Days Go By... Really Fast!

Didn't realise it's the 10th already! I have one last holiday tommorrow, then it's back to college. Been a while since I posted... I was in Chennai for a few days. Yes, I braved Chennai weather once again and came back with cheek loads of heat/sweat pimples (what are those things actually called?). Anyway, it was definitely worth it since I got to meet some cousins I hadn't seen in a really long time (and one I hadn't seen before). We took loads of pictures - since we all came with cameras, the entire collection filled up two and a half CDs (and that's excluding the videos)!

Oh and I finally got to show my Dark Machine video to a couple of people there — everybody liked it (at least they pretended to)... although the more I see it, the more crappy it looks.

As usual, I've seen a lot of movies lately — Saw 2 (totally awesome), Doom (dumb), Cellular (very good) and Salaam Namaste (good). Salaam Namaste, like all Hindi movies was long, but was entertaining throughout. And it didn't have dumb songs like the ones in some of the recent movies like Ek Ajnabee (translation: One Stranger). One song from that movie is incredibly dumb... it goes like this —

Mama told me
Don't be talking to a stranger
Don't be talking to a stranger
Stranger is danger

I've also been testing some of the Ninth Gate levels... who knows? You might actually see that project released in your lifetime. Now I hope you're not expecting another Wallpaper of the Update... you can't expect me to be THAT creative.

Dark Machine

Made this little animated clip over a span of a few days. Almost all of it was filmed after midnight in my room, and I used the stop motion animation technique - basically I shoot a single frame, move the objects (in this case, a bunch of really old toys I had) in the scene a little, and shoot again. When you play it back, the objects appear to be moving by themselves. Of course, I was too lazy to film at a high frame rate, so my video is a little jerky. Well, this itself involved taking about 500 shots (not all were used) and that was pain enough.



Video was finished on 25 November, runs a little under 2 minutes. Inspired by Tool's "Sober" video and some of Pablo's stuff. It's too big to upload anywhere, so you'll have to ask me if you want to see it. Not that you're so interested anyway.

Oops almost forgot... check out the Wallpaper of the Update - "Blur".

Feel Good Inc.

Oh yes! I'm done with semester exams and I'm jobless until 12 December. No point writing about how I did my exams... marks are never proportional to how you write them anyway. Wanted to write a post here yesterday itself, but the day went by so fast it was way past midnight before I knew it!

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire yesterday. For all the hype it was an average movie at best. Didn't make much sense to me at all... maybe it's because I haven't read the books. After I came back home in the evening I saw Kaal on Sony. Now that's another dumb movie. But I definitely enjoyed it more than HP. Was funny watching all of them trying to act cool... actually just watching them trying to act itself was funny. And it isn't supposed to be funny movie. So that makes it more funny I guess. I saw Scary Movie 3 fully sometime back. Now that's a movie that's supposed to be funny and IS funny. Confused?

Haven't been doing much of anything else lately. Used the bluetooth dongle yesterday after a long time. Only time I used it before was when Karthik was here (earlier this month). And all I can remember is us fragging each other on Quake 3 Arena and Doom. Actually it was more of me fragging him, but you get the point.

Ah I'm just talking nonsense. Just go look at the Wallpaper of the Update - "Pill". There's no thumbnail because I'm too lazy. And no, there's no blood.

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.