Morro

Microsoft is set to release a FREE virus protection software in the second half of 2009. It's their response to the growing need for PC security and they call it "Morro." This new antivirus will gradually replace Windows Live OneCare subscription service, of which retail sale will be stopped by June 30, 2009.

Morro is reported to use "fewer computer resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs." Hello third-world computing!

Honestly, the first thing that entered my mind upon hearing Morro were the Muslims. The Philippine Moro, though, has a single R so it might not be it. But come to think of it, it's such an appropriate name for an antivirus if they based it upon the Moro of the Philippines. Moros are fighters; fearless ones. And who better fight the Trojan horse! The virus, btw, was derived from The Aenid, an epic poem by Virgil. In the poem, the Trojan horse was used by the Greeks to deceive the Trojans themselves, and that exactly is what the Trojan horse virus do - it appears to do a desirable function but is in fact destroying your computer. So what's the better way to destroy the Trojans? Bring in the Moro, or in MS's case, the "Morro."

And since Trojan is derived from literature, Moro is also part of the Philippine literature. Moro-moro is a play popular during the Spanish colonial period, and is about the battle between the Christians and Muslims of Spain.

Meanwhile, Morro (with two Rs) mean something else in other countries (mostly Spanish speaking ones). It can mean a snout, a hill, and even lack of shame.

Shame.

Photo via the movie Troy

Legend of the Seeker

I'm a fan of LOTR, not to mention of Tolkien himself. I also know about the book series entitled "Sword of Truth" by Terry Goodkind but haven't read it yet. And then now it's on TV as "Legend of the Seeker." Reminds me much of LOTR. I'm now a fan.

Two episodes was shown in the pilot last November 1 - (1) Prophecy and (2) Destiny. It basically tells you about who the seeker is and where he came from and stuff.

Craig Horner plays a charming "Seeker."


Bridget Regan as Kahlan Amnell is a beautiful sight.


And Bruce Spence as the wizard reminds me so much of Gandalf.


Watch it here.

Dota Allstars 6.57

A new DOTA map!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
Date: 2008-11-11
MD5: 0c88743d59c8023eeacd6bf4f3fb8f21
Filesize: 3.24 Mb
Category: Hero Defense
Tileset: Felwood
Dimensions: 128x128
Playable Area: 118x120
Recommended Players: 10

Choose from 93 unique heroes in an epic battle to defend the Ancients.

Modes: -ap, -ar, -rd, -sd, -cm, -dm, -lm, -xl, -mm, -tr, -vr, -rv, -mr, -du, -sp, -sh, -aa, -ai, -as, -id, -em, -sc, -np, -om, -nt, -nm, -nb, -ns, -nr, -ts, -pm, -oi, -mi

Changelog for v6.57
* Changed how -sd hero selection works. The three heroes are now added as icons to select from your circle of power
* Lots of fixes and improvements to the translation capacity of the map
* Fixed a few Warcraft 1.20e specific bugs for Chinese community
* Some performance improvements (more coming in the near future)
* Your Circle of Power now has 6 inventory slots. The items it has are now abilities instead. You cannot pickup items that you don't own with Circle of Power
* Items drop on top of your Circle of Power if a unit is not there instead of making a big pile in the center

* Improved Shallow Grave cooldown
* Increased the bounty on Power Cogs a little bit
* Decreased Clockwerk's Intelligence gain slightly
* Increased Hookshot manacost from 125 to 150
* Scaled the cooldown on Eclipse from 140 seconds for all levels to 160/150/140 seconds
* Eclipse no longer continues after death, Beam interval is increased from 0.5 to 0.6 seconds
* Improved Windrunner cooldown
* Lowered Admiral Proudmoore's base Intelligence and intelligence gain
* Decreased X Marks The Spot duration
* Added manacost to manual return ability of X Marks The Spot
* Increased Ghost Ship's manacost
* Lowered Omniknight's base movement speed by 5
* Increased Rhasta's base strength
* Improved AOE on Fervor
* Improved Dark Seer's cast animation point
* Increased length of Wall of Replica slightly
* Lowered bonus damage per second on early levels of Geostrike
* Tweaks to Shackleshot angle and area check mechanism
* Slightly improved Shackleshot duration and cd
* Improved Mass Serpent Wards' cooldown
* Reduced Haunt Illusions' damage from 50% to 40%
* Haunt now has a 1 second delay during which they fade in before the images start attacking the targets
* Improved Thunder Clap AOE
* Improve Primal Split's manacost and cooldown scaling per level
* Improved Life Break
* Improved Slardar's Cast Point
* Increased Command Aura's AOE
* Reworked Voodoo Restoration stats
* Minor improvements to Glyph of Fortification
* Courier now costs 200 gold
* Improved Eidolons damage type progression
* Lowered Lycan's Wolves Hitpoints
* Lowered base armor on Lycan and his wolves by 2
* Increased Empowering Haste's AOE
* Improved Aphotic Shield's life from 100/125/150/175 to 110/140/170/200
* Increased Kelen's Dagger cooldown from 15 to 18

