I finished Half Life 2: Episode Two yesterday. Another epic game by Valve. The story was great, gameplay was great, visuals were excellent, sound was mindblowing, I have absolutely no complaints about this game except for the fact that it was too short. I really feel like playing more of Half Life, so I guess I’ll start playing Half Life 2 again or Episode One.

On a sadder note, Indonesia’s former dictator, General Suharto, passed away on Sunday January 27th, aged 86. This may not mean much to you, but it has a sublime effect on me, knowing that I lived in Indonesia during his reign. May his soul rest in peace.

Sometimes, I think that I should get rid of my spectacles and go for contact lens but then this image changed that impression. A reason for all us specs wearers to continue wearing them.

Ever wanted to know what it feels like to pilot the world’s largest commercial airliner? Now you can with this panoramic view of the cockpit of the Airbus A380.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of one of the most popular toys around the world, Lego. I cant tell you how much I used to play with this as a kid, it’s good to know that it survived for so many years and hope it will continue to do so for the following generations. Google also commemorated this event with a special logo.

And coming to the local news, a Bugatti Veyron was given a parking ticket in downtown Manchester and a crowd supposedly cheered while a parking warden wrote him the ticket.

In the Tech section, an insider source has revealed information that the 80GB PS3 model will be discontinued, paving way for a 120/160GB model, which will come along with Dualshock 3.

Another exciting yet not very useful tool for webmasters is this service which finds out other websites which are hosted on the same server as yours by performing a reverse IP domain check. I tried it myself and found out that discount-oriental-area-rugs.com, papayacoconut.com and meaningfuljewelry.com are hosted on the same server as mine. Give it a try yourself here.

Update : I’ve done some minor updates to the ‘About me‘ page and added new photos to the ‘Me‘ gallery, check them out here!

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We went to the cinema today to watch Sweeney Todd, a relatively new movie since it released only 2 days ago in the UK. The film is a part musical and part movie, which is an interesting combination.

The story of the movie is fairly simple, Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) is a barber who gets falsely sent to prison by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who falls in love with Barker’s wife. Barker returns to London after 15 years, and adopts a new name, Sweeney Todd. He meets an old friend, Mrs.Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who owns a derelict pie shop, and agrees to help him get revenge on the judge. Todd then proves his skills as a barber in a street shaving competition with Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen) and establishes himself as a credible barber in town. The rest of the story is about how he gets his revenge on the judge, murdering several people along the way. I’ve only mentioned the main plot of the movie but there are a couple of more sub-plots in the movie, which add to the numerous twists in the plot. These plots include one about a sailor boy falling in love with the Judge’s daughter, who is infact, Todd’s daughter and another one, which, if I reveal will probably spoil the movie for you.

Since it is part musical, there were several scenes where the characters start singing the dialogue lines. The background music during these singing scenes, was perfectly co-ordinated with the sights and sounds of the scene. I did not enjoy these scenes too much, but some of my friends felt otherwise.

The look of the movie was just spectacular. It appears as if almost the whole movie was converted to HDR (High dynamic range) which definitely enhanced the atmosphere of the locations. The post processing of the entire movie was very well done and was successful in giving the look of old London, and along with the well made sets, it looked great.

Generally, many people usually don’t pay much attention to the make up in movies, but the make-up work in this movie specifically caught my eye as it was done in a manner where it did not look freaky but still seemed unnatural . The blood, however, in my opinion did not look too real, and I felt that it looked a bit too red.

Cinematography was absolutely prefect in every situation, always maintaining an innovative angle yet retaining the detail in the scene.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and was quite impressed by the cinematography. It is a good movie, recommended for fans of blood, musicals and Johnny Depp.

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Today is the 58th Republic Day, and we supposedly had French President Nicolas Sarkozy as our guest of honour in Delhi. So, anyways, Happy Republic Day to everyone. I played Portal all night yesterday along with the help of a couple of friends. It was a lot of fun and is definitely a great game. It requires you to use your brain extensively which made it even more exciting. We finished the game after playing for about 4 hours, taking turns for certain parts. It was quite a short game but highly innovative. The game is basically about several puzzles which can be solved using your Portal gun. You progress to the next room after finishing one puzzle. Each puzzle is tougher than the previous one and slowly introduces new elements into the game. At the beginning of the game, you can only shoot blue portals but after a certain level, you can shoot both blue and orange portals. For those who are still confused about the whole concept of Portals, let me explain. You can shoot Portals with your gun and the blue one is connected to the orange one. If you walk through the blue one, you’ll come out of the orange one, which, if used properly, can lead to some very complex and interesting situations. For example, you can shoot a blue one next to you and an orange one at a higher place which you cannot reach by jumping. When you walk through the blue portal next to you, you will come out at the orange one above. If you are still confused, this video should be very helpful, it is the trailer for the game.

