Spore Islands Cheats, Tips, and Tricks

Spore Islands is a facebook game based on the popular PC game SPORE. In this game, you play the invisible hand of evolution/intelligent design (whichever you think made us what we are). The game is mostly about balancing your creature's stats enough so that it thrives in the Spore Islands area map and dominates the other species. You can go to other people's maps as well for more points, and they can go to yours too.

Here are some cheats, tips, and tricks for Spore Islands that I've been able to figure during my playing time. I hope this guide will guide you to a better playing position.

- You don't necessarily have to be the top of the food chain. If you can reproduce faster than your predators can eat you, you will still win in dominance.

- Using only one source of food is very risky, specially in crowded maps of Spore island.

- Fastest way to accumulate points is to appoint friends who can design "food" creatures for yours. To be fair, you can also design "food" creatures for them. Food creatures are badly designed creatures that can be eaten by your creatures as additional sources of food, all the while ensuring they do not compete with your creatures in terms of resources (make them eat rare herbs for example)

- If you're going for top predator, you can lower the sensitivity to danger to just one, because if anybody attacks you, you can always just annihilate them. Increase food/spark sensitivity instead.

- When building noncarnivores, go for either the extremity of defense or speed. Speed works well with fast multiplication and light weight. Kinda like real life.

- Lots of friends = more diversity = more points for all. So keep inviting people to your island.

- The more creatures you have roaming in your island, the faster points accumulates. If you're the top predator, expect to dominate the early part of the round, but as your food falls and your numbers go up, hunger will kill off most of your kind. If you're unlucky and get one creature stuck on a creatureless sector, you will be left with no creatures at all! After that, it's going to be a tough climb back up.

- Adding up above, consistency is key. To avoid overpopulation and crashing afterwards, carefully balance out your reproduction rate with the available food, which varies from location to location, and the local inhabitants of the place. In the event that you're not on top of the chain however, you should also take into account the chance your creature will get eaten. Again, getting eaten is not such a bad thing, as long as you can sustain losses. Don't worry about having your creature's ass handed back to him everytime it gets into a fight.We're playing survival here of a species, not just one creature. Insects are weak compared to humans, but they outnumber us by a million to one. Same logic applies. To sum up, do not overreproduce, do not underreproduce and you get the points.

- One interesting thing about this game is that what works for one island will not necessarily work on the next. Stats for every animal on your island is available in the main screen so you can copy interesting builds for your creatures.

- It's easy to give builds to people, but the fact is, all builds are equal and differ only by how well they interact with each other. The main objective of you as a player of this game is to figure out how to exploit the ecosystem. If you see a type of resource being underutilized, adopt your creature to it.

That's it for now, I'll add more tips and tricks later. Good luck with your spore island! Happy gaming!
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The REAL Alternative for 2010

Tired of having to pick over fruits being handed out to you by dubious looking strangers? Me too. To be quite frank, picking a presidentiable right now feels like picking the type of firearm you want to shoot yourself with. We need somebody who can represent our feeling that we're already tired of the usual gang of posers. Somebody who can make the country follow them. Make the country listen. We need people who can educate our masses. We need people who can foster values. My fellow citizens, I hereby propose the creation of a new party. Bayang Ayaw sa Tiwaling Indibidwal, Balimbing, O Trapo PANAHON NA. TAYO NA. DOON SA BATIBOT. President - Kuya Bodjie - Sino pa ba nag pwedeng makapagpasunod sa bayan na ito kundi ang ating "kuya" na kinalakihan? Sya lang ang kayang magasabi ng "Mga Bata!" na hindi mo iisiping kontra bida sya. Vice President - Ate Sienna - Si Sienna, natural na vice president kasi magaling syang sumuporta sa mga layunin ni Bodjie, at hindi sya balimbing. Department of Defense - Pong Pagong - May mas titibay pa ba sa pagong? Amphibious, malaki, matibay, malaki ang mata. Office of the Ombudsman - Kiko Matsing - Kung ungguyan din lang, si Ka Kiko na sasalo sa iyo. Walang makakapagtago sa baging ng batas. DOST - Sitsiritsit - San ka pa? Alien to tol. From outerspace, hindi India. Hightech. DOH - Alibangbang - Alam kong bawal ang nepotismo sa gobyerno, pero hindi naman talaga magkapatid sila ni Sitsiritsit. Preba? Hindi pareho ang apelyido nila. Dela Cruz si Sitsiritsit, Perez naman si Alibangbang. (sinabi nila sakin to dati, pero top secret daw kasi nga alien sila) Press Secretary - Irma Daldal - Artista. Madaldal. Parang si Kris Aquino, pero walang STD. DECS - Kapitan Basa - Galit sa illiteracy at mga malimaling libro. Lumilipad. Kaya ba ng DECS secretary natin na lumipad? Pakyu. Dito na tayo. DPWH - Koko Kwik-Kwak - Tutal naman walang may gusto sa kanya, inilagay sya sa DPWH, para kung maging tiwali sya, pwede natin syang ipabaril. Walang malulungkot. PANAHON NA. TAYO NA. DOON SA BATIBOT. BATIBOT PARTY. VOTE STRAIGHT. VOTE SMART.

