie with a battle with a bad guy. It's not high literature, but it's a great action movie with lots of fun moments throughout. The Iron Man origin in the movie is transplanted from the original comic book location of Vietnam to Afghanistan.

So, I'm just going to list out what's good and not-so-good about it. And to preemptively sum up things, it's mostly good.

Spoilers ahoy!

I ain't joking. SPOILERS!

The Good

• This is classic Silver Age Iron Man, not Tony Stark, Director of SHIELD, who might or might not be a Skrull as currently seen in the comics.
• It's a very fun movie. No angst overdose as seen in X-Men and even Superman Returns. It seemed like everyone enjoyed making the movie. All the actors did a great job in it. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark, and I'm not the first to say it. Jeff Bridges performs Obadiah Stane with a subversively dangerous edge which of course culminates in the climactic final battle with the Iron Monger suit. Gwyneth Paltrow performs Pepper Potts as a loyal personal assistant whose down-to-earth trait that saves Tony Stark. Terrance Howard is James Rhodes who's still in the military here, but is in all but name, Tony's best friend.
• Jarvis is the home artificial intelligence and not a human butler, but is a wonderful sarcastic character. He and his robotic minions (each mechanized widget seem to have different personalities) earn a cheer or two from me.
• The movie is armored suit porn. Each time Tony suited up, it was awesome. You don't just hear typical hydraulic whines, but clockwork clicks and metal parts snapping into place or pivoting out.

• Testing the suit's propulsion system is a hoot and the moving parts on the external structure of the suit are actual control surfaces that help him steer it in the air.
• When he goes into action against the terrorists in the Mark III red and gold suit, it's a classic superhero against military bad guys. That is to say he owns them big time.
  
• Rhodey looks at the grey Mark II suit and tells it, "Maybe later, baby", which alludes to him eventually becoming the user of the grey military War Machine version of the suit.
• The Ten Rings terrorist group in Afghanistan hints of the actual big bad of the story. Who actually wears ten rings in the Iron Man mythos?
• Jon Favreau is Happy Hogan!
• Tony thinks Stan Lee is Hugh Hefner! Or mayber Stan Lee thinks he's Hugh Hefner. Hilarious.
• And finally when the end credits start to roll beginning with "Directed by Jon Favreau", what caused me to go into geek overload and had to be dragged by Ain out of the cinema a drooling mess on the floor, is the appearance of none other than Samuel L. Jackson as Ultimate Nick Fury (not regular Nick Fury, mind you, who is David Hasselhoff for some reason). And he actually says onscreen the magic "A" word.

The Bad

• Not enough scenes to establish Tony as an actual superhero. There should be more scenes of him going out and helping the public however reluctantly he does it. This should give more emotional impact for his final press conference scene in the movie. (You know these superheroic scenes, such as the one in Superman the Movie where he spends the night fighting crime and getting a kitty out of a tree.)
• There is a Raza in the movie who appears to run Ten Rings, but no Ch'od, Hepzibah and Corsair? OK, just kidding with that one.

Now go out and watch the movie!

Bonus image

So will Robert Downey Jr. be able to pull of an alcoholic Tony Stark? Let's wait for the sequel to find out.

Which leads me to believe something's up front.

The road curves downward before climbing back up, and I lost sight of the road before me.

Then finally, TA-DAAHH!

But don't worry. The drivers were fine although they looked a bit dazed crouching on the far side of the wreck, waiting for assistance to arrive.

Almost.

Some weeks ago, we went to Sitiawan and lo and behold, there was a kenduri at the Seri Manjong stadium that was organized by the new state government which gave the old state government a run for their money during the recent elections.

During the speech by the local representatives and politicians, Irfan took a couple of good photos of his grandfather.

..

Then he got bored and went to enjoy the nearby playground.

..

Well, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game (RPG is the popular acronym attributed to it), true. But it's more than just D&D and we'll get to that later.

If you ask ten gamers, you'd probably get ten different answers on the description of an RPG.

So this is a description of a role-playing game as what it means to me.

What Do You Do?

A role-playing game (RPG) is a collaborative game where players take roles of characters in an interactive story which is planned out and refereed by a game master (GM). There needs to be at least two people in the game the GM and one player. More players of like mind, more often than not, would mean more fun.

