Tales banner up!

Hey all!

Finally have a banner for Tales and just wanna say a BIG thank you to Ende whose blog is http://entale.blogspot.com/ for drawing and colouring it. Haha.

I found it absolutely brilliant :P You guys should check out her artworks, it'd be worth your time, I promise.

Thanks again Mags!

In other news, sorry for the lack of posts, I'll be sure to try and get myself to post something soon haha.


~Fox

Dogs can recognise their owners’ faces

A study was conducted to see if dogs were able to recognise and focus on their owners rather than a total stranger. The team who studied this says that our canine companions have difficulty in recognising their owners if they had their face covered.

Methods

They had the dog stay in a room with two doors at opposite ends and got volunteers (one the owner and another a stranger) to walk by from one door to another, in opposite directions, where they’ll meet in the middle and measured how long the dog focuses on each person. They were asked to cross the room several times.

Results

"Most of the dogs gazed at their owners for most of the time and then chose to wait by the owner's door," said Dr Mongillo, one of the scientists who conducted the study. He also said this was “an expected” result but it was never really measured.

If put into real life situations, dogs walk with their owners on a lead and in a busy city such as London, smells and sounds overwhelm the dogs so using sight as a sure and quick method to confirm their owner’s presence is effective.

Repeat and modified

When the study was repeated with both participants’ faces covered, the dogs were less attentive to their owners. That shows how much the canines relied on human faces for recognition.

Dr Mongillo says “This might be a by-product from a thousand years of domestication”

Wild dogs rely on body signals and on cues from other animals in their social groups, but studies including this one suggest that domestic dogs are so attuned to human social groups that they are even able to recognise some human facial expressions.

Studies of the genetic differences between dogs and their wolf ancestors suggests that canines were first domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Dog dementia

In the same study, the team investigated the effects of ageing on the dogs’ attention.

“Aged dogs” of 7 years and above were less able to focus on their owners and were less likely to choose their owners’ doors.

"There have been studies to show that dog ageing is similar to human ageing in terms of cognitive impairment," said Dr Mongillo.

From BBC – Earth News


~Fox

Back to unexpected freeze

Hey everyone,

Just got back from Nottingham today to a freezing London and I’m not doing anything so I decided to make another entry. Why go to Nottingham and come back on a weekday, you ask? What? You didn’t ask? I’ll tell you anyway! It’s because I only have classes on Thursdays and Fridays and I want to see my gf :P. Apparently there was something added to the timetable while my internet was down during the weekend so I went to Notts not knowing. So… oh well.

Nuisances in Notts

Nothing much happened there other than some of my girlfriend, Shin’s flatmates at Broadgate Park halls making noises and causing her to be stressed. The wardens there seem to have their hands full with delinquents too, I guess. They should put similar years’ people together not first years who just want to party and have fun with final years who are drowned in work and stress. They just need to be complained about anonymously to the higher ups, hopefully they’ll grow up and see the light.

Surprise in Notts

One of the night there I “accidentally” saw an invoice from Superdry while Shin was checking her e-mail. I started to poke fun at her compulsive shopping and turns out she bought me a hoody which looks awesome, and I’m not just saying. I decided to take a few pics of it and show you guys. Sorry for my bad photography skills.

Front

Front logo

Back

Back logo

Much thanks to Shin <3 <3

Back in London

It’s surprising how easy it is to fit back into my Hall in London, from getting cafeteria food dinner to playing pool with the friends I met here, it’s all good. Hope my class tomorrow will be something interesting. I really hope my course will shape up sooner or later…

As always, thanks for reading peeps, add a comment if you wish.

~Fox

Welcome to Minecraft

Hi all, 


It's 05:47 and I decided 2 hours ago that I am not going to sleep and just last the whole day today then sleep a little earlier tonight to fix my body clock. ...or attempt to fix.


A few days ago I was completely bored and after trying some MMORPGs like Lost Saga and Mabinogi EU, I was still bored and even resorted to downloading (half-way then stopping) Maple Story EU. Gasp


Aaaaaaanyways, since I reached the epitome of boredom, I decided to give a game called Minecraft a shot and in this post I'll show screenshots I took while playing the world (which I failed epicly and won't go into it in detail for now).


What's Minecraft about?
First of all, Minecraft is a proper sandbox game with no goals to win whatsoever; I guess you could say you set your own goals. Every time someone starts a game, a new totally unique and different terrain is generated. And by unique I mean I am safe to assume no 2 players have a 100% similar game map without save file sharing.


