Stepping Stone

Duffy is one my favorite singer of late. Her voice is really great with broad range and power.

She is also one of the few that would sound better live than in the album.

Here is one of my favorite song of her in live version that I like best.



Now the song is in my phone, lulled me when I am on the road :) I think that if she ever held a concert in Bangkok, I would pay the thousands of baht for the ticket to go see her live.

Sporadic Office Closing

With the redshirt mobs causing staging protest near my office area in Siam Square, my office has been close from time to time.

Today my office send another SMS to say that all the offices are close for today and we should stay home. Not that I mind, just that I have plans at my branch office today...

Hopefully things will be resume tomorrow...

I think I will do take a bit of nap to enjoy my morning off at least...

I Hate The Morning Shift

I am not a morning person, I am just not. I might have stem from my stint as night time operator but still I don't like to wake up using my alarm.

In my old branch office, I can wake up at 9:30 because the office open at 11:00. It was a dream job for me for sure. But now that the HQ, I am stuck at morning shift. 8:30 is my due time to start the day. Plus it is about an hour to get there in morning traffic. So now I have to wake up at 6:30...

I also could not shake the habit of sleeping around midnight... The heat of summer did not help enticing me into my bed either...

At least I can nap in my ride to work...

The Returns of the Building Leaper

I finally finish Assassin's Creed II a couple of days ago. It certainly was a fun game to play.

The story seems to continue right from the ending of the first game (seems because I never actually finish the first one). After Lucy help Desmond escape the bad guy's compound, she take her to one of the assassin's safe house to have Desmond use the Animus again, not only to utilize the bleeding effects to train Desmond to fight but also find the clues to the Templar's objective.

The gameplay as whole feels much more fun than the first game. A lot tighter and can be quick pace if you choose to focus on the main missions. The missions themselves, however, are not very varied but spaced out quite nicely.

The character models are the most expressive among the games I played lately. The facial expressions were done very well.

The game made quite a buzz for having the most uptight DRM system, the kind that required you to be online all the time to play the game. This DRM system is quite effective. None of the usual scene group come up with a proper crack for the game. However, all are not lost, by the efforts of some Russians group, a server emulation was created. The setting were done to fool the DRM system into looking for the server on 127.0.0.1 IP and the fake server program will feed the necessary value to the game, enable it to progress.

This emulation came out about a month after the game release. Quite understandable, since there were nothing like this before. At first all hope were lost because none of the scene groups release any working crack. The game publisher said that if a working crack came out they will release a patch to stop the need for internet connection. The pirates are successful in circumventing the DRM. But the game itself was not crack in anyway.

I wondered how the publisher will react to this. Since the game now can be played offline but the DRM system itself is not broken, just rerouted.

Anyhoo, the game itself it fun to play, it looks great, and it set in Italy!! They use Italian language in the game as well, which I like. I may play the game again to get memorize some of the words and line to use when I went to Italy next year :)