Bringing My Blog Back to Life!

For those who are new to my blog, you may have noticed a huge gap between my fourth to the last post to the next one. Yes, I've kinda abandoned my blog for a short time because I got too busy with work last December that I was still working during the holidays just to finish my deliverables. Honestly, I thought I would not be able to post again, but the views that I get everyday inspired me to continue what I've started. It's not much, but I feel proud that my blog gets at least 50 views in a day. My Globe Superstick reviews are my most viewed posts here, and I still receive comments and questions about it from time to time.

Those tough days are over, and I'm pretty glad that I can now post regularly in my blog. I still have a lot to work on though. My blog's design is still pretty messy, and I need to change a lot of elements and fonts. I still haven't decided what to do with that navigation bar though. I would love to hear suggestions from you regarding this so let me know in the comments.

Hopefully, I can work on these little by little as well as posting as regular as I can. Thanks to people that are still checking my blog from time to time and please be patient with the changes around here. 

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Posted in: miscellanous

This is How You Create a Street Fighter X Tekken Film!

Let's face it, the Tekken movie released last 2010 was a horrible piece of crap. And upon watching this 10-min film from Youtube, I can't help but be reminded of a thing that Hollywood movie producers failed to create throughout these years - a good film based on a video game. The Resident Evil series is probably the best that we got, and it's not even that spectacular. I wonder if movie makers have a damn clue of what they should do to create a good movie based on a video game. They should learn a thing or two from this video.

I personally love the last part of this video showing Jin. Enjoy!

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Posted in: Street Fighter,Street Fighter X Tekken,Tekken,Tekken movie

Iglesia Ni Cristo Grand Evangelical Mission in Quirino Grandstand

You know that awkward feeling when you see this amount of people in the GEM held by Iglesia Ni Cristo in Quirino Grandstand? Yeah, I know, it's overwhelming, I felt the shivers down my spine because little did I know that it would be THIS huge. It felt like the INC 95th Anniversary all over again.


The picture above was a desperate attempt from me to keep a memory of one the biggest gatherings of Iglesia Ni Cristo in history. Yeah, my phone's camera is an epic fail during events like this but at least I was able to get a decent shot out the 19 pictures that I took (yes that's the best that I've got ^__^)


Brethren started filling up the venue as early as 5 AM in the morning, so it was no surprise that I had a hard time getting near the stage as it was already crowded at around 2 PM, 3 hours before the start time of the Bible exposition. My girlfriend and her officemates who went to the venue a few hours later had no choice but to walk their way to it from Ayala Ave. Traffic was already too heavy and the LRT was too crowded that the line to the ticket booth extended to the streets.


You can imagine how massive this event had become. Media has released their estimates but the numbers are a little bit off, some estimates say it's 200,000, some say 600,000, while I've read a few ones say it's over a million. I'm not gonna give my own estimates here though. And since my Samsung Galaxy Y can't do the job very well, I'll post some more pictures here that I've taken from another source to give you an idea how many people were in the said event in Quirino Grandstand as well as shots taken from other venues. There are 19 venues all in all, so I missed a few of them.

An aerial view of the GEM in Quirino Grandstand during the night

An aerial view of the GEM in Quirino Grand Stand during the day

GEM venue at Freedom Sports Complex, Pili, Camarines Sur

GEM venue at Palawan

Gloria Town Plaza, Mindoro

Tacloban City Convention Center

La Union National High School Sports Complex

Isabela Sports Complex

La Paz Plaza, Iloilo City

General Santos City Gym

Davao Agro-Football Stadium

Cebu City Fuente Osmena

Limketkai Center Cagayan De Oro City

Agusan City

These pictures were taken from the official Facebook page of the Iglesia ni Cristo. Yup, this IS the official one, there's no other, everyone else is fake. Like the page and make sure to follow THE INC official Twitter account as well if you want to get updated about these big events and receive spiritual guidance as well. ^__^

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Posted in: events,GEM,Grand Evangelical Mission,Iglesia Ni Cristo,Quirino Grandstand

Playing Battlefield 3 With The Globe Superstick

I know you guys have seen this dreaded message at some point while playing Battlefield 3. It's very very frustrating especially during those clutch situations where the heat of the battle is at its greatest, grenades flying everywhere and you and your team mates are holding your own to protect the objective and then boom - you lose all the points, all the unlocks, all the kills (and deaths) that you've collected and that particular matchup is recorded as a loss. It happened to me a lot of times, and I always felt like throwing my controller out of the window in sheer frustration. 

