Thought Overflow

Well, this post is obviously filler. But I found this picture amusing enough to share. Basically, Steve’s a pretty big fan of Metallica, and is pretty excited about their new album, Death Magnetic, which is receiving some pretty good reviews. So, he invited me to join the group “Metallica” on facebook. And this is the result of accepting that invitation. So now you know who’s doing the background vocals on Metallica :P.

Since I’ve already spoken about Metallica’s new album, I suppose I might as well go ahead and comment a little bit on the album,which I’ve heard (not in its entirety though). My initial comments are:

• Kirk Hammett returns with his impressive guitar solos/leads (I’ve never really understood the difference between a guitar solo and a guitar lead…someone might be able to explain this).
• It does NOT sound like St. Anger or any of their last few albums actually.
• But it doesn’t quite sound like Master of Puppets either. Perhaps that’s partially because MoP has become a legend in my head to the point of where I know and love every note of every song (almost).
• “The Unforgiven III” is absolutely awesome and I’m likely to like it for a very long time; at least, I certainly hope so. I have a bad tendency to get bored of songs (as does everyone else, no?).
• The sound appears to be a little dirty. In fact, I’d say it’s probably their dirtiest sounding record yet (not counting St. Anger). It makes the sound rougher, but it’s not quite an effect I like too much. Then again, it could just be that I got a bad version or something.

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I’ve very recently finished playing a game called Metal Gear Solid. This game was initially released for the Sony Playstation in 1998, where it quickly achieved cult status. Even now, it’s widely regarded as one of the best games ever, on any platform. The game was revolutionary in terms of graphics and gameplay at the time of its release, but as with all games, these things have very little importance as time passes. What endures is the core gameplay and the story or the effect the game has on you. It’s pretty much the same with this game. Most games have cutscenes that are interspersed between long periods of gameplay to advance the story. This game, however, has lengthy cutscenes that are truly magnificent even today. The graphics are horrendous by modern standards, but the story just drags you into it, and the entire game is wonderfully