Movies, Doom and Sets

After a long time, I got to get up late on a weekend... couldn't do that the past few weeks because of the paper presentation, a party and some stupid extra classes at college (don't know why I attended them). It was almost lunch time, so I went out with a couple of friends for lunch at Ohri's. Man that place is cool! If I had my cam and the place was empty, I would have probably filled up a good chunk of my 512MB card.

I watched Wes Craven's Red Eye today — good movie. I'm too lazy to tell you what it's about, but I'll tell you that the story isn't anything original... it's a little predictable too. However, it was well made and well paced, so I was entertained. Speaking of movies, I also watched The Intrepreter recently. I expected it to be good, but it turned out to be an average movie.

Ismaele released the first episode of his Italian DooM project, The Lost Colony a week ago. The WAD is a compilation of 8 maps by the all-Italian team of Toranaga, Buzzbomber and Ismaele himself. I just played through them briefly today and it was a lot of fun. Buzzbomber's maps have a clean, well-planned design. Ismaele's maps are also very detailed (and hard too), however it does get slightly room-door-room-ish at times. I also don't think the death traps were such a good idea. Toranaga's maps have lots of ammo, but they could use a little more detail. Can't comment about the gameplay in these maps since I didn't play them properly. Anyway overall, it's worth downloading and playing, so go get it if you haven't already.

There's a new photo up on my gallery, and there'll be another one uploaded in a day or two where I experiment some more with lighting. This time I got some strong orangish-red lighting by tying a light pink cloth over a torch. Was very tricky getting that soft diffused light, so I'm happy with the result. Now I know (or at least I think) you'll want to see the set I used for the shot, so here it is (more convenient this way instead of sending out individual mails isn't it?) —

Papers, Glósóli and More

Again almost a month since the last update. Wasn't really busy or anything, just wasn't in the writing mood. And the problem is that now I am in the writing mood, but I can't think of anything to write about. Maybe I'll start with something I talked about in my last post, my paper presentation at Aurora College...

The paper did get selected and we did make that presentation last Friday. Why don't I seem excited? Because I later found out that those people selected almost ALL the entries... in other words, there was no 'selection' at all. Now this is a good and bad thing. Bad because 95% of those papers were useless and not worth presenting at all. Can you believe there was this one guy who thought "Mail Merge" (in MS Word) qualified as a suitable topic to write a paper under the main theme of "Merging of Technologies"?! The first question he was asked by the judges after he finished was — "Can you tell me what Merging of Technologies means?". And because there were so many papers, they had to conduct parallel sessions, each having a different panel of judges, so the judging process wasn't fair to begin with. Now it's also good because we got a chance to present our paper, which we may not have been able to do otherwise (mind you, that's a VERY BIG 'may not'). And of course, I got a certificate, which is good I guess.

In other news, Karthik was here for two days because the police wanted to take his fingerprints (he's a WANTED man you know). He also bought himself a laptop recently, so you might see updates on his blog/site more often now. Go to his blog to see a really tiny picture of the cute thing. Yes, it has a widescreen display. Congratulations K!

So what's the headline all about? I'm getting to that. Pablo told me about this, and it has already been publicised here, so I thought why not publicise it some more, since it's so awesome. I'm talking about a music video of one of Sigur Rós' songs - Glósóli. Haven't seen a video so perfectly synchronised with the song in a long time, and the instrumental itself is very good, so overall it's excellent. Go watch the video here.

Oh and before I wind up this update, there are a couple of new photos on my gallery that you might want to check out. They aren't great... and one of them is apparently too wierd to appreciate. So don't tell me I didn't warn you.

Beans

Wow! Been almost a month since the last update. I just haven't taken any new photos or made any new wallpapers, so there's nothing to show this time. Been busy with college stuff lately, I spent last week writing a paper for a paper presentation contest at Aurora Engineering College. Maybe if the paper gets selected, I'll talk about it more. The event is called Prabhaava 2005, see this page for more details.

OK now since you came here looking for some interesting stuff, and there isn't anything interesting here (don't know if there ever is), let me point you to some interesting stuff elsewhere on this vast network called the Internet —

-:: [ /not-so-newstuff ] ::-
Sequels to two of my favourite Doom PWADs were released some time ago - Afterglow's Jägermörder 02 : Terra Nova and Erik Alm's Scythe 2. Both are very well crafted and have excellent gameplay. Highly recommended.

-:: [ The Doom Remix Project: The Dark Side of Phobos ] ::-
An OverClocked Remix site project that contains remixes of music from the original Doom. Lots of great tracks in there, most notably "Darkness Dawning (text music)" by Larsec featuring Elsa Persson, "The Glass Moon (e1m8)" by DJ Carbunk1e featuring Ryan8Bit and "The Leaning Tower of Babel (e2m8)" by Evil Horde. Official project page here.

-:: [ Kotogoto ] ::-
Now Kotogoto really has kotog... errr... everything! Tobias uploaded the remaining pages (and there's a totally awesome intro flash clip now), so it's not just a journal any more. His new photosite is now online too - has a simple, professional-looking design. No high-res pics there any more though :(

Yep, so that about wraps up the go-here-go-there update. Maybe next time, I'll have some of my own stuff to show.