Lag. It's a game breaking problem that most of us have experienced one way or another and it's not really something that the game devs can completely eliminate, especially if you have a wireless internet connection like myself. And it doesn't help that our ISPs here in the Philippines are subpar compared to other countries. 

When I check the server browser, I used to always get 1 bar ping on every server wherever it is. It really destroys my gameplay because there are a lot of times that I'm sure I hit the guy first, unload my clip but for some reason he manages to turn around and kill me first. There are times that I've used up a full clip of DAO-12 bullets on an enemy and he's still alive. I feel like my bullets take 5 minutes to hit the enemy sometimes and it's very frustrating. Lag also affects the VOIP, and though the poor quality of the PS3 voice chat is already identified as an issue, it becomes more apparent using a wireless connection (note: The VOIP issue has already been fixed in the recent patch). Especially during those peak hours, I can't understand what my squad mates yell at me.


In this article though, I'll teach you how to enable port forwarding on the Globe Superstick to somehow improve the online experience of Battlefield 3. It doesn't completely eliminate the lag, but it greatly minimizes lag during gameplay which in turn improves hit detection and it also lessens disconnections from my experience.  You can also apply this to other online games as well, but the ports that you need to open might be different. In that case, refer to Portforward to check the ports that you need to open in a particular game, or do a Google search. However, this doesn't guarantee that the game will be playable. Tekken 6 is absolutely unplayable online using the Globe Superstick even with the port forwarding enabled.


I must warn you though, don't even attempt to play Battlefield 3 or any online game if you can't even attain a less than 300 ms ping consistently (to check, just type ping -t google.com or any site on your command prompt). You're just gonna get frustrated even more.

The first thing you need to do is to set a static IP address on your PS3. By default, most routers assign dynamic IPs and the Superstick is no exception. It will assign an IP somewhere in the range of 192.168.0.1xx, but will start from the lowest number available, e.g. 192.168.0.101. When a static IP address is assigned to a wi-fi capable device, the router won't know that the device is using that IP address, so it might assign the same IP to another device. Thus, you need to assign a static IP address that you're sure won't be handed out to another device that connects to your Superstick, so choose a higher number to assign to your PS3. Now let's get started.

1. Turn on your PS3, connect to your Superstick through wi-fi then go to Network Settings > Settings and Connection Status List. Write down the IP address that's assigned to your PS3, subnet mask, default router, primary DNS, and secondary DNS as you'll need them later.

2. Go to Network Settings > Internet Connections Settings. Choose Custom for the setting method.

3. Next choose Wireless > Enter Manually. Don't change your SSID and security settings.
4. For IP address setting choose Manual. Now here's the part where you have to set your static IP. After choosing an IP address, just put the same values for Subnet Mask, Default Router and DNS as your settings that you took note of earlier.

5. Just choose automatic for the rest of the settings and save.
6. Ok, now time to configure port forwarding on your Superstick. Open your Superstick dashboard either through Tattoo Superstick icon on your computer or by typing http://192.168.0.1 on your browser.
7. Go to Settings > Firewall > Port Forwarding.
8. Choose Enable for Virtual Server Settings. In the IP Address field, put the static IP that you assigned to your PS3.
9. The ports that you need to configure are in this link. So basically you need to enter 8 rules all in all. Click Apply for each rule that you enter.

Now try to play Battlefield 3. Feel much better now? Again, this does not guarantee that your game will be lag or disconnection free. This is due to certain factors, one of which is the network traffic. There are weekends when I totally can't connect to any server in the server browser until midnight comes, when network traffic is very low. But when your connection allows you to connect, you will feel like you're really playing Battlefield 3.


Above all this though, my best advice to have a better online gaming experience is subscribe to a wired connection because seriously, Globe Superstick or any wireless internet out there sucks chicken ass. DSL is still the most reliable internet connection here in the Philippines.


Take note that all of this testing is with a HSDPA only connection, so given the lower ping rates and higher upload rates of HSPA+, I believe the online gaming experience is gonna change once Globe has rolled out HSPA+ to all cell sites near my place. However, I feel like the improvements of Globe to their internet services is very sluggish. The moment that my Superstick starts receiving HSPA+ signals here in my place I will put it to test immediately to my online games.


