Life's scar

A Matter of Perspective

2008-02-11T10:29:00.000-05:00

I have always been fascinated by this -- found it on Digg

Geometry Wars - Retro Evolved

2008-01-06T18:17:00.000-05:00

From wiki:

The object of Geometry Wars is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as possible by destroying a constant, ever-increasing swarm of enemies. The player controls a claw-shaped "ship" that can move in any direction using the left thumbstick, and can fire in any direction independently using the right thumbstick. The player can also detonate a bomb that destroys all enemies currently visible on the screen. The game takes place on a rectangular playfield. As the game progresses, the player earns extra lives and additional bombs, and his/her primary weapon changes at regular intervals. Also, enemies spawn in progressively larger quantities and at greater frequency as the game progresses. If an enemy touches the player's ship, it explodes and a life is lost. The game is over when the player loses all of his/her lives.

The Evolved version of the game takes place on a playfield that is slightly larger than the display area of the TV screen, and the camera follows the player's movements. A background grid pattern adds to the graphical effects by warping in reaction to player shots and the behavior of certain enemies. This version of the game also introduces a score multiplier that increases to higher levels as the player survives and destroys enemies.

Enemies in the original versions of Geometry Wars include:

Light blue diamonds, which move slowly toward the player.
Magenta boxes, which move more quickly. When hit, this enemy splits into three smaller boxes that swirl around in circles while moving toward the player.
Green boxes, which also move quickly. They attempt to avoid the player's shots.
Red circles, which move very slowly. When hit, they become powerful gravity wells that attempt to suck in other enemies and the player, while also repelling the player's shots. Each time an enemy is sucked in, the circles grow in diameter. If allowed to grow large enough, they explode and send a swarm of smaller blue circles toward the player.

Enemies in the Retro Evolved version include the above enemies, plus:

Purple pinwheels, which move slowly and in seemingly random directions, serving more as obstacles to the player rather than as direct threats.
Aphids, small dark blue triangles, which appear in huge swarms and attempt to overwhelm the player with their sheer quantity.
Red claws, which take aim and charge toward the player, emitting a shot-repelling force field in front of them.
White snakes, which appear either in the corners of the screen or in a circle around the player and "wiggle" their way toward the player. Can only be destroyed by shooting the head.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved also features enhanced graphics, including 3D effects, and an overhauled user interface.

Well..that's what wiki has to say about the game. I have been playing this game everyday during the Christmas holidays and I should say its just awesome and very addictive. As for the graphics its all vector and no bitmap and its just stunning. The brilliant colors that show up on the screen are just amazing. My top score so far has been 230,000. Still trying to improve. The highest I saw a guy game 3.2 million on youtube. I wonder how much time he spent doing that.

EDIT:

I just scored 1,072,000 lol

Testing Windows Live Writer

2007-11-10T19:02:00.001-05:00

Seems to be pretty good. Let's put some junk stuff

content from previous post

Finally yesterday night I was able to sit and put up my new template. The new blogger made it easier to change the template although there still seem to be some bugs in it. This is actually a wordpress template which I modified and put on blogger. I wanted to change the template for a while but could not do it because I was either busy or didn’t have the patience to do it.

While putting up my new template I was trying to use imageshack as my image host but the damn site was too slow and was not responding properly, which pissed me off as it wasted a lot of my time. So then I tried photobucket, but the problem with that host is that it always resizes the images for some stupid reason, even if the image is small. I spent an entire morning trying to find another reliable host. I read that some people used geocities as an image host, but it offered very limited bandwidth and that would finish just by me using it. Then I finally realized that google pages can also be used to host images, so uploaded all the template images to my google pages and after some editing it was all done. Still have to do a few tweaks.

Teach Both theories

2007-10-05T22:38:00.000-04:00

Teach both theories and let the people decide.

I say, learn both theories and decide, because many people out there learn one and say the other is stupid.

Best stick ever!!!