The Power-Cut Chronicles

Yesterday, there was no power here for the better part of the day. It was the same thing a few days ago. I couldn't use the computer, so I had to keep myself busy with other things. This is what came out of those 'other things' --

A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step


I think it's been a year since I did my last drawing. I knew my drawing skills (if I had any) would be a little rusty, so I wanted to draw something simple. This isn't the best drawing ever, but I think it came out pretty nicely. Now don't you dare compare it with any of Karthik's stuff.

The Pod


Was bored so I took out my camera to take some pictures... this is actually an out-of-focus shot of the emergency lamp in our house. The funky colours and all happened by accident, when I was post-processing. The name I know is dumb, but I couldn't think of anything better. But it does look a little like an alien space pod doesn't it?

I'm tired of saying there's a new photo in my photo gallery everytime I write a post here, so I won't this time. Just go to my gallery everytime you see an update here. There most likely WILL be a new photo there anyway.

Good Morning or Happy Birthday?

Yep, turned 18 yesterday. Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

I changed my profile pic recently, got bored of my 'comic' self. Made a wallpaper of A Perfect Circle's latest album, eMOTIVe, some days ago. Their songs are awesome! If you ask me, they come a close second after LP. Not much of creativity in the wallpaper, but you probably won't be able to find a huge/sharp/clear album cover like this easily. And this time it's designed for people who like to have their icons on either side of the screen (are there any?).



Other than that, I uploaded two new pictures to my gallery. One is a portrait (!), and the other is a shot I took of my Philishave. I like both of them, but the number of views they got say otherwise. Or maybe people were just lazy this week.

Hey, it's 11:55pm. But who watches the watch... err... time anyway. Are you reading this K?

The Unimaginative

The first weekened after college re-opened on the 4th! Was waiting for this since... the beginning of the week :) With the kind of lecturers we have this year, five days felt more like five weeks. Anyway, now time for a movie... and speaking of movies, take a look at this —



So Bollywood has moved on to ripping-off stuff from video games now... guess they ran out of things they could (sort of) copy from Hollywood movies. Pathetic really. India is so full of unimaginative people (there are exceptions, of course). They can't even come up with a tune for a song on their own these days. The recent "Aaj Kal Tere Mere" remix has the beats of Will Smith's "Switch" in it. Then there was this song called "O Haseena" (from the movie Haseena) I saw some time ago which had the tune of Safri Duo's "Rise"! There was one more song I saw yesterday which was a ripoff... can't remember it now. Does their right brain even function at all?

There's a new photo in my photo gallery - "Four LEDs". Took that shot when there was a power cut at home. I first saw this kind of thing done in some of Pablo's (early) photos. There will probably be another new photo over there in a few days, so stay tuned.

Is There Life Out There?

Today I'm trying something new - I'm writing a general article! Why? Mostly because I'm jobless and have nothing better to do. I've never done this before, so don't expect too much. And don't ever complain if you fell asleep reading it.

If you're even a little curious, this question would have definitely crossed your mind at least once — "Is there life out there in space?" (if you're not, then let's assume it crossed your mind at least once). Now to me, the answer to that question is quite simple - there IS. Considering that the universe, housing billions of galaxies, is bigger than you can start to imagine, it's improbable that Earth is the ONLY planet that supports life. Besides, Earth-like conditions aren't even a necessity for life to exist — on the Earth itself, some extremophiles have adapted to living in extreme environments where other life wouldn't stand a chance. They're boldly going where humans dare not and cannot.

So if there is life out there, why haven't we come into contact with them? Simply because the universe is so immensely vast, and we have only explored an infinitesimally small portion of it. Our escaping radio and TV signals (called the radio bubble) get weaker and weaker as they move away from the Earth and eventually drown in the ambient radio noise of the universe. Just for the sake of it, let us assume that technologically proficient aliens are intercepting our signals and are managing to decode them. After watching 50 years of our television (if they have the patience) — all the K-serials, mindless comedy shows, news about the wars we started etc., they'd probably conclude that human beings are a dysfunctional bunch of idiots.

Then what about those signals (of our own choosing) we sent in space crafts like Voyager? Don't worry, at the rate they're travelling (50,000 miles per hour I think), they won't reach the nearby stars for another 100,000 years. Our propulsion systems are not suitable at all for space travel... sure a rocket is fast, but it exhausts its entire fuel in a very short time. Newer propulsion systems like the ion drive and solar sail are very efficient for long distance travel, but they're horribly slow.

So will we ever make contact with extra-terrestials? Of course we will. Just not yet. With the research work being conducted by organisations like SETI, it's only a matter of time till we do make contact. Their Seti@home (thanks for the link Ganeshan) is a program that YOU can run on your computer to help in the search for extraterrestial intelligence. Who knows? You might find an alien and become really famous! Or you won't find anything and you'll get so mad you'll uninstall it.

In any case, this article comes to an end here. I know I haven't really talked about anything you don't already know, but then again, I told you in the beginning not to expect too much didn't I?


Edit: I was finding links for some of the stuff I just talked about, and I came across this page — http://www.duntemann.com/fermiqsn.htm. Good question ;)