I have to be very honest. I was totally exhausted during last Saturday’s Social Media Breakfast, so I only had about 50% presence of mind. The other 50% of me was zoning out on sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations.

Some SMBers might have noticed me occasionally favouring the striking pink floral wall at Cafe Domus with a glazed, sometimes shocked, stare.

The wall is quite garish, if I may be honest, but I do realise perhaps it’s meant to be alternative or retro or whatever and I do respect artistry even if I may not appreciate the art.

Now, since I was feeling rather sleep-deprived, I turned up in my jammies.

I found this photo in my camera when I got home and remembered that Coleman had taken liberties with it while I was engaged in a conversation with Bernard about his writing projects.

Coleman had taken this very interestingly-angled photograph of me with my camera while I was distracted.

Which was just as well, now that I realise that, in my incapacitated state that day, I had quite forgotten to camwhore.

I managed only to take a few random photos during the moments I wasn’t busy eating or chatting, which was hardly.

Oh, those aren’t really jammies I was wearing. It’s just that someone came up to me and expressed his shock at seeing me in my “pajamas” because I’m usually “all dressed up”.

All I can say is that it’s a lucky thing I didn’t turn up in one of those little skirts I’m usually fond of wearing. (Once in a while, a barely-conscious sixth sense kicks in.) Michael‘s camera had made history by becoming the first non-human to receive a tag at an SMB.

What an honour. Or not.

Incidentally, this same camera caught me babbling incoherently when Mike decided to interview me, Daryl and Derrick for the Geek Goddess Show in our roles as organisers of SMB (although, other than contributing feedback at our periodic MSN meetings, I didn’t help much in the planning of SMB2, so I’m lucky D & D still consider me part of the team).

Anyway, now, I’m hypothetically wondering whether it’s better to get caught in an upskirt video or be filmed talking nonsense and having people think you’re a complete ditz.

I suppose it depends on whether you’re wearing attractive undies.

I believe I was also caught babbling incoherently on Tech65‘s very scary contraption that records voice.

I don’t even know what to call this intimidating-looking device.

You people are making social events very stressful, you know that?

NTT (picture above) and his Tech65 mates wielded that device with glee, traumatising everyone at the event.

Someone even chose to make his trauma known publicly:

Of course, the upside to dealing with Tech65 is that audio recorders can’t record upskirts. So, as long as you shut up when any one of these people encroaches within 50 metres of your personal space, you’re quite safe.

Unfortunately, being sleep-deprived is sometimes akin to be drunk. You don’t know when to shut up.

I hope everyone enjoyed SMB2.

I managed to meet a few new people but I didn’t manage to talk to as many people as I would have liked to.

But that was actually a half-baked ploy to minimise on the incoherent babbling.

See you at SMB3?

Oh, gosh, is it Friday already? While people are thanking god it’s Friday, I’m raising the panic alarm for a worrying number of deadlines unmet.

Nevertheless, Gamer Girl Friday is still in business, even if I have to sacrifice my Age of Conan game time.

In fact, I only had time to play for one measly hour since receiving my AoC registration key on Wednesday. But that’s enough to talk about AoC at great length because it gave me enough lasting first impressions to fill a book.

You’ll want to read my “Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian” series because it’s funny!

And don’t forget to take part in this week’s contest. I’m giving away a Grand Theft Auto IV game! Ooh!

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Table of Contents

1. Playing Age of Conan on dual-monitor setup
2. Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian Part 1
3. Age of Conan first impressions
4. Ninja patrol squad terrorizes Bugis Junction
5. Results of last week’s contest
6. Ask Sheylara
7. Win a Grand Theft Auto IV game!!

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Playing Age of Conan on dual-monitor setup

Here’s a quite useless and self-indulgent video showing you Age of Conan played on dual-screen mode.

I was on a dual-monitor setup when I logged in to Age of Conan for the first time and found that I couldn’t force the game back to one screen, so I decided to play it like that just for the heck of it.

Of course, the game world looks incredibly beautiful spread across two screens, but it was a pain to play because of the gap between the two monitors, where your character is stuck the whole time.

So, bad idea. Next!

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Adventures of Sheylara the Barbarian Part 1

Once upon a time, onboard a slave galley, there lived a kind-hearted and innocent barbarian girl by the name of Sheylara.

Sheylara had been kidnapped from her hometown in Aquilonia to be sold into slavery. Her talents include looking cute and owning an outrageously daring bikini (for that era).

One day, as luck would have it, the ship got wrecked by some fearsome squall or something and everyone got thrown overboard. Sheylara passed out before washing up on some scenic beach shore, just like in the movies.

Shortly after, a strange old man, who just happened to be hanging out at the beach, came along and tried to wake her.