Basically you are the Robinson Crusoe of a blocky world. And when I say blocky, I mean blocky. Almost everything is made of cubes and/or cuboids or at least simple pixelly goodness. Animals such as sheep, cows and pigs are cube-ish. Sheeps drop cubes of wool when hit etc etc. I won't go into more detail since that's all you need to know. I found it more fun to explore the mechanics yourself or go look on the internet. There are tonnes to do in the world ranging from gathering supplies and resources, constructing monuments or even making your own personal roller coaster!


My life in Minecraft
Here's a collection of screenshots I took when I was running though the world as a newbie.

My attempt to build a house failed when the sun set and I ran out of wood. The "roof" you see is actually just one block covering my head and cowering in fear of the sounds of the night

After that I completed the fail-hut and went on my merry way to explore the world and surprise surprise, I lost my way, night came again and I had to resort to.......

Covering all around me with dirt

As day came I broke out of my dirt cocoon and, still lot and wasting time looking for base, I decided to build a second house which.... had zombie sounds even during the day, but I didn't bother to do anything about it.


Sadly though I don't have a screen of that moment.

Another swift death came and I once again lost my way looking for the second house, so I decided to build another house. Which is bigger but similar to my second

And got a visitor that night as it came to day

I went out to... "greet" him with my sword, but who would've thought he had a friend with him
 and though I graciously "said hello" to him, his friend said hi back with an arrow in my head.


Respawning, I tried to find the third base and I found...

This half finished face

and this funky rock formation

Wandering for ages, I found my second house again, which made me rage. So I decided to make myself a lookout tower.

The work was nerve wrecking

But as night came, I completed the platform

The light in the distance is what I use to navigate and tell me where the second house is. It wasn't easy to use though...

I decided to kill time with some sniping, wasted all my arrows

When day came, I enjoyed a the sight of baptism by fire

And decided to marvel at the tower I made to hide from creeps.. with bacon

Outside this house was a small cave which I then dug downwards and found a cavern! It is things like this that made me awe at the complexity of a map. It's not just the surface, but the caverns were lying in waiting for someone to find it.

Huzzah! A new world to plunder!

Naturally I looked around and found a stream and pond and especially this waterfall. Sadly though, I was so newb that I didn't know the blocks with yellowish spots were iron ore, useful stuff

And lava..fall spitting at me

I ventured deeper into the cavern and met with lots of mobs resulting in lots of deaths and fail-beacons made it hard to find the house. Finally resulted in a nerd rage quit and remake of a new world  but before that...

I sent my pretties to set the creeps on fire

Final words

Well that was all that I took on my journey to the unknown cube world. All I can say is, the screens don't do the game enough justice; it is something you should experience yourself. And right now Minecraft is in the Alpha phase, so they are selling it for half price. It is predicted to double to 20 Euros when they hit beta so get it and save some money!

The site is www.minecraft.net try the Minecraft Classic to have a feel of what it's like, but it definitely is not as great as Alpha.

There are also impressive architecture created by people which can be seen in youtube. Though I don't think someone made this, I wish to share its awesomeness. Please watch until the end, it's made of win.

And with that I leave you. Just want to say... I'm freaking tired right now.... And you know what effed up my body clock.

Have fun and thanks for reading.

~Fox

Is the water from bathroom tap safe to drink?

I started boiling water taken from my bathroom a few minutes ago when suddenly it hit me: When I felt unwell recently I would claim it might be from the bathroom water. This is because the Residents’ guide from the hall I’m currently staying at suggests that we don’t drink from the tap in our en suite bathrooms.

So I went on to our dear friend the internet and searching on google who, like a great friend, gave me something not necessarily helpful but relevant to my interest:

Which can be found here

Naturally, as a lurker and find trolls somewhat amusing, I wanted to share it with you guys.

Refining my search, I found a mixture of different comments on forums and the like which are quite old to be honest. They are here and here.

In a nutshell here’s what they had to say:

•  Bathroom tap water is generally drinkable as long as you know it comes from the mains.
• If it comes from the mains but you’re still unsure, boil and leave to cool then filter out.
• If your bathroom water is stored in a tank in the loft (or attic) it would be ideal not to drink it as it sits there for some time as opposed to the kitchen sink coming straight from the mains.
• One forumer wrote “The tank containing upstairs water is usually old and stagnant. I replaced my tank one time and came across bits and bobs floating on top, like dead spiders, dust and flies. I seriously would not recommend drinking tank water.”
• Check your pipes are not copper or lead based. These pipes would make them really unsafe for drinking.
• Do not drink hot water straight from the tap, regardless if it is from the kitchen or bathroom.