2007-10-03T20:31:00.001-04:00

My Best Friend

2007-08-14T18:51:00.000-04:00

tHeSiD: what life you made for me
tHeSiD: already im sick of being the official repairer for 5 houses now
tHeSiD: i am a girl consoler cum left gf entertainer
tHeSiD: why oh why didnt i study in iit
tHeSiD: and over that.. im doing all this crap for free
tHeSiD: if only i atleast passed all courses there
tHeSiD: never regretted coming back
tHeSiD: but asshole like you makin me do that

Call Of Duty 4

2007-07-08T12:35:00.000-04:00

Free Time Is Boring

2007-05-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

Every year during the time of my exams I keep dreading the fact that I have to study and cannot enjoy myself and have to spend my time preparing. Even when I have some assignments that need to be completed, there is always the thought in my head “after this I will be free”. Most of the time I daydream about all the stuff I am going to do and how I will am going to enjoy myself once I am done with the work at hand.

After my last exam or after I have finished my daunting task, I start to think, ‘finally!! Time to party!!’. But that is when I face reality, boredom. If you have lots of free time and don’t know what to do with it, it’s not like you have excess of some stuff that you can just throw away. You have to do something with it or else you get bored. This means you have to start planning something out of the blue that will entertain you during your free time. Half the time, if you are lucky, you get something to do, like, going to a movie, chatting with your friends about some topic that you had in mind, play games, watch TV etc. But when you get bored of all this regular stuff you have to come up with something interesting and new or else the boredom will drive you insane.

So, what have we learnt so far?? Free time is good, as long as you had enough ‘busy time’ to plan your ‘free time’ otherwise its hell.

kvickyk: he's will buzz you now
Siddharth: wha
Siddharth: what for
Siddharth: its like saying "you will die soon"

Reliable Image Host for my new template!!!

2007-05-12T05:46:00.000-04:00

Questions that make you wonder....

2007-03-24T08:54:00.000-04:00

Inuyasha: who is LMOA ??
Sesshoumaru :find out

Inuyasha : fine .. chill ... a small joke which i thought of earlier
Inuyasha : came to tell u this
Inuyasha : relation between time and length…..
Sesshoumaru : huh?
Inuyasha : the amount of time u stare at a girl is proportional to the length of the dick raised
Inuyasha : :D
Inuyasha : btw….do dick & penis mean the same?

$1M Bugatti Veyron supercar smashed!

2007-03-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

Poor guy!

more info at http://www.motorauthority.com/news/supercars/bugatti-veyron-smash/

God Dammit!!

2007-03-02T07:09:00.000-05:00

For the last 1 hr I have been pacing all over the house and with great difficulty strapped myself to my chair and I am trying to release all my energy into typing this post.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with Sid about how our lives have changed and how I wished things where back the way they used to be. It was just us and our computers, internet and downloads. But again I began to think that we should be careful about what we wish for. Because in the past I did wish for something and I came very close to my wish, except that instead of going in one direction I stepped off a cliff and right now I am hanging by a thread. I mean this situation is something that will seriously get you all fusked up. You will never see it coming until it hits you and when it does you will begin to hate everyone that is happy and of course curse the one who did it to you although you are aware that they don’t have the slightest clue and have no fault. Who ever said life was unfair was right and if you want to be happy, always be unfair!! If you are wondering what I am talking about….well neither do I, cause that’s the state of my brain at the moment. I don’t know if it will return to normal or not, then again, what is normal?

God Dammit!! One thing is for sure, God does not have mercy otherwise everyone would be happy today. Sometimes you look for signs when you don’t know what to do….what if those signs take you in a direction that is the opposite to which you want to go and finally you end up at a place you where trying to avoid all your life?!? I mean, just think about it, no one wants to be miserable but they just get there. So now you might wonder…does you life have a fixed direction or do you get to choose !@#$@%#$&# GOD DAMMIT!! THIS IS NOT WORKING!!! MY BLOOD IS STILL BOILING!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF???????????

AJAX/FLASH/FLEX/CSS which one?

2007-02-10T11:02:00.000-05:00

I have this project where I have to create a web application and I have to make the front-end of the application. We are using struts as our framework. Now to make the application as user-friendly as possible we decided that there should be a lot of interactivity in the front-end. Now a few things come to mind here. The most famous being AJAX and simplest being CSS. Now I spent sometime on each technology to see which was best for me. Of course, all the technologies need a browser at the client’s end.

CSS

I already knew CSS pretty well and it is easy to code. But we are not making a website here; we need the front-end to have the look and feel of an application that runs on your system. So we could not use CSS to achieve our main but we kept it as a backup.

AJAX

On the web you can see many people sharing their views that AJAX is a emerging technology and is the future for web applications. The reasons behind it are, first, no plug-ins of any sort are required as it uses native JavaScript from the browser and it also offers high level of interactivity. Now, all that sound fine until you take a closer look at it.