* Circle of Power is now selected for each player at the start of the game
* Added disablehelp for X Marks the Spot
* Fixed some issues with the tree layout near the center scourge neutral camp
* Slight adjustment of top scourge tower position
* Your Circle of Power is more visible than your allies'
* Undid the previous minimap change due to concerns from different leagues
* Tweaked the bash values on Roshan
* Moved Glyph of Fortification from an item to an ability on your Circle of Power to prevent some abuses possible by the enemy
* Added Disablehelp for Keeper of the Light's Recall
* Added new hero sounds to -quote (Ogre Magi, Techies, Blademaster, Panda) and it now also tells you which number it played if u randomed with it
* Changed Windrunner's soundset

* Adjusted neutral pullability area for the Scourge ancients a bit
* Fixed camera movement issues when multiple Meepos respawn with Aegis of Immortal
* Fixed scoreboard consumables count
* Fixed static field doing a small amount more than what the tooltip says
* Fixed BKB being droppable after use when it's duration is decreasing
* Fixed the text display in -sc
* Fixed a bug with Phase Boots and Puck's Phase
* Fixed Phase Boots triggering Last Word
* Fixed some issues with the creep pathing on the bottom Sentinel wave
* Fixed a bug in Death Match that allows you to rebuy the same hero again
* Fixed Observer Board not showing up from a reloaded game in -cm
* Fixed hero respawn issues in regular dm (not dmap or dmar)
* Fixed Dust of Appearance tooltip not showing cooldown
* Fixed an old issue with dropping items away from you while under Berserker's Call pull
* Prevented Flying Courier from using dust of appearance
* Fixed an issue with Dawn Tavern being disabled when repicking in normal mode
* Fixed the RD spot not being marked as unexplored for scourge players after the draft phase
* Fixed a rare bug with Psionic Trap count limit not being enforced
* Fixed a test game only bug that caused the tower deaths to not register properly in single player
* Fixed a bug with Aegis of Immortal not setting proper mana on Meepo clones
* Fixed some performance related bugs with Admiral Proudmoore
* Fixed a bug with Power Treads and Essence Aura
* Fixed some minor bugs with the manabase on Primal Split's level 1 and 2 Earth
* Fixed Sange sell cost
* Fixed some minor issues with Phase Boots
* Fixed Kelen's Dagger being undroppable for the same old cooldown values
* Fixed Windrunner not appearing in -sd or -ai
* Fixed a Drop Items bug with courier and Aegis of Immortal
* Fixed a bug in some game modes where Kelen's Dagger had a small chance to not register properly and get disabled on incoming damage
* Fixed some rare bugs with the combination of Dispersion and Starfall
* Fixed some group selection inconsistencies with Primal Split units
* Fixed Windrunner to not cancel your movement command
* Fixed Phase Boots from canceling Curse of the Silent
* Fixed a bug with X Marks The Spot and Primal Split
* Fixed some issues with super creeps (in -sc) getting stuck
* Fixed Shackleshot and Nature's Guise to work on Sprout trees
* Fixed a recent bug with the -courier command
* Fixed Torrent buff icon
* Added -cm to -gameinfo
* Fixed being able to buy from secret shop from the area above Roshan
* Fixed some group selection priority issues with Circle of Power and the shops

Special Force slash Soldier Front

Up to now, I'm still getting hits about the Soldier Front (locally known as Special Force) error message "cannot run multiple instances of soldier front" and I can't believe I haven't blogged yet about my analysis on the problem (I kind of did, but it's chopped into multiple posts).

