Something Amiss

I’m a huge fan of online games. I recently found a genre of games that was new to me- “point and click games” and instantly took to liking them. These games usually involve escaping from a particular room or situation and the games proceed by clicking at various places in the scene, finding various objects and how to use them together to escape. Some involve even mini-puzzles that should be solved to move further.

I came across one particular series of point and click games- the “Something Amiss” series, which I found to be very intriguing. The series has 3 parts- Chapters 1,2,3 which are interlinked. This game has a story and is actually a kind of mystery, which gets unraveled slowly as you play the three chapters. You have to pick up various items and use them to perform a task or escape from a place and the usage of objects in this game is quite logical most of the time, unlike many other point and click games I’ve played.

The graphics in the game are quite good, and the scenes are designed with detail. I played all three chapters and thoroughly enjoyed it. It does consume a considerable amount of time, given the length of the game. But, I recommend that you do play the game; I feel it’s worth the time.

Here’s the link:

http://www.somethingamiss.com/

2..2..5

Weird title huh? Well, I think so!

2 blog entries in August, 2 in September and 5 in the first half of October…what does it mean? It means that I’m wasting more of my time in October! Somehow every other thing seems to be more appealing than studying, especially before exams.

Remember the funny pictures blog entry? The other day I was searching for funny images on the Internet with a view of releasing a ‘Funny Images-2’ blog entry (kinda sounds like The Mummy-2 or Spiderman-2!), but most of the good images were copyrighted.

I found this picture though:

Initially, I found it to be quite funny, but as I looked at it a second time, it reminded me of…………exams!!!! Hence I quietly closed the preview of the image, dismissed the whole thing as a bad idea and thought of another topic to write a blog on.

Then came the marvelous idea of writing ( and at the same time boasting) about the novels I read. But then I just couldn’t get the flow (I’ll do that sometime or the other though).

Suddenly I want to write so much in my blog! I still dint decide as to what to post in my blog- whether to write my day-to-day experiences and use it as an online diary or choose a topic and write my views on it, Well, I guess I’ll do both and use the blog for many other things too.

The reason for this particular post is to tell myself ‘No more blog entries for a month from now'. Hope at least this will make me open my books sometime in the coming days.

But, who knows, you MIGHT find a new entry within a month, or in fact tomorrow itself, well, that’s me!

A reason to ponder

The earth is a wonderful place to live in, the green cover, the deep blue oceans, and the richness of species in each region, very picturesque indeed! The earth is said to have 2 to 50 million species, which include many magnificent creatures and plants. The ecological system and how everything works in it is awe-inspiring. No wonder many great poets chose nature as their theme.

But today the earth is in a very sorry state thanks to a single species with a ‘highly developed brain’ called humans. This one species was enough to burn thousands of acres of forestland, dump seas and oceans with tons of muck, pollute the atmosphere and drive the fellow-species to extinction; all in the name of development.

I don’t say development is bad, but it need not cause harm to our earth and the millions of creatures that live on it. After all, this is the only planet we have!

In the present day, ask anyone as to where animals are supposed to live, “In the zoo”, pat comes the reply. Trees and plants, which were to cover the whole of the land on earth, are now limited to patches of forestland, a few parks, roadsides and flowerpots. Animals which were to freely roam the vast grasslands and jungles are now limited to zoos. The problem is, most people think that that’s the way it should be!

Hundreds of beautiful animals have become extinct and many more are on the verge of extinction. If the carelessness continues, there is a risk of animals being completely wiped out from our planet and all that will remain is their pictures in our books.

Everyone must’ve heard of this or read this somewhere hundreds of times, but have we really understood the seriousness of the issue? We even have a subject called ‘Environmental Studies’ in engineering, covering all these issues. But I bet everyone ‘learnt’ the topics, regurgitated them on the answer paper and left it at that, without a sense of realization and remorse about what we have done to our planet.

The earth was designed to support the entire flora and fauna, provided the ecological balance was maintained, but cannot sustain our greed, as we are exploiting the resources beyond its limits.

If something goes wrong with our house, maybe a small leak or a crack, wouldn’t we take immediate steps to repair it? Yet, a hole in the ozone layer or the disruption of the climate due to deforestation and pollution is a trivial issue and something not worth thinking about!

If we go on like this, what will be left of our planet in a few more decades? We will all have to face the wrath of the affects of our deeds sooner or later. And when we do face them, they will be devastating.