First, take the example of Google and yahoo mail beta. Ajax on Google works great without any problems and I have never seen anyone complain about it. Yahoo mail beta on the other hand has had a lot of complaints. If you ask me, Ajax is JavaScript, and JavaScript was not meant to be used in such huge amounts. JavaScript was initially developed to provide some dynamic nature to web pages but was not meant to use so much that it becomes an application. If you don’t understand what I am talking about, try opening yahoo mail beta in a Pentium 3 system with any compatible browser, the system will slow down completely because the running the JavaScript itself takes up all the processor power. On the other hand Google opens perfectly because its Ajax interface uses much less code.

JavaScript is interpreted language and hence puts a heavy load on the system if used too much. You may argue here that new systems have no problem whatsoever. I can’t argue against that, but just try to do some Ajax coding and you will realize how hard it is to code in Ajax. Again you might argue that a person who knows JavaScript and html will not face any problems. The truth is that they will, because JavaScript behaves differently in different browsers, for it to work on all browsers you will have to write some browser specific code. For example in IE to make a request you have to use the ActiveX object whereas in other browsers you have to use the xml http request. Now that is a bad thing for a technology that needs to be widely used. Even though we have W3C standards for the web, no web browser follows it. And a important point to note here is that JavaScript is not a programming language (no wonder programmers find it hard and confusing).

The conclusion about Ajax is that it is great if used properly (like Gmail) but you should not get carried away. If you want to make a highly interactive environment then go for some other technology.

FLASH

The first thing that comes to mind when we think about flash are the amazing websites that web designers make on the web. If you think flash is not that great, check out this website www.2advanced.com and you will be blown away.

Also some web programs have flash as the front-end interface because they look good and work in a browser. Unlike Ajax you don’t have the problem of browser compatibility, but it does need a flash player plug-in (which I don’t think is a big deal).

My first impression of flash was that I just had to learn it, because of the way it looks. I already knew some basics of flash for making animations and thought it would be easy, but as I watched the tutorials, I realized that flash was actually designed with the concept of animations in mind rather than websites. Soon I realized that for making websites you have to trick the flash player a bit with action scripting. Now this was a big turnoff cause you had to concentrate on how to move from page to page more than on the designing itself. Of course it was much easier designing in flash than in Ajax because whatever you wanted to do worked perfectly in all browsers and there are lots of tools for developing in flash. Ajax has no such tools.

But to code in flash means that you have to learn Action Script, which means spending time on learning. Personally I don’t think it will take as long as Ajax because action script is a programming language and JavaScript is not. And also flash is compiled to SWF format and runs more efficiently than Ajax. So we can have a much more complex interface with little load on the system... And the same code will work in any browser on any platform which makes it a lot easier for the programmer.

If you know flash already then my advice to you is to learn flex which I will be explaining below. If you want to learn flash for making interfaces then I still say learn flex (you don’t need to know flash to start learning flex). In conclusion flash is amazing but it better stick to animations and let the flex part of it deal with interfaces.

FLEX (ahh!! Finally!!)

First, what is flex? Flex is, to put it in a simple way, a extension of flash designed specifically to make interfaces. It can be integrated has front end for PHP, JSP, ColdFusion etc without any problems at all. It uses XML to transfer data from the server. It can also use SOAP.

When I started to learn flex I was simply blown away by looking at how easy it was to make complex interfaces in just a few seconds when compared to Ajax which would take like a week. If you are wondering how that is possible, well, Flex has been designed so that the programmer can make these interfaces without any problems. This way the programmer can concentrate on the design of the interface than the coding. Creating the interface is pretty much just a drag and drop. You have to only do coding for the event handling. The coding is done in action script and for me it just took about a day to get a good grip over the scripting. The action script is almost like java, it has it own API which is very easy to understand and almost every feature you would want in an interface is already present.

If you are wondering what the drawback are, it needs adobe flash player 9 to run and only action script 3.0 must be used. According to me this is not even a problem. Just learn Ajax one day and flex the next day and see the difference between the two, you will fall in love with flex. Of course, if the interface is for something like e-mail where lot of people will access it, then Ajax or simple HTML/CSS is better. But if this is an application that is used always by the same people then you should give flex a shot. Yes, it is new, but with proper support it can gain a lot.

