Surface Effort

One day, the "leader" of my group assignment sent email to me and other teammates in order to tell us about the detail of our assignment and the work distribution. Our topic had 5 concepts. Since there were 5 members in our group, so each of us was distributed with one concept. Every group member has to prepare a relative storyboard for the designated concept and bring it on the next discussion meeting. After I read the concept which was given to me, the first thing I did was doing research on my concept through internet in order to fully understand it.

My thought was always complicated for doing an "easy" thing. After I understood my concept, the next action I proceeded was searching the real case or story for this concept. But spending several hours, I failed to find out the thing I wanted. The discussion time was during the class. The duration to the class hour remained around half an hour. My housemate was also one of the group members, he was having a nap on that moment. I did not hope to go late for class, so I went to wake up him to prepare for departure. Since I had not yet come out with a story, therefore I planned to bring my laptop to class for surfing net purpose. I finished washing my face and walked passing through the room of my friend (housemate), I saw that he was sitting on his chair in front of his computer. I knew that his story topic had a great relationship with my topic, because our topics were doing the same thing but using different actions to perform. I walk into his room and explained the term in the concept to him from my research result. After he understood what was the term, he told me to write down a story first before going to the meeting. This speech gave a weird feeling to make me not to care about the lateness. I continued surfing net to get a correct idea on my topic. My stomach suddenly shouted, I asked my friend for lunch. As a result, I got scolded by him that asked me to faster come out with a story so that we could go to class "earlier". We were actually late for a few minutes. I seemed to be very relaxed for everything and totally ignored the time.

Soon after, I still cannot find an idea for the story. My friend said that he had written down his story on a paper and gave me to have a look. The story idea was very simple. It seemingly showed the meaning of the concept without telling the procedure to execute the specific action. I was not sure whether it was correct if doing like that style but for writing a such simple story I could have one also without finding the actual thing. However, we were already late too much to class, it was better for us to get ready to go. There was a simple story in my head. Meanwhile, my friend asked me whether I was ready to leave for campus. I thought that I could write down my story in the class because the discussion was after class, thus I should have no problem to get going on that time. When we got into my car, my friend started "shooting" me. He said that I had done nothing for the assignment and I would be galling if everyone had the storyboard except me during the discussion. I told him that I could do it during the class. He found a chance to "shoot" me again by saying that the email mentioned all group members "must" prepare and bring their own storyboard to the discussion. Since he said like that, I had nothing to say anymore. Before we reached to classroom, my friend gave me an idea about my topic, no matter how I should appreciate him.

During our discussion, the story of every group member was also quite simple. They did not clearly show the actual procedure to do some actions too. I felt that I was very stupid. Why I wanted to make an easy work to be complicated? Since I had understood my concept, actually I could simply think out a story to explain the concept in surface. But I never think about easy thing, so I spent much time to search for the unnecessary thing. In consequence, I could only find out the definition of my concept but failed to come out with a story that was required during the discussion and gave a chance for my friend to blame me that I did not put any effort on the assignment! Damn it ...

Back to Blogging

It is really a very long time absence at here because of the busyness on my Final Year Project and other assignments. Finally, they are all submitted. Now is on my examination week. I just had my first exam paper yesterday, the second or last paper will be on next Saturday. In the other words, the days before going to the next paper can be considered as a short holiday for me, but I have to study earlier also for the exam else it is a last minute rushing preparation.

Anyway, take a short breath to relax first and continue writing my nearly abandoned blog. There are quite "many" thing go through my mind and wait to share with my blog readers, finally I have the time to release them on my blog.

Fate of Defeat

Today I just find out that, I keep losing my army not really due to my careless and stupid mistakes, the fact is, the game (the Three Kingdom Online, 热血三国) does not allow me to increase my army!

