Afternoon Crunchies

Did I tell you I love the new interface of Blogger thats Opera friendly? Delicious!Sans the activex controls, and that gives it +5 in my test. W00t!

The Saga Begins

Sam: I need parts.
Arun: What?
Sam: I'm building a thing.
Arun: What thing?.
Sam: It needs parts.

*Sam looks at arun's computer..
* blink, blink

Arun: But what thing are you building?
Sam: A thing that needs parts. Hey could I...
Arun: No. NO. You get away from-
Sam: But its got parts..
Arun: I don't care if its got an ASS growing out of the-
Sam: Oooh, here's a shiny one.

*Sam takes a hammer out and smashes Arun's PC to smithereens

Wham! Crack! Crunch!

Sam: Damn. Hammers these days. Minds of their own.
Arun: (weeping) You did that on purpose.
Sam: Makes a good ashtray though.

Not, Infact a Tiger

A year gone by since I passed out of college and started working. And I am still working. I guess that's good. Of course neither me nor most of my friends know what we're going to be doing with our lives. Whether we'll study further, or just keep at this working thing, or find a new kind of animal to tame. Nobody knows how long we'll be doing this, or more importantly, why we're doing it.

I wonder if life grades by attendance.

Stuff that happens to most weird people
So AJ wants me to make a movie with Puneet and feature Andy holding a copy of the book 1984 in his hand and say, "I have been reading this since 1948". It tickled my funny so much, I think I am going to do it. Though I have only a foggy idea, maybe thats how everyone starts off.....

A couple of friends who read mah blog emailed me and told me that in the middle of my masturbation jokes and clowning around, I sometimes let slip insightful comments. I need to keep better control of myself. People might actually ask me for advice if I prove that I have some to give. And I don't remember anything even remotely insightful appearing here.

In other news, did anyone notice the name of the new Charlotte NBA team? The Bobcats. Owned by Bob Johnson. Greeeeat. As if egos in the NBA weren't big enough, a team bears its owner's name? What's next, the Dallas Marksmen? Sheesh...

Some more weirdness- My company is holding compulsory English workshops for everyone. Though Arun got stuck in the ensuing embargo, I am still safe. And I am typing this from the floor of my cubicle, hiding from public view. I don't know how long I can survive like this, but I intend to hold my fortress as long as I can, or at least till lunch hour. People! I got fucking 98 percentile on my English CAT score! Gimme a break here! Shoo!

Clazy Japanese People

So this place is selling a unique cardboard computer cabinet. A metal cabinet costs around 1500 INR, so money saving will not be that big a selling point. Since the site is in Japanese, here is the translated version of the selling points of the contraption:

It is biodegradable

One could decorate it by drawing on it

The case is easy to open and access (for upgrading)

Its made out of recycled paper

Its unique (therefore, fashionable)

They can customise it for you (the lettering from LUPO to your choice)

I'll have to see it working to be convinced though...

GOOGLE Technology Revealed!

The technology behind Google's Page Rank in its index is up for speculation no more! The secret is out. This is what Google has to say:

google.com: "As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages."
Check out the full story here.

Carroto Juice
One of the most basic things that binds guys is their love of, and the fear of any harm to, their genitalia. While both sexes have their own private parts, the women privates are more private than the men privates. For men, it is simply a case of a stray cricket ball, or a misguided stone, or a snake hiding in their potty, to bring their very existence in jeopardy. And all men share the pain of the lone guy being hit in his cream and crackers by a leather cricket ball. I once visited a relative of mine who had an 8 year old daughter and a 5 year old son. We(by which I mean me, the family I visited, and their pets) decided to go out for a walk, and unbenownst to me and my uncle(yes he was my uncle), there was an extremely important life or death important event being covered on the telly at that precise moment. That is another way of saying there was a Mallorca versus Roya Spanish League soccer match, which as everybody knows are the most premiere teams in the Spanish league, which in itself is the league-iest of all leagues.

But men can smell sporting events from as far as Pluto, and this was in our own living room. Needless to say, my uncle and me plonked ourselves in front of the telly while the kids and my aunt were getting ready. And as soon as she came out all ready in her Nike joggers, she started telling my uncle off about how insensitive he was to the children and how he could not even help them get ready, and not watch the football match. I have a feeling she wasn't too happy about her 5 year old running naked yelling ay-phoo-chaieeee all over the apartment either. Well, the little dude was told off too, and he decided to get ready on his own.

Big mistake. The kid got his well, thingie, stuck in his zipper. Ow! As soon as me and my uncle heard his scream, we knew, it was the secret guy scream of hurt directly in the Hamina-Haminas. The kid was crying of course, but you should have seen us. We were two concerned men, not giving two hoots about a screwed up rerun of a soccer game between two unknown clubs of an almost defunct sporting league. There was real concern, real paternal love and caring in our eyes. But most of all, we shared the pain. We slowly, and gingerly eased the offending zip off the kid's by now public privates, while feeling a pain in our mean bean bags too. My aunt was marveling at us swarming over the kid, lightly joking with him to ease of the pain, getting him a huge chocolate box. For her, it was a minor injury.

Women will never truly understand this. Alas, the unity that men share will never be seen by female eyes. Just as well, at least they let us watch Spanish League.

Matrix Unloaded
Well, seems like Arun has a thing or two to say about Matrix Reloaded. And though not as irked, I was disappointed too. I decided to make my views about the movie public now that the euphoria is dead, and well, now that I have some time and inclination to rant. Here goes:
There was no power behind the action sequences, no consequence. Every fight was just going through the motions. One of the great things about the first movie was that during a fight, the opponents surprised one another, there was a sense of urgency about the conflicts. In this movie, the fights are pointless, long and boring. They go no where and serve no purpose. They don't move the story forward or have anything hanging on their outcome.

