Have you choose your fate?

Fate is an action role playing diablo-like game created by WildTangent. The story is really simple. A village was underattacked by mighty demon which reside in the cave afterwards. And our hero will have its destiny to fight those demon by using his/her special skill.

At the beginning of gameplay, we can choose 4 difficulty setting i.e: Page, Adventurer, Hero and Legend. And then we can choose hair style, face, etc. Some unimportant stuff :P...
Our hero will be accompanied by a dog/cat as his/her pet during the mission. Surprisingly, our pet cannot die while in the battle so its will come to really helpful in supporting our hero. Just let our pet fight for our hero and then heal it when its health is in danger. Very simple...

The uniqueness of this game come from fishing mode. Our hero can catch many different fish for feeding our pet and let it transform into another monster form. Each monster our pet transform into has a special skill and ability. But after spending hours fishing, we can become very boring of waiting and buy the fish directly from the fisherman there instead :P...

The game doesn't put some restriction of what our hero will be. We can choose every skill and magic we like to be learned by our hero. Of course, there are limit of what skill our hero can learn at any given time. Every level our hero gained, there are only 2 skill point given.

The similar situation comes apply for our hero charateristics. We can let our hero become witch by raising its magical point but of course with trade-off of lowering his/her strength or maybe dexterity. For each level gained we only get 4 stats point. But the choice of make use these 4 stats points is up to us completely.

In summary, Fate is a average game, with average gameplay. The upside of fate is that it's not require so much processing power nor graphical processing power. You can use your notebook with integrated graphics card for playing it. The downside, of course this game can be really boring. Imagine going 50th level down in the cave full of monsters with the similar enemy and no surprise at all. Wild tangent can do much better by adding some puzzle and secret enemy/character, but they didn't do it while creating fate, making it only deserve 6 from scale 1 to 10!

Monster sound from edifier!

Edifier, a chinese speaker manufacture, recently release a super montrous heavy metal speaker for music lover. It's S550 and S730 that will captivate heart of enthusiast people around the globe. Let's take a look at both of them ;)

S550, as we can see from the image on the left, is a really nice-looking design speaker. The speaker is designed and inspired by Phil Jones, one of the most famous audio artist who settles in Japan currently (if I'm not mistaken). Except the design, Phil Jones has fine-tune the overall sound of this speaker too, to be sound as please as possible for everyone.

But how about the specification. Below is the specification for S550 taken from Edifier website :

Specifications:

• Power output: RMS 5 x 35W + 120W (THD=10%)
• Signal to noise ratio (amplifier): >=85dBA
• Input sensitivity: 5.1Ch: L/R: 480mV +/- 50mV SW: 175mV +/- 30mV
• Stereo: L/R: 520mV +/- 50mV SW: 200mV +/- 30mV
• Frequency response: L/R: 140Hz ~ 20kHz SW: 20Hz ~ 133Hz
  

Features:

• Luxurious 5.1 speaker system with 10 inch subwoofer- Wooden MDF housing for all speakers
• Passive radiator on both sides on the subwoofer to exaggerate bass performance
• Magnetically shielded drivers for all speakers
• Switchable dual input ports for both 5.1 channel and stereo inputs
• Multifunctional wired controller with 2.5 inch LCD display (dimmer included)
• Headphone output on wired remote controller
• Master volume controls both speaker output and headphone output
• Volume booster for extra power output
• Separate bass and treble adjustments
• Multifunctional wireless remote controller included
• Dolby decoder circuitry included in digital version

Edifier S550 will be sold around Rp 3.800.000,-. Will the price worth it? For bass lover who need 5.1 speaker for their small home theater system, this S550 really can rock your room. Equipped with 10" subwoofer with 2-way design for each sattelite and 3-way design for its center channel will make S550 not disappointed.

Meanwhile S550 will be targeted to hit small home theater market, S730 is another beast from edifier targeted for music lover. This 2.1 speaker with its total 300 RMS has the power needed for shaking your small room!

