My nails look well-groomed too, might I add.

There I was, out for a very regular run-of-the-mill ride on my unicycle. I get a message on my phone, so I took the phone out and before I could flip the top open, I hit a curb and fly off, skidding knees and hands first onto tarmac. The knees are fine because of shin/knee guards and so’s the other hand but I skidded on my knuckles of this hand because I was clutching my phone.

Way to go.

Quick one.  My Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ID is

2074-4441-1328-3000

Add me if you’re playing.

Tags: Nintendo DS, Pokemon, Friend Code

I’ve 3 articles due this week - 1 on Monday, 1 on Tuesday and a 3rd by Friday. Procrastination ensures I’m only 1/2 an article through. Not a good sign.

While researching on one of the articles, I’ve stumbled upon a few rather interesting facts though all of which revolves around the shocking truth that Singapore doesn’t have any strict censorship rules on videogames. All Singaporeans let out a collective gasp now. Uh huh, feel better now?

Now here’s a country, Asian no less, that’s got a good adult population tsk-tsking over the audacity of film and tv shows to portray characters in a certain manner. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was aired at 11pm one season because it’s got a gay theme (not that it really mattered because the gay bits got cut ANYWAY)  and countless other TV shows suffered similar fates because of violence depicted. And whoa whoa whoa, videogames - arguably this generation’s favorite pastime got left as it is and no one’s saying much about it?

Not that I’d want my games to be banned from local shores of course but it is a little dysfunctional for there to be a public outcry over the airing of mindlessly violent shows on primetime (without most of the gory bits of course. Censors.) and yet a 5 year old could walk into a shop, buy a copy of (everyone’s favorite culprit) Grand Theft Auto and play it to his/her heart’s content IN BROAD DAYLIGHT without objection.

Way to go Singapore!

Its english name doesn’t do justice to the translation of the chinese text which would be along the lines of ‘ghost-hacking oil’. So what does the medication do? It claims to cure rheumatism, arthritis and other assorted pains. Ooo scary.

I’ll be heading to Hong Kong in about 11 days and picking up a Miyata unicycle there (hopefully I’d be able to locate the shop). In the meantime, here’s a brief look at the unicycles I’ve come to own.

I bought a unicycle back in April 2004 before I could even ride a unicycle or been acquainted with a unicyclist (at least not in real life although I’d sent out various emails to the local unicycling mailing list). The shop owner made it sound really simple - Put your foot on the pedal, hop up and ride off. I later found out of course, that the guy can’t unicycle.

Some months later, I’ve come to the realisation that I want to move into trials and cool stuff like that so I sold off the crappy learner uni and bought a cool 20″ trials one which I painted pink.

More months later, that got stolen. Before I even learnt to hop properly no less. About a month after, one of the local unicyclists won a 24″ from a competition and sold that to me. So there.

I found the 24″ to be rather heavy and a lot intimiating to learn stuff on so I sold it (again) and bought the same model of 20″ that was stolen earlier on. Ironically, I’ve never mustered enough courage to try a suicide mount on my 20″ despite being able to do that previously on the 24″. That was about 7 months back.

For those of you who’re looking to buying a unicycle and are debating to get a 24″ or 20″, here’s the pros of each.

Pros - 24″

1. Rides smoother with less effort
2. Easier to adapt to a 20″ than vice versa
3. Rolls over little curbs with ease and riding down stairs feels more stable…
   • …but unfortunately, it’s more daunting to even begin riding down stairs.
4. Easier to do standstills
5. Easier to learn to idle which means…
6. Juggling on a uni becomes automatically easier.

Pros - 20″

1. Hops are automatically higher because the uni’s more manageable
2. Less scary to learn to ride
3. Easier to handle when precision is needed (e.g., hopping over obstacles)
4. More intuitive - turning can be sharper; easier to maneuver corners…
5. Falls don’t feel that bad (although I think this is psychological)
6. More convenient for transportation

Tags: unicycle, unicycling, choosing a unicycle, trials, muni, freestyle

This is in reference and response to a blog post at Juggling Mike’s about homemade juggling clubs. There are quite a lot of FAQs on the net that talks about how to make juggling clubs of your own, most of which advocate using rolled up newspapers taped together to form the handle. This makes the clubs unnecessarily heavy and clumsy to spin. The ones at Mike’s uses wooden sticks as handles and most interestingly, half-tennis balls to cover the head of the clubs.

I’ve made some clubs myself some time ago, improvising and using plastic pipes for the handles (the same ones that you have around the house to transport water and which you can get at the hardware shop for cheap) and cutting each bottle into half so I can fill a section of it with beans to weigh it down.

They worked rather well for clubs that cost like $4 or so each and I could even work Mill’s Mess and double spins with them. Unfortunately, after a while, the tops of one of the clubs split and broke and I’ve never got around to fixing it. I bought a set of one-piece clubs after that so these were made redundant. Still, given clubs are rather expensive for the beginner juggler who’s unsure whether or not to venture into club-juggling, homemade ones are the way to go.

Here’s what I used for each of the clubs:

• A roll of colored plastic tape
• Paper
• 2 bottles
• Beans
• Stoppers that you plug onto the end of stools so they don’t slip. The FAQ suggested at Mike’s calls them ‘Furniture Tips’.
• Pipes - Try to get those of a diameter that fits well in your hands. When you wrap your fingers over them, your fingers should just about touch your palm. Try tossing some of the store-made clubs to see what feels best for you and get a gauge from there I guess. Oh, but make sure the mouth of your bottle’s wide enough to fit the pipe into.