Why I say so? I do not know what thing I have done to unintentionally offend the 2 players in the game, they kept robbing the resources in my town. If my town do not have the great internal defense, they sure try to conquer my town in order to make me no home to back. However, according to my current army power, I know that I am unable to fight with them. My army kept dying, it makes me so hard to get a huge amount of troop. In fact, I know why they want to attack me. Every time they successfully wiped out my army, they would send a message for me in order to ask me to join their guild. Why should I want to join them? I am playing this game with my friends, surely I join my friend's clan so that we can discuss and chat together. Just now I was defeated by one player, he sent a message to me and said that I was lucky because he did not send his light horse riders to come together in the battle, so he lost around 1 thousand of archers instead of losing nothing. What the hell! This meant that I should be happy because I could kill his archers. My loss was more than him damn a lot. I lost 2675 archers, 546 light horse riders, 480 shield carriers, and 1300 spear soldiers. He lost just a little bit of archers, he still dare to send a message with rude words to show his anger for me. This sounds like I did not have any sad feeling on my losing, my army was valueless or cheap? The 1 unit of archer seemed like very important for him, he would feel very sad on losing 1 unit but I would not? Therefore, he could say that I was lucky with my success on killing his archers. So bored, I need to train again my army. My damage has not yet getting recovery, the player who just attacked my town and won the battle asks his friend in the same guild to come together to attack my town again! I really do not know what are wrong with them, I just want to play the game in peace because I am just a new player. Finally, they successfully force me to move my town immediately to another place. I hope that they are unable to find my town again. They just wait, if I am able to have a huge army in the future, I will surely revenge to wipe them back!

When I say until here, I think that all of you will say, it is very normal. In the game, all of players have the freedom to choose anyone as the victim. As the phrase, the law of the jungle, the weakling must be bullied by the stronger one. Thus, it is a shame to complain on any defeat and scold the person who attacks me. I am a good person of course I never do such thing. But something really make me unhappy and I am unable to control myself not to release my anger. However, it does not mean that I send a message to scold the player who make my whole army gone. I just show my dissatisfaction through chatting with my friends in the same clan. Why I have so many complaint? The first time I lost my whole army due the attack from the player who likes to aim me. I have nothing to say with this case because I was a newbie. I did not know that it was necessary to set the defense mode to make my whole army staying inside the town so that they would not go out from the protection area to suicide. I have learned the lesson, I immediately set the defense type as defending inside town, they want to rob my resources I let them to do that, I just want to protect my troop from dying. But this time, I still lost my whole army again due to a ridiculous reason, seems like a fate to make my army unable to live longer.

When I woke up, I saw the army status tab blinking terribly, I knew there was something bad happened to me. As I expected, a player was sending his troop to my town in order to rob my resources, they were on the way and have the remaining traveling time of 30 minutes. I was not really care about my resources but my troop! I did not hope my whole troop to die again. So, the first thing I had done was checking the defense mode for several times and confirmed that my army would stay inside the town. Of course, I could not allow my enemy to get any benefit from me. Thus, before they arrived my town, I tried my best to spent my resources as much as possible such as training a lot of soldiers and sending my resources to the court in order to increase my reputation. I did not receive the reward from the tasks I completed in the list as temporary so that it would not increase my resources for my enemy to rob more. Finally, my resources was spent until leaving a little bit, I had done the thing that I could do, next was just waiting to see the result. The countdown timer made me so exciting. I did not know how huge the enemy army was, I did not have the courage to fight with them outside my town in order to prevent them from robbing my resources because I knew that I was not the lucky one. The attacker would not fight a war without the full confidence to win. Three ... two ... one ... they arrived. Something was out of my expectation, my stupid army was still going out to fight with them. As a result, of course my army was not qualified to fight with them. Finally, my whole troop successfully committed suicide! After that, I still want to listen my enemy to say me lucky. Damn it! I was very wondering with the defense setting because no matter I did set or not set, the consequence still be the same, my army still like to go out to receive the enemy. Then, I found out the problem, it was so funny that I was actually unable to change the setting. I had tried it several times. Every time I set the defense type to be defending inside town, after I refreshed the web page, the defense type would be changed back to "receiving my guest" automatically. I was not sure whether it was the line problem to cause the server unable to know any change on my setting. But, I still could train my army and construct buildings at the moment! If I could not do anything in the game, surely I would refresh the page. I could not change the defense mode but at least I could immediately teleport my town to another place to avoid the war. What a good reason to make me to enjoy the great loss!

Lastly, what I could say is, I am the one who have the fate of defeat. So bored ~ again.

