So I went out and bought myself a new graphics card. I used to have a 3 year-old ATI RADEON 7000VE with a bare 64Mb of video RAM and upgraded to a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 with 256Mb of video RAM! And the best part is that it was only HK$340, which is about US$40. That’s damn cheap. Oh how great I feel.
But of course after installing it, I had to test it. For the past few months I’ve been playing FIFA 06 in a disgraceful 640 x 480 resolution which looked so 90’s and didn’t show the full power of the game. So I install the card, turn on the PC, wait for it to load, run FIFA 06, go to the game settings and for the first time ever I’m actually allowed to change the resolution from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 1024 (my real display resolution). Usually when I try to do that, the game just doesn’t let me. For a while I thought it was a game bug and I was stumped but today I was very relieved. Anyway back to the actual game. I change the resolution, click OK… and wow! It’s already better, the game fills the whole screen and everything is sharper. By this time I can’t wait to play a match. Alright, just the default Barcelona FC against Real Madrid, load up game… pure amazing. It’s as good as my friend’s PS2 now, maybe better. The graphics are what they’re supposed to be, as good as the game was supposed to look, the stadium, the field, the ball, the players; everything looked sharp and clear. You could even make out Ronaldinho’s face.
I can’t wait to test out my other games that have had problems running because of my sucky graphics card. Why am I wasting time in Firefox anyway, on to the games.
Oh Yeah: Windows Vista Beta 2 is now able for everyone to download and now that my computer can support the Aero visual enchancement, why not give it a try. Too bad it’ll take me half a day to download it (3.5 Gigs man!)
Final Exams. What can I say, I’ve been studying and taking exams. As of this writing I’ve done my Mandarin and English exams. This was probably my best Mandarin exam ever since I was actually able to write a lot unlike the usual sitting there at my table and looking at the paper and feeling stumped. As for English, well it’s always been easy for me.
Tomorrow I have my Physics and World History exams. Next Monday I have Biology and the big one: Precalculus. The Precal exam is a whopping 3 hours and 15 minutes but nothing I’m afraid of. I’m sure I’ll need the time to do well. I found out from my math teacher that even if I get a 0 on my exam I’ll still pass the course because my other grades in the course were high enough. Not that I’m planning on getting a 0 on the exam though. I believe this will be the most challenging exam for me and for some of my classmates.
But how happy I’ll be when exams are over, school is basically over then. We’ll have some activites, lectures, go and clean up beaches, receive our report cards and for some of us awards, watch the graduation for the seniors and then that’s it: my sophomore year will be over. Seems fast.
After school ends I’ll have two weeks to stay around Hong Kong and prepare for Calculus next year (the teacher assigned 16 different assignments to be studied so he can start teaching on the first day of school next year). Then, on July 14th, I’ll be handing my cat over to the SPCA, where he’ll be staying for 20 days. The reason for this; on the 15th my family and I are flying first to Washington D.C. for a week and then to the Bahamas for 9 days for vacation. I’m quite psyched about the trip and can’t wait. Just a month left.
It was no doubt a bad game for first-time World Cup qualifiers Ukraine yesterday. Just by watching the first few minutes of the game, you could see that the Spanish side was playing better. The Ukrainians just kept playing it a bit in their own half and then crossing it into the penalty area and hoping for the best – unfortunately the best never came. Spain’s first goal was on the 13th minute when they got a corner kick and Xabi Alonso headed it into the goal. Oleksandr Shovkovskyi (Ukraine’s goalkeeper) was able to get a hand to the ball but it wasn’t enough and the ball was already in. The second goal came just 4 minutes later when Spain were awarded a free kick within shooting distance of goal. David Villa took the kick and the goalkeeper seemed to be following its path when suddenly a Ukrainian defender deflected the ball and it flew into the net. Ukraine then had a few chance to lower the deficit but all failed. The first half ended 2-0, an already bad start for Ukraine and a great one for Spain.
Just a few minutes into the second half, something terrible happened. On the 47th minute, Fernando Torres was brought down in the penalty area. After watching replays I couldn’t see what even happened. Vashchuk (Ukrainian defender) was running alongside Torres when all of a sudden Torres just falls down a few yards in front of goal. I thought all would be fine but no! The referee awarded a penalty kick and then showed the defender the red card. So now Ukraine were reduced to only 10 men and the Spaniards had a penalty. David Villa didn’t waste his chance with the penalty and made it 3-0 to Spain.
By this time, a comeback for Ukraine seemed impossible but it got even worse. In the 81st minute, Spain did an absolutely great play allowing Fernando Torres to score a low shot and make the final score 4:0 to Spain.
Although I definitely feel upset about the loss for Ukraine, it would only be fair to say that Spain played a much better game. You can see by looking at the stats. Posession was about 55% Spain and 45% Ukraine which isn’t bad but Ukraine could never finish off what they started. They only had about 5 shots on goal as compared to Spain’s almost 20 or so. It’s definitely hard to play with only 10 men and against one of the favorites for winning the World Cup this year but I was expecting a bit more from Ukraine in this game. Hopefully they do better in their games against Saudi Arabia and Tunisia later in the month. Here’s hoping to something better next time.
In Hong Kong, the World Cup is only shown on some cable channels which I do not have. I want to watch the games because this is the first time that the country I’m from (Ukraine) is playing in the World Cup. So now I had a problem, I wanted to watch the games but couldn’t because I had no cable and wasn’t planning on getting it. So I go onto Google and search for pretty much “watch the world cup live online”. I went through a few useless pages and then came upon worldcupblog.com and found some ways. Luckily for people living in the UK, they can watch all the games live and free online but no one else in the world can.
Anyway, after following some links I found that TVU Player streams channels that show the World Cup live. So basically here are the steps to enjoying all the World Cup has to offer from your computer for free:
- Head on over to viidoo.com
- Click on the big download TVU Player button on the right.
- Download the TVUPlayer.zip file to someplace convenient – the Desktop is a good choice.
- Find the TVUPlayer folder and open it. Open the folder whose name starts with “TVUPlayer”.
- Double-click on the file whose name starts with “TVUPlayer”. Select the “Run” choice in the dialog box. This will start the Install program.
- In the Install program, choose the default buttons for the easiest install.
- Find the TVUPlayer icon on your desktop and run.
So How Do I Watch the World Cup?
Now that you’ve got the player installed, just locate the TVUPlayer icon on your desktop and click on it. The program will open up (wow!) and you’ll see a channel listing on the left-hand side. The channels that show all games live are CCTV-5 (with Mandarin commentary) and ABC (American commentary). Since I don’t care much about the commentary anyway I think the CCTV-5 stream is better since it is clearer and doesn’t stop much at all. Note that to activate a channel, double-click on the name, then wait some time for it to buffer and load up (during this time the video will be choppy). Enjoy and have a great World Cup experience.
I thought they all said that there would be an apocalypse on 6/6/06. Well where was it then cause I’m still here. I bet they’re all gonna argue that it doesn’t necessarily mean 2006 now. Stupid superstitions.