The design looks similar with S550. This is really obvious because this one was also designed by Phil Jones! Phil Jones interference in the design and fine-tuning process will ensure S730 will have a maximum overall sound for music lover. Especially bass lover since it's using 10" subwoofer for 2.1 configuration. Only logitech with its Z5500 has doing the same thing. (Well, audiophile will say it's really overkill to have 10" in 2.1 setup, but who care anyway :P)

Okay, let's take a look at the specification, shall we?


Specification :

• Total Power Output: RMS 75W x 2 + 150W
• Frequency Response: 20Hz~20KHz

Features:

• Heavy metal 2.1 speaker system with 10 inch subwoofer
• Wooden MDF housing for all speakers
• Multifunctional wired controller with 2.5 inch LCD display (dimmer included)

This speaker will arrive in Indonesia market around June. That's the information I got from official Edifier distributor in Indonesia. The price will be tagged at around Rp 3.300.000,-. Can't wait to audition this one. It should sound awesome!

With both speaker, it's clearly seen that Edifier has put so much effort for entering new level of computer multimedia speaker market. I think now they can be put at the same level as Klipsch, Altec Lansing or JBL in this criteria ;).

If only Edifier put the lower price tag for this speaker, I would be at the front row of sales queue, then :P. Absolutely!

And the winner goes to......Cook?

At the end of American Idol season this year, the result is quite shocking! In the end, David Cook is the one who is crowned as the king, ultimately defeat David Archuletta by 12 million vote! Very confusing, because at the show itself, all three judges had clinched the decision that David Archuletta is the absolute winner. Even Simon said David Archuletta knocked out David Cook in all three rounds.

So it seems that American people are disagree with all three judges and they defended the red boxer-David Cook as their only supreme idol. Weird decision, because it's clearly seen that David Archuletta has a singing talent which surpass David Cook by ten thousand miles!

But the recipe for the idol is not only voice, charm would make everything different. American pop idol Britney Spears, in my opinion she has a average voice if we compare her with Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, but she has many successful albums sold there. Why? Because this is live. Not everyone care about singing, while the tone is undesireable or not, because they have no professional experience in music anyway. Folks like me who listens music from ordinary tv with mediocre speaker or from boombox radio with worse sound quality than CD, can only judge based on personal preference of melody.....

Anyway, both are winner! David Cook win American Heart while David Archuletta win professional opinions. This will open their doors to professional stage evenmore. Success for both of you!

It's been a while....

Whoa....1 month not update my blog.
Damn, pretty busy recently...
But at least now, I can update it now ;)

So much has happen in this month. The most distinguished event in this month is fuel price rise by the government. This event spurs several demonstration on the street, but luckily the mass not ran amok this time (maybe haven't :-S)..

Our government decided to rise the subsidized fuel price by 28.7% the day before yesterday. This is not a popular policy and will take more burden on people in Indonesia. While the poorest can stand still because they will receive donation cash from the government, the medium welfare society will suffer most. Why, because we as workers are being paid flat every month. And our salary rise, which just happened last month, is not even close to the fuel price rise.

Then the conclusion is, we will have to lower our standard of living to cut cost. Otherwise we will have none for saving. It's really hard pill to swallow! And as survey says that after 40 years of working hard :

• only 1% will be live in prosperity
• 4% will safe for enjoying standard living with their saving money
• 5% still have to work to earn small amount of money for keep living
• 54% will live under poverty by depending to pension money or their relatives
• 36% have already dead

So under those numbers, we can easily see that to be able to enjoy standard living or more in our dusk age is really hard (only 5% from population). Therefore we must be really wise of spending money at our pruductive time, especially me, who have to take care of my parents as their only son ;)...

Struggle for living is seemed a job never end in Indonesia. Only small amount of people in Indonesia can enjoy the "cake". The others can only dream...what will happen if someday blablabla...

Just like me who can only dream of having a mainstream desktop pc. Still keep on dreaming and believing that someday my dream will come true....:)
Peace.....