Short Rant: I, Pirate, Would Like To Lodge a Formal Complaint.

Short one today. Yes I know I haven't been here a while and I don't intend to stay for too long, but this got to me good.

As you guys owning iOS devices know, 'jailbreaking' your device liberates it from Apple's Big Brother-like control, allowing you to install pirated versions of apps. Yes, I realise there's more to it than that, but I have a hard time believing Malaysians care beyond 'I CAN HAS FREE APPZ DURR HURR.' I find it easier to believe there are Malaysians out there who read, even if it is limited to just the signboards on the highway.

It is perhaps obvious here this is a vitriolic post. Sorry.

Anyway. Whilst browsing the app store for some appz, (durr hurr) I found one I was interested in. I won't say which app, but suffice to say you can use it to buy stuff. Hopefully that's general enough. So there I was, checking out the screenshots and the description, then I went to the reviews. That's where my animosity comes from.

Quite a few of them had rated the app one star out of five, with SOME words in ALL CAPS as if a tiny MARIACHI was dancing ON THEIR capslock key. I did want to see what was wrong with it, so I read the review. As it turns out, the reviewer was criticising the app maker disallowing the use of paypal to make your purchase if your device was jailbroken. The reviewer went on to emphasize, in ALL CAPS, how jailbreaking was LEGAL.

First off, yes, jailbreaking has been ruled by the US Supreme Court to be legal. I was surprised to find that out, but apparently our friend here is right. Fair enough. But what would you be doing with a jailbroken device in the first place? Of course, so you can play all seventeen versions of Angry Birds without having to pay a single cent. Like I said, jailbreaking allows a lot of things but I doubt anybody knows or even cares. So how about all those apps, or IPA files you have on that device? Obviously the developer never meant to release it as a free IPA file (or why bother charging 0.99 USD for it on the app store in the first place), so all those twenty eight Angry Birds apps you have are basically stolen property. Whoops! So the truth is, you are a pirate.

That's not all bad. A lot of my games are pirated, but since Steam and other online delivery game stores, I find myself with more original versions of games. And hey, if I enjoy it enough, I'll go out and buy the original game and even DLC too (such was the case with Dragon Age). Still, whenever I hear something I don't particularly like about a game (The DRM on Assassin's Creed 2, or the mediocre reviews of New Vegas) I immediately flick the 'Fuck This Shit' switch in my brain and torrent the mutha. I'm not saying being a pirate is all bad - well, okay, it is, but what you do with your money is no concern of mine and is not what I'm here for.

No, it's you complaining that the company doesn't support pirates.

Admit it. The only reason you went all Scofield on your iPhone is to play all thirty two versions of Angry Birds for free. So once you do that, you actually give up the right to complain about shit. It's not like you're paying for the fucking app. Fuck, the app I'm talking about? It's free. FREE. EFF-ARR-EE-EE. It costs as much as air does these days, or your mom back when she was a hundred years younger and a hundred kilos lighter. The devs made a perfectly good working app, and made it available for FREE, even to those who don't pirate shit, and you who never paid for anything ever just waltz up here and complain that you're not being paid attention to.

The nerve.

I could go on-I have, actually, but I cut it out. There is no point in this; I just wanted to express amazement at the sheer SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT that rules the Malaysian hivemind. I thought I knew how far it went, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. Well, amazement expressed. Rant over.

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POEM: El Dorado

To be completely honest with you all I have no idea what this is. A poem? A description? A story? I don't know. I tried making it into a poem but...well, this is the result. All I knew was I had to write it down before the feeling left. It could do with some editing, but maybe later; when I'm not too busy. Constructive criticism very much appreciated, if you have time to spare.


Dedicated to Farra.


Read the poem itself after the break.

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Diary Rant: Until It's Gone

I used to think my hand phone was, while useful, expendable. Nobody contacted me unless they wanted something. Useful in the events of needing instant communication, but that was it. I didn't find myself saying 'Oh, I couldn't live without my phone' like some people are fond of gushing. I needed it, true, but I could certainly live without it, and sometimes wished I did.

