Mandatory article on my organisational skills

I have none.

Thank you for reading. This is the last post I need to write for now, so I probably won’t be writing here again any time soon. Toodles and have a good one.


Author – Fabio Alanda                       Editor – Fabio Alanda
Illustrator – Fabio Alanda                    Producer – Fabio Alanda
Royal Toolbox – Fabio Alanda               Background Artist – Fabio Alanda
Sound engineer – Fabio Alanda           Make-up – Fabio Alanda
Publisher – Fabio Alanda                   Mighty No. 5040 – Kamiya was right
Cover design – Fabio Alanda                 Typography – Fabio Alanda
Theme song – 4’33” by John Cage            Hair stylist – Fabio Alanda
Narrator – Fabio Alanda                    Revolver Ocelot – Revolver Ocelot
Cameraman – Fabio Alanda                  Milkman – Fabio Alanda
Postman – Fabio Alanda                       Batman – Wruce Bayne
Aquaman – sucks                               Co-producer – Speed Weed
Ponce – Fabio Alanda                            Tosser – Fabio Alanda
Git – Fabio Alanda                                Twit – Fabio Alanda
What every girl wants – Wolf, Dick (that’s an actual person’s actual name)

Copyright ©2016 What a Nuisance, Inc.
All rights reserved

Eych-titty-pee, the chronicles of a waste of time

Normally I would bash every single event in the FEP despite the actual amount of fun I’ve had with them, but I’m feeling rather un-salty today because I finally have enough money to waste on Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse, so I’m going to talk about the HTTP event in a less rude manner and give it a generally more positive review. Here it goes: the HTTP event was absolute wank. Better luck next time, HIMTI.

They’ve certainly spent a lot on this event; not just money, but also time. And it shows, but maybe they should’ve spent more time planning a more interesting event like, say, a huge water balloon fight except the water balloons are filled with milkshake, or a huge conga line circling a sacrificial pyre, and the sacrifice is the lead event planner.

The event started (for me, anyway), with them showing Zootopia on the big screen, which I ignored after a while because I couldn’t understand what any of the characters was saying because the speakers suck, so I just played Monster Hunter on my 3DS until the actual event started.

The actual event started when a guy in a low-cost robotic costume robot-walked onto the stage and robot-moved his robot-body to the robot-voice track playing in the background; I will refer to this person as “Bisaac Blarke” from this point on. And then a band came on stage. They were alright, it’s just that the songs weren’t to my tastes. They were Binusians too, so I guess I can’t blame them for any unprofessionalism. I mean, I know how stressful college can be.

And then a couple of douchebags very fine people climbed onto the stage and announced themselves to be the MCs for the event. This was followed by an overly-long speech–sorry, overly-long speechES by various presumably-important people who I can’t remember. I seem to have forgotten a lot of the boring parts, and I wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t read my friend’s post on this same event(shoutout to you, Lord Edge McFilth of the Jacket Kingdom).

Now let’s move on to the event that I remember most because I’m getting bored remembering the boring parts. The event I’m talking about is the “visualisation”, which I believe is wanker’s talk for “play”. The play was about life in Binus, from the FEP all the way to…uh…I’m not sure at which point it ended, actually; as far as I remember, they did a project and then a slightly chubby person came up on stage and ended the play with some narration and a little dance. It was a bit fun to watch, I admit, but ironically it was much more fun to watch the little skits the characters do when they’re not in focus. Now I don’t want to crap on these people too much because honestly they act very well, which was emphasised by the fact that the entire script was an audio track and the actors were lipsyncing it well. But that still didn’t help me from drifting away from the play and right onto my 3DS, where I spent a huge chunk of the play on. As the play went, I noticed a lot of people sleeping around me; sitting down, spread across three seats, and even on the floor. I guess the play wasn’t engaging enough for them.

I just remembered that there was a talkshow before the play, so I’ll talk about that right now. It was boring and I wasn’t paying attention to it. Alright, I’m done talking about the talkshow.

Now for the rave. After the longest break of the event, we were gathered on the lower level of the hall, where we were promptly deafened by a blast of electronic music. I’m getting ahead of myself here; I already have my poker heated up and the HTTP tied up with its bum in my direction, but I forgot to address the guest-starring band that performed beforehand. The band was pretty good, actually; they played some good songs and I especially like the trumpet player for giving the whole thing a more jazzy-swingy feel. Alright, back to the rave. Maybe it’s just not my thing, but the rave was my least favourite part of the whole thing, what with its music being so loud that I swear my heart started beating to the rhythm. And the room was hot because they turned off the AC and there were a bunch of sweating people bunched up together. In short: my legs hurt, the music was too loud, and I wished I was at home playing video games.

