Bhor Bhor Bhor Bhor Bhayee...
You know what is fun? Going to an Indian Ocean concert with friends. So I had fun on saturday. Gobs of it. As an improver, there was Shubha Mudgal doing an absolutely random jam thing with them. Wow. The best thing about them, that has not changed with fame and time, is their unassuming, unabashedly down to earth attitude. They way they connect with the audience is a synergy to be seen.
Rahul seems to go from strength to strength on the bass guitar. Right now, he's somewhere around the super cool category. The girls seemed to kinda like Amit, the drummer. I got that idea when a particularly raucous groups of girls screamed at the top of their lungs, "We Luuuurve Youuuu Amiiit". Heh.
Sushmit was his usual quiet, genius strumming on a guitar self, while Asheem is did what he does best... percussion, mostly tablas. AND he sang note to note with Shubha Mudgal. All in all, fantastic.
One funny thing happened... you know the time when a concert is about to end, and during a slow song, how everyone takes out lighters, matches, and candles? Well, since there was a dearth of smokers in this particular crowd, cellphone-obsessed Delhi improvised, and whipped out its phones, displays lit up! :D

Finally this is the story of my life:

image courtesy Dork Tower

Amd Launches New 64 Bit Processors

Advanced Micro Devices launched its latest Athlon processors, the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX yesterday.

With the Athlon 64 and 64 FX lines, AMD seeks to encourage performance-minded desktop consumers to prepare now for a 64-bit upgrade path when a Windows operating system capable of running in 64 bits becomes available in the first half of 2004.

More reviews on the processors are linked at Blues news here.

This is also important since Microsoft released a beta of Windows XP for 64-bit PCs based on the new Athlon 64 processor yesterday. Check the news.com article here.

Smartly, Me Lad!

A great article on HardOCP confirms most of our suspicions: The Phantom console seems to be an elaborate construction of lies and half-truths, an outright scam to defraud investors unfamiliar with the gaming industry.

We live in an age where technology has provided us with tools read and cross-reference any record you want. Con artists leave trails like these too, only they assume nobody will check them. Its certainly not the first time the gaming world is confronted by someone with the outright ambition to defraud gamers and the industry. Investigative journalism is something that anyone can partake in, and everyone should. I want to see a day where all such hucksters of misinformation are run out on a rail by an angry mob of Google users, Mississippi style. I want to see regular people like you and me witch-hunting the Phantoms of untruth, making them flee from a populace armed with the pitchforks of public records and the torches of technology empowered knowledge base, screaming, "KHAAAAAN" as they usher in a new age of gumption. I'm all tingly just thinking about it.

Anyhoo, 19th was Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I spent my day screaming,"YAAAARRR!" and "Avast ye Landlubbers" at people in my office. My shenanigans had to be stopped however, when I said, "Avast ye, ye scurvy dog", while my Project Manager was around. Heh.
The next day, I caught Pirates of the Carribbean, and spent the rest of the day as a bonus Talk Like a Pirate Day. Also bought Dragons of Eden (my earlier copy is lost, sad), Prince of Ayodhya, and on a whim, Alexander: Child of a Dream. Gave me enough incentive to laze around on Sunday. AAARRRR!!

How well do you know your Atari?



Take the test here, and see how much of a classic gaming nerd you are.
By the way, I got a 100%.

%SPOILER ALERT!!%

The answers are:
1.) What is the name of the hero in the game Pitfall!? (Harry)
2.) Which of the following games was not published by Activision? (Centipede)
3.) Which game came with the Atari 2600? (Combat)
4.) Which of the following are enemies in the game Megamania? (Diamonds, Tires, Irons)
5.) How many difficulty levels were in the game Adventure? (3)
6.) Which company published the game River Raid? (Activision)
7.) In the games Yar's Revenge, what does the player's ship look like? (An Insect)
8.) Which game had more returns then any other Atari game ever? (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial)
9.) Which of the following games did not use the paddle controllers? (Maze Craze)
10.) Which of the following is not a racing game? (Berserk)

%SPOILER OVER%

Yes, yes I know, I need help. Now, if you would be so kind as to give me your shrink's phone number...

I know this is pretty late...

...but I had an eventful weekend. I finished The Da Vinci Code, excellent, excellent book that it was, I finished the layout of my new site design, I saw the final cut for my movie, the one that Arun is editing...and I bought a cell phone.
And that is the new bane of my existence. I bought it so people wouldn't call on my friends' cell phones to talk to me, and that's it. I despise having to carry around something that helps people track me down. I keep in touch with my friends my own way, thank you very much. Suddenly I see the whole country being gripped by cell phone mania. If you have to call a person, you have to call him right now! I dunno, maybe I value my privacy a little bit too much... I think I'll have to get used to the thing.
On the movie though... I think I'll call it 'Gamasutra'. Or maybe not... lets see. Its coming out pretty well, and I expect it to go to Andy for sound editing this weekend. If he has time, it should be up and ready soon. I see now that I could have done a lot better, but considering it was my first shot at this, its pretty cool nevertheless.

Why am I boring you with this? At least I'm not ignoring you for games. Or maybe I am. :p

Choices and Influences

About a year ago, Janet Murray and grad student Chaim Gingold initiated a "game morphology" project at Georgia Tech. They asked several game designers and researchers, What ten games have been most important to you as a designer/reseracher, and/or most important to the development of electronic gaming in general?

Some initial results of the project made public on their website. Makes for an interesting read.

Also, I ended up watching Saving Private Ryan for the umpteenth time last night, and missed Meet Joe Black. Something tells me I made the right choice.

The Seventh Day

"The magic of a computer lies in its ability to become almost anything you can imagine, as long as you can explain exactly what that is. The hitch is in explaining what you want. With the right programming, a computer can become a theater, a musical instrument, a reference book, a chess opponent. No other entity in the world except a human brain has such an adaptable, universal nature. Ultimately all these functions are implemented by the Boolean logic blocks and finite-state machine described in the previous chapter...."

Daniel Hillis, "The Pattern on the Stone" 1998, p 39.

Danile Hillis is a computer scientist and the head of Disney's Imagineering. What he has theorized here is the fact that science and what a man can do with it is limited to his imagination. The malleable property of computers shines through this piece of prose and reflects a very important thought: Everything you use on a computer has been inherited as a fundamental property of computers. Everything is crafted out of the material of raw ideas. And unlike most media, electronic entertainment remains an abstract form of ideas. Just as computers remain the sum total of your ideas, so do videogames. The experience that you derive from them is limited to your imagination.

So Big Things

Oh joyous day!! I'm so happy!! Apparently quite a few people have decided to send me wicked screensavers, many more have approved me, still more want to discuss that movie with me, and a lot more are asking for my details! YAY!

While I answer all this wonderful email, please visit this place. It's fun. Really.

Armageddon

WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

Virtual Stimuli

Videogames are a form of human expression. There are people who insist it is art. Others rebuff that idea and call it entertainment. "Art" is merely what happens when you start to apply entertainment and the experiences thereof to your own life. That is to say: if videogames don't say anything to you, that's your own fault for not listening. It's the same as with anything in life, including books, comics, and movies. I deny outright the notion that playing videogames is inert creatively. It's not the same as doing nothing at all. People listen to music, read books to help them get in a relaxed frame of mind, and continue the creative flow on to their work. Art forms, and the experiences they offer are a known augmenter to the creative process. Similarly, I experience art forms to entertain myself and I utilize the settings and scenarios to enhance my own creative process, outputting a huge volume of supplementary data for each character, activity, and context. I think that videogames are an excellent tool for this purpose.