The game has a lot of dark and subtle humour which has become very popular all across the gaming society. The final credits song after the game is really hilarious and I feel that everyone should watch it. If you havent played the game, but plan to, then you might not want to watch it since it has some spoilers but if you dont plan to play it, then you must watch this video. I’ve posted it below. And click here to view the lyrics to the song.

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My new PC arrived yesterday after a few delays in shipping, and I was quite excited when I went to pick it up from the Postroom.The specifications are as follows -

• Intel Viiv Core 2 duo E6550 2.33Ghz
• Dual Channel 2GB RAM 667Mhz
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 256MB
• Dell 20″ Widescreen Monitor
• 19-in-1 Media Card reader
• Hard Drive 500GB Serial ATA
• 16X DVD-Rewriter
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• UK Dell Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard

It also came with the standard stuff like mouse,etc. I am using my Creative 2.1 Speakers which are really good. The computer itself is quite sleek and thin, I’ve put it under the desk with the sub-woofer to avoid occupying precious desk space. The monitor is simply gorgeous, watching movies on it feels like your in a theatre. I’ve installed most of my frequently used softwares onto it, just a few left to do.

Here are a couple of pictures -

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I got back to Essex a week ago. Classes and lectures have started off in full swing. We had our first test a few days ago, and it went quite well considering that I only studied for an hour. We have a 2500 word essay due tomorrow morning and I’ve got a 1000 words done so far, and  I think that I should be able to get it done tonight.

The weather is pretty horrible now, and its good only once or twice a week. Fortunately, last wednesday was a bright and sunny day and we took advantage of the weather by going into town. We only had a few things to get done, which we did and spent the rest of the time walking around aimlessly and munching on a bag of candy that we had bought.

Meeting university friends again was nice, got to see lots of familiar faces and exchange stories of our new year celebrations and other fun that we had done during the past one month.

The winter break was quite good, and provided a nice break from daily university life. But it probably would’ve got a but boring had it been any longer, and getting back to Uni with a fresh mind feels good. I’ve settled back into the routine University life easily, and life seems almost perfect.

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Day before yesterday, Apple announced their new Macbook Air, which is supposedly the thinnest laptop ever made, and I must add, one of the most incompetent too. Although it looks quite sleek and fancy, it hasn’t got much power under the hood and as a result, is quite useless for the average daily user. And the price is another shocker, retailing at $1,799, which isnt exactly anyone’s cup of tea. Honestly, I could get a much better laptop for a much cheaper price. And along with the extreme portability, you also get extreme fragility, meaning you have to take much better care of it. I don’t know who their target market is, and who they exactly aim to sell this to, but I also know that it will sell, simply because its from Apple and its claimed to be the worlds thinnest laptop.

Picture this, you’re sitting in a cafe with your Macbook Air, browsing the web, using its wifi and a friend pops up next to you. This is the conversation that I think would happen -

Friend - “Hey man, long time, whats up with you?”

You - “Duuude, Check out my new laptop.”

F - “Wow, that looks pretty sleek.”

Y - “Yea, its the worlds thinnest laptop and it’s from Apple.”

F - “Sounds pretty impressive, what can it do?”

Y - “Well, for starters, its got a battery life of 5 hours with everything running.”

F - “Thats amazing, now I can watch 2 entire DVDs without needing to recharge.”

Y - “Ahem, it hasn’t got a DVD drive, so you cannot play any discs.”

F - “Maybe I can plug in my external drive and watch movies”

Y - “You can, but it only has a mono speaker so you wont have the best sound.”

F - “That sucks, so what else does it have?”

Y - “Its got a solid 2Gigs of RAM and 1.6Ghz Dual Core processor!”

F - “Neat! That means I can do a great deal of video encoding on it.”

Y - “That might be a possibility, but its only got 144MB of shared video RAM.”

F - “Oh, well, atleast I can browse the internet all over my university now, without needing to lug around my heavy laptop.”

Y - “I hope your university has Wifi all over because this does not have a Ethernet port.”

F - “What the hell? No Ethernet port? Anyways, I guess I can atleast use it to transfer pictures from my camera to my external Hard disk”

Y - “It only has one USB port, so you cannot attach more than a single device at a time.”

F - “I suppose I could run Photoshop on it, to edit my photos.”

Y - “Yea, this baby can run photoshop like a breeze, but the display is only 6-bit so you wont have the best colors.”