Amazingly, Sheylara wasn’t dead and even managed to wake up looking like she just stepped out of the latest issue of Swimsuit Illustrated.

The strange old man said to Sheylara, “Since you’ve washed up on the shore anyway, I might as well make you do some work. There’s this cute little thing got herself captured by an evil man. Go save her, would you please, if you’re not in a hurry to go anywhere.”

Sheylara, being kind-hearted and innocent and, in fact, not in a hurry to go anywhere, agreed to the old man’s request even as she coughed out the last drops of seawater from her lungs.

Now, it didn’t take her long to find the cute little thing that needed rescuing.

“Help!” said the cute little thing, whose name is Casilda. “You look like you have the stomach for a bloody encounter (even if you resemble a swimsuit model). Wouldn’t you please kill that meanie over there and get his keys to free me? Please?”

“Okay,” said kind-hearted and innocent Sheylara, and off she went waving the broken bottle that the strange old man had given to her to use as a weapon.

Incredibly, Sheylara managed to kill the meanie with nothing but the broken bottle and her charms.

She returned to Casilda and freed the bimbotic wench. Then, the two ladies had a nice conversation about the latest trends in swimwear.

Casilda said, “Hey, you know what? The city of Tortage has some really nice shopping spots. Why don’t we walk there together and I’ll show you around?”

“Awesome plan!” said Sheylara.

The two provocatively-dressed ladies then proceeded to leisurely stroll through the jungle, chatting and giggling as if they’d known each other forever.

Suddenly, Sheylara was attacked!

“What is this?!?!?!?!” she screeched. “You didn’t tell me there were more bad men around!”

“Oops, sorry,” said Casilda as she scurried off to hide behind a tree. “My bad.”

Just as Sheylara was about to get slaughtered good and proper, a strange feeling overcame her.

A fascinating blue light descended upon her, like a deus ex machina, and infused her with the strength of a panther and the courage of a man who’s about to get a root canal treatment without anesthesia.

“I can take on the whole world!!” she declared. “Come and get me if you dare!”

With that, the thug in front of her dropped dead with fright. He also dropped some loot just the way mobs are supposed to, when they die.

“Cool!! A new bikini!!” enthused Sheylara, as she changed into her new outfit right there and then, never considering prying eyes hidden in bushes.

Casilda ran out of hiding.

“Aww, pretty!” she crooned. “I told you, didn’t I? There’s a lot more of that where we’re going!”

Sheylara blushed before rolling her eyes and said, “Yeah, okay, let’s go. But next time, warn me before I get hacked almost in two pieces again!”

With that, the two happy maidens went on their merry way.

(To be continued next week…)

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Age of Conan first impressions

Like I said, I could fill a book with my first impressions, but I’ll just pick a few things because I’m sure you don’t want to read a book.

Impressing me right at the outset was the character creation screen. It’s so dynamic I thought it was another intro video sequence.

As the story goes, you’re a captive on this ship on the way to being sold into slavery. The character creation screen shows you being on a ship, surrounded by oarsmen busy at work rowing and making a frightful din.

It’s a dark and stormy night and all that and you’re alone and frightened, but you have work to do. You have to choose a gender and race and class, following which you have to choose hair colour, eye colour, body shape and size, and all the rest of it.

From here, you have the option to go into an advanced customisation mode to tweak every single last detail, from boob size to eyebrow angle. Never has character customisation been so detailed since Star Wars Galaxies.

Past the character creation stage, the game world is truly a sight to behold.

The colours are vibrant, the landscape is lush, the avatars so detailed. Everything is just so beautiful it makes your heart sing with joy.

Once in a while, you get these cutscene animations when you initiate contact with an NPC.

These are pretty cool. Makes me feel like I’m playing a console game. And the voice acting is really good. The only complaint I have here is that the character animation seems a little blocky, lacking the natural fluidity of real-life motion.

Not that I’m expecting a lot. Remember Beowulf (Angelina Jolie)? Even that didn’t achieve 100% fluidity. So I don’t expect any better from a game for which cutscenes are only a minor feature.

Age of Conan is not a game for MMORPG newbies. There is no newbie-friendly tutorial such as you would get in World of Warcraft and EverQuest II. You do get guides that pop out when the game feels you need some, but they are not as intuitive as those in aforementioned games.

But that’s fine because I’m not an MMORPG noob and I managed to get a quest and kill some mobs right away.

AoC is very bloody, which is a first for an MMORPG.

It’s very tantalising. If you’re playing a female avatar, you’re staring at a pair of perky butt cheeks 95% of game time.

There’s also the option to disrobe your avatar almost completely but I’m not showing it here!

Oh, did I forget to mention spell animation?

I totally love it! If it’s so beautiful even at starting levels, I can’t wait to see what I’m going to get at higher levels.

