Dead Space

So 2 days ago I finished Dead Space, a game I started last month. Warning! This game is designed to scare you so keep away from Dead Space if find these screenshots disturbing. Anyway if you can handle it, you're in for around 20 hours of extreme killing.

You start off in a space shuttle sent to repair a large spaceship called Ishimura however upon landing you immediately notice there is something wrong with the ship. Nobody is around, luggage scatter all over the place and then suddenly you get attacked by these unknown creatures with freakish long limbs that look like blades. At this point you'll realise what you have to do in this game, kill these things and to find out what happened to the ship.

I thought this game was similar to Resident Evil, being 3rd person shooter however Dead Space is much more suprising and tend to do more jumps to startle you. Like in Resident Evil you can see the zombies from miles away but here they'll spawn an enemy right next to you which causes you to panick and start spamming all over the place. Which can be annoying because you have to find your own ammos and guns. The good thing is there are electronic stores on the ship which you use to buy ammos. However you wont be able to buy any new items unless you find the schematics for it first.

You can use these things called power nodes to upgrade your weapons but becareful you wont be able to max out everything on every single weapon. This forces you to think and plan out strategies when you fight these creatures, some weapons are long range while some are short hence some weapon works better against some enemies. A lot of times I ran out of ammo for a certain type of gun which stops me from moving forward since I cant kill the creature thats blocking me.



The graphics and details on the monsters are pretty good especially when you get killed by one of them. They show you exactly how you died, like your head gets chopped off or your body gets ripped in half. Certain effects in the game are also pretty unique, like when you are in a vacuum you can not hear anything also the zero gravity zone can get you pretty confused and lose your sense of direction lol. The downside of Dead Space I think is that it gets really repetitive after half way when you've gotten used to the creatures. Personally I think they should've made the game a bit shorter so players would not get bored of it. Nevertheless, Dead Space is a good game if you're trying to find some excitement in your everyday gaming life.

Durarara!!

Another anime with exclaimation mark at the end of it's name and this time it has two!! Does it mean it is double awesome? X)
So I just finished watching Durarara!! which I started a few days ago. Dont even ask what the title means, I dont even know, google it lol. I would say this anime is good but nothing further than that. First of all I gotta say I love the character design, including the clothes they wear, just simple and stylish. I think most people will agree with me the two best looking characters are Izaya and Shizuo.

So what is this anime about? Well to summarise it, it is about the district in the city of Tokyo called Ikebukoru. At the start of the anime, you get an overwhelming introduction of nearly all the characters who appears in the anime. At first you dont see how they are related but as you progress more into the anime, you see the connections they have with each other. I didnt like the start of the anime because you couldnt see the purpose or the point of this anime but it gets better by the episode. It got to a point where I just HAD to click the next one to see what happens, damn cliff hangers...

This anime contains both fantasy and reality. The reality being its based in an actual city, they even drew the actual landmarks in the anime. Also a lot of the concepts behind it are very real which can be seen in our current society eg. gangs and internet chat rooms. The fantasy being the characters, like a dude with insane strength, chucking vending machines everywhere. However without the fantasy, this anime would not have worked. The fantasy and reality intertwined with each other producing the core of Durarara. So in the end I rate Durarara a 7/10.

This video just shows how real the anime was, quite unbelievable :O
Btw the songs used here are the openings and endings of the anime. So it was good I found this video, can show both the setting and songs of the anime. 2nd and 3rd songs are my favourite :)

Management Reflection - week 6

For the last week of the accounting module, we learned about capital expenditure. Capital expenditures is when a company spends money to acquire an asset and instead to use it for a long term. For example a machine or vehicle. This matter is significant to any business since you are required to put down a large sum of money and because it will take a while before you can break even, it is uncertain that the asset can help you earn a profit. Therefore CAPEX must be carefully planned, if we did not budget enough for it, it can result in eg. not producing enough products to meet demands. If we over invest in the budget then we already lost the money since the very start with uncertainty that we'll be able to get it back.

To avoid these mistakes, we learned techniques which can help us make the right decision when it comes to CAPEX. There are two categories, non-discounting and discounted cash flow techniques. I learned that money has a time value, the value in few years time will be less than the value now. The non-discounting technique excludes the time value factor. The discounted cash flow technique on the other hand is a more accurate method when it comes to estimating CAPEX since it takes the time value into consideration.

Management Reflection - week 5

Last week we finished the module on budget. Budget is basically a planned guideline, a goal of what the company is hoping to achieve in a long term. Without a budget, a company might spend too much money on one aspect of the firm which result in the lack of money for other areas. By having a budget, it sets a limit on how much money the company should invest in that area. As long as the company stick to their budget, their chances of success will increase because they are following the plan which they believed was the best option for the firm.

I learned that a proper budget must be done step by step because one thing leads to another. We begin with the sales budget, this decides how much we want to have sold at the end of the time frame. Production budget comes next, after we know the units to be sold, we can work out how much we need to produce in order to meet that requirement. From the production budget, we can form our direct material, labour and factory overhead budget which then goes under cost of goods manufactured and sold budget. Then we have the selling and administrative expenses budget. By combining all the previous budgets, a cash budget, probably the most important budget, can be made. This budget indicates how will the cash run in the company and how much we will have left to operate our business. Finally a balance sheet is produced.

Start of the Food Blog - Korean BBQ Queen St

The most intense part of this term has finally past. Dixon adn I worked our asses off on the report this morning, not sure if how we'll do the interview next term lol... After handing in our report because I didnt have breakfast so I was really keen for some korean bbq buffet. So I rallied the crew and head off for to Queen St while the other faction went to Golden Bowl.

Ok so this was suppose to be my management reflection but I just realised I dont know what to write so I'll have a read over the notes tomorrow and see if I can come up with anything. Instead, I had a thought on this for a while, I think I will start writing about what I eat around Auckland uni. I look for affordable and delicious food, most campanions who eats with me enjoys where I take them so I have decided to share with everyone.

So I will start my food bloggin with the Korean BBQ place. The place is literally called Korean BBQ buffet. It is located on Queen St, walk up towards Upper Queen St and it is on the left side, after a block of asian restaurants and before you reach Upper Queen St. It is a self serve, self cook sort of BBQ.

Playing while cooking :-)

The price is $15 for lunch, $18 for dinner. All you can eat but apparently there is a 2 hours limit (1 hour if you eat by yourself), we normally finish under 2 hours anyway. Since this is affordable buffet, dont expect luxurious meat selections. There are like 6 meats, marinated chicken/beef, spicy pork/squid, pork belly and beef. There are pre cooked food like fried chicken wings, egg rolls. Fruit juice (Raro), rice, all unlimited so it is a pretty good deal for students, especially one who just loves meat.