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Meaning of Workplace Objects

Here's a list of common items you find on the workdesks of your officemates. I've taken the time to translate what they're trying to convey and what they really mean.

Anime Figurines

- I am a connoisseur of the oriental art of animation.

- I secretly masturbate to this figurine when nobody is around.

World's Best Dad Mug

- I have children who love me, hence the mug.

- My children are either largely unimaginative or gifted with the virtue of sarcasm

Lots of paperwork

- I'm a very busy person, back off.

- I hate mother nature, and digital information.

Certificates/Trophies

- I am the alpha employee in this office. Just take a look at it.

- But it doesn't make up for my small penis.

Pictures of Children

- My children are awesome.

- If you hate long long tales of my kid's firsts, avoid bringing that topic up.

Chinese ornaments

- I've very sensitive to the chi around me, which I feel compelled to protect with these artifacts.

- Sometimes, I see dead people.

Rubbing Alcohol

- I'm a very hygienic person.

- Sometimes, when we talk, I imagine bacteria coming out of your mouth hitting my face. Gross.


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Top 10 Reasons the 2012 Apocalypse Will Not Happen

10. Duke Nukem Forever still needs to come out.

9. We're still waiting for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's offspring to grow up so we can see what happens when you win the biggest genetic powerball in history.

8. Twilight Saga's next twenty films ensure we have bigger things to worry about.

7. I still haven't seen any cellphone capable of toasting bread.

6. Nobody's decided yet which religion will bring people to heaven.

5. Hell's probably still too overcrowded, no thanks to internet and internet p0rn.

4. After six years, Ragnarok Online is still in beta, as God intended.

3. Erap might win this election, in which case apocalypse will happen sooner than later.

2. Kris Aquino can't run for presidency until the next election.

1. Chuck Norris does not wait for the apocalypse. The apocalypse waits for Chuck Norris.


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Red Dates A Supermodel

I went out on a date with a supermodel one day. I was not even impressed. The whole night, I didn't even get to see her fly. The supermodel told me, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I told her no of course. I'm pretty sure supermodels can't be called super unless they can fly. They're just hiding it. Why else would they call the stage "RUNWAY"? Read more!

Sabrina’s “I Love Acoustic: Intimate Interpretations of Your Favorite Hits Download/Review

Anyway, I thought I'd do some album reviewing for a while since I'm too busy at the moment to do full articles. I figured we can kick start with something mellow.


Sabrina’s I Love Acoustic: Intimate Interpretations of Your Favorite Hits.


No, I'm not kidding. That's the title of the album. Quite a mouthful, if you ask me, and not mention it sounds as frigging stupid as Buruguduystunstugudunstuy. Only for the latter's case, it's intentional. I mean really, Love? Acoustic? Intimate? Greatest Hits? What other random word do you need to chuck into the cover page? It's almost as if whoever thought of the title was desperate to catch the attention of the type of people who browse their music by keywords. To be fair though, nobody can ever judge an album's content by its cover, why, Jericho Rosales's album cover sucked too and...


Okay, nevermind. Let's just move on.

As said in the album, Sabrina covers popular love songs in this album. I really don't get why covering songs is all the rage nowadays. How long will we keep on accepting the reason for this is nostalgia? How about laziness? Yeah, that. Anyway, a good cover's still better than a bad new song, so let's just let that slide.

Here are a few songs worthy of note for this album:

A Thousand Miles
Vanessa Carlton has a notably fancy schlancy style, while keeping that snap at the end of her verses that adds a hint of poppiness to the song. Sabrina took that fanciness and ran around with it, ending with a song softer than the dongs of people who came in contact with Vina Morales. Also worthy to note, the original rendition is already ACOUSTIC, albeit PIANO acoustic. Which made me think that the only reason this was included is because people thought acoustic had something to do with being covered using a guitar or something.

Superman

A notably masculine song, sang by a female artist. Cute. But why change every "man" word in the song to "girl" and still keep the title? Fucking stupid. Seriously. Everytime I listen to this, I die a little.

Way Back Into Love
Hugh Grant sang this. Hugh Grant is the musical world's equivalent of the Little Engine That Could. Obviously this song is very very hard to screw up so Sabrina does okay here. Okay maybe not that much. What's with the strange falsetto (like there's a leaking airtank somewhere in the studio)? Falsetto is cute, but this is just too much.

The rest of the songs are pretty much the same. Sabrina likes to sing cute, which is something I'd like to hear when going to videokes with friends, not when I want to listen to something prerecorded. Too cute = maarte. That about sums up almost every song in this album.

Best Track?
You're Beautiful by James Blunt. For some reason, Blunt's pussy-style of singing blends well with Sabrina's style, and barely makes up for the other covers. But that's just me.