Back to the problem: Soldier Front (or Special Force) will only run on monitors with the screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher. And higher means both horizontal (at least 1024) and vertical (at least 768). Like in my case, I used to play on a 17-inch widescreen Samsung with a maximum resolution of 1440 x 720 and I couldn't run Soldier Front on it. I believed it wasn't my CPU cuz it's still kinda new. So I searched the net for solutions and did what most of them said - install the latest video card driver. I did that despite the fact that my shop computers could run Soldier Front even on old video card driver. And just like what I expected, the "latest driver" thing didn't work.

Until instinct told me to test the game on an old 17-inch CRT monitor (AOC) which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. So I connected the old CRT to my cpu, adjusted the resolution to 1024 x 768 (since it's still trying to display via the 1440 x 720 resolution that my desktop was set to), and after restarting the PC, lo and behold! Soldier Front worked! Just to make sure, I changed the CRT's resolution to a lower one (800 x 600), and yes I was right, the game wouldn't work on a lower resolution.

Right now, I use a 19-inch widescreen LG with the max resolution of 1440 x 990. It cost me a new monitor to play the game, and somehow it is worth it. I don't just play SF, anyway. Cabal and Crazy Kart also looks great on the new LG.


PS: For Windows XP users, if your computer restarts itself upon entering SF, make sure to install a security update from the Microsoft website (or you can Google the file) called WindowsXP-KB926255-x86-ENU.exe...

Discounts

I went to buy a new cpu to replace one at the shop that has been giving me headaches since last month. Asianic Bicutan has a new supervisor. Jonathan (the previous supervisor) and I are already friends, and for a while I thought of finding some other store to buy my stuff when I learned that he has been assigned to some other branch. But since I really need a new cpu ASAP, I tried talking to the new supervisor this morning over the phone to give me quotations of so and so. When he called back, I noticed that he gave me better discounts compared to Jon. LOL! And based on that alone, I think we'll be friends, too. His name is Cris, btw.

It's a 2.53 Core 2 Duo with 1G DDR2, 80G SATA and 512 ATI Video. The stuff in front of the box are extra memory sticks and an extra IDE hard drive for stock.

While they were assembling the cpu, we went to Jollibee because I brought with me an alalay. I can't go out alone when I have Princess in tow. So I asked a kid neighbor to go with me. He's actually the kid of the Bayantel salesman who was salestalking me into buying a wireless landline. Anyway, I haven't decided yet if I really need a wireless landline. But here's the Bayantel salesman kid with Princess.

Nearing Extinction

The very first online game to hit the country, and the very first online game I fell in love with, is going to have a major server merge this November 15. Ragnarok Online's three servers are going to be merged into one. Back in 2003, they started with just one server (Chaos). As the game became popular, they added a second server (Loki), then a third, and a fourth, and so on. But as competition arose (I think MU Online was their first competitor), players began to explore, and Ragnarok first merged their seven servers into three. They are (1)Chaos and Loki became BALDUR (2)Odin and Fenrir became TYR; and (3) Iris, Sarah and Lydia became FREYA. And since I don't think there are that much players of Ragnarok around, they are merging these three servers into one called NEW CHAOS. They started with one, and they are going back to just one. From Chaos to New Chaos. And oh yeah, they are cutting the cost of subscriptions. I heard a month will go down to 200php (from 350). Not bad. But I think it's the start of a phase-out.

New Haircut

Mother and I brought Princess to the vet yesterday morning. We were in SM 20 minutes before the opening time. When the doors finally opened, Animal House was still closed LOL. But anyway I was glad we were there that early cuz the minute I got to Animal House, two more dogs (to be groomed) immediately lined up after me.

I told the groomer I want Princess' to look like this (I actually printed this out and gave him the copy for reference):


But he trimmed a larger area of the head than he was supposed to, and he left the body coat longer than was in the pic. I'll never let him touch Princess's coat again. And since the haircut was wrong, here's Princess now:


She still looks okay, though. It just didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.

And so we turned her in at 10 am and the groomer said we could fetch her at 1 pm. He was still doing finishing touches when we arrived. And mom and I shopped while waiting for 1 pm. She bought a pair of shoes and we went to the supermarket after that. I hate supermarkets, especially the wet area. But anyway it was fun. It was like 3 years since I last went to the supermarket with mom. I guess I should go with her more often. Just for the fun of it.