Headache in Gaming

Few days before, my friend introduces an online web-based game for me. The game named "Three Kingdom Online" (热血三国 <-- Click it!). This game is great but it gives me a lot of sadness. There is a special feature on this website game in which I can give commands to my army during a battle. I can control them to move forward, stop, or move backward and attack which troop on a battlefield. The ability of controlling army greatly influence the battle result. I may win a battle without losing a unit. If I forget to control my army, they may stupidly go to die. This is a headache that I always miss the chance to give command for my army. Why? Because when I want to attack a land, it needs time for my army to move from my city to the battle destination. If the travel time is too long, I will go to do other thing to wait for the battle begins. Sometimes, I may totally forget the battle and the whole troop heroically die on the battlefield.

Training a unit spends much time and resources. For my city, training 100 archers needs more than 6 hours, training 50 light horse rider needs more than 4 hours. But I can get a lot of units very quickly since I have 5 barracks in my city. Thus, I can have 500 archers and 200 light horse rider after 10 hours something. According to this training speed, I should have a great amount of units in my city. But, there are a lot of funny cases causing the number of my army unable to reach higher. Those sad cases are unforgettable in my heart.

I brought my army to commit many wonderful wars. Thanks to myself as a genius commander, my army was able to eliminate all of the enemy troops on the battlefield without losing a unit. Archers made a great effort in battle because they were the only ranged attackers in the early game and had the benefit of long attack range. They could attack enemies in a long distance and prevent the enemies from going near my troop. However, the good matter never last long. I still remember the amount of loss in my army. I lost 900 archers, 200 light horse riders, 120 shield carriers and 89 spear soldiers on my first defeat. Why I lost? Because after I sent out my troop to fight, I did my Final Year Project (FYP) while waiting for the battle. I was attracted on solving a problem in my game programming work and absolutely ignore the battle without intention. After I solved the problem, I felt the bad thing and then I suddenly remember the battle. My concern was too late. The battle ended when I wanted to control my army. Then, I opened the report box to see the result. What a "good" news for me that all of my army was wiped out. Nothing could be done after the fact happened. The only one thing I could do was training my army for several hours again.

The second case was damn funny. I played with full of braveness to challenge a high-level land. I brought 1600 archers, 400 light horse riders and 200 shield carriers to conquer the land. In my impression, the defender approximately had 5000 basic soldiers, 600 spear soldiers and 370 shield carriers. I was very scared of those melee enemy units which are able to go near my archer team. The life of an archer was as low as an ant, he was so easy to get killed by the enemies. In strategically, I should attack the enemy units with highest movement speed in the first and kill them in efficient way such as dealing a good damage according to their weakness. But I made a "clever" decision to kill the hardest enemy units in priority, that was attacking the shield carriers although I knew that the attack damage for an archer against a shield carrier was only 70%. Finally, I eliminates all of the shield carriers in 3 rounds. But the scary thing happened, the 5000 basic soldiers and 600 spear soldiers was already standing very near with my troops. They just simply wipe out my whole army in one round by dealing a huge amount of damage. I lost in this battle due to my stupid mistake.

The third case was the greatest loss and I had nothing to say with this. The war happened in my own town. A strong player came to bully my army while I was playing DotA. After that, I saw the army status tab was blinking. It gave me a bad feeling, what would the matter be? I saw the winning of the attacker in a battle but lost 100 something light horse riders, I thought that the attacker was me and my army went to die stupidly again without my control. But the problem was, I remembered that I did not send my troop out for battle before I played DotA. Then, I read the report carefully. Damn it! The attacker was not me, it was another player. It meant the losing defender was me. My pitying 1900 archers, 73 light horse riders and 357 shield carriers were gone in this war. I thought that I sent my troop to conquer a land and I forgot to recall them back to home after winning the battle. I left them to stay outside and they were killed by others. But when I looked at the battle location carefully, it was my town location! The wall around my town was hard and there was a lot of arrow turrets and traps in surrounding to prevent them from entering my town. I wondered that why my turrets and traps did not work. The attackers could be easy to go into my town and kill my people. After I continued reading the battle report, Oh My God, it mentioned that my stupid army went out from the protection of my town and fight with the attackers at outside instead of staying inside to defend behind the wall. After I told my friends about my army's funny action, he said that it was necessary to set the defense type at somewhere in order to make the army staying inside to defend. I had nothing to say with this. I made my town defense to be so great, but it was useless, my army was damn smart to fight with enemies at outside and got rid of the protection of my town. They liked to commit suicide when I did not pay attention on a battle. I really did not know I should laugh or cry. Because of this defeat, I lost a great amount of army again.