F - “Ah, hope you got a good deal on it”

Y - “Actually, I paid $1,799 for it”

F - “Thats a freaking ripoff, anyways, I’ll catch you later, have *cough* fun with your new laptop”

Y - “Wait, it has a built-in camera and multi touch pad and…and……”

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Its been exactly two years since I posted my first ‘Hello World‘ on this blog. Two years. Its been so long but it feels like it was just yesterday. I can honestly that my blog has progressed a lot in the past couple of years and has indirectly affected my life to quite an extent.

My first anniversary was less exciting when compared to this one, maybe because my life was more or less the same that time.

And in the past year, my internet addiction has decreased by a lot, which is a good thing. Earlier, I used to have the urge to sit in front of the PC and do nothing useful. I used to waste a lot of precious time, simply refreshing and going to random websites. But in the course of the past year, I’ve learnt that that the internet is nothing spectacular. I’d rather sit and ponder in real life, instead of spending time of the internet. I’ve also learnt that internet is just an useful means of fulfilling your needs, but not an end in itself.

If someone had tried explain the above, to me before, I would’ve looked at them with disgust saying that they don’t understand the importance of the internet. But infact, I would’ve been the ignorant one, not understanding the importance of life. Even today, I have several friends who are in the situation I was a year ago. I sincerely hope that the truth dawns upon them too. You cannot explain someone about it, but the person has to go through the experience personally to realize it.

You should note that I’m not abusing the internet in any way. Its been highly useful for me in several aspects of life, made me meet new people and taught me many important things and it will continue to do so, until it dies.  It is an important resource of information, yes. I’m not opposing that, but simply that one should minimize the time spent on the internet unless it is essential. I’m sure a lot of people who read this post are going to deem it as utter bullshit, but in the course of time, they will (hopefully) come face to face with reality.

Life has certainly changed over the past 2 years, and this blog has been a witness to all that gradual change. It will continue to be a virtual record of my life and the experiences that I will have. I would like to thank my family and all my friends for having influenced my life in someway or the other and made this blog more interesting to read. Thanks.

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A couple of days ago, I went along with a few friends to the circus. The Empire Circus was the one which we went to, and it’ll be in Hyderabad until Jan 30th. We reached there a little early and stood around admiring each others cameras and lenses and wondering what to use once we got inside.

However, just as we were about to go inside, the man at the entrance pointed out that photography was not allowed inside the circus. It was a major letdown but we thought that we might as well enjoy the show. Ticket prices ranged from Rs.40 for the cheapest which were the furthest away from the centre, to Rs.130 for ones just infront of the stage. We got tickets for Rs.100 and got good seats.

The show started on time, and kicked off with the trapeze artists. I’d never been to a circus before and therefore, almost everything that happened there was quite exciting for me. Once the trapeze artists had done all their swinging and jumping, the nets were taken down for the elephants. Five elephants came through, and performed a puja (Indian ritual) to mark the beginning of the show.

After that, there were several performances of varied themes, including bike jumps, performances by dogs and birds, gymnasts, and a lot more, which I cant remember right now. All of us saw several exciting photography opportunities towards the beginning of the show but after that, we all just forgot about photography and enjoyed the show. The two and a half hours passed by quite quickly, and it was a lot of fun to watch the things that we had only seen on TV previously, in real life.

And I finally got some mention for my photography by winning the 5th place in a photography competition for the theme ‘Clouds and Sky’ for the month of December. The photography which helped me win this is below.

 The win, although nothing too big, has encouraged me to continue pursuing my hobby. My sincere thanks to my friends and family, who’ve always supported me in my photography.

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I didn’t even realize that it was 2008 last night because I was too busy watching a classic Kamal Hassan movie, ‘Thevar Magan‘. Only once the movie got over, I looked at the clock and realized I had already spent more than an hour in the new year, and it felt like the same ol’ 2007.

I don’t understand why people make such a big fuss about the whole new year concept. Its just another day in your boring life. It doesn’t not make it more exciting, except for the movies on TV. I think its just a huge marketing ploy just to increase sales of all the goods, and cheat the people by giving discounts along with 5012 Terms and Conditions. And New Years Parties, what a rip-off! An outrageous amount of money just to watch random people get drunk and fill your lungs with smoke. I can honestly say that I had a better time yesterday watching the movie at home than I would’ve had if I went out.

2007 had its own positive and negative aspects but when overall, it seems like a pretty good year. It had the formula for a near perfect year, with its own ups and downs, miseries and joys, jokes and insults and I just hope that 2008 turns to be atleast as good as 2007, if not better.

I’ve also done some updates to my wishlist, but these updates would seem insignificant to the common man since they are all about more and better lenses for my camera. If you are camera savvy, please do take a look here for some great lenses and if you are not camera savvy, still take a look here so that you know what to get me for my birthday.

Oh, and for the sake of obligation, I wish all of you a Happy 2008.

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