My Wish list…

Christmas is here. The new year is coming. Here is my wish list. If I don’t get all of this within 30 days, the world will come to an end. Save the world! Get me these stuff:

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Nexus One (yet to come, you can just give me the cash for it)
• A planet to my name, preferably far from this solar system.
• Dell Adamo XPS, its blooooody thin!
• BuckyBalls, who wouldn’t like a pile of magnetic metal balls?
• This gold coated PS3 from here.
• A pet T-Rex
• A year long supply of rasmalai and daal khichdi
• God of War 3: Ultimate edition: i need a second copy
• Velocity Micro Gamer’s Edge DualX desktop: this machine rapes benchmarks.
• 10 licenses of Unreal 3 Engine
• A publisher for my book: The Zombie’s guide to get a girl
• A white PSP Go
• Razer Mamba
• A set of shurikens and a shiny long katana
• Anything good you can think of

The future is in your hands, errr.. wallet. Save your future. Your kids will thank you for it.

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A day without the internet

On a normal saturday night, I had an abnormal idea. Spending a day without internet access. At first the thought horrified me, but it sounded kinda fun. So I sent a SMS to deactivate the data connection on my phone and turned off my wireless router. Theoretically, I am now cut off from the internet.

8:16 am: Just got up and was shocked to see only two sms on my phone’s notification bar. No emails, no IMs, no new wave conversations. Going back to sleep.

10:34 am: NewsRob (my google reader client) doesn’t have any new feeds. Missing the luxury of reading news feeds while brushing my teeth.

10:39 am: Switched on my desktop. There are a couple of programs screaming about internet access already.

10:43 am: Started UT3 and realized my biggest loss here: no online play. Will play against the AI.
Update: The AI is dumb. Except at godlike. The bots go hunting for you like you have a million dollar bounty over your head.

11:25 am: My girlfriend called me. She was wondering if I was invisible on gTalk. I told her my story. She thinks I am trying to avoid her. Nuts. Why are girls so weird?

12:20 pm: I’m hungry! Tried a voice search for a local pizza joint. No results. Turns out Android uses the internet for almost everything. This is kinda bad.

1:03 pm: Facebook and Twitter still send sms updates to my phone. Looks like one can never be totally off the internet.

1:36 pm: Had awesome lunch with a serving of ice-cream to finish it off. Want to tweet about it. Or maybe a status update on Facebook. Oh I miss the internet so much!

1:58 pm: Playing Tekken Dark Resurrection on the PSP. Missing online play again.

2:45 pm: Wikipedia! It is such an indispensible tool. I miss the convenience of anytime access to Wikipedia. Reminder to self: donate to Wikipedia when i go online again.

4:10 pm: Movie time: Again, i miss the convenience of checking movie ratings and booking tickets thru my phone. And my girl is boring me to death. Wish I could escape to Mars. Do they have internet there?

8:20 pm: My iPod is also complaining about no internet access. So is my girl. She wants to check some stupid site.

9:26 pm: Just noticed that no internet means really good battery life for my phone. Almost 80% juice left. Otherwise it would have been screaming for charge by now.

10:10 pm: Will turn on the internet in about an hour. Why am i feeling so excited?

11:23 pm: Turned back the data connection on my phone and switched the router on. Feels so good!

11:28 pm: Information overload! Shitload of emails, IMs and other stuff. Over 200 news feeds. Phew.

12:02 am: Confession: It felt like the longest day of my life. I am sort of over dependent on the internet. Going to sleep now. Will post this later.

This is Tuesday. I forgot to post it. Shitloads of work. Posting now.

Posted from my iPod

Motion controls for gaming? Huh!

It will be a sad day for me when the primary control scheme for all the consoles turn out to be motion controls. Why? I could write a book full of reasons.