So there you have it, the yes and no’s of some of the compiled advice and thoughts. 

Overall, if you live in a house, just use the kitchen, simple and painless. As for me, I have no choice as the water dispenser here gives a crap 1.5 litres per 5 minutes or so, so I just boil bathroom tap water.

Also what I realise from my stay (also from an experiment I did in undergrad) is that water in the UK is classed as Hard water. Basically it means the water here has a higher concentration of mineral salts. Hence why you see lots of limescale inside heavily used kettles. So I recommend those who are more squeamish to filter their water here. (I just tend to drink straight out)

And the phrase you should definitely share with your friends and family today is:

“Toilet water is delicious”

And yes it is delicious indeed, just ask your dog.

~Fox

Stopped before even started

Hey guys,

Not feeling well recently, had a flu or some sorts that prevents me from even sleeping early (well that’s probably because I always sleep late but still) so I decided to make another entry. I’ve looked at one or two sites about how to blog and it has occurred to me that writing a blog does not revolve around the writer’s life story, hell it bores the crap out of the readers. Obvious, I know.

LF/Reader Suggestions

So I’m just wondering if any of the one or two of the readers of this blog can make any suggestions of what they would like to read about. I can’t promise anything but I’ll do my best in terms of taking your advice if it is reasonable. I can’t say I’m a massive consumer of social media so I’m not going to even try to pretend I know what’s the in thing. By the by, LF is online gaming lingo for “Looking for” for those wondering. :3

Epiphany

A friend of mine today made me realise: I get into things after the hype is over. Take writing a blog for example, sure people still start writing them but the high time was a few years back I guess? Same as when I started playing WoW i.e. World of Warcraft last year. Looking back, there are many things I enjoyed which I initially dissed: talk about ironic and hypocritical lol. Now time will tell if I will fall into Twitter and this game called Minecraft.

I don’t know why I do that with new products. It’s probably some subconscious defence mechanism for not wanting to be swept by the generic hype. Some teenage “I want to be different” phase that we all went through but I never got out of? Best not to read into it too much.

Final words

As always thanks for reading, people :3 Even if you don’t comment, the thought that someone somewhere took the time to at least skim through the text is touching. Especially at this early age of Tales. Finally, I welcome any constructive criticism and suggestions, one can only learn to better themselves.

~Fox

New day

So like, I was tinkering around with the page and set up a Shoutbox. Any comments welcome but no obscenities please :P

Anyways, classes started today and I can say though I find the topics quite interesting, the venues were not so.... fancy schmancy as I would imagine. Classes were held at this building which is supposed to be our HQ lecture room. Yes room, not a theatre. The evening lecture though is in a theatre. And it seems soooo gloomy inside, it reminds me of a Victorian era courtroom I saw in Nottingham a while back. But the lecture was smashing. 2 hours long with 15 mins break in between and they provided coffee and biscuits :D That really won me over, nothing like something warm to drink on a chilly evening.

I'm still thinking of how to design this place seeing as it is kinda bland and simple. Thought it would be the best way to start before I burned it down and a phoenix of a blog-spirit thing would rise from the ashes!

Nothing much else happened today other than the fact that all my tinkering mentioned before made me stay up til 02:30 and in effect made me sleep through my alarm (had no recollection of it ringing), missed breakfast, woke up at 11:00 and go for McDonald's for breakfast. Oh and I got lost multiple times after getting off the tube and tried to find my lecture areas.

And finally, quote for today would be me asking my lecturer, "Where can I get a massive stapler?" and he answers "I would guess at the massive stapler shop, but I don't have any though"


Cheers for reading~

~Fox

Beginning of the No lifing?

Hey ya'll,

This is just a test post at 01:43am on  Thursday 07 October 2010.

Lol lets see if I actually will follow through with this blogging thing (-.- a)

Always wanted a place where I could rant, give reviews and share amusing things when they come my way xD Well don't know what made me actually go ahead with it buuuuuut here it is, lets get out our imaginary virtual bottle of champagne and christen this place:

~Fox's Tales~