Another blog

I created another blog just for posting recipes. I didn't want to mix up the recipes with the other topics.
Here's the link:

http://scrumptious-subjis.blogspot.com/

Recipe - Aloo Bonda

Cooking is one of my hobbies and whatever I cook is edible for sure (in fact they're yummy 90% of the time)

Today I made Aloo bondas as an evening snack. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

(for making 12 bondas)

Potatoes-3
Carrot-1
Peas-quarter cup
Gram flour (Besan)- Half cup
Corn flour- 2tsps
Turmeric Powder
Chilli Powder
Salt
Oil- For deep fry

For the seasoning:

Oil-1 tsp
Mustard seeds- half spoon
Urad dal- half spoon
Curry leaves – a few


Method:

Peel and chop the potatoes and carrot. Add the required amount of salt and turmeric powder and boil till they are soft . Boil peas too.
Mash the boiled potatoes and carrot and add the peas.
Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and add the ingredients for seasoning and fry. Now add the seasoning to the above mixture, mix them well and roll them into medium-sized balls.
Now, add corn flour, salt and chilli powder to the gram flour and mix with water.
Dip each ball into the gram flour paste, so that it is evenly coated and deep fry till golden brown. Serve hot with tomato sauce.




The aloo bondas came out very well. Actually I should’ve taken pictures of them while cooking and after they were ready to be served. While cooking, my hands were all grubby with all the ingredients on my hands. After they were done, they looked so tempting that I immediately served them. I realized that I wanted to take pictures of the bondas only after everyone polished them off the plates. What do I do? I don’t know when I’ll make them again. So, I took this picture :D

NTLDR is missing

As soon as I saw this message on the PC screen, my heart sank. I had switched on the PC and the Operating System did not boot. Instead I found this message on the screen. ‘NTLDR is missing'-that’s it. My mind raced through the various files that I had created not only on this PC, but also on the previous Pentium-3 and Pentium-1 PCs as well. 10 years of work (though ‘junk’ would be a more apt word, I prefer to call it that way because at least 20% is real work) would just vanish into thin air. The files ranged from artwork in Paint to C and Java programs. I then realized that all the work, all the files are ‘virtual’ and not real. I suddenly felt sick at the thought that I spent so much time on something that didn’t even have a physical existence.

I read last year in ‘The Autobiography of a Yogi’, that this whole world is only an illusion and that we have to overcome the illusion to get true wisdom. So, it implies that I spent all that time on something which is virtual in a virtual world! What’s real and what’s virtual? My mind raced through these thoughts in a fraction of a second when I saw that message on the blank screen.

I had a backup of all the important files, in a 4GB pen-drive. Good huh?
But, just two days back I had erased all its contents and given it to my friend to load songs in it. Probably that’s what is called tough luck!

I soon recuperated from those thoughts and installed Windows-XP. Luckily, nothing happened to my files in the D and E drives. But my favorite videos and images in the C drive and some of my power point presentations were wiped out. Nevertheless I started to install all the softwares again, real player, gtalk, photoshop and so on.

Do you think I learnt my lesson and stopped spending so many hours at the PC? No way! I was creating junk and non-junk right from the next day in full swing! Well, virtual in virtual or not, that’s what I like to do!

Online Treasure Hunt

Coordinating the event 'Online Treasure Hunt' in our department's fest 'Qubit' was one of the most memorable moments in Engineering.

It all started with me coming up with an idea for holding a 'Debugging Treasure Hunt' rather than the conventional 'Online Treasure Hunt'. The idea was approved and I thus became the event coordinator of the event.I coined the caption 'Delve into the fantabulous world of debugging and evince your prowess in this exhilarating quest for treasure!' and plunged into the work of the writing programs.

As this went on, suddenly there was a change of plan to conduct the 'Online Treasure Hunt'(OTH) as usual because there was already a 'Coding and Debugging' event and this OTH was supposed to rope in non-cse students too. I was truely disappointed and felt really dejected, nevertheless I prepared myself to conduct the OTH as Qubit approached.

The caption became 'Delve into the fantabulous world of brainteasers and evince your prowess in this exhilarating quest for treasure!' and I started to collect puzzles instead of writing programs. I collected some puzzles, created some on my own, I tried to incorporate as much newness as possible in the brainteasers and puzzles.

Then, I had to choose the organisers for helping me to conduct the event.