It would look like a bunch of people sitting around the table (or the floor as depicted to the left) talking to each other contributing to the story. The GM would narrate the set-up to the players and moderate the situation, and the players will choose what actions their player characters (PCs) that they control would take.

How Do You Resolve Actions In Game?

When resolution of an action can either succeed or fail (for example, picking a lock of a door, swimming in strong current or trying to shoot an arrow into a dragon), players will have to roll dice based on their character’s attribute scores. A player would roll against a target number or against an opponent's attribute score. Some characters have better chances in physical skills while others do better at social skills, or mental skills, or technical skills. Therefore, all players have to cooperate as a team to achieve their goal.

Some games use playing cards (like Savage Worlds) and dominoes (like Noumenon) in their rules to add to the randomness of the game. Some games, like Amber has a diceless system instead focusing on comparing attribute scores.

Sometimes your character can die in a game with an unlucky dice roll, but that's the risk of playing the game. Just create a new character and join the rest of the party in the next session (or immediately thereafter, if situation permits).

How Does The Story Come Into Play?

The story and situations in the story is narrated by the GM. The players react to this and choose what they will do. The GM also counter-reacts to the players' actions and has to improvise to ensure the story flows well and the players are entertained. The overall story will change accordingly while adhering to the general theme of the campaign.

A campaign is a series of adventures and games with almost always the same PCs, allowing situations to change and the characters to evolve and to grow older within the game. A GM can plan the campaign to have an epic storyline for the players, with a beginning, middle and an end. A player can start out as a lowly street thief but by the end of the campaign might chance to become the king of a country, if the choices he makes lead him there.

In the end, you and the other players have experienced a unique storytelling media unlike that of motion picture, books or video games.

So It's All Just Dungeons and Dragons?

As I mentioned before it's all not just Dungeons and Dragons, which is a knock off of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings take on fantasy novels. There are a plethora of games out there created by large companies and independent publishers, which covers a broad spectrum of genre, from fantasy to science fiction to horror to western to steampunk to pulp. Some games are licenced from other media, such as the RPGs of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Super Heroes, Robotech, James Bond 007 and the forementioned Amber which is based on Roger Zelazny's series of novels.

There are also original worlds for players to play in and explore, like the western with some weirdness Deadlands or Dogs in the Vineyard, the pulp setting of Spirit of the Century, the future dystopian cyberpunk world of Shadowrun with elves, dwarves and orcs that can use magic, or the alternate history game of Rocketship Empires 1936, where World War 2 was fought in space.

However I've yet to see RPGs based on daytime soaps and Japanese / Korean serials.

Although some gaming system rules are married to certain settings, there is no reason why you cannot drag and drop a whole (or part of a) system from one setting to another, for example using West End Games' D6 system for Dungeons and Dragons.

It's Just Like Video Games, but With No Graphics and Surround Sound?

Yes, but for two things.

1. You also don't need graphics and surround sound to read a book.
2. The game artificial intelligence is not artificial at all and is a real human, thus vastly superior at improvisations and adapting to new situations.

Like I said, it's a unique medium that integrates gaming with storytelling.

Finally...

If you like reading and you like stories and you like a great afternoon with your like-minded friends, try sitting down, create your characters and run a role-playing game with them. You might just be surprised at how fun it can be.

Sorry, I don't intend for the gallery to be a community site - that's what this blog is for - so comments and ratings are disabled. Just enjoy the stuff I got on there.

Hey, you know what they say about pregnancy being a time when your hormones go nuts? Well, it's all true. One minute, I'm sitting and playing with Lily, the next I'm in tears because she won't let me pick her up and I feel rejected. Sheeeesh. Be careful or I'll go ballistic on you too:

Don't play-play OK???

On the whole, things are getting more and more exciting. I can feel the baby move around constantly, and sometimes when (s)he is feeling ornery and kicks hard, Vin can feel it if he puts his hand on my belly. We have progressed beyond "flutters". This morning, that baby kicked Vin's hand when he asked for a sign that (s)he was awake!

On the negative side, the belly is getting larger and larger. Sometimes I wake myself up in the middle of the night, just trying to turn over. It's a whole process now, you know? But on the whole, the report is we are all of us doing well, god willing.