I took a video with the built-in video recorder (also an MMORPG first, I think) but it’s in a weird resolution (1274×992) because I was playing in windowed mode and, somehow, YouTube isn’t able to play that.

I love the built-in video recorder, except that it doesn’t capture sound. I have no idea why.

Well, I think that’s enough AoC for a day. If I talk anymore about it, I’ll never be able to get out of my house and I do have an event to attend in a couple hours.

If you’re in Thog, look me up!

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Ninja patrol squad terrorizes Bugis Junction

There are only two days left to the Ninja Gaiden II preorder promotion and the current preorder figure stands at 327 (needs 174 more for the release of the second tier freebie of the NG2 notebook).

For such a popular long-running game series, I’m surprised the figure isn’t higher.

But then, it’s not my job to worry about preorder sales figures. My job is to worry about properly terrorizing random folks in the streets with my scary Ninja demeanor!

As you can see, we were completely and utterly menacing.

In fact, people had to literally beg us not to harm them.

Ferocious Ryu Hayabusa says, “You. Yes, you there. I’m watchin’ you, kid, I’m watchin’ you.”

That was unfortunately the last of the ninja patrol tourist attraction pose squad, although we will be making a couple of appearances during the launch event on June 3 at Funan, which will be on from 12:30 pm till 8 pm.

There will be a lucky draw going on every hour for people who have pre-ordered the game. An exclusive NG2-themed Xbox 360 Elite will be given away! I wonder who the lucky person will be. Will it be me? (I wish).

You have until Sunday to preorder the game. I swear it’s really fun. Go for it!

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Results of last week’s contest

Last week, I put five Grand Theft Auto IV stickers and three Grand Theft Auto IV coasters up for grabs. The response was really quick and all items were snapped up within a few hours!

Congratulations to the following winners!

GTA4 coasters
tedbear
bedlamite
Aves

GTA4 stickers
Leo
Bartman
modchip
Ayane06
siegeholler

The items will be mailed out to you as soon as I can find some time to zip down to the P.O.

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Ask Sheylara

Ask me any gaming-related questions! Post them in the comments or e-mail me, I don’t really care. I will try to answer all questions (unless I get like 500 questions a day).

BC asks a Wii question:

I wanted to connect to the Internet using my Wii and its in Japanese so I downloaded your site’s translation. However, when I went to press the wrench icon to go to system settings, it gives me an error message saying that it can’t connect to this certain url and that I should check if I typed it right. I have never touched the settings until now. Please help.

Sheylara Says:

This is one of the most common problems faced by users of a modified Japanese Wii set. When you insert a game disc of another region code which contains a firmware patch update, it will overwrite your original menu. You then get an error because the system is trying to locate the Japanese menu with the address “marc:JP/JP/JPN/index01.html” but it’s not there anymore.

This is known as semi-bricking your Wii. You can still play games but you just can’t access the settings menu. In some severe cases, you will get a fully-bricked Wii, in which case your set is totally unplayable.

You can fix semi-bricks by inserting a Japanese game with a firmware update that is higher than your Wii version. That will overwrite the menu again with a valid Japanese one.

Matthew Chua asks a DS Lite question:

I just bought a DS Lite for my girlfriend. But, being a gadget idiot, I’m lost trying to load music into it. Do I need any software to do it? I’m using an ezflash card.

Sheylara Says:

Please note that Gamer Girl Friday does not advocate piracy! But I will answer your question this once. If you’re using EZ-Flash V, it should have an MP3 icon which you can tap to launch the media player. If not, what you need is Moonshell. I can’t explain to you in detail because it’s not exactly legit. But you can Google it.

David Lee asks a console comparison question:

If you were totally unbiased, how would you rank the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, in terms of games, performance, satisfaction?

Sheylara Says:

It’s really hard to rank them strictly, so I will tell you what I like about each console!

PS3: It’s sleek and shiny and it has Blu-ray capabilities so you save your money on a Blu-ray player.

Wii: It’s cute and the games are a totally different experience. I love the great workout some of the games give.

Xbox 360: For now, Xbox 360 has the best games library and the Xbox Live experience is unbeatable.

You know what, I’m going to open this last question out to all you readers. It’s really hard for me because I do like all the consoles almost equally. But there must be dedicated fans of specific consoles out there. So how would you rank the three consoles?

Post your answers in the comments here.

Best answer received before next Friday will get a small mystery prize!

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Win a Grand Theft Auto IV game!!

YES YES YES. I’m giving out a Grand Theft Auto IV game (Xbox 360 Asian version) because I’ve got a kind sponsor this week. And because it’s a bigger prize, the contest will be a little harder than last week’s (but not that hard).

This week’s prize is sponsored by The Xbox 360 team in Singapore. (Yaay! Give them a standing ovation!)

