Crashing Akademi Fantasia (TV Game)

To the truth, I've never watched one of Astro TV's premier shows in the region, Akademi Fantasia, mainly due to my lustful intimacy with my computer rather than my TV (take note however, I am now two-timing my computer with my cellphone, which probably explains why they never want to communicate peacefully via UBS cable anymore).

But last Friday was one of the hectic-est (can I patent this word?) day for the last 2 months and a half I've ever been in MyGO. Reason pertaining was that completing the new AF game was of the utmost priority, so that Astro can make the most standard-telco-rates-apply money while the momentum is running strong.

I can't really show you the full game we were crash testing, mainly because it's not fully completed yet at time of writing. Furthermore, I'm too cheap to hire a lawyer in case Boss Bun turns against me and sue for infringement of privacy, breach of contract, etcetera-etcetera. Now that I think about it, his attention span of two minutes would make court proceedings slightly difficult.

So I can only afford this secret cellphone snappy.

Everybody! Stop working and start playing. That's your boss's order! Now!

If you're an avid TV SMS gamer or just curious to know how game developers do beta-testing, read on at your pleasure. It was something new for me too.

When a system is done, head programmer (Supervisor-Christy) needs all hands on deck to abuse the game to the max. Once in the company's server, the main programmer of the game, in this case is green-jacket-guy Usuff, starts the countdown to tell the system how long it should run.

Meanwhile, anybody who's glued to a PC has to access this dummy site that simulates a cellphone SMS system (but without the standard-telco-rates-apply) which connects directly to the test server. Since it was a dummy site, most staff of MyGO opened two or three of them, since the game system was designed to accommodate a Mongol horde.


Dummy SMS site. This image was blurry on purpose but I'm guessing you get the idea.

The plan was to hit the AF game system with an overload of players, real-time scenario, so we can check for any bugs, failures or even sudden stalling of the whole thing, which Astro company most definitely don't want that (we work hard so you play hard, hehehe). This is what the cyber-universe community calls a crash-test.

Once the countdown started running, it was like provoking a pack of hell-hounds. Everybody had only 20 minutes to get the highest score possible and with no minimum charge, who the hell wants to be skipping out of the Numero Uno battle, even a mock-up was it was?

Not all the participating 8 staffs of building 2A, Jalan Wan Kadir 1, that's for sure. The greatest reward is in the play.

It was a lot of fun, being the very first players of a very brand new game based on a popular reality show. Especially since it was a shooter style game and pretty easy to catch on. Once the 20 minutes was up, I managed a respectable 6th place (but about 200 points behind the 5th, bleh).

Our top game designer Kenny, master gamer as he always have been, gathered 600+ point on the top. If this was a real TV SMS game, he would have spend over RM20 but since it was a mock-up, I'm sure he enjoyed his rich, dark, very sweet, one gula-gula Hacks prize.

Again, the best reward is all in the play (Head programmer Christy was too cheap-lar~...).


As for the AF game system, it survived our abuse and had kept its smooth run. After a bit of tweaking and a list of credits, it'll be ready for Astro TV's Channel @ 15 soon enough.


Later that afternoon, Boss Bun gave a minor party to everybody to celebrate MyGO's stability.

SP's January 2008 Photo Entry

I think I’ll make a photo entry as a regular feature, now that I have a Sony Ericsson and Imageshack at my disposal. It should give you an intimate view to the many aspect of my life and get to know more about the small random things about me and around me.

Actually, I’m just too lazy to write my regularly long-winded entries.

The barbecue set. A very old friend of the family, this thing had served more mouths than a school canteen’s stove and passed between family members more times than the number of reasons to actually have a barbecue.


Sandwiches. One of my Seven Shameful Sins. I don’t often buy sandwiches, but I make’em like Dagwood style. Plain bread, brown bread, toasted bread, garlic bread, cheese slices, cheese spread, swiss cheese, melted cheese, garlic butter, garlic mulch, green relish, salami, burger meat, mince meat, meatballs, beef bacon, barbecued chicken, shredded chicken or tuna (dry, grilled or mayo), boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, turkey ham, turkey strips, hot dog strips, corn chips, lettuce, chopped celery, chopped chili, cucumber (thick, thin and pickled), pickled jalapenos, tomatoes or onions (fresh or grilled or pickled), toasted mushroom, brown sauce, barbecue sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, chili sauce, mustard, 2-layered, 3-layered, open-faced, you-name-it-I-had-it.
Now I want to go to Uptown and eat Subway.


I. Have. Bad sense. Of direction. In more ways than one.
I’m more male-oriented mentality when it comes to driving to new places. I read maps, I don’t ask for directions. So if I’m lost, you better get a motorbike and locate me because telling directions to me on the cellphone guarantees gets me lost even more (I got lost in Hospital University as recent as lastweek).


I read a lot of fantasy books. These two of the Aleran series by Jim Butcher (excellent writer, see his Dresden Files series) are currently loaned to my cousin since he doesn’t need to buy fantasy books since I keep buying them. I just hope he remembers to give them back before he returns to study in India.





Photos of The Curve's New Year 2008 party. I saw them last year with my father and was pretty awed. I went to The Curve again this year with a couple of moon-lighting buddies.


Oh yeah, one more thing. Please, please, help! I still have a bee hive in my trash box and no idea how to get rid of it before it grows any bigger.

Kak Dilla’s New Home

I’ve mentioned before that I have a Big Freaking Malay Family in my entry, Aidil Adha gathering.

Here comes the encore; Blessing Kak Dilla’s New Home. The rules of conduct are the same; bring family, bring food, bring gossip.