Overall Recommendation?
Sabrina's I Love Acoustic: Intimate Interpretations of Your Favorite Hits is like those fancy chinaware every Filipino family has. Fancy as hell, but hardly something you'd find using on a regular basis, and if you do, it's only mostly to impress other people.

Download The Album Via This Link
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Full Disclosure

I just one to let this out. One more time. I am so fucking angry at my fucking job right now. For those of you who aren't too familiar about what I do, I am working for a year-old IT firm that absorbed my old company last year. Upon absorption, I retained my status as Lead Analyst of the Java team, and it's all been good. Or rather it would have, except after being absorbed by our new company, the workload that was coming from our client company more than doubled. Meanwhile, our team increased by a magnitude of big fat zero. Simple math says, everybody had to take in double responsibilities, and half the normal rest time.

Frequent friction between our team and our client's side lead to the decision of upper management that maybe, to solve issues that stem from people making mistakes because of overwork, it'd be a good idea to lynch everybody that made mistakes. Three more staff left/were force to leave, bringing our total strength from 16 to thirteen. One of the staff that got removed was my direct head, our section manager.

Not wanting to see some nobody to take the now vacant helm, I was literally forced into taking my boss' position, without so much as an increase in pay, or even a change in title. But I figured it had to be done, so I did it anyway. Our general manager said the promotion will follow eventually. My workload, already double, went triple because I had to do what my section manager used to do, on top of what I'm doing already. Chalk it up to experience. Suck it all in.

We were basically overloaded for the better half of this year. I couldn't even take one vacation leave for the last five months. Not a single fucking one. And we did our job as good as we could. My team basically outperformed the better part of this company in cost/revenue. And HK even sent good words to upper management for our performance.

We're not perfect and god knows we've had our share of mistakes along the way, but we knew we our standing. We were making money and the clients are happy. That's the bottom line.

Then came the appraisals. Our former section manager appraised most of my team, as well as me. And to his credit, I can understand his somewhat modest ratings, as it made sense to make sure that the bell curve to be normal, meaning more people get the middle value compared to the lower and upper extremes. We still got higher than the average so it's more than acceptable. (see graph)


After performing the appraisals, carefully informing the staff of their strengths and points of improvements, we submitted the results to management, who then performed the subsequent calculations for the actual performance adjustment.

Now this is where shit hit the fan. Somewhere along the way, somebody thought it wise to just move the scale up, even though it will pull everybody's scores down inexplicably and produce a motherfucking skewed distribution below.

Because of the adjustment, all of my team members, including me, suddenly appeared subpar. On a scale from A-H, the highest any single member of my team got was E, while some of us did not even get a rank (because they were too low).

Talk about pushing hard and slapping people in the face.

Can you imagine that? Working hard the whole year, being told by everybody including the upper management that your team is doing great, and is one miracle short of being Jesus and then you get a fucking F for all your hassles?

Because of that, and the amazingly stingy policy of management, I got a raise that's not even half of the first raise that I got when I started as a trainee, 5 years ago.

But nevermind the money. On top of that, upper management had the gall to tell my staff individually about complaints coming from HK, which appeared to be random, because even the highest regarded developers somehow got requests of demotion from HK. We verified this and the reports were obviously pulled out of thin air. No substantial evidence could be given. Nothing.

Of course I complained. Oh hell I complained. I asked management if they thought there was something wrong with the team getting real low results despite being good performers. They told me, yes there's something wrong with that. Then I ask them if it can be fixed. I got a big fat NO for an answer. You know what's worse than getting ripped? Being told by whoever ripped you that they really did rip you, but only because they know you can't do anything about it.

Morale in our group has been in an all time low since that day.

I have never been so insulted in my whole career as the day I got my appraisal results, to be honest. It wouldn't have hurt as much if it happened some other time. Any year but this year, because this year, fuck, I knew deep inside my heart that
this was the year I tried hardest.

I argued of course. And in the end, our general manager told me that he will try to make amends through the title adjustments that was supposed to happen after a month. If people got promoted, we figured, salaries are bound to go up and at the very least, people will get their needed reassurance that they didn't work their asses off just to get E's and F's.

Earlier, during a meeting, we were told that the promotions will not happen anytime this year, and even if it did, that I cannot promote everybody - a stark contrast to what I was told, and what I committed to my staff, simply because it's "hard" to do. Funny, because I can't remember an instance we stopped doing something just because it was "hard".

Appraisals are supposed to give people something to look forward to, something that will make them want to work more, because god knows work in itself is just toxic. This year, the appraisal worked opposite, making you just want to work less sterlingly.

And personally, doing management work while retaining my old title is awkward as fuck. Nobody wants to get instructed by somebody who's barely their rank.

What the fuck.

People will think this post is biased on my side, because I'm angry and I just need to vent out. I don't really care. I have numbers to back my side. Substantial numbers that can prove beyond the shadow of the doubt how much BS we got for our efforts.

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