• Games using motion controls can’t be played for long time: they will destroy your arms and eat your soul!
• Motion controls are just not precise enough: imagine trying to pull off a headshot using a wiimote.
• You look stupid: that weird look on your face while playing a game is already bad enough.
• Long combos? Pulling off a hadouken while jumping? Way too complex for a motion controlled setup.
• Motion conrolled games are gay.
• Traditional setups are just too good: what would you prefer – pushing a button to jump or jumping for real?
• You can never be fast enough: see that ultra cool chun-li’s high-n-low kick combo? Try doing that in real life.
• You won’t be able to boast about it: because motion controlled games are so simlpe, even your grandma will laugh at you as you get owned by her in some stupid game.
• Games will be simple: because you can’t use complex input mechanisms, the developer will be forced to design a gameplay that is simple.
• Will it be portable? I seriously hope it doesn’t turns out this way: imagine stupid looking people kicking and knocking people on the road!
• Destruction it invites: you will probably destroy everything near the console and the tv and hurt people passing by while you play virtual boxing or tennis.
• Motion conrolled games are gay.

For me, the only part of motion i want while i am playing a game is the rumbling of my controller. That’s it. No more stupid hand waves or anything. I can rejoice as i sit on my bed and tap out awesome combos in God of War or dominate people in TF2. And while Microsoft’s project natal and Sony’s wand thingy will make games accessible for more people, it will also dumb down the games in the process. Want to make the game better? There are always other options. More innovation. Stereoscopic 3D, better sound and graphics, better gameplay, more content and more gameplay, and most important: more FUN.

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Calling all ya gamers!

All right. It all started when i ordered a new mouse for myself. $80. By now i am almost used to paying crazy high prices for gaming hardware. Then a old school mumbo jumbo economic rule popped in my head: there are not enough users to buy these products, and thats why they are so expensive. Which brings in another question: why are there not enough users? Turns out that we itself are somewhat responsible for it. We, the indian gaming community, are responsible for the fact that our community is not big enough. Nuts.

Why? Because we are in a way blocking new gamers to come onboard. How? Our ego. Our vanity. We love to taunt over noobs when we own them. And games now are complex enough for total newbies to take a lot of time and practice to be able to play smoothly, leave alone master it. People like us who got the blessing of games in our lives from an early stage got great at playing it. So great that complex control schemes like a keyboard + mouse combo for fps games, or fps on consoles that require one analog stick to look and other to move feel totally natural to us. This leaves the newbies light years behind. Don’t believe me? Try teaching your mother to play a fps. You will get the idea. I tried, and failed miserably. Another example, I went to croma, a big electronics store which had a xbox 360 running Halo 3 for people to try out. The booth was a success. Success in terms of gathering people around it. People of all age classes. I was kinda happy to look at it. Happy that games were picking up among people. But when I looked at the screen, all my happiness vanished. Master Chief was looking at the ground and used to stick to every wall or turn for a good 10 seconds. I asked a few people who played the game, and they all told more or less the same thing: the game looked beautiful, but it was way too complex for them. Then I picked up the controller and played the game for a few minutes, and boy, people looked at me like I was some sort of alien being among them. Gibberish.

Getting more gamers onboard is important for a number of reasons. Cheaper hardware being at the top of the list. More gamers means more games being made as well. More gamers means more competition so that we also can have an annual 5 day gaming tournament. Many more reasons. But how do we get more gamers? More marketing, or making simpler games. These are something we can’t do much about, because these depend upon the developers and publishers. What we can do is introduce people to gaming. Tell them about how awesomely supersensational the games are. Introduce them to a simple game. Don’t expect them to take headshots any time soon. And if you are playing with them, losing a few times to them is not a bad idea either. Just a few times. Let them feel the emotion of owning a nemesis. Let them feel the joy that brings a gamer back and back again to a game. They will tell others about it. I am teaching my 13 year old kid neighbor how to play unreal and a few other games, and apart from the fact that his parents think that I might be spoiling him, everything seems fine.

Here is a call to all you people who gave their precious time reading this mumbo jumbo: you don’t need to be a prophet of gaming, but just introduce one person to gaming. Thats it. Hope it makes my next mouse purchase a bit cheaper. Cheers!

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Linux ported to iPhone! Absolute Nirvana!