Feel free to comment about your experience with the Superstick especially in online gaming. I would love to hear from you.

If you haven't read my reviews for the Globe Tattoo Superstick yet, you can check them out here:

The Globe Tattoo Superstick Review: Device and Interface
The Globe Tattoo Superstick Review: Network Performance and Internet Experience


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Posted in: Battlefield 3,Globe Superstick,internet,video games

New Theme for My Blog!

I deeply apologize for everyone who are constantly visiting my blog for the mess that happened recently. I don't exactly know what happened but it seemed like my last theme got corrupted beyond repair. Well not really, it might still be fixable but I don't wanna go through all that hassle. Applying a new theme is 10 times easier and because most of my articles are related to video games, I've chosen the Gamenation Blogger theme. 


Fixes to this theme are far from finished, I've been very busy during the past few weeks and I'm just squeezing what little time I have left for the day to fix my blog. For now please ignore the navigation bar below the title. It's not working and I still haven't decided yet what to do with it. The search function doesn't seem to work as well, and a lot of people have been complaining about Blogger's search widget lately. It's a shame because the theme's default search bar looks cool :-/ Anyway, if you need to search something from my blog I suggest using Google instead for the mean time.


Don't worry I'm planning to modify the sliders as well. Please bear with me till I get done with everything here.

Future Plans

I'm having a lot of problems with the Blogger interface lately it's not even funny. For example, I tried to change the Favicon but I'm getting the error below. The Edit Layout page looks absolutely wack as well. So I'm planning to move all of these to Wordpress so stay tuned for that. I'm just not sure when it will happen but as soon as I get all the resources that I need, I'll update this blog big time.

What the hell?!

I don't get anything from writing articles here but I appreciate everyone who constantly reads my posts and visits my site every now and then. Thanks everyone. 


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Posted in: miscellanous

New Members of My Gadget Family

Sorry for the title. Yeah I know it's lame but I just can't think of a better title for this post. But anyway, I know you're feeling the cold winds of December right now. It's the jolliest month of the year because there are lots of things we get excited about - Christmas, New Year, holiday, 13th month bonus, iPhone 4s release particularly this December, you name it. In my case, I'm pretty excited for Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and the latest additions to my gadgets and gears collection. These blessings that I received lately are not that much but I'm very thankful to have them.


Logitech G330

From the moment I started playing Battlefield 3 with a clan, I knew I have to somehow find a way to communicate with them. After all, Battlefield 3 is a teamplay based game and team communication is an indispensable part of gameplay if you want to score that W. 


At first I try to chat with them through XMB menu if I really need to say something like if I spotted a hidden sniper, etc. It was really inconvenient and it causes my PS3 to slow down or even hang at times due to multitasking. Also, I have to find a safe spot first so I can have ample time to type what I have to say. Sounds absurd right? It also doesn't help that I always tend to play Battlefield 3 when all my house mates are sleeping, and I don't want to play the game muted. I don't want to always go through all of this so I finally decided to buy a headphone that is compatible with the PS3. I could go with the official Sony wireless headset but that is way too expensive for me. I could go with a really cheap one like CD-R King but I don't want to settle with lackluster quality and poor durability. So I asked my clan mates what their preferences are. Their most recommended headset? The Logitech G330. 

It's priced at P1950 which is roughly half the price of the Sony Official Wireless Headset. It also works right out of the box but is also a little tricky to setup if you want redirect the audio output of your game to the headset, otherwise you'll hear only the output of the voice chat in it. Also, it's a wired headset so the distance between you and your TV is limited to an extent, though the wire is long enough so you can game at around 4 feet away from your TV, depending on your setup. If you have a big ass TV though, I certainly won't recommend this or any wired headset for that matter. Aside from that, I believe the sound quality is good as long as I can hear everything in BF3 and I don't hear any unwanted noise. I highly recommend you buy this headset if you don't have enough money for the Sony wireless headset and still want good quality.


Samsung Galaxy Y






After more than 5 years, my Nokia N70 has finally given up on me. I always believed that my N70 has all the functionalities that I needed from a phone and I don't need to buy the more techy and more expensive phones out there. Now that it finally died, I needed to find a suitable replacement. There are lots of great phones and tablet PCs out there, and I got some prospects in mind - the iPhone 4s for its awesome 8 MP camera as well as 1080p HD video recording, Samsung Galaxy Note for being a phone-tablet PC hybrid, or the Asus Transformer 101 or Samsung Galaxy Tab for sheer power in an Android tablet. Unfortunately, I don't have the money to buy any of this, so I ended up buying the Samsung Galaxy Y instead. 