After the whole thing was over, it was finally time for the promised goodie bags, which was my only motivation for staying. Unfortunately, after queuing up with the aforementioned bunched-up still-sweating people for a few minutes and getting to the door where they were giving out the goodie bags, I was told that I needed to wait for my goodie bag. I have no idea why, but if I had to assume, it was because I had one of the photocopied paper tickets instead of the fancy-shmanzy colourful tickets that most of the other folks got. Anyways, I waited, got my bag which contained a t-shirt, a karaoke coupon, a slip containing a password for a useless site, though it does make for a good bookmark, and a pen; then I got on the bus and finally went home.

Bisaac Blarke appeared again at some point in the show to dance but I can’t remember exactly when that happened.

And there you have it, a review of the sweatstained landfill that is the HTTP. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting something so utterly boring. You’d think it’d be a spectacular event, what with so many sponsors whose names they just felt the need to announce every single time the MCs came on stage. One of which was Nescafe, which I find a bit odd, since it doesn’t look like they did anything to carry the fact other than mention its name. I mean, they could’ve at least given a can of the stuff to everyone; it certainly would’ve helped with the incredible drowsiness I was feeling throughout the whole thing.

P.S. I had to re-write some parts a couple of times because I can’t seem to remember things correctly. I’ll just chalk that as a testament to how boring this whole thing was.

My thoughts on the three games shown on the latest Re-Load

Earlier, I watched a show called “Re-Load: Games On Review”. Or at least I think I did; about halfway through it I drifted off and started thinking about the viability of using dolphin-mounted torpedo launchers for underwater combat, then came back to find them playing a card game with no pictures.

Anyways, Re:Load -Starting a Game in Another Save File- is a show about video games, and that’s about the only thing I know and am certain of. They talked about three games all made by Binusians of the GAT department, all of which I will be reviewing here.


Snowman Defender
At the very least, it has an apt title; you play as a kid defending a snowman from legions of snowmonsters, which might be an allegory for how humanity is destroying itself, and the only thing that can stop said destruction is something inhuman, but I doubt that. The graphic’s alright, I suppose; it’s certainly got that “no passion for pixel art” vibe seen in a lot of mobile and/or indie games these days Edit: okay, maybe I was a bit harsh on it, it’s fine, nothing offensive, simply okay. The gameplay is the aspect that I’d most like to criticise because, putting aside the simplistic gameplay, it’s very slow, and a very slow shooty-wooty kind of game is no fun. I just erased an entire paragraph that talked about Doom and Painkiller because I remembered a much better game for comparison: Touhou. Much like this game, Touhou is a bullet-hell shooter, wherein you move around a 2D space dodging bullets and shooting enemies. Where it differs is in speed; Touhou is a fast game that forces you to think fast or you’ll be hit by one of the many bullets that fill the screen, and it’s engaging that way. It’s a challenging game that gets your blood pumping, and that’s what makes it fun.

 


World of Warcreatures War of Creatures
Hearthst-I mean War of Creatures, is a card game that’s kind of similar to Hearthstone. And that’s all I know about it thanks to the aforementioned thought of dolphin-mounted ice cream dispensers or something. Even if I did pay attention I don’t think I can give it much of a review seeing as how I don’t play those kinds of games.


NecroLands
SPOOPS AND GHOUKS GALORE, BOYS. NecroLands is a horror-themed twin-stick shooter with the greatest scare of all: lack of fun. It has the same problem as Snowman Defender in that it’s very slow and a very slow twin-stick shooter is no fun; as I’ve covered this problem in the Snowman Defender review, I don’t think there’s any need to write about it again. I don’t really want to talk about the graphics because I feel like I won’t be able to without calling it a bucket of sewage on wheels. Anyways, speed things up and improve the graphics, that’s all I can say about it.


And there you go, my reviews on the three games shown on Re-Load tonight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wallow in my own cynicism.
Toodles.

A Blog Post About the Academic Orientation

It has now been three days since I made the post about the General Orientation, and much like it, I don’t remember much about the Academic Orientation; in fact, I think I remember even less about this one.