The making of the clubs is pretty self-explanatory but let me talk a bit about how the club heads should be done. I chose bottles that are curveous in a way that when I cut one in half, it fits over the base of the other nicely. This creates a little compartment for me to fill up with beans (hence creating a nice weighted feel). You should check out websites like Dube or RenegadeJuggling to check out the weight of the clubs they sell and then weigh the parts you have to see how much beans you’d need to put in.

The weakest parts of the homemade clubs (and the parts most prone to spoiling) are the tops and the mouths of the bottles. There’d usually be some space between the mouth of the bottle and the pipe walls so do stuff some paper to fill up the space and secure it well with tape. As for the tops, I suppose tennis ball halves or rubber discs or an equivalent would be good.

Tags: juggling clubs, making clubs

Summary of situation:

Got bored, looked at shelf, played some games.

Games Played:

Kingdom Hearts (ps2)

After 25 hours into the game (20 of them were accumulated over the past 2 years), I’m still looking for signs of the brilliance game reviews from all over made this out to be. The camera’s crap; the cutscenes are unnecessarily slow; if you die in battle you can’t skip the cutscenes you’ve already watched for the 52344th time; the voice acting doesn’t synchronize with the characters’ mouths and did I mention how crappy the camera is already? Why do I still play it then? I’m a big Disney fan and the graphics are all so pweeeetty!

Fable (Xbox)

Kicked a chicken. Got bored. Next.

 Dynasty Warriors 3 (ps2)

The whole hack and slash theme was fun… until I lost a level and had to start from scratch again because there was no save point. After 2 hours of button mashing, about 30 min worth of kills away from victory, a whole swarm of enemy troops burst into the scene and kill off my character. Game over. This happened twice.

Final Fantasy VIII (psOne)

I started up the game. The title screen bored me. I took the game out.

 Polarium (Nintendo DS)

Well, some sources describe this game as being “like Tetris”. Tetris was fun. In the 80s.

Pokemon Diamond (Nintendo DS)

In all fairness, the game’s really a rehash of the previous Pokemon games with Wi-Fi capabilities now thrown in (because it’s a DS title, duh). Instead of having the prompts for your next moves overlaying your command box, the options are now on the touchscreen so it can claim to be a DS game. Redundant really and annoying at times even.

Still, 6 hours later, I’m still compelled to play more of the game so that must be a good sign.

I spent the week trying out crazy stuff like unispins and stand-up wheelwalking (which really isn’t dangerous at all) and kickup mounts and running kickup mounts. The worst I get are little bruises around the crook behind the knee, mostly because I bruise very easily. Then I go out and play a safe game of unicycle hockey and scrape a slice of skin off that bony part of the ankle on the end of the fork while dismounting. So it bleeds and all. Darn, thought I.

On my way home, I thought I’d one-foot ride down the path, a reallly fail-safe trick because if you lose your balance, you’d just jump off the uni unscathed. While putting my foot back on the pedal, I scrape THAT SAME PART of the ankle on THE SAME SPOT of the fork.

Ugh.

I discovered Pokemon Diamond yesterday. Will update with Friend code and raves/rants soon enough.

POKEMON ARE THE BEST THINGS ON EARTH! (and Pikachu tastes best served simply with soy sauce)

I bought 4 of those Made-in-China imitation ‘Superballs’ today. They were from those capsule machines that kids (and I) love. I used to have quite a collection of the smaller ones when I was a kid and I distinctly remember them feeling a lot harder and bouncier than these though. Still, they’re waaay lighter than my current lacrosse balls which sound awful on the marble at home so no one’s going to be complaining of an earthquake anymore, I hope.

Videos to come as soon as I figure out what to do with them. In the meantime, I’m learning 5-ball juggling after being quite inspired by some people. More on that after I actually can juggle that.

Tags: balls, juggling

Stand up wheelwalking is the most frustrating thing to learn ever. I found a nice tutorial on YouTube so you guys will know what I’m talking about.

Tags: unicycling, wheelwalk, one foot wheelwalk, unispins

I like a la carte buffets. For one, the food quality tends to be better since each dish is prepared individually (well, at least it’s true for sushi and sashimi) and also, you don’t have to contend with settling for the less popular dishes after the hungry hordes descend the tables.

Hanabi at Bukit Timah has, I reckon, the most consistantly good Japanese buffet in town. The servings are generous, yet not so overwhelming as to fill you up fast before you can try other items on the menu.

There’s nothing like a dish of assorted dead raw fish flesh to make you feel full and satiated.

Tags: japanese, sushi, food

My whole obsession with Ben and Jerry’s pretty much began some two years back when, feeling quite rich, we’d have ice cream by the pint on bus rides.

Yesterday was Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day. THEY DIDN’T HAVE CHUBBY HUBBY DAMMIT.

Tags: ben and jerry’s, ice cream, free cone day

Sometimes, I amuse myself.

So by some twist of fate, I’ve got myself these two games. Battle for Middle Earth II is now the 4th game in my possession that states explicitly on its box that it “does not support GeForce 4 MX graphics cards”. And as the aforementioned fate has it, that’s what my computer runs on so this is the 4th game in my possession that I can’t play on my PC.

Nice.

So let’s talk about Carbon instead.

Oh wait, I don’t have a Wii either.

Bloody hell.