Pictures of Lily

By The Who:

I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of having sleepless nights
I went and told my dad

He said, 'Son now here's some little something'
And stuck them on my wall
And now my nights ain't quite so lonely
In fact I, I don't feel bad at all

Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
Pitcures of Lily solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright

Pictures of Lily
Lily, oh Lily
Lily, oh Lily
Pictures of Lily

And then one day things weren't quite so fine
I fell in love with Lily
I asked my dad where Lily I could find
He said, 'Son, now don't be silly'

'She's been dead since 1929'
Oh, how I cried that night
If only I'd been born in Lily's time
It would have been alright

Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night

For me and Lily are together in my dreams
And I ask you, 'Hey mister, have you ever seen'
'Pictures of Lily?'

I have been meaning to blog about Lily for a long time but my motivation levels have been ridiculously low lately. So here's some more Pictures of Lily (mouse over for captions).

The next three pictures were taken in one shoot - she was completely stretched out across the back of the chair in the library, and I couldn't get all of her in one shot so here's an attempt to show you how completely draped she was:

Here's Vin and me with her:

The rest are Pictures of Lily taken on different days doing random things.

Incidentally, that's what she's doing right now, sleeping on the back of the sofa. Lily went to the vet yesterday for her annual checkup, and got 2 booster shots. She had stomach issues all afternoon yesterday, but seems to have recovered now. Poor little Lily...

Seriously, the daffodils blooming always makes me smile!

Unbelievably awesome and of fantastic quality. I wish they were selling this en masse in the stores. Also, I can see an awesome alternate-universe Star Wars RPG campaign running based on these figures with Rebels and Imperials and Jedi with steampunk tech at turn-of-the-20th-century Earth, with clockwork droids and balloon-powered speeders and such.

Check out the figures (as well as other coolness such as custom Dune and Gaslight Justice League figures) at the link above.

Addendum: More Steampunk Star Wars concept art can be found in this thread at CG Society Forums.

When the tooth was loose he was concerned with bleeding, but after the tooth fell out in school he didn't seem too concerned. He was proud of it, even. No blood and pain, he made a point of letting everyone know.

I wish he didn't discard the tooth in school though. It's now probably in a waste bin or down the toilet or something.

˙dılɟ

After writing last year's Green Lantern Corps epic The Sinestro Corps War, Geoff Johns is back with veteran artist George Perez with something that knocked me unconscious for a minute...

Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.

Here's a tidbit from the interview at Newsarama:

Newsarama: Let's just start up front and say what people are probably thinking, Geoff. Three Legions! When someone starts reading Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, is there anything they have to read first? Maybe they should read your Action Comics story that included the Legion of Super-Heroes? Or study up on Legion history?

Geoff Johns: If you want, sure, but you don't have to know anything before you read it. This is Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes vs. Superboy-Prime and the Legion of Super-Villains. Things explode from there, but I’m approaching it like the current Action Comics storyline: You didn't have to read The Lightning Saga before reading that story, and the same kind of thing's true here. So I highly suggest Gary [Frank] and my wonderful Action Comics [laughs], for anyone who hasn't picked it up yet. But no, you don't have to read anything to pick up and understand Legion of 3 Worlds.

NRAMA: But Geoff, you're going to have all three Legions in this story? One Legion sounds overwhelming enough to a new Legion reader, but three??

GJ: But there's a focus on a group of characters. Certain characters will really get the spotlight. A lot of other characters will be in the background. That's what George does. When you have these big epics and you have dozens and dozens of characters, it can get overwhelming, but there's a focus on a group of characters that have their goals and missions that really represent to me the heart of the Legion. And those characters will be getting most of the attention. But everybody will be in there. Just about everybody.

It's like the Sinestro Corps had a lot going on, but it was focused.

NRAMA: So, just like it didn't matter if you knew the name of every Green Lantern and Sinestro Corps member during Sinestro Corps War, you don't need to know anything about the Legion going into this – is that what you're saying?

GJ: If you do, cool, if not, if you’re a DC fan you’ll enjoy this.

OK, all three versions of the Legion will be featured! The two reboots which was done by DC Comics has been made part of the story! I am a happy Legion fanboy! And with Grant Morrison writing the main Final Crisis mini-series... I guess I'll have to spare some cash monthly to pick these up as they get published.

Wait! What are Jenni Ognatz, Lex Luthor and a GL battery doing behind the Time Trapper?