But then I had a girlfriend.

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Filosophy Friday: Let’s Read ‘Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction’ by Edward Craig, Part 2

Hey everybody and welcome to this week’s edition of Filosophy Friday. This is the second part of a series where I explore a book in my possession, ‘Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction’ by Edward Craig as a kind of beginner’s primer to the wide subject of philosophy. If you missed the first one, you can find it in the handy dandy sidebar to your left, where it says ‘Filosophy Friday Archive’.
First off I’d like to apologise for posting so darned late, when it’s almost Saturday already, but time and tide waits for no man, as they say, so I kinda found myself only free at this very moment. I’d also like to try some new features to speed up the blogging process, so I’m kinda alt-tabbing between the blogging and the feature testing and whatnot. Once again, I apologise.

Okay, so reading back on the first post, I was struck by what a mess it was. Me and Farra both like things to be neat and orderly, so you can imagine how horrified I was to read it in retrospect and find out that the ideas presented in the post were a mess. So now, I’d like to try a different tack; read the chapter first, let it simmer, then type out a short summary. Hopefully this way I get it all organised and stuff and shit.

Today we’ll be looking at Chapter 2 of the book, entitled; “What Should I do? Plato’s Crito”. If you remember in the first chapter, the author presented three essential philosophical questions: What Should I Do, How Do We Know, and What Is There, or What Is the Nature of Things? He will explore each of these by presenting us with a particular philosophical view that attempts to answer each of these, which provides a nice entry into the very wide subject of philosophy.

Now, on with the show.

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Filosophy Friday: Let’s Read ‘Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction’ by Edward Craig, Part 1

For the next few weeks (if I’m going chapter by chapter, eight) I’ll be going through this book my dad picked up at the UM bookstore, called Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig. It’s a very good introduction to philosophy, and one that you can spend days wracking your head over even if it is, as the author claims, just a roadmap to the study of philosophy. It explores a few concepts, points us in the general direction of a few good philosophers and their works, and hopefully armed with this knowledge we can ourselves have a working knowledge of philosophy with which we can hold a fruitful discussion.

I am not going to reproduce the text of the book, not only due to copyright issues but also because it’ll be a hell of a job. It’s not so thick, in fact it’s thin enough to fit in a pocket, but it’s still too much work for a side project. While typing this out I still found it was quite a job, so luckily I didn’t try it. Also I think it’s better for me to try and decipher and discuss the various points highlighted by the author. Any quotes from the author will be marked with quote marks ‘like this’. It’s also important for me to highlight that I’m expanding and adding to what the author says, and any parts which are unclear or deserve a specific example I can call to my mind will be expounded upon. Philosophy, after all, isn’t a subject to be memorised and accepted at face value, but one to be criticised and discussed, so I will do just that.

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Regarding Podcasts

Hey everybody. I was supposed to update yesterday but I kinda had a lot of things on my mind. But I’m not here to speak of that, I’ve decided. Too dull and depressing. I’ve decided to let everyone know what I’m listening to on my iPod: podcasts.

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Worst Start To The Week

Hey y'all. I kinda get why I didn't update so often previously; takes a lot of time and dedication to do so. Well I should be able to multitask. I'm a doctor after all.

Speaking of which, I have never felt more inadequate as a doctor before today. We had ward rounds today and Dr Sabri simply walked out on us since we didn't cover the patients we were supposed to. Two of them were mine (in fact he walked out after I said I hadn't clerked the patient yet). It was kinda a stroke of bad luck; he always did the rounds in one order, and I clerked fully half the patients I was supposed to (six, which makes me look really fucking stupid) in that order but then he went the other way, towards the beds I hadn't clerked yet...disaster ensued.

I'm really hoping there are no lasting consequences to this. The last thing I need is the rest of the lecturers bearing down on me again. I'm trying my best, but it just isn't enough. I'm at the stage where I'm supposed to know the things I don't, if that makes sense. I have to already know certain things which I took for granted back when I didn't take my studies seriously, and now I should be learning new things on top of catching up. It's hard, and sometimes I wish some slack could be cut my way. Though to be honest, it's entirely my fault. I should have done this, should have done that. Shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have done that. I'm twenty four years old. And already I have regrets I wish with all my heart I could undo. Is it surprising I have grey hair already?

