Sabbatical

You do know that this is only a phase I am going through. I'd probably write a couple of more posts and then forget about the existence of this blog even though it stares me in my favourites toolbar of my browser every single day. I am adept in ignoring things that once used to matter to me.

Lets get this over with. It should be obvious from the title of this post and the date stamps from the last post, that it has been almost a year since I blogged last time. During this period of time I have been busy doing some actual stuff, which really didn't require me to abandon my blog but I'm gonna try to justify it anyway.

I relocated to a new country called Singapore, got myself enrolled for a masters degree in something to do with lasers (not the Star Wars kind) and diamonds (not the De Beers kind) and chips (not the Lays kind) which I miraculously finished in one year. Normal people tend to take about a year and half to two years to complete a masters degree but there is a reason for the studious-Indian/Asian-kid stereotype to exist.

Now I live in an apartment with 3 other dudes, and I was forced to have learnt to cook and clean up after myself. I had classes for 3 hours on all weekdays in the evenings only. I spend my days gaming, feeding myself and doing other unproductive things and go to classes in the evenings. That's the life of a "full time" student.

A couple of days ago I finished my last exam and I had an overwhelming feeling of finishing something extremely menial. Being a student for almost 18 years tends to do that. Now that I have successfully finished my exams I have to get myself a job. This is supposed to be the difficult part, they say, to which I say, the exams weren't any bit easier.

You probably knew all that story already since all of you who read my blog are either my friends or a sibling. Blogger makes it a point to show it to me that I have only 6 followers and I have racked up a whopping 396 page views.  So I hope you can understand that I didn't need much of motivation to stop writing.

And what motivated me to get back to writing it again?

Nothing, I was just bored.

***

Its gonna be at least 3 more months before my graduation ceremony and I plan to post as often as possible within this time frame so as to prevent any possible brain damage due to brain inactivity. If I do not, then you need not worry, It would only be because I found something much more interesting to do...which is great for me, but I don't know how it would improve your situation. Maybe you should worry. Or maybe not. I really don't care (unless I get like a thousand followers which is highly unlikely).

I'm gonna finish this post and get back to doing something until I can come up with something worth writing about. If you want me to write about something specific, be sure to leave it in your comments. And if I decide not to write about your idea, its probably because it was either too awesome or too lame for me to write about.

Ciao.

Sunday Blues

Another father-son moment:

"You've been buying english newspapers for a week but I've never seen you read them. Are you reading them or are you wasting the money?"

"Yes dad I am reading."

"Well then go read it now. Don't watch TV all the time."

"But I've read it already!"

"Everything?"

"No I just skimmed it..."

"Then read it again, this time, in detail."

"But dad! I-"

"No buts. Go. Now. And hand over the TV remote to me."

Perfect Sunday.

***

This holiday thing is getting a bit exhausting. Then again, I'm not exactly on a holiday, there's no next semester for me, I'm technically a B.E grad once I get my provisional certificate. And then I am falling into a deep and empty void of nothing.

Seriously, will this holiday ever end?

***

In my quest to avoid boredom in the unconventional way (conventional way would be watching TV, gaming and just sitting on the couch and staring at the roof), I have been experimenting for the last few weeks. I've been trying sketching, my childhood hobby, but my nemesis, an 8 year old who claims to be my nephew is interrupting the process. I was going to make my comeback in deviantART with my drawn and inked Batman sketch, but the brat tore it off while I was sleeping and took it home to stick it in his wall. He'll probably show off to his friends that he drew it.

But I got my revenge. I've tuned out all the cartoon channels from his TV set. You don't wanna mess with the Eggman. I'm pure evil.

Next is my new found passion to read newspapers. Not that I didn't have newspapers before but now I'm buying english language newspapers and tamil activists might protest against me for not helping tamil to grow. Sorry, but tamil newspapers are marginally costlier with less content when compared to english dailies. And the editorials in The Hindu are a learning experience. Do you know that 80 crore people in our country live on Rs. 20 a day? That's less than how much we spend for a coffee at a coffee house in the city.

Then came cooking. It actually started out like this. When I try to watch TV at around 6, my mom will snatch the remote from me and watch a cooking show (somehow all channels have a cooking show around that time), and I thought 'What the hell? Does it matter what I watch, as long as I watch it in a TV?'. TV is entertaining and educational. Even Kalaignar feels that way.