My New Cars

Been playing a little more than the usual lately. And been buying karts, too. LOL! Crazy Kart and Princess take my stress away.

And speaking of karts, I regret buying the Ming Ming (the cat kart) cuz it bounces LOL! And I'm not so much of a pro not to hit on anything. I like the Spy Kart but I guess I'll repaint it black someday. It's my fastest kart but I find controlling the yellow Beetle better.

Anyway I raced with someone this afternoon who drifts all the time. Drifts and bounces. Drifts even on a straight. So he drives diagonal to the road. LOL. But he's so fast he beat me by like 10 seconds. I tried drifting on a straight to no success. I kept falling on the edges of Valley Fort.

Halloween

I really wonder if the entertainment industry is getting short on better cover girls.


Is there any part of her we haven't seen before?


oh lo! photoshop works (not!)

Uhh... I forgot it's November.

The Phone Goes to Charity

My cellphone was stolen. It was a cheap Nokia, but I love it nonetheless. And it isn't really the value of what's taken, but the fact that someone stole something from me.

What's worrying me is Joseph's account in Cabal Online. Details are all in that phone. Good thing I was able to recall the password. So right now I'm on vigil. I can't log his character out for fear that the cellphone thief might try to hack it. I've texted Joseph several times already but I guess he was already asleep or using a different sim card.

It was about 10:30pm when I noticed that my phone's missing. I told Angel about it and she was like "Since when?!" 'cause according to her, I still texted her using my globe when she was still in school. And to top it all, I even gave her a "miss call" (something I never do). She had already deleted the text messages but the call register was still in her phone - it was between 5-6pm. Last time I used my globe phone was when I transferred funds from my G-Cash to my load.com account. I checked my load.com transaction history and it says 1:25 pm.

I don't recall using/seeing the phone after that transaction. And the effing thief even texted my contacts! Angel said she found it weird when she received the messages from my globe 'cause according to her, the messages were "so not me."

To whomever has my phone now: God bless you!

I don't want any more phones. I still have my smart so I'll just stick to it. If it also gets stolen, I'll just use the land line or the internet messengers. No more phones! I'm thinking of just buying a new digicam. Something cheap that I can carry around anywhere, that I won't have to cry when it gets stolen.

Really, I prefer losing my gadgets to defects rather than to thieves.

Dota Allstars 6.56 Ai+ v1.52

The map isn't by IceFrog but by BuffMePlz. It's actually a modification of the map AI+ v1.52 of RGB.

Download it here.

Known bugs with AI:
-AI don’t properly react to -nb, -nm and -nt modes
-Some exploits that should have been fixed are still in the game…just don’t use them. If you really want to cheat against AI, just use -test

Some commands have yet to be implemented properly:
-ah
-afk
-kickafk
-rd (the new one in 6.53, -rd is in the game but done the same way pre-6.53)
-cm

Additionally, there are two Fun Taverns in the lower right corner. Currently includes nine legacy heroes: Old Invoker (6.12b), Old Lifestealer (6.48b), Old Silencer (6.12b), Gambler (6.06), Old Morphling (5.84b), Old Stealth Assassin (5.84b), Void Demon (3.0d), Rider (5.72), and God of Wind (6.01).

To access the fun taverns, type -fun within the first 15 seconds of the game.

Revelation

I just saw Myx's feature on Arnel Pineda with the Journey. I didn't realize he's really that good until now. And I mean he's really, really good. Galing ng vocals. To think that he used to collect bottles, newspapers and stuff for a living when he was young. Now I really wonder if you should suffer (really suffer) first before you become super successful. And if you became successful without suffering first, would you suffer later in life? If that's the case, I'd prefer to be just average. LOL!

For years, Arnel Pineda used to perform with his band in Hong Kong. And he sang the original "Running Away" which was revived by Erik Santos, the dyosa. Tapos he did a song with South Border - "Looking Glass." I really wonder why I didn't know him LOL! Perhaps it's the genre. And he's 41 years old. Perhaps he reached his peak in the local scene when I was still on nursery rhymes...? Haha kidding.

Revelation, the very first Journey album with Arnel Pineda on vocals, is still out in the market. Go buy one. Even just to support Arnel. I'll buy one when I go to the mall. I just don't know if I'd play it.

Anyway I found his 1999 self-titled solo album cover:

He looks like Phillip Lazaro...