After I successfully trained a lot of army, they died. I trained again, they died again. I was unable to gather my army step by step in order to make a huge army. Some bad matters must be happened to me when I had a good number of army. It was so bored with this cycle.

Team Spirit

After playing 2 different sports for continuous 2 days, one was playing basketball in midnight for 2 and a half hours, and another one was playing badminton in evening for 2 hours on the next day, I was very tired and felt the pain on some parts of my body and bone. Due to the tiredness, I thought that I could be easy to fall asleep. But, when I lay on my bed, I spent around half an hour to successfully go into dream.

I love playing basketball. Basketball is a team game, the spirit of teamwork is very important while playing. Every player who joins the game should know what is the role of each player, who is shooter and who is supporter. Actually this is not very important, everyone also can try to shoot the ball if there is a chance for the person. But the shooter needs to see whether there is a teammate under the basket to do the "Rebound". If the ball fails to go into the basket and rebound out, the teammate can immediately take back the ball rather than giving a chance for the opponents to grab the ball if no backup. When the ball carrier is blocked by the opponents and he is unable to move through them or shoot the ball, he should pass the ball to others. If he forcibly to go through the defense or take the risk to shoot the ball, the ball will be easy to drop on the opponents' hand.

No matter how strong a player is, the act of playing as "One Man Show" is prohibitive and will be hated by the teammates. Everyone in a team have to train the privity between each other to prevent the opponents from knowing the playing strategy on tournament. One person is impossible to complete all the tasks including carrying the ball, running the whole court and shooting the ball over the defense of the opponents. It is very tired and hard to successfully throw the ball into the basket and get the score. Someone may think that if cannot get any score for the team, others will not pay more attention on the person. In the view of spectators, the player who gets the most score in a tournament is the strongest in the team. The player who only does the support and never get a score will be considered as no contribution in the team?! Who say that? In the reality, anyone who looks only the surface of a case will have such theory. Because of this reason, someone who cares for the thinking of others will be selfish and wants to get the score as much as possible by self. The person thought that passing the ball to the teammates means losing a good chance to get score and giving a chance for others. He worries that cannot get a satisfactory result in the personal scoring to show off himself.

In the most popular game, Defense of the Ancient (DotA), playing as a team is compulsory. All the DotA heroes have the limit power. One hero is impossible to beat down 5 heroes in a battle unless the opponents are too weak. So, all of the players must gather and fight together in a battle to make the winning possibility to the maximum point. When your hero is attacked by the enemies, your teammates may come to rescue you at this moment and prevent them from killing you or kill them back. This scene is so touching. You will know the importance of the team spirit. Some noobs (newbie) are very damned, they always say "Ks! Ks!" (Kill Stealing). What is Kill Stealing? Kill Stealing is the act of keeping a damaging spell for killing the enemy hero on the last hit to death in order to get the rewards. There are many stupid players (noob) thought that the teammates come to support in order to steal their "food". A noob is chasing an enemy hero, his teammate come to help and kill, he kept saying the teammate purposely killsteal his "food". Although the noob can kill the enemy hero by himself, should the teammate stand beside and watch only? Those noobs do not know how to play DotA at all, they just know playing solo style and getting the highest score of killing in game. They should go to play the DotA with AI (Artifact Intelligence) that does not require much cooperation with team.

Team game is very enjoyable especially playing with friends. I can enjoy the communication and cooperation with my friends during the game. Sharing a triumph together with friends is quite a happy matter. Anyway, fellowship is more important than winning a game, so we should enjoy the process while we are playing together.

Love

One day, my housemates and I finished our dinner and arrived at home. I just sat down on my chair for a few seconds, the doorbell was rung by someone outside. On my thought, it must be the delivery that usually ordered by my roommate. He normally backed late from his work and did not join us for dinner. When I went to open the wooden door and looked outside. A girl and a boy who seemed same age as me was standing outside and having a smile on their face.

My curiosity was quite heavy so I asked them about their purpose for coming. They told me that they wanted to do a survey for their Christian society in campus. Their current topic was talking about "Love". They would like to know that how people defined "Love". Somehow, I was so enthusiastic to help them in answering their questions on the survey paper. May be because I am a Christian, so I felt close to them and had the heart to help them.