It's unbelievably cheap for an Android phone, and people are getting crazy over this from the moment it was released in the market. I had the chance to ask the sales guy in MemoXpress and he told me they're selling Samsung Galaxy Y's like hotcakes, as much as 10 units in a day. So I finally got one and I'm enjoying it. I wanna put an in-depth review of this phone as well but this is my first Android phone so I'm not sure if I can put up a good comparison with other phones out there. But I will definitely post my impressions about this phone in the upcoming days.


Steel Series Shift Pro Gaming Keyboard

If you've read one of my past articles, I've mentioned that I won an epic gaming keyboard from Let's Go Gamers and I've already received my price a few weeks ago and I'm very excited to use it in my PC. My PC is not a gaming rig, but I have a few games there that I can test with it. Damn, I wish I could upgrade it sometime in the future so I can fully utilize this keyboard. Here are some screenshots of it. Now wipe off that drool coming out of your mouth :-P.

I will post a review of this gaming keyboard sometime in the future. Now if you're not part yet of the more than 10,000 gamers in LGG community then join now and use this invite code: 84bbcd5


Mipow Power Tube

My girlfriend's hometown is in Legaspi City, Albay, and I take a vacation there with her at least once a year because it is such a beautiful place. And during those long trips it helps that I have some of my gadgets to keep me occupied. However, one way trip to Legaspi City is like 10-12 hours and none of my gadgets can last that long, especially with my PSP having a lackluster 3-hour battery life. So when I got to Mall of Asia last weekend I decided to buy the Mipow Power Tube 2200 mAh from Astrovision.

There are newer models with higher capacities like the 4000 mAh, 4400 mAh, and 5500 mAh. I like the design of the 4000 mAh model but unfortunately, it's only compatible with iPhones and iPods. The 5500 mAh looks the same and also compatible with pretty much every gadget or device out there but is way too pricey for me. The 4400 mAh should have been perfect, complete with all the tips compatible with different smartphones and portable game consoles but I don't like its design. It's literally twice as long as the 2200 mAh model so it won't fit your pocket at all. So I just settled for the 2200 mAh model, and during that time the battery charge of my Samsung Galaxy Y is critically low so I tested it right away with its manufacture charge. Both my phone and the power tube fit in my pocket so it is really convenient though it feels a little awkward later because the power tube gets warm while charging the phone. It added a few more hours of life to my phone before it got fully drained. Wonderful. This will definitely add an extra life to my gadgets during a long trip and during those emergencies where you can't find an electrical outlet or whatever.

So I'm gonna post my thoughts about these gadgets in the near future so stay tuned!


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Posted in: gadgets,technology

Battlefield 3 Patch Released for Playstation 3: IRNV got nerfed!

For those of you who missed that post in Battlelog, DICE has just rolled out a patch today for Battlefield 3 on PS3. Xbox360 players will have to wait though. It's some 750+ MB which is quite huge, and here's the complete list or what's fixed in this patch:

General fixes

• Significant improvements to the Squad Join interface, full details in this earlier blog post
• Removed FIND ME A SQUAD option
• Allow players to join empty Squads alone, thus having 1/4 Squad members
• Change order of options to LEAVE SQUAD, INV A FRIEND, SWITCH TEAM
• Disable Privacy flag when 1 man Squad
• Reset Privacy flag from Private to Public when Squad drops to 1 player
• All occupied Squads will now show up colored blue on the Squad selection screen
• Players who choose not to join Squads will also show up as Blue in the "Not in a Squad” line
• Squads that are currently empty will display as white -- if you wish to join an empty Squad, you can choose the first one marked with white text
• Added round duration and ticket summary at end of round screen
• Fixed sound for when climbing ladders
• Fixed and issue with some weapons' sounds in first person view
• Fixed a swim sound loop error
• You should no longer be able to damage a friendly vehicle when sitting in an open position
• Grenades now drop to ground if you get killed while attempting to throw it
• Spawn protection now should work in Conquest so you no longer should spawn too close to enemies
• You should no longer spawn too close to enemies in TDM and SQDM
• Fix for missing input restriction during intro movie, causing players to potentially fall and die while watching movie if moving controller (or having a controller with a bad stick zone)
• Combat areas on Kharg Island in Rush mode tweaked in order to disallow defenders to access the carrier ship after first base is taken and being able to enter the AA gun
• Fixed a problem with revived players not being able to get suppressed
• Fixed a problem with the camera when being revived in co-op
• Spotting VO now plays when spotting from MAV/EOD bot
• Fixed several issues regarding the kill card, including showing wrong weapons used for the kill
• Fixed that sometimes you would be stuck on a black screen when kicked from server
• Fixed so when a team captures two flags at the same time, the UI does not show wrong owner of the flag
• Fixed a problem where the capture progress bar was shown as friendly when the enemy was capturing
• Fixed a problem with the bipod deploy sound
• Fixed a problem that you could be spawned in with no weapons after being killed while using the EOD bot
• Fixed problems with health bars not displaying health properly when using EOD bots
• Fixed a problem with flickering name tags
• Fixed a problem where you could damage friendly helicopters
• Fixed a problem where you could get stuck in the co-op menu when attempting to join the session twice
• You should now be able to spot explosives
• You should no longer spawn in home base if your selected spawn point is disabled while waiting to spawn (e.g. if your teammate dies right before you are about to spawn)
• Damage from bullets will now continue to cause damage even after the firing user is dead
• Fixed several client crashes
• Fixed a problem where players could get stuck in the join queue
• Fixed the repair icon on the minimap
• Fixed a problem with changing camera on certain vehicles
• Fixed a problem with the grenade indicator when in guided missile mode
• Fixed a problem where the machine could hard lock when joining a public coop game
• Fixed a problem where the headset attached icon would not show up in the UI
• Fixed a problem with the falling antenna on Caspian Border. It should now more instantly kill anyone in its falling path
• Fixed a problem where tank turrets would turn too slow
• Fixed a bug on co-op mission "Exfiltration" where you could end up outside the vehicle and not being able to enter it again, thus blocking the mission
• Fixed a problem where a user can become invulnerable after being resurrected
• Fixed a problem with the M60 reload sound
• Fixed a hang in terrain streaming, causing the user to get stuck on black screen under special circumstances in single player
• Fixed a problem where the enemy would not be able to get a road kill on a user that was using the SOFLAM
• Fixed soldiers disappearing in the mortar kill cam
• Fix for Type88 and MG36 zoom in animation offset when in supported shooting mode (using bipods)


Balance changes

• Increased the damage of helicopter miniguns, AA guns, and jet cannons against infantry
• Increased the damage of helicopter miniguns against jeeps
• Reduced the physics impact of AA guns and jet cannons so players under attack from these weapons no longer should lose control
• Increased the damage of the 44 Magnum slightly
• Increased the range and minimum damage of the .357 Round from the MP412 Rex
• Increased the range of all .45cal and 9mm weapons
• Slightly increased the range of the P90 and MP7 and PDW-R
• Slightly increased the range of the 5.56mm PDW-R and decreased the minimum damage at long range
• Slightly increased the minimum range of the Mk11, SVD, and M39 EMR 7.62mm rifles
• Decreased the maximum damage and maximum range of the G3 and SCAR-H 7.62mm weapons
• Reduced the damage from FIM-92 and SA-18 IGLA missiles against aircraft
• Increased the damage and range of the 40mm BUCK rounds
• Reduced the damage .50cal weapons do against helicopters
• Updated T90 canister shell tweaks to match Abrams canister shells 


That was some huge update! Also, Demize99 also posted a Youtube video showing how the IRNV scope and SCAR-H gun were nerfed:

 
I haven't downloaded the patch yet but from judging through the video, it looks like the IRNV can't spot enemies anymore from a certain distance. The color of the soldiers also changed from orange to green. Also, there's some kind of blurring effect that was added to it when you spot moving targets. 

And yet there's still people complaining that there's no difference and it's still overpowered. Some people never get satisfied, do they? For those people who are still whining about the IRNV after the patch, please stop whining like 7-year old kids. If you can't see the difference then you're either blind or stupid. If you still think it's overpowered then you're either a fag or a retard. We should be at least thankful that DICE is willing to fix these things unlike other shooters out there that has obviously a lot of glaring flaws yet never get fixed. *cough*MW2*cough*BlackOps*cough*


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Posted in: Battlefield 3,news,video games