As the day of the event appraoched (5th march,2008), the pressure increased and I had to create webpages and at that time I did'nt even know what a tag was! The question papers for the written exam had to be printed, the questions for the written and the online exam had to be finalised, the schedule had to be submitted, the posters had to be stuck all over the campus and permissions had to be sought for using the labs and classrooms.

The day of the event arrived and the event was held, successfully (although many complained that the written paper was tough :D).

And that's how I conducted the Online Treasure Hunt.
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Wait- there's something absolutely wrong with the above mentioned piece of writing....I forgot 9 important people, without whom none of this would've happened:

Nitin- Who helped me coordinate the event, finalize the questions, and who patiently taught me html and clarified my silly doubts in html (now that we are learning web technologies I know that they are silly)

Tarun- Who initiated the whole process

Ramana- Who had confidence in me and made me the coordinator of this event

Gayathri- Who ran around for the arrangements on the day of the event and kept me cool

Bhargav Sai- Who helped me to make arrangements in the lab, took care of the technical stuff and solved the puzzles a day before the event to see if they were solvable

Krishna Bhargava- Who examined the puzzles, took care of the printing of the question papers and the advertising part

Siva- Who took care of the advertising and campaigning for the event and roped in more participants for the event.

Jyotsna- Who patiently sat at the reception desk registering the participants.

Pavani- Who helped me in correcting the numerous question papers.

I could conduct the event only because of them and shudder to think how it would've been without even a single person from the above mentioned. I thank them all for it.

In case any of those who I mentioned are reading this, I would say, "Chalu le, inka dhigu :P"

My first crush

Well, I thought I wouldn't be writing about sad and serious stuff anymore, but this is a serious topic. All the situations which I am going to describe are real and took place. I know that it happens to many people, but I used to wonder as to why they even let it happen. I used to laugh and mock others when they used to tell about it and how it all happened. I used to be like "Puhleeez! Don't tell me such silly things". But then, it happened to me and I know how it feels, to be in that situation, to be in those peoples' shoes. Although I never expected it to happen to me, it did. Now I know how it happens and the pain in it. Now I can sympathize with those who tell me about their experience with it and can say, "Ya, I know how that feels". Now I will not mock those or laugh at those who tell me that the same thing happened to them.

This is how it happened. It was an evening in July, 2006. I was preoccupied with arranging some books in my cupboard. Then, all of a sudden, the door bell rang. I found it strange because we weren't expecting anybody to come to our house then. Before I could react, the door bell rang again and again. "What an impatient person!" , I thought. In a hurry to close the cupboard door, I slammed it and ............"AAAAW", I closed the cupboard door right onto my right index finger, crushing the nail and causing a lot of blood to ooze out. Never in my life did I think that I would be so careless as to let such a thing happen. As for my finger, it took 3 months for the pain to subside completely. Such was the impact. And the person who rang the bell was our neighbour's daughter who came to give chocolates for her birthday.

And this is how it happened...my first crush :D

My first blog had been a rather sad one, reminiscing about my dog which passed away. But hey....don’t expect all sad and serious stuff from my blogs, I love humour (though not everyone has the privilege of seeing my humourous side :-P). What’s cooler than being able to bring a smile on someone’s face and make their day? In this blog I’m trying just that, to make you smile, through this collection of pictures that I found really funny. Hope I’m successful in this endeavor!

A reminiscence

1996....it was a year which brought many changes in my life, one of which was the entry of a new member into our family- a cute little puppy which was to become an inseparable part of our family and which affectionately responded to the call of 'Ruby' for almost 11 years.

Ruby was always a very spirited dog. I still clearly remember the day when it was first brought into the house and how we all surrounded the tiny confused puppy and coaxed it to drink milk from a saucer.

It was so attached to me; it would whimper and bark every morning when i left home. I would be sure that two big brown eyes would be eagerly waiting for me to return every evening.

The little games of tug-of-war with rags, my unsuccessful attempts of trying to keep it from chewing on my socks and shoes and clawing at my books, its stomping at the sight of its favorite food....all these are still fresh in my mind and bring a smile to my face when I think of them.

Ruby passed away on the 13th of September, 2007, leaving eleven and a half years of friendship as a sweet memory. It still hurts to think that my best buddy is no more, and that I can never look into its innocent eyes again or see its tail wagging in frenzy whenever I used to play with it.

All those who had a pet will know how I feel. For all those who never had a pet, I suggest you to get one, it's a wonderful experience.

Unfortunately, the lifespan of man's best friend is nowhere near man's lifespan :( .