They asked me what was "Love" in my opinion. My answer was very general, "Love" was an action to concern others, or pay more attention on others, think from the position of others, know the needs for others, and help others to solve problems. There was an interesting question, they asked me what was the difference between "Like" and "Love". I knew these 2 words must be bringing different meaning because they gave me the different feeling, but I failed to differentiate them. I told the girl and the boy that I gave up to answer this question and hoped to get the answer from them. Their answer awoke me. It was just the answer in my feeling but I did not know how to explain it.

"Like" is temporary, you "like" someone in the first seeing because the person attracts you, you just have the good feeling at the person due to figure, talent, or any other aspect that was able to magnetize you. "Love" is long or permanent, you "love" someone, you will know how to care for the person, you will put the person on the first place in your heart and do a lot of matters to show your concern for the person. No wonder many people say that "Love" is blind and "Love" cannot be measured. It is hard to tell a reason to "love" someone. Only the "Love" without reason can be permanent. Why? Because if there is a reason in "Love", that means there is a condition in "Love". If the condition cannot be achieved, then the "Love" ends. If you love a person because of his or her figure, and one day your beloved becomes old and ugly, will you still love him or her? If you love a person because of his or her talent, and one day your beloved loses his or her skill caused by any accident, will you still love him or her? If you really love a person, you will not think so much about him or her. This is called as "True Love".

When I was young, I was as cold as a stone. I did not know what was "Love". I did not care anything happened around me. I did not show my concern to the people beside me. Everyday, after I came back from school and had my lunch, I hid in my room to do my own thing and isolated myself from outside of my room. Normally I did not know the actual location of my parents. When someone came to find them and asked where were them, I could simply answer,"I don't know." since I had really no idea about that. When whole family sat down together for eating meal or watching television, I did not pay much attention on their conversation and just kept quiet. My mother always scold me that I looked like not the one member in my family. I was indeed a problematic children or teenager on that time.

What will happen if there is a lack of "Love" in this world or society? All people will not give a hand for anyone who is in difficulty. All people are busy with their own business and do not care other matters. We will hard to hear the laugh and feel the happiness in a society. If this really happens, what is the meaning in life? So, do not be closefisted to share your "Love" with others and make your life to be wonderful. Hope that everyone can be happy on everyday!

Expression and Communication

Yesterday, I heard from my lecturer talking about communication skill in class. She said that a lot of students do not know how to present something that they are expert in. The students have the skills and their own idea but they do not know how to sell themselves in order to get the attention from other people. They know how to make a product, but they have no idea to sell the product. This is a big obstacle on the way to make a successful business.

In this 21^st century, communication skill cannot be ignored. It is very important for anyone who wants to live in this society. Good communication skill can easily make your audiences clear with your idea. Poor communication skill can easily confuse your audiences as well as yourself and make them bored to continue listening. If the audiences are patient to hear your idea, you may have the chance to express slowly. Good communication skill needs a lot of practices in speaking to others, listening from a good speaker to learn the expression ways, and learning more vocabularies to make your speech to be easier.

What are the factors to cause a person presents something hardly?

(1) First factor can be shyness. Shy to communicate with others especially standing in front of many people and getting their sight attack. It will make you in tension, causing your thinking to be void and then you do not know what to say.

(2) Second factor should be language problem. Language of course has a great influence in communication. When you want to talk something to a foreigner or someone who only know the language which is not your special language, you may have the difficulty to translate from a sentence with familiar language to another sentence with unfamiliar language. Lack of vocabulary or not good in grammar can really make you unable to say out what you want to present on your mind.

(3) Third factor may be professional problem. A person talks about something that he is not well-known about it. He has just a little knowledge about it but he wants to present to others. So, he may talk many nonsenses for the part which he does not confirm yet. After a lot of bullshits, he may confuse himself and hard to continue or easy to make a mistake. Talking nonsense sounds not professional and easily exposed by others when they find out there was a conflict between these points. Saying a well-known topic surely easier to communicate with others comparing with talking nonsense.

There are many methods to present an idea. If using vocal is not enough to clearly express your idea, you can use the body language or sketch it on a paper while you are talking in order to make your presentation to be clearer. No matter using what methods, the most important thing is to make your audiences clear with your idea or your selling point. It can be considered that you have the good communication skill with others.