The Academic Orientation, complementing the General Orientation, is a way for Binus to teach us about the things we’ll be studying in college; in the same way that certain species of birds teach their young how to fly by pushing them off the nest and into freefall. Not three days into the orientation and the professors have already told us to make, and I emphasise that, MAKE a board/card game. As in, not only do you have to design an entirely original game, you have to produce everything from the art, the pieces, the cards, the instruction booklet, the box, and a piece of our stressed-out nearly-suicidal spirit to put in every box. I mean seriously, professors; this is a bit much for a group of 4 freshmen, isn’t it? I mean, I barely know how college functions and you already throw what equals to a job but with no pay onto me. And some of these people don’t even have 4 members, so they have to work harder, still with no pay. “We’ll pay you in grades”–don’t give me that; I can’t use grades to buy the expensive necessities of college like, for example, the production costs of this game. And how much time do we have to do all of this? Until the end of November? That’s how long it took to make E.T. for the Atari, and you can see how well that turned out. Though, to be fair, making a video game back then was as easy as rock-climbing with both of your legs cut off.

Back to the actual orientation, then. I honestly don’t remember anything else about it aside from the test we had on the last day, so I guess I’ll just write about that. The test was divided into two parts, an essay and a programming test. The programming test was fairly simple; they give you an example of the program they want you to make, you make the program they want you to make. But they have to give you more of a challenge than that, so they forbid you from using getchar(), forcing you to find another way to not have the program close after doing what you want it to do. The essay test had only two items: number one asked you to explain what game balancing is, and number two asked you to explain the entire history of video game consoles, upon reading which my eye started twitching and I stared disgustedly at the professors. So on top of having to come up with programs you also have to write a book, all within 100 minutes, because the GAT department are elitists who have nothing but disdain for anyone not acquainted with obscure gaming consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey. And yes, I had to Google what the oldest gaming console is.

Alright, that’s all I have to write about the Academic Orientation; and it only took me two hours with bouts of lounging around on Youtube, each of which lasts about half an hour.

2016: An FEP Odyssey, chapter 1: General Orientation

References to classic literature aside, the FEP really felt like an odyssey to me; but mostly because before that I had a 4-month long break from school, a lot of which I spent ligging around on my bed watching Youtube videos. So you can imagine how incredibly unmotivated I was when I had to leave home and begin a new chapter of my life; leaving behind the bedroom I’ve held near and dear to my heart, alongside my very expensive collection of two whole artbooks. Why do they have to make them so expensive anyway? It drives me mad when so many good artworks are placed right in front me, yet we are separated by the walls of capitalism.

My mind seems to have wandered off a bit there. Now where was I? Oh right, the general orientation. The general orientation was a way for Binus to introduce us to their university, their visions, their goals, their organisations, their clubs, their way of teaching, their next-door neighbour, their friend whom they haven’t seen in a while yet are still close, their therapist, their milkman, and anyone else they happen to meet during the course of the orientation. And now I’ve used the word “their” so many times that it sounds weird in my head.

I don’t remember much about the general orientation, because it was mostly uninteresting; so I’m just going to write about the things that I do remember.
In limerick form.

It was the first day of FEP, and my mother came to wake me.
To Syahdan we went, from our apartment;
luckily we had time and was in no hurry.

There in the classroom I’ve been put into, was a lot of people I never knew.
Though that was expected, as I am introverted,
but that just filled me with fear undue.

The groups were led by seniors called “BCs”, who at first I thought were called “bishis”.
(Thanks to my weeb side, all with its smug pride)
But thankfully, they were quite chill-sies.

The first day went swimmingly well, despite my nervousness that no one else could tell.
It was quite short for an event of its sort,
But I cheered nonetheless when they rang the going-home bell.

It was much longer on the other days, and they held presentations in many different ways.
Some with games, and some are lame,
But attending these is required, and it pays.

Now let’s skip to the fourth day of it all, where we watched a show in the theatrical hall.
I thought it was gonna blow,  but they put on quite a show.
With so much talent on stage, it was an amazing ball.

The MCs were charming and funny, and the clubs’ presentations were sweet like honey.
Especially the choir, and I won’t be a liar,
to hear them sing again I would give a lot of money.

The fifth day came so and such, and to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much.
But one thing I remember, like a New Year’s Eve in December,
is a sort-of gathering for the non-religious bunch.

There we were gathered, in the BCs’ post; as the other folks prayed to their holy ghost.
We talked and we ate, but what we mostly did was wait
Until everyone was finished and we were picked up by our host.

On the final day of the orientation, we were given the chance to join a conglomeration.
Or two, or three; it doesn’t matter, really.
But they did cost quite a bit; for the initiation.

After about three hours (and I almost can’t believe it too), a special limerick, just for you.
With my love I wrote it, and my desire to graduate.
And now, finally, I can bid you adieu.