Here’s how you can win it!

1. Write a review of Gamer Girl Friday.
2. Post it on your blog or in a gaming-related forum (but don’t spam).
3. Link the post to www.sheylara.com.
4. Post a comment here when you’ve done it so I can check it out.

Rules:

1. There is no word limit and it can be any style you like.
2. Entries will be judged by me! I will pick the one I like best.
3. You need to be at least 18 to win this prize. (ID verification will be required.)
4. Closing date is June 5, 2008!

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Oh, my. Today’s issue seems very long. I don’t know if you read everything but thanks for reading!

Remember to take part in both contests! There is one sneakily embedded in the Ask Sheylara segment. Haa.

Okay, Gamer Girl Friday needs to sign off now to go play Age of Conan (after attending previously mentioned event).

See you next week!

I was in a cab today, on my way to the HTC Touch Diamond media launch, making use of the time to frantically memorise as many lines as I could for my play, because first rehearsal was tonight and I was supposed to have all the lines memorised by then.

(This is a photo I took of Precious and myself in the Shangri-La toilet, where HTC launch was held. I mean, the launch was held in Shangri-La, not in the toilet. But I will blog about that another day. About the launch, not the toilet.)

Back in the cab.

A phone call came.

Ordinarily, I would have been quite pleased to entertain a telemarketer while in a cab because, as you know, there is nothing better to do when you’re stuck in a cab, anyway. Plus I have free incoming calls.

But today, I had a script to memorise.

So, when the caller introduced herself as being from Prudential, I planned to cut short the conversation by deploying my usual answer: “I’m unemployed and can’t afford whatever you’re selling.”

BUT.

Something in what she said made me improv a new response.

She said, “I’m pleased to inform you that your residential zone has been selected for our new promotion.”

I remembered that I recently moved house.

So I asked her, “Do you know where I’m living now?”

That stumped her, for some strange reason.

“Er… umm…,” she said, “Er… OH, I mean your company. Yah, your company has been selected.”

That, of course, was the wrong answer.

I asked, “Do you know where I’m working now?”

This time she was stumped for a slightly shorter duration.

“Er… er… *clear throat* *shuffling sound* … MediaCorp?”

Wrong answer again. I left MediaCorp in 2002.

I said, “Oh, I’m no longer working there. Does that mean I’m not eligible for your promotion?”

*click*

She hung up on me!!!!

Just as well, I suppose. I didn’t have time to entertain her, anyway.

Look out your window now!!! THE MOON IS RED IN COLOUR!!!

Okay, I know this probably isn’t the first time, but I’ve never seen the moon any colour other than what it’s supposed to be, so it is pretty damn amazing to me!!

I swear this isn’t photoshopped. I didn’t even adjust the brightness and contrast. This is totally wholesale from my camera (after cropping off the edges).

This is the uncropped and size-reduced version to fit into my blog:

The lights below the moon are lights from ships.

When we first discovered it, it was kind of hiding behind some clouds and it looked somewhat smaller, but no less amazing.

It slowly moved out of the clouds.

And then there it stood in full red glory!

Hmm… it’s starting to get more and more orange, heading towards yellow as I’m typing this.

Hurry catch it before it’s gone!

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UPDATE — ONE HOUR AFTER DISCOVERY OF RED MOON:

It’s not red anymore. I think the moon was red for only about half an hour or so?

You can see how high it’s gone now. And the colour has reverted to normal.

Oh, well. No armageddon.

I accepted an acting job despite being insanely busy.

I did that because it’s a theatre performance and I don’t get many of those and the script is funny and the director is great AND I get to play a rat.

Well, it’s only a 10-minute play, but one has to start somewhere.

Random archived photo

I don’t know how I’m going to manage!!!

And the Goonfather said he wants to buy me Age of Conan. Where got time to play! I’m worried it will be like Pirates of the Burning Sea. We spent more than $100 each just to play the game for only a month.

Life is now literally a rollercoaster. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so rollercoastery.

Oh, yes, you can buy tickets to watch me. It’s happening at the Short+Sweet Singapore 2008 festival, during which 10 plays (each running 10 minutes) will be performed each night.

My show will be on nightly from June 5 till June 8. You can call 6332 6919 or e-mail tickets@toph.com.sg to buy tickets.

MY FIRST DRUMMING CLASS STARTS TOMORROW. IS SO EXCITING!

Totally packed this week. And the next. And the next.

REHEARSALS!! EVENTS! BLOGS! EDITING! MEETINGS! ETC!

GOING CRAZY.

It’s evident that I’ve really gone crazy since I seldom rave like a looney on my blog.

Oh, I’m tired of posting photos of myself, so here’s a random non-me photo.

Is me and the Goonfather! Hahahaha.

Anyone recognise where these dolls come from?