Then I started coming across many cooking recipes while browsing for playboy centerfolds arts and paintings, and I took it as a sign. I cooked Paneer Shabnam and for the first time I liked something I cooked myself (except Maggi noodles). Then I tried to cook Chinese with Schezwan Noodles but I didn't get the sauce right. Its okay, baby steps.

***

This anti-corruption thing is actually gaining momentum and the only thing its missing is a skinny bearded yoga guru who can't stop blinking his left eye. Actually we do have one of those, and its name is Baba Ramdev, who is fondly called 'dhongi baba' by Mahatma Gandhi's grandson. Aptly named one would say. I don't like anyone uses religious means to a political end. Dhongi baba is making ridiculous demands half of which cannot be done overnight and the other half is too silly to even consider a possibility. You've gotta blame Congress though, for acting like a wuss with him from the very beginning. He's a yoga instructor for heavens sake! You don't send 4 cabinet ministers to make nice with a guy like him. 

If you think he's doing something noble, let me tell you this. The Ramlila grounds, which was used for the protest, was actually booked by the dhongi baba claiming that he was going to conduct a yoga campaign. He tried to make under the table negotiations with Congress and if Congress ministers didn't read out his letter in the press conference on the night of the hunger fast, the so called fast would've ended in a day. 

BJP thinks its right to back him, but its gradually giving its ground as the opposition party to these so called civil activists. Its one thing to support Anna Hazare, but if BJP gives support to ignorant manipulators like the baba, it will be hard to please him if/when BJP comes to power. A word of caution to Congress: an RSS backed religious leader is a loaded weapon with a hair trigger.

***

Okay I've written something about current affairs. Now will you believe that I've been reading newspapers?

Until next time.

The Eggman.

The Lesser Evil

MMMMUUUUAAAAHHHH :*


This kiss is for Mylo, my dear computer, who's SMPS was fried by TNEB's notorious voltage surge last Friday. She was finally fixed today and during the last 4-5 days during which she was knocked out cold, I missed her very much and realized how much internet is essential to us and how costly GPRS is.

***

 

This image was made when JJ became CM of Tamilnadu the 2nd time and it was actually used in the ADMK website. Who would've expected those fellas to have a sense of humour?

On the day of voting I was very much indecisive about who I should vote. No doubt ADMK is as corrupt as DMK is. But the deciding factor was that the whole of Karunanithi's family is knee deep in the muck of corruption and it seemed that it might be good to give JJ a chance and see if she has seen the error of her ways.

I am pretty sure everyone except ADMK was surprised by the fact that they actually won. Even though everyone hoped that DMK shouldn't win, they thought it was impossible since DMK has proven its mettle in rigging elections. Alas, if it wasn't for BHEL's homemade electronic ballot device, DMK might have won this election (I've always wanted to use the word 'alas' in a sentence). Kudos to the election commission for conducting this election with least noise and hindrance to the public and at the same time having 80% voter turnout. with respect to voter turnout, any number above 50% is good.

To make a list of surprises,

1. ADMK's huge majority
2. DMK's low vote share
3. TN people's nerve to stand up against corruption
4. The look on Vadivelu's face

 Actually, Vadivelu's face should be on top of the list.

***

It has become almost a common thing that all major games these days cannot be fit inside a commonly available 4.7 GB DVD. Games like  GTA 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Total War Shogun 2 well exceed the 10 GB mark while most other "serious games average around 6-8 GB. However there are some games which can be fit inside a CD and still get higher ratings in comparison to these games. And I'm not talking about Super Mario and Contra. Here are the top 5 so-called casual games of the recent times that pwned the serious games.

5. Angry Birds

One of the highest selling iTunes app of all time, when Angry Birds for PC came out I found that it had the niche to bring out the person inside you who never gave up from beating the level even after seeing the game over screen so many times over and over. The objective of the game is pretty simple - knock out a bunch of funnily drawn pigs perched precariously on top of unstable structures. The difficulty ramps up pretty smoothly and you should be a master of projectile physics to get 3 stars in every level of the game.

4. Plants vs. Zombies

 Plants vs. Zombies was the first game that I've played in the tower defense genre. Brain eating zombies have taken over the planet and you have a bunch of plants that can protect you from them. You get easily hooked to this game as I found that my time was better spent playing this game than to prepare for TCS placement test (oh, that explains why I didn't get placed in TCS).

3. Anomaly: Warzone Earth

 Anomaly is a hybrid of strategy tower defense games. The alien invasion theme also follows in this game but all instead of zombies you have huge mechanical things that zap your ass to kingdom come and instead of plants you have tanks and missile launchers and people talking in British accent. This is a thinking man's game and the gorgeous visuals will protect you from your friends making fun of you for playing children's games.