The CGI sequences were not that cool. In the first movie, the W. Bros used practical but innovative filming techniques to show us something we had never seen before. Why abandon that? The fight with the 300 agents looked like a bad Xbox game.

Zion looked like a bad 70's movie. It was worse than Planet of the Apes. The 30 minute rave and love scene was overbearing and gratuitous. The council chambers looked like a bad Star Trek episode.

I was ultimately disappointed because the second movie did not pick up where the first movie left off. Instead, RELOADED abandoned the first movie for a new direction. At the end of the first movie, Neo is confident, he's the savior, he's the one. He's going to show the world that they are not bound by what they conceive to be reality. He's not going to unhook everyone, because that would be impossible, but he's going to wake them up inside the Matrix. He's not here to end things, but start a new beginning and possibly, a new coexistence.

At the beginning of RELOADED, Neo is back to being unsure. He can fly now and he's a better fighter than most of the other rebels, but he has no purpose, he has no plan. In fact, he mentions on several occasions that he wishes he knew what he should do. They never explain what happened to shatter his confidence.

This may make you think that the movie sucked. Well, yes it did in parts, but it was not all bad. There were cool parts too. But I was disappointed, and the Wachowskis owe me 75 bucks.

Lets See
If you can beat mah mighty Imp:

Sam's Battle Imp is

Eaery

Backstabbing: 4 Dodgin': 6 Guts: 2 Magic Mojo: 10 Smackdown: 7

Will your battle imp beat Sam's? Enter your name and fight.

Blender
Blender 2.27 has been released, the second release in its Open Source form.  Blender is a 3D Modeler which used to be shareware, and has now gone Open
Source. Not only are the developers of the project working on improving  it, an entire community also have the ability to contribute code, or ideas to the project. Since a whole community is working on this open source modeler, and the  progress I have seen it go through recently, there is no doubt that this will be as good as 3ds max and Maya in the near future - and its Open Source! Its based on OpenGL and runs on FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Irix, Solaris and more!
Go here: Blender

Bird of Prey
Today is officially the depress Sam day. All together now, tell me the worst news that you can come up with and keep on depressing me. Come one, come all, fuck Sam in the ass, this is the official day for it.
Bah! Go Away!

Yeh Dil Maange MMO
Some guy asked me about what I thought about the MMO glut that Sony online has brought in the market. this is part of what he said:

I was reading that everquest has over 420,000 subscribers. That means they are pulling in about 5 million dollars a month from just the montly fees for that one game. Sony is going to have everquest, everquest 2, planetside and galaxies soon. They have mentioned a special price you can play all of their mmo games unlimited for 20 bucks a month. Imagine that, they will probably be pulling in over 10 million dollars of gamer's hard earned cash a month just on montly fees alone.

He went on to compare the monthly price of 12$(US) for each game to rape. He also said :
Not to mention this is hurting all the small non-mmo devs that really deserve success. Think about it. If you are a subscriber to multiple mmo games, you are going to be very tied up with those games. You would be paying your montly fees and want to get all of your gaming's worth out of them. You could go from a non-mmo gamer that buys several titles per season to a mmo gamer that might buy a very few titles a year. Think about how much that will hurt all the small non-mmo devs.


Lets see, what light can I shed here?
I dont play MMO's. But that is a choice thing. I dont play them because I am more a fan of Single Player experiences, and personal LAN games, rather than internet play. I have never played or understood the mechanics of playing a fantasy MMORPG, so I cant really say if the experience is worth 12USD(565 INR). But Planetside? For 12 USD? After all is said and done, its a shooter. While I can play MoH:AA, or UT2003 online after just paying for the game, now they expect me to buy the game and then pay to play it. I understand that most MMORPGs have a character they have grown attached to, since they have devoted a lot of time on it, and done a lot of roleplaying with it. Hell, I am proud of my Morrowind character too. But however much you may upgrade him, in a shooter your character is just a guy shooting at other people. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Planetside will be played by people who are totally involved in it. But I still cant see myself paying for such an experience.

As far as the debate on whether or not the sudden spate of MMO's is good for the gaming community goes, I think its a mixed thing. While the MMO's have given birth to a lot of close knit communities and involve a lot of dedicated play towards a game, on the other hand, there are examples of people only playing MMOs and shunning their other gaming interests.
I have always thought the the next cool thing in game distribution would be episodic. Games would be available for retail at cheap prices, and with a lot less gameplay in the beginning out of the box game. But if you happen to like the game enough, you can spend more, and download/stream more levels, scenarios, and move your game forward. I am not talking demos here. I am talking about a longer gameplay duration than that, but a lot less than what games have to ship with in order to justify a 60 USD price tag. This would eventually lead to shorter initial development periods, and would really determine whether the game is worth investing in. This will be financially sound for the gamers as well as developers. There are actually some discussions on this model in the industry, so its not a whim, but a distinct possibility.

So how does all this relate to the topic at hand? Well, for one, this model could well bring those "everquesters" back into mainstream gaming, since the time/money they invest in the game is directly proportional to their interest in it. Also, this is the recurring expenditure model that I am willing to accept. I refuse to keep on paying to play in the same world and killing the same monsters over and over. As I understand, currently, all new worlds are released as expansion packs, only accessible to people who buy it. I am not oppposed to game companies making money. I am opposed to paying good money for something that does not add to its value over time. The model I described above, if implemented right, could well be a revolution in terms of game distribution as well as game pricing.

*switches the lamp off*

LIVE
I found this band, and its called Live. It has some great sounds, in fact I think it rocks. Go buy a cassette or CD or whatever (mp3, wink, wink). Verry cool stuff.