links for 2009-09-21
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An hour and a half after waking, early birds and night owls were equally alert and showed no difference in attention-related brain activity. But after being awake for 10 and a half hours, night owls had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention. More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift. Peigneux says faster activation of sleep pressure appears to prevent early birds from fully benefiting from the circadian signal, as evening types do.
links for 2009-09-17
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The film charts the misadventures of five teenagers on the fringe of Singaporean society. Abandoned by the system, they seek answers to their aimless existence among the misfits and outsiders of Singapore's underclass. A provocative film acted by real street kids, it exposes a gritty side of modern-day Singapore life that many never knew existed. Banned in Singapore.
links for 2009-09-02
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Just a collection of images, but wow, what a collection!
A few Spymaster tips
When Spymaster originally launched I instantly hated it because of the default set up to spam the crap out of your friends on twitter. I really hate anything that does that and to get spammed by something that was in private beta so you couldn’t even follow through if you wanted to was extra annoying. I started blocking and banning anyone who was playing it. I guess a lot of people had that problem and they corrected some of the issues and I kind of forgot about it. Recently Joi talked me back into checking it out and it’s actually kind of fun, even though it still rewards you for being a douche by spamming your friends. If you want to check it out, the very first thing you have to do is turn off all the notifications, it’s not worth annoying everyone you know for a small cash bonus in game. This is actually my biggest problem with it and I wish they would just kill that option all together. Other than that, here are a few tips and tricks I’ve figured out:
- Level from 1-10 doing MED level tasks. This will give you good experience and a little cash to get started and you’ll level pretty quickly.
- Don’t buy any weapons except what you need for the tasks until you hit lvl 10.
- At 10 sell everything you have and buy only the top tier item for attack/defense, try to get one for each spymaster you have.
- Also, ignore the bank. Depositing anything in there is useless because of the fee, a better place to store cash is in safe houses because they don’t depreciate at all and also make you money.
- At level 10 switch to PVP/assassinations. Focusing solely on MED level opponents will bring you in much more cash than doing tasks can and about the same experience. This will keep your cash level high enough to constantly sell off and upgrade your weapons to the highest level you can buy.
- Attacking LOW targets is a waste of time and attacking HIGH targets can be fun but it’s risky. MED is fairly safe and pays off.
- When you get the opportunity to buy cars, DON’T! They are not a good value for the most part and are easily lost in losing battles.
- Take a second and do the math on equipment upgrades too, just because something new is unlocked doesn’t always mean it’s the best value. To determine how much a given item is worth take the price and divide it by the number of points it gives you and that gives you the price per point. Buy the items that have the lowest point per cost ratio to get the best bang for the buck
- At around level 35 the cash payoff on attacking MED targets drops to nothing, so if you want cash you need to switch to HIGH targets. That said, the experience payoff for attacking LOW targets multiplies considerably, so if you want to level quickly switch to them. Sorry LOW peeps.
- If you want to kill a director, buy the suicide attack option with your points.
- Transfering cash via the bank sucks because they take fees each way and there s a $1MM limit each day. If you want to transfer a bunch of cash to another player, say just before you go elite and all your stats are reset, sell all your weapons so your stats are stupidly low and then attack a high level friend. You’ll loose obviously and they will get a huge chunk of cash from you. You can keep doing this all day, even dying several times. This method will allow you to transfer tons of cash.
That’s just a few tips off the top of my head that I wanted to jot down for friends. If you have any others, please post ’em in the comments.