There is a chance that flex can face a problem like applets did and disappear suddenly. So I am having my fingers crossed.

Interesting thing I found……

As I was trying to decide which technology to use I began to wonder why are there so many technologies and why more and more are being developed. These technologies make no difference to a client because they have no clue. So it must be for the programmer. For example, take java. Unlike C, C++ you can use the same code on all platforms, and other languages have been developed for doing specific jobs. This all indeed makes it easy for the programmer. But consider the technologies used in browsers, like all the ones I talked above. These don’t make it easier for the programmer but make it hell! HTML/CSS does not work the same on all browsers. To solve this problem Flash/applets/Flex came but need a extra plug-in to work, and clients are just too lazy to install one. Even if we decide to use HTML/CSS, and even though we have web standards, no f****** browser follows those standards. You have the developers of browsers saying “use our browser, it is the best!!”. The more the browsers, more the problems. And to make matter worst IE, being the most widely used browser is the worst when following web standards. And because of this web programmers have to make sure their websites work on IE first and then on others.

Why we don't need a cross-over cable to connect a router's LAN port to a switch's normal port

2007-02-06T15:42:00.001-05:00

If there is auto MDI/MDI-X feature support on the switch, hub, network card or other network devices, you don't have to use crossover cable to connect two similar ports. This is because crossover function would be enabled automatically when it's needed.

Well there you have it....a router automatically makes its LAN port either a normal port or uplink port depending on the requirement. So the thing is you can use both, a straight-through or a cross-over. If you think one of the cable is not working just restart the devices and it will work. If it does not then it means that both your router and switch don't support the auto MDI/MDI-X feature.

Sleep cycle related to power cut

2007-02-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

For the last one month I have been sleeping at nearly 3 or 4 AM in the morning and getting up late in the afternoon at 1PM. I partly blame this because I have no college for atleast half the week. But even in that case I would get up at around 10 or so....but, the now we have a powercut everyday from 10 am to 12pm everyday, which means, no computer which means I can sleep and extra 2 hrs. So there you have it!! My new sleep schedule. Currently I am trying to get back to normal but I think its gonna take a while.

hmm.....Photoshop!!

2007-02-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

Was checking out my photobucket account and came across all the signs I created when I was learning Photoshop.

Bad, bad server. No donut for you

2007-02-01T11:52:00.000-05:00

WTF?? orkut has been giving that all day today and both of my friends blogs are also giving errors. I wonder what happened to the server. What puzzles me the most is why orkut behaves in such a manner. Normally if something is wrong it should remain wrong until it is fixed..but this does not happen with orkut, first gives an error and then after refreshing the page it works again.

The new blogger seems to have completely removed my old template which I made with great difficulty. But, anyway I will be making a much better one soon.

Yesterday night I spent my time watching the comedy series "The class" which seems to be a pretty good series although its rating is not so high, but it is worth watching.

Emp. Xavier: Sir! you have real skill....you won 2vs1... you gotta teach me
Genghis Khan: ROFL!!!!!!!

Oh and I almost forgot, the harry potter book 7 will be released on July 7th 2007.

The New Blogger

2007-01-30T14:29:00.000-05:00

So finally I have been able to switch to the new blogger. And most if it is pretty much the same and they just gave it a few more userfriendly features, like you can put modules at different locations in the template without requiring yourself to change the template itself, which is a good think. Overall I think its fine, except that the first time I tried to put up this post it got stuck, I had to click on 'edit posts' and then come back to create to get it working again (mostly didn't load properly).

And lately since I have been so free I have been learning some 3d studio max and making some 3d stuff. Still a long way to go before I can actually make something proper with all the lighting and stuff (trying to make a sword but its incomplete). Anyway this is enough for today because my Prison Break latest episode is nearly finished and been waiting for this like crazy.

Death in me by Naruto

2007-01-22T07:43:00.000-05:00

Want to read naruto manga go here

http://shc221b.blogspot.com/

R.I.P.