If it's any consolation to myself, I love fiction. I love making shit up like Dedushka Igor did in the past post. This writing business is something I enjoy, not because I want to shove ideas in front of an audience (I have the Filosophy Friday column for that) but because...well, it's fun. It's fun to imagine people doing things. Things I wish I could do, yanno? Like hang gliding, or jet skiing, or hiding a corpse. Ah, it's great to imagine.

But once I'm done I'm back in reality, back to the regrets, back to the realisation that I am still nowhere near the vicinity of 'As good as I should be'. And that kinda sucks, but we all need a reality check. We had the spinning top in Inception, mine is just...looking at the mirror. Okay, depressing. Let's stop before somebody (me) gets hurt.

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Filosophy Friday: "Saying the Darndest Things"

(Note: Posted this before on Facebook. Reposted for the sake of having a proper 'Filosophy Friday' column.)

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
- Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

We've all noticed people saying things we consider stupid. But wherein comes this unutterably horrible offense to the intelligent psyche? I propose these postulations to help explain this phenomenon.

Postulation 1: Words are expression of thoughts and ideas.
Postulation 2: Thoughts and ideas are generated by sensory input.
Thus, What Goes Out is What Comes In.

Let's examine these postulations and see what I mean by it. Postulation 1 states that whatever we say betrays our inner thoughts and ideas. You might go, "So what else is new?" Fair enough, it isn't. Of course when we express ourselves, we are expressing our own thoughts and ideas, and may in fact betray our own emotions about the subject. For instance, simply saying, "Lapar sial," carries with it first, relaying that the speaker is hungry, in fact hungry enough to comment on it. From here we can also deduce a few things; the speaker is in fact giving an invitation to the recipient for lunch or dinner or munchies. The usage of the word 'sial' can give us a clue to either the education level of the speaker, how strongly the speaker feels about his subject, and perhaps the company he is in. Thus, no matter how much (or how little) the speaker says, there's something we can learn about how the speaker thinks.

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On The Origin Of Vampires And Werewolves: Based On Something I Told Farra Fender Out Of Boredom

(Note: Dedushka means Grandfather in Russian, and Babushka means Grandmother. I’m pretty certain Poludnitsa means She-Devil. I know Bog means God. Mudak means idiot. Belyat means bastard…I think. Drochit means ‘wank’, or ‘wanker’. I’m not sure if the old Slavs spoke what we now know as Russian, or if Transylvania even had Slavs, or were anywhere near the vicinity, but for the sake of comedy and Rule of Funny, I ignore all pretense to accuracy.)

In the gloomy countryside of Transylvania, where the wolves howl and the children of the night make their ‘vonderful’ music, sits a small village, its name lost to time. In one of the village hovels, old Igor sits in his chair smoking a pipe, gently puffing on the smoke and blowing circles, guessing to himself where they might go. As one went up to encircle the full moon outside his window, making him laugh at his own awesomeness, he heard footsteps running toward him at full speed from the rooms where his grandchildren slept. He groaned. It was storytime, and apparently Dedushka drew the short straw tonight.

“Dedushkaaaaaaa,” the children yelled as they ran into the room, shattering the peace as only insolent children knew how. “Story, story story,” the yelled and chanted, running around screaming as if they were possessed by the unholy demons that wandered the night.

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Blog News Progress As A Progressive Post

4.55 pm
From now on posting in this ginormous font for people to read easily. Blog cantik xleh baca apa guna.

5.01 pm
Shit, x puas ati laa template ni. Mcm agak sukar nak maneuver. Try lain jap. 

5.17 pm
Hmm, Memoranda looks good. 

5. 27 pm
Font tadi macam terlalu besar. Nampak selebet. Biarlaa macam ni.

Right, so it's decided lah. This is how my blog is going to look like from now on. Sometimes maybe try out different templates but for the most part this is how it's going to look like. Cheers.  

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