Craaaaaaaaap. But it’s still my favorite kind of crap.

Kak Dilla is my mother’s eldest brother’s second daughter; for short, she’s my first cousin. One of the eldest cousins to get married in Clan Jailani (shame-shame on my still unmarried brother, *Arsenal, the oldest of the 3rd generation), she, her husband, their 2.3 kids and their kitchen sink had been living in this small apartment next to the noisy NKVE (New Klang Valley Expressway for you foreign readers).

Now they have a real home; a small one-storey semi-detached house next to a noisy ironworks factory. If it weren’t for the driving distance and the good-sized plot of land, it’s not much difference from their old home. Literally.

As usual, there's never enough hallways to stuff people in.

Back to the new house. Kak Dilla’s husband’s family also joined in the fray but it’s not as a huge turn-out as the Aidil Adha gathering; but it’s still big enough to loose a baby in.

Namely, this baby.

At nine months old, the youngest and newest addition in Clan Jailani (until May 2008, when my sister’s second baby’s due), Kak Dilla’s baby, BigEyes, is very quiet, observant, tends to crawl everywhere on his own and does weird habits like laughing loudly every time someone flushes the toilet.


Mohd. Soleh, dubbed BigEyes. Oh, and that’s my brother, Genius, in the background, looking for his socks amidst 143 shoes.

There was a panicked 30 seconds when every responsible adult had assumed the other responsible adult was watching the baby. It turns out BigEyes was, yes, in the bathroom, laughing every time his two cousins flushes the toilet.

After the noon ritual prayers, every body takes position and a holy book. The idea was the fill the new house with the reading of the Al-Quran, so that the white walls echoed. You don’t need an imam to bless someone’s house, just a group reading aloud from the book and a leader to direct the prayers.

There’s no need to read aloud all 114 chapters (that’s the job of the accorded household living in the house for the next so-and-so years), just as much of the book and the time you have as you can get a large group of people to do it. The After-Haji party.


Each able-bodied family member grabs a chapter of the Al-Quran and reads aloud, so the house gets blessed.

And it gives the excuse for the older family members to check on which responsible young adult had been reading the Al-Quran diligently... and nag them.
“Hey, tak betul bacaan tu! Tengok tajwid, jangan leka!”
Good grief.

So after the long-winded reading and the continued blessing and the procedural bru-ha-ha-whatever, then comes the next event.

FOOD!!


As Clan Jailani’s from Johor, what else but to serve Laksa Johor? Yum, look at the long line.

Okay personally, I’m not into Laksa Johor. Or any other kind of laksa. Put me in the Laksa Shack and I’ll starve to death. It’s a genetic disorder (my uncle and one other aunt couldn’t stand laksa either and they’re from Johor). Luckily for my plate, there are fruits, cakes, sandwiches and a healthy order of hot meehoon soup.



Clan Jailani in all our eating habits glory.

Once everybody had been stuffed, stinking of laksa breath and baby BigEyes secured in his priso-, I mean playpen, then comes the family discussion. PakSu was supposed to bring his high-tech projector and laptop and show it off on Kak Dilla’s nice blank wall but he forgo the equipment (must be because the risk of the ‘little people’ stampeding everywhere) in exchange for nice printed documents.

The children of Allahyarham Haji Jailani, aka Yayi Board Members (yayi is grandfather in Javanese), brought out all the usual things they didn’t get to discuss on Aidil Adha gathering, along with several new updates.

From her Johor trip, Mak reported that Bibik (Yayi’s youngest sister) is doing fine with her son’s family, though her eyesight is really, really failing and that she tires more easily (she must be about mid 80s at least).

But she still insist on serving her special tea herself every time the KL family comes so Mak remembers to NOT CALL before arriving (surprise!), lest Bibik tries to turn on the stove and serve the glass cups with her bad eyes and bad back.

Beyond that, the usual. Money from the pineapple farm goes into the Jailani Fund, Bibik’s grandson is doing well in Colorado, USA and Cik Jah (my aunt with Down-syndrome) is sticking around Pontian, Johor for a while longer to renew cousinly ties.

All and all, the usual family discussion. Although I wasn’t really needed to be in the discussion, I try to keep up-to-date with the family’s, er, gossip. Mak’s siblings are an army of grandparents or soon-to-be grandparents. Just in case anything happens, I feel like I want to make sure I know how the connection goes and who to turn to in any emergency.

That sort of thing. It’s really a feeling of responsibility. . Nobody is in prison, nobody is in drugs, nobody is physically disabled and nobody had a major life-altering road accident. The Clan Jailani has grown and prospered and maintained a beautiful network, a very far cry from Yayi’s own history in the Japanese-Occupied past

For myself, the big family thing sucks. Sure it’s large and dandy and whatever-fancy, but we got lost between Sungai Buluh and Meru while on the way and found ourselves stuck in construction-induced traffic jam for an hour.

Everybody’s so freaking busybody (“Okay, okay! I’ll fix my tajwid. I promise to read the Al-Quran more often too.”) and always want to know if anybody found a new girlfriend or boyfriend yet. Seriously, my Aunt No. 5 actually declared this aloud to a comfortably chatting group, making it sound like it’s a life or death situation.

Also when not going Dutch, the main food is always Laksa Johor (which I hate) and nobody can keep a real proper eye on anybody’s baby (I think BigEye’s a budding mad genius... or a plumber) and so they al blame ME because I wasn’t occupied doing anything (and also that I’m in my twenties and unmarried; aunts trying to scare me of my future).

Next family’s gathering coming up anytime now. Maybe sooner than later.
Craaaaaaaaap.

But it’s still my favorite kind of crap.