2. World of Goo

Being a casual game hater for most of my younger and ignorant life as a gamer, World of Goo was the first casual game that I played because of the rave reviews it got. It was designed by 2 programmers who used to work for the gaming mogul Electronic Arts. They started a company called 2D boy and their first product was this game. The game used simple mechanics such as gravity and wind. Numerous tiny balls known as goo balls can be used to construct makeshift towers and bridges and they should be made so that they lead to a pipe's open end. Structures should be made with minimum number of goo balls because the more goo balls you save yields you more points. All this means endless hours of puzzle solving fun.

1. Super Meat Boy

Forget about everything I've said above. None of these games even come close to greatness as Super Meat Boy does. THIS IS THE SHIT.


***

Yawn. Oh so sleepy. Until next time.

Super Egg Boy.

I'm ba...no I'm not gonna say that again

This is strange. I've been here before. Oh yeah now I remember, its my blog!

I know what you're thinking and I can explain why I haven't been blogging. Its just that for the last one year I was tailing Osama in a special joint operation with the CIA and finally we killed that douchebag. So now I finally got some time to blog.

No! I was just being lazy you know...playing video games, watching TV and movies and other stuff and I forgot to write about all the embarrassing stuff I did in my everyday life.

But now I have realized the truth. I'm a grown up now (sort of), so I shouldn't spend my time playing games and watching TV. I should take charge of my life and perform some responsibilities. Here's what I'm gonna do now. I'm gonna find a job, maybe do some research about higher studies, try my luck with GRE, apply to some universities abroad and decide what I'm gonna do with my life. 

Oh wait a second...I got a job, I aced GRE and I have applied to some foreign universities! So I guess I'll just figure out what I'm gonna do with my life...I'll just stay home, play video games, watch TV until I get my call letter. But I guess that's what I was doing already.

***

Hope that answered what I've been doing since my long absence from blogging. Right now I got almost everything an early ty-ager would want from his life. I am twenTY one, making me a TY ager. See I just made up a word for my convenience just like that guy in that HTC Pulse mobile phone ad who makes up a word called zoot for the convenience of a game of scrabble. Do ad film makers actually think before making ads like that? Isn't it just ridiculous, thinking that if you have a mobile phone with an internet connection you can do anything? Maybe even start a revolution to topple a government? (an exception would be Libya...think about it for a second, their government was so weak that a social networking site was responsible for its downfall.)

Another ridiculous one is the Kellogg's Special K ad in which they say if they eat that stuff twice everyday for two weeks you can lose *upto* two pounds. Then the narrator with the cool voice says that research has shown that by having healthy eating habits people can become slim. Now, the people who watch this ad maybe stupid, but they gotta be real dumbasses if they haven't figured this out themselves. If that piece of information was found out using research then the researchers were real dumbasses.

But the ads which really make my blood boil are the cosmetic ones which really sound as if to make women have a really low self esteem. There's this anti-ageing cream ad in which two couples are having dinner together and one of the women tells the other that there is no need for such creams at the age of 30. 5 years later the woman who uses the advertised cream is living happily with her husband while the other woman is sad because her husband doesn't pay attention to her enough. And the happy woman says its not too late and gives her the cream. What is wrong with this ad? First of all, here's a little information for some woman out there, if your husband doesn't pay attention to you, its probably because your his wife, its bound to happen. You can dress skimpily, that might help (but not in public places, that's perceived a little differently). Second of all, if your husband does not love you because your old, then he probably didn't love you for your character, you should figure that out yourself. So you can divorce him, get yourself an older husband who will find you new, and your ex-husband can get himself a newer wife who will eventually get old, but hey, you'll still get half of his assets and alimony!

And oh the fairness creams! First they said you didn't look fair so you needed to use that cream. Now they're saying that your face is fair but your body doesn't match the fairness of your face so you need another cream for that! Now if these ads were shown in the US or any other country with black people having an appreciable amount of self esteem they'd have sued these companies for offending them by pointing out racist differences. Well if these ads could be applauded for not showing any sort of discrimination then that would be gender based descrimination because there are fairness creams for men also. As Virat Kohli points out, performance off the pitch matters just as much as on the pitch in his Fair and Lovely ad. If Martin Luther King thought that having a darker skin complexion is in someway not good then black people might still be considered inferior to white people. Which is in fact true in India as I know of some people darker in complexion made fun of because they are darker in complexion. Black chicks would dig them if they went to the US or the Caribbean.