2006-12-26T12:16:00.000-05:00

31st May 2004 - 12th November 2006

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 prescott 2.8GHz (on organ donor list)
motherboard: intel 865 GBF
RAM: 1GB DDR SD RAM 400MHz (on organ donor list)
Graphics card: ATI Radeon 9600 (on organ donor list)

(had 4 spine replacements, on the 5th it was put to sleep and the new spine never came)

successor:
Processor: Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz (2MB L2 cache)
motherboard: intel 945
RAM 512 MB 533MHz DDR-2 SD RAM
Graphics card: (does not have licence yet)

inheritance from predecessor:

160GB Western Digital hard disk (brother died of brain damage)
SMPS
cabinet
monitor 19" HP
creative 2.1 speakers
keyboard & mouse
UPS
printer

Sky has Fallen

2006-11-12T02:58:00.000-05:00

The year 2006 has brought me many problems, lots of setbacks etc., and somehow I got through each one of them. I had a feeling that it would not let me go that easily at the end, so I was wondering what it would throw at me that would bring me down hard.

Since the last 2 weeks my system has been facing some startup problems. When I turn on the system everything starts and stays idle, the power light stays on and there is no hdd activity and the monitor goes to standby mode. I expected the source of the problem to be either the SMPS or the motherboard. Last night my dealer came and both of us put our heads together to find the problem and finally it was the motherboard(my 4th one). He said it would just take a week to get a replacement and with this I felt relieved. I was supposed to take it to him today after some further testing of other parts. During the test process I suddenly noticed that my main hard drive was not working....................

to be continued.......

Attitude Matters

2006-07-18T14:25:00.000-04:00

FireFox background

2006-06-03T14:27:00.000-04:00

the 1337 curse

2006-03-31T12:54:00.000-05:00

I finally got my motherboard back after three and a half weeks. It normally takes just 4 days for a replacement motherboard to arrive, but this time it took really long and I am pissed. But the problems don't stop there. My system keeps restarting or hanging up frequently and yesterday I almost had a heart attack when the system suddenly just shutdown!!! I hit the power button and nothing happens. I open the cabinet to check if something was wrong and to my greatest fear, the light that glows on the motherboard was off even though there was still power.

Immediately I got up and shut off the UPS and then turned it back on again. Normally when I do this the entire system powers up for one second and shutdown (don't know why though). But this time it didn't happen, I hit the power button and nothing happens. I started to panic thinking that something had fried inside. I then decided to call my dealer and ask him "WHY THE F*** IS MY SYSTEM BEHAVING THIS WAY???” I take the phone and dial the number.........then suddenly the system turns on by itself. What the hell happened!?!?!? I am clue less.

I finally calmed myself down, got on to the net and started chatting with Sid & arvind (both of them are like me gamers and also have cursed 1337 systems). We had a long chat and finally realized that our systems where cursed. Sid said that my system was actually dead and that now it was a ghost (he may be right). By now I was a bit relaxed and felt that my system would not leave me anytime soon.

OH MY GOD!!! With my mind hung up on all this I totally forgot that I had a lab internal exam tomorrow. What am I gonna do?!?!?!?!? I don’t' know a thing. Why does this have to happen to me?!?!?!?!?

Ok all that happened yesterday!!!
What happened today was...

I got up late as usual and got ready for college still thinking what I was gonna do in today's exam. I got into the college bus and a friend of mine (praveen) gave me a 10 minute crash course on the subject. I was still not confident. I reached college and just like me most of my friends did not know a thing. But somehow we mustered the courage to go in. The problem that I got was easy but the viva was............

The rest of the day was boring and I got back home at the usual time 6:30. I sat down at my system and started wondering what could have gone wrong yesterday. The first thing I did was install the new ati drivers, then rebooted. But the system kept rebooting non-stop. I had to go to safe mode and uninstall the drivers and put back the old ones. This raised an interesting question, why are the new drivers not working? I forgot about that and thought maybe I should reinstall the OS. I started to wonder if something was wrong with the OS I installed.....then suddenly my comp rebooted (which meant it was a YES!)

Anyway I have my internals on Monday and don't have time for all this. I thought I will just reinstall the OS once I have some free time.

mobo after mobo

2006-03-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

for the last one month nothin went in the right way, first everything that I plan gets screwed up and when I think everything is over my motherboard fucks up and now I have to wait 10 days to get a new one, good thing its still under warrenty(this is the 4th mobo). And finally when I thought things could not get any more worse, it turns out that I have to submit a project by 20th of April otherwise it will be difficult to get a certificate for the project, which gives me only a few days to complete the entire project with my system dead.

Currently I am trying to push away any other work other than my academics etc., otherwise I think I am gonna get royally screwed. I asked my tenant for his laptop so that I can use that for the week(its damn slow though) to get my work done.