Absolute nirvana. hit to read the official post

Ok, we had been waiting for it, and now finally, our favorite OS, Linux has been successfully ported on the iPhone. Devteam member planetbeing has done a incredibly phenomenal job of reverse engineering Apple’s hardware drivers and has successfully ported Linux on 1^st and 2^nd generation iPhones and 1^st generation iPod Touch. Though it’s a bit buggy as of now (read: no touch screen, wi-fi, audio and cell radio support), it’s definitely a first step in the direction of absolute nirvana on Apple’s darling device. The team is hard at work and even looks to port Android (yippee! Android) to iPhone. Thing just can’t be any better.

So if any of you guys want to check it out, hit this link, and if possible, lend a hand to this project. Even if you don’t know Linux or can’t code, just spread the word about it. Blog about it, digg it… try to bring this wonderful project into visibility.

Cheers for open source! Linux rocks! Even better on iPhone!

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I miss my CRT monitors!

Ok, so I upgraded my bulky old monitor to a shiny new super sexy LCD, but I end up missing quite a few things. You see, now that I have upgraded my CRTs, I don’t know what to do with all the extra space. The main problem I have is now that there is too much open airspace either in front of or behind my new monitors. When I used my 17” CRT monitor, I knew I needed to have a reasonable amount of space on the desk to accommodate the devices. But the majority of computer desks were designed keeping in mind the right face-to-monitor distance ratios so that where exactly at the right distance to view them comfortably.

But now these fancy new LCD monitors don’t take up any space. I sometimes find that the monitor is too far away, because it closer to the back of the desk. And if I push the monitor back, what am I going to do with all the empty space in front of the monitor? I can’t really put anything there because it’s going to block the view. And if I move the monitor closer, I have all the empty space behind the monitor – space that has no real value for shelves or anything else.

What have I gained?

Sure, LCD monitors are sexy to look at, but where am I going to put my cap? At least with CRT monitor, you could keep your unreal tournament figures on the top. But there is no space on the top of a LCD monitor, they are so bloody thin! Now my desktop is a vast sea of unproductive open space, and unless I cut my desk into half, I’m stuck with this awkward setup.

Seriously, what were the engineers thinking when they designed the LCD monitors? Obviously not the end user. And what am I going to do when I will get myself a 48” LCD TV? Yes, I would be able to mount it on the wall, but where the hell will I place my beloved game posters?

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Linux through a browser? COOL!

I love the StumbnleUpon extension for Firefox and today i stumbled upon a really cool concept. It’s called workspot.com and aims to provide “a Linux desktop, through a browser”. Cool. I can now look and preview a distro before downloading it, and i won’t have to read reviews and user opinions to decide on a new distro.

It would be a great service for Linux enthusiasts as well as Linux newbies to help them decide which distro to decide upon. And it seems more convenient than downloading a live cd version of the distro and and then waiting for another 4 minutes for it to boot up.

The downside:

1) The site isn’t up and running yet, it just says “coming soon”.

2) There are just 5 distros to have a preview of (that’s what the image at the site suggests, though i have my finger crossed for more).

3) The user experience may vary on the browser being used to access the site (though most recent browsers would do the work well, but i have seen morons using IE4 and Netscape as well).

Anyhow, I am waiting for the site to get started. And a cool idea: you can bluff to your friend that you have five distros installed on your system and you can switch between then in just seconds. All you need for this trick is a fast internet connection and a decent browser in full screen mode.

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Your computer has a sense of humor!

Ok, so you thought that your computer was just a dumb electronic box. Well, you may be wrong (if you are a linux or unix user). Here are a few outputs that your unix or linux machine will give if you input the following commands:

The C shell

% rm meese-ethics

rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God

ar: God does not exist

% “How would you rate Reagan’s incompetence?

Unmatched .”

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?

Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Reagan spent, what would I have?

Too many (’s.

% make love

Make: Don’t know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me

bad character

% got a light?

No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?

man: : Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?

Bad substitute.

% man woman

No manual entry for woman.

% %blow

%blow: No such job.

% (-

(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense

no sense in pretending!

The Bash shell

$ drink <bottle; opener bottle:

cannot open opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat >matter

matter: cannot create

Do you still believe that your computer is and idiot box? (Windows users: your computers are dumb, just because of windows, accept it).

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