So what I am trying to say is, ad makers should take some social responsibility when making ads and not just do what they are told to. The whole strategy of advertising is to make people believe that people think they need something even if they don't and scare the living shit out of them into making them buy. If you look at the moral of the story for each ad film this is what it will be: If you are not fair then use a fairness cream; otherwise you'll never get a date, never fall in love, never get married and you will die a virgin. If you don't have this mobile phone then you won't be able to update your facebook status and your other friends with cooler phone will think that your so yesteryear. If you don't have a pension plan, after you retire, your children will abandon you and you will live in the streets. If you don't have insurance you will die and your family will be left nothing.

Hope you think about why you are buying something before buying it before you fall for this corporate conspiracy.

***

"I decided to keep this post short, so that I don't run out of stuff to write about next time. And hopefully next time wont come a month later."

This was how I ended my last post on Feb 2010. I'm frankly surprised you haven't killed me for my lies. I'm even more surprised you have taken the time off your day to read my blog. Thank you very much. I'm hoping to blog even more. Lets see how that works out.

The Eggman.

More Fun, Less Blogging

Yes, more fun, less blogging. Nice to write to you all once again my dear eggs.

Guess what I got from my brother? A Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360 Controller for PC. Actually its his Nintendo Wii, which he decided to give it to me since he's getting an Xbox 360 Elite (which is way cooler than 10 Wiis put together, but his generosity is much appreciated). That should explain what I've been doing for one month without blogging.

Its too late to wish you a happy new year. So what was your new year resolution? I took...none. It's for a pretty simple reason actually. Every time I take a resolution I don't stick with it for more than 3 months...okay, not more than 3 weeks.

Why should I take a resolution on new year anyway? Why should anyone take a resolution on new year anyway? With some Google-ing, I found out that there's a god in Roman mythology named Janus. Now this guy had 2 faces, one to look into the past and one to look into the future. So those Romans dedicated the first month of the year to this guy and made resolutions to make things right so that the two faced god won't punish them for their past deeds.

I also found out that

• Of the 28million taking an oath of self improvement for 2010, a remarkable seven million will have given up – within a week.
• 30% of all resolutions are broken within the first week.
• Recent research shows that while 52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals.
• Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting.
• Women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.

If you have also given up on your resolution, I hope the above facts make you feel better. You have 7 million others like you.

***

I rarely watch a tamil movie twice. Heck, I rarely watch a tamil movie. Its usually because I can guess most of the story by knowing who's the lead character - especially Vijay movies - man from village goes to town, falls in love, single handedly fights hordes of gangsters, throw in a friend's death in the hands of the villain, a kuthu paatu, and then not so surprisingly, the hero is victorious. Seeing the pattern you can even write a C program for it (gotta try that once).

On the other hand, you can tell whether the movie will do good by watching its trailer. Take Sakkarakatti for example. My friend got epileptic fits after watching the trailer. People knew very well that Aayirathil Oruvan is a rip-off of Indiana Jones, Gladiator, 300 and other half a dozen adventure movies from Hollywood from watching the trailer. And still they complain that the movie is not good. Trailers are a warning to people. They should realize this.

And there will be some other movies with a great trailer, like Aasal. But when you see Ajith's dance in the song Athiri Puthiri (also known as "to-to-doin"), you get dizzy.

So the last tamil movie I saw was Tamil Padam. It made fun of every stereotypical character in tamil cinema. In fact, I liked the movie so much that I saw it twice. The picture on the side is a wallpaper for the movie. You'll get the idea on how the movie will be after looking at it. So no review this time. Just a score.

4.5 stars out of 5.

***

Colin McRae DiRT2 as revolutionized racing games. It is one of the first games to support DirectX 11, and the environments look awesome. The car damage is real enough not to get in the way of having fun in the game, but at the same time, gives you a professional feel to driving the cars. Other drivers react to you when you bump their car with yours, appreciate you if you drive well, congratulate on your victory. Racing in many different locations of the world in many different off road races such as rally , rally cross and some fictional type of races too.

DiRT2 has revolutionized racing games, a genre in which EA Games' Need For Speed franchise was on a higher ground. NFS Shift might be good, but its not as good as Codemasters' DiRT2. This time they've really outdone themselves.

***

I decided to keep this post short, so that I don't run out of stuff to write about next time. And hopefully next time wont come a month later.

Ciao