The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

The Quen sign (the aura shield spell) is imba. I was able to transition from complete witcher noob to good (by my standards anyway) because of this sign.

Basically, my strategy for combat while hostiles exist for all of the game (except the Kayran and dragon fight) is

1. Cast Quen
2. Hack, slash, dodge
3. If Quen's comes off go back to step one

Inventory management is the worst of all the modern games I have played.

No sorting for junk. Junk is stored randomly. Unlike DA2 where there is a magic button triggered in merchants to sell all junk. Simplifying that experience is important because sorting junk is not what the game was made for!

Looting is awful too.

UI response is slow.

The game requires an uber imba PC from hell to run. It only run at 30-50fps on my machine.

Sexy time is more liberal but sort of repetitive.

I did enjoy the playing the game. The main motivation is the intrigue with Geralt of Rivia's story if anything.

The Team Building

The leaders shined

derick
- tinamaan sa johnnie walker

randy
- natusok ng bumble bee sa court nung nagpaa siya, ang dami kasing nakakalat na bubuyog sa court

basketball

extreme activities
- wall climb, rappel, zip line

Every part of my body f***ing hurts

Black Swan (2011)

I was on vacation, resting after the team building big weekend.

I watched black swan dahil sabi ni Myk maganda raw.

Isa lang ang naisip ko pagkatapos kong manood. Holy sh*t, ang galing ni Natalie Portman. Hands down. Hands down. Hands down.

Dahil sa galing niya, nakanganga nalang ako at hindi na humihinga simula nung climax hanggang ending. Good job!

My Investor Experience

It is very limited.

I started with insurance, life insurance. It sucks. I get no benefit from it because I am sure as hell that I am living up until my early nineties feeling like a 30 year old.

It still is in the negative because the holding period is 6 years. That started around 2 years ago, so I still have 4 years before I can cash in.

The good thing about it though is that it became my conservative investment. Bonds and fixed income.

I also got into SDA (special deposit account). Oh what a joy. Or so I thought. I was unaware that the tax is ridiculously high relative to the gains until the statements came to me a month after the placement.

I pulled out on the next maturity date.

Then I discovered mutual funds. I found a website detailing the 2009 earnings of various funds in the Philippines.

I thought, hey, this is a really nice horse. I can ride this one.

So I did.

I got a net return of around 12% in around 2 months. Take that SDA.

Now, compared to SDA, to me, that was awesome. I did not do anything (or so I thought), and I earned that percentage.

During those periods, when I had time, I read business news. I did because I noticed that the news affected stock prices especially in the short term. Generally, good news -> price up; bad news -> price down.
I was particularly interested with company financial information (historical figures, forecasts), growth strategies (projects), and changes in stakeholders.

So what have I learned so far?
Diversify my portfolio
I need better fundamental and technical analysis processes

Will post some more in the future.

Good Times with Mo The Podcast Favorite Guests

Krista Kleiner
Rhian Ramos
KC Montero
Pia Cayetano
Boys' Night Out

A League of My Own

Master league!

Natawa lang ko, kasi na-promote yung rank ko to master league sa SC2 after playing some games. Akala ko naman sa big league ako napunta, yun pala gumawa ng league para sakin XD

Sabi nga ni Tyrone, top 1 no matter what! Parang yung isang biro na yung estudyante, top 5 nung nagtapos dahil lima lang sila sa klase.

beats the stressful day right out of me.

Camelot (2011)

Since it is Easter Sunday and it is me time, I decided to watch an American series called Camelot. It is another adaptation of the King Arthur legend.

After watching, really, I was hoping to get the inspiration from lore, bravery, mysticism and leadership. However, because there were at least three sex scenes in the first episode alone, all I remembered were the sex scenes XD
The best way to ruin a good story is to put actual sex scenes in it. Instead of implying it, which was the way old movies did it by the way, putting the real deal in the film/show, especially if it is unnecessary for a scene, pulls the focus away from the story.

I am going to watch it still because I like Eva Green’s acting :D

If it is about getting viewers horny in a medieval setting, mission accomplished.

Some Things Never Change

Bilang holy week at chilax mode ako ngayon, nagnilay nilay at nag-isip isip sa mga nangyari/nangyayari sa buhay ko.

Pansin ko lang, yung mga panahon na wala akong sinulat sa blog, medyo limot ko na.

The reason why I am continuing this blog is to see my personal development through the years.

Apparently, I've thought of myself as a workaholic some 5 years ago. http://chessteralbert.blogspot.com/2006/07/work-work.html

Nagbago na ko. Iba na yung mga priorities ko sa buhay.

Ngayon ang binubuksan ko kapag nag-iinternet ako ay Business World

Pipl I Love/Hate You!!!

I hate it that when I searched myself in Pipl, I saw more than I was expecting.

It is so creepy. It digs in through all websites, and provides me a list of accounts that are related to my name. This includes accounts that I have:

1. no idea existed
2. created out of a whim and have absolutely no memory of
3. created out of a favor
4. created to access a specific part of a website
5. created to get leverage for an online marketing campaign

I love it because I get to know what accounts still exist. Since I know which ones are "easily" visible, I have the power to get rid of them :D Fortunately my name is quite unique and finding real accounts related to myself is easy.

Some of the more popular accounts I have deleted:

1. MySpace which by the way, as of the moment, has the lamest logo for a website that has a market of about 43 million unique visitors each month. Unbelievable.
2. Scribd
3. Friendster (still thinking about it though because there are some nice memories from that site, which I can probably migrate to a nicer archive:)

Information is hard to manage :-)

Dragon Age 2 1st Playthrough

(Spoilers!)

Finished with the 1st playthrough of DA2. ~73 hours XD

Nightmare, no deaths, all possible quests

Setup
Hawke - Rogue, Assassin, Shadow
Aveline - Tank, Full strength/constitution
Anders - Healer, Panacea, Heroic Aura, Arcane Shield, Barrier
Merrill - Tempest, Debilitator, Barrier

My usual strategy
Charge Aveline to a big chunk of hostiles
Hawke to cast decoy and summon Mabari in Aveline's area
Merrill to cast tempest in Aveline's area
Pick off stray archers/mages with Hawke
Micro Anders for healing
Anders and Merril to cast barrier as needed. Especially when there are blood mages/assassins
Retreat as needed

Sharing screens from the playthrough

Strike A Pose
Character posing in this game is okay. Unlike FFXIII where the in game camera angles were just begging the player to take screen shots.

Deep Roads

Get some Darkspawn

The Deep Roads Dragon

Illuminate

Merrill chugging a health potion

The Wounded Coast

The Spider in Sundermount

During Barthrand's frenzy

Lyrium

One Damage

Kirkwall Docks

Sunsets

The Generic Hideout

Enter

Another Wounded Coast sunset

Null

In the Hanged Man

Stretching

Duelist

The Gallows

Some book

Indoor Graffiti

Bonfire in the generic cave

Flying objects

The Ethereal Golem

Sundermount Cave

The aspect dude

Hybris

The Bugged Bandit Leader

Docks nightfall

Mr Orsino

Champion of Kirkwall

The three Rage Demons, dead

Sandal The Badass

Striptease

Aveline does not care if everyone else is stunned

Underexposed cave

The Brutalities

Assassins kill my assassin easy

The Captain

Melee Archers

Qunari Spears

Undead archers

The Decimus Fight
This is one of the battles that I had to reload a lot. The reason to this is that

1. This is a relatively early part of the game where my characters did not have access to abilities that will have protected allies/decimated hostiles. I had bad builds XD
2. Decimus will one shot any of my characters in the first couple of moves
3. There are more hostile archers/mages than I could imagine. A single hit from one of them removes around 15% of a characters health.
4. You start at a disadvantage. The moment the fight starts, you are already surrounded.

It was a big challenge, and here is the strategy that I used to win.

Focus fire on Decimus first to ensure that he is unable to cast any spells

Go up the terrace to get rid of the advantage of the long ranged attackers

Reaper. Eliminate each of them one at a time

Once your numbers are favorable, charge and win

Ancient Rock Wraith
The tough golem from the deep roads

The best strategy is to stay away from it and use ranged weapons

Ancient Rock Wraith

Anders, so calm; Hawke, so dead

Rangers

Waiting for the right chance to strike

Melee? No Thanks

Varric

Major

Smite

And Hawke gets rich

Arishok
The Arishok is bugged.
I started the fight with a dual dagger Rogue. I wasn't timing his attacks correctly. Losing health and potions, I decided to switch to a bow. After that, he stayed still while my arrows rained on him.

Pre-fight trash-talk

Arrow, arrow, arrow...

...arrow, arrow...

The Arishok falls; The Champion is proclaimed

Crawlers
For some reason, crawlers are very popular and strong in the Dragon Age series.

(From Alfred) In, DA2 however, most of them are terrain challenged. Unable to go up or down stairs. They get stuck very easily and cannot retaliate to ranged attacks. Free XP

The deeps roads free XP

Not free XP

Spider boy

Free XP

...

Varterreal

The Varterreal is one tough crawler

With Zevran

Dragons

Mature Dragon

Hawke

Merrill

Stonewall Fenris

Anders

 The High Dragon

Hi

The High Dragon's IMBA fireball shooting, invulnerable state

Tossing Aveline like there's no tomorrow

Aveline is supposed to be being chewed

The quick and temporary vulnerability

Almost done

Bonding with the High Dragon

Should have looted and equipped the Champion Armor first

Emoticons

Best on the fly rendering emotions from Merrill

Sad and Sorry

The eyes tell the story

 

Merrill realizing she caused the death of Keeper Marethari

Others

The Champion seeing the death of the Viscount's son

Mourning Viscount

Disappointed. Blood? No worries.

The Chantry Divine looks like Linda Hamilton from Chuck

Sebastian is sucking up to the Champion

The most relaxed face ever. "I don't mind the blood at all."

Bloody and composed

Isabela on taking a ship

Sexy Time!
Merrill's sexy time

Isabela's sexy time in Hawke's estate

In the Hanged Man

Before the Final Act

Romantic Achievement

GG!