If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. 

— CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain  

To love and forgive is painful for us. But I often forget that it is deadly to God.
In a sense, Nietzsche was right: God died; and we have killed Him. I have taken him and nailed him to a cross and he bore the punishment that I rightfully deserved. What terrifying love is that which would make a cosmic king lay down his life for the murderer that I am? And what stupefying joy it is that he has risen and conquered death? And how utterly bewildering that the object of his affection is me? ME? Me the coward? The liar, hypocrite, bigoted, petty, unkind ME?? If this is a lie, it is a frightening lie. But if it were true, it is infinitely more terrifying to behold. Because this means my life is no longer my own—it was bought at a monstrous price—with the life of a God. Who loved me enough to think it a worthy exchange.

Some colour names get way more attention than others. It's not fair that pretentious things like Ebony (meaning black), Crimson (meaning red), Scarlet (red), Obsidian (black) and plain ole' black (... I'm seeing a pattern here) gets used in every other movie/game/book title while colours like Periwinkle, Brown, Mauve and Aquamarine gets little love. Prejudice exists in colour-name-selection too!

Rule on hipster cafe logos:
Colour: Black
Font: Orator
Plus, have a cross somewhere in the design encased in a circle so it looks like a a billion other hipster cafe logos with crosses somewhere in the design. Encased in a circle.

Okaaaaayyy... I finally got HoMM2 working on my computer. NO. WAY.
All those memories. All those sleepless nights waking up at 2am to sneakily play this beast on my dad's Win 95 com. So many memories! Heroes 2 is my very first real experience in playing a proper computer game. Even first-er than Red Alert Command & Conquer (of which I'm still trying my hardest to find a version that will install well on Windows 7)  And, oh man. Words cannot describe the intense nostalgia this game brings me. What year did it come out? 1996? That's when my age was still a single digit!
Look at the world map screen. Look to the right menu bar. They used a FLOPPY DISK to indicate the save button. A. FLOPPY. DISK.

 

Wizard in da house!

 Back in those days, I'd play as the Sorceress class every single time. What a fool I was. But the Sorceresses' get up looked so cool, hey. Style over substance.

Hero stats with only 5 army slots. Man, they were stingy with the slots.

But the best thing about Heroes 2 was the music. Hands down better than Heroes 3. This is 1996 remember, but it won't sound out of place in a Lord of the Rings movie. That's how epic it was.

I recently downloaded some survival horror games, Dead Space and Amnesia. I played Amnesia first as I heard fantastic reviews on this indie game production-and man, even the trailer scared the crap outta me. Sadly, it was in 1st-person camera; which I know gives a more personal, claustrophobic feel to the game. Unfortunately, yours truly is allergic to 1st-person camera and puked after playing for 30 mins. (Granted, I got through 30 hrs of Skyrim gameplay on 1st-person; but strolling along idyllic nordic scenery is a different ballgame from creeping around a monster-infested, god forsaken castle with only a LANTERN for protection)
I am currently waiting for my guts to regenerate before I go back to play that sanity-sucking thing.

Speaking of monster-infested, Dead Space is the epitome of that.
And it's 3rd-person, so I can actually play it meaningfully without a bucket. Although I may need to sit on a toilet while playing because the scares, oh the scares.
Look at this:

Nope.

When that thing crashed through the elevator I was riding, I literally exited the game and breathed very loudly at my computer screen.
And the music. Oh, did I say music? I mean sudden violin shrieks accompanied by eerie metallic scraping noises that could either be the rickety ship acting up... ... or a monster waiting to burst out from the vents and chomp on your intestines like a fat kid loves candy.

So while Amnesia is a foreboding game that winds up tension by an ominous atmosphere, Dead Space is jump-scares galore and gore aplenty. Compared to Resi 4, the last 3rd-person horror game I played - Dead Space is a ton scarier and far more claustrophobic. I do miss playing tetris with the inventory though.

See this survivor crying for help? Well, you won't have time to make friends. Dead Space is one lonely game.

For the past books in the series we've always had trusty sai kang warriors to draw the neighbourhood maps for us. Now, they are no more.
Now, I take up my pen and do the sai kang myself.
Now I know their pain.
Satisfying pain. But pain nonetheless.

 

So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace

The days are hot as soup and my skin has melted into the bedding. I'll need to scrape myself off the pillow in the morning to get to work, leaving bits of lydia here and there like confetti.

Oh Apple, Apple, Apple. Why art thou iMovie so utterly intolerable?
I don't understand, it's a really decent amateur video editing software with a super-easy interface (much like most Apple software)—then why in the world did you remove the SAVE option? Look at this. Look at it!

Where's the SAVE button? Did it take a holiday from the dropdown menu? I know you guys are all about "less-is-more" and proved that by removing the disk drive from the newest just-as-expensive iMacs; but this is getting ridiculous. Apparently, iMovie doesn't have the SAVE function because it autosaves any project edits on the fly—which is all good if the autosave actually works. Which it does—92% of the time. Saying the autosave works 92% of the time is as reassuring as a skydiving instructor informing her student just before the jump that his parachute is in 92% working condition.
I woke up this morning to find out that a video project I've been working on had its changes reverted to the old file 2 weeks ago. TimeMachine didn't help. There wasn't ANY traces of the recent edits I made (and substantial edits were they). iMovie simply saves over the file again and again so there is only one instance of the project anywhere. Apparently, many people have also suffered from the iMovie not saving their changes and Apple hasn't done much about it. No plugins, no updates, nothing. Can you believe if Microsoft pulled that move on MS Word—universities will implode as everybody loses their thesis papers. Apple, if you're gonna remove the SAVE button—the Autosave better work 100% of the time.

If I feel bitter toward those who condemn me, as it seems to me, unjustly, forgetting that if they knew me as I know myself they would condemn me much more, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

-Amy Carmichael

Here's something about designing a book cover. It's not designing a book cover. It's designing twenty and killing off nineteen so that one may live.

I'm dead buried in work. Work begets more work. And unending avalanche of work.
Wow, look at me. Sitting in an air-conditioned office all day long and clicking my mouse furiously going, "Man, this is hard work" when some Cambodian kid is probably walking a few kilometres through a lethal mangrove swap to fetch water from a well surrounded by crocodiles just to get enough water to cook his rice for the day. Argh, first world problems.

I got a box of of socks for my birthday. And 6 packets of Milo. And a partridge in a pear tree.

If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.

—	Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Many times, I think that what I desire is pure and right. Therefore, anything that agrees with this desire must be pure and right as well. And anything that goes against it must be wrong.

Strange isn't it? I know well enough that my heart is a selfish, imperfect thing; despite the exorbitant value the world puts upon it. "Listen to your heart", "Go where your heart tells you" urges the plot of thousands of movies and the lyrics of even more songs- truisms so cliche yet so appealing. And what if your heart doesn't know what's best for you? What if the last thing it knows is what's best for you?
Never listen to your heart that is fickle and fallible but put your trust in the Saviour who has mercy; even for hearts as wrinkled and loveless as mine.

I was porting my Skyrim saves over from my old laptop when I discovered that my save folder was taking up 1GB+ of space. Whaaaaaaaaat?! And each individual save file is 17MB? Whaaaaaatt?! Bethesda, what in the world did you feed those saves? Dragon bones? Why are they so big?

Questions that may never be answered.

Muahahaha...
Finally installed Windows 7 on the iMac - all without an external or internal optical drive. The CDs you see there were my futile attempts at plugging in an external optical disk reader - All but useless because Apple likes to flip off anyone who doesn't get proprietary add-ons. Don't ask me why we pay more for less. In Apple's case, we literally pay more for a whole optical disk drive less.

2 days ago when I was at Plaza Sing, I saw Poh Kim having a closing down sale. Poh Kim was such an iconic stall. Tucked in a corner beside Carl's Jr we'll always catch snippets of some newly released DVD trailer playing on the screen at the storefront as we ride up the escalator. Not anymore. And how would they survive when the very medium of physical disks are going the way of the VCR? Were there any fanatical VCR fans then who vigorously resisted the change to the CD medium? Apple's move to CD drive-less macs would be the nail in the coffin. Not that I have any special affection for CDs, but but but.... sigh, I don't know. You'd better have some indestructible internet connection when dealing with Cloud storage. Especially if you have 10TB of free storage. Slow internet will be the bane of us all.

Well, I guess it's time to reinstall all my games again. Hello FF of my childhood.

Mr. Howard perches jovially on the top of my workstation and is never tired of raising his left stump of wood arm in cheery greeting every morning. And throughout the day. And possibly all throughout the night. He has a slightly quizzical look on his face, like he's unsure of how many times he has bid me hello today and how many more times should he be doing it.

Sometimes, I take pity on him and change arms so they both hang by his side. This makes him look like a gorilla holding pails on both arms, except without the pails. Sometimes I raise both his arms way up so Mr Howard can imagine that he's doing a Superman takeoff, except that his butt is firmly blue-tacked to the mac.

 

It's for his own safety so he won't fall head first into my tea.

This is the view from the window of my room. Back in those days I still had time to take a noon day shot from my room in my pyjamas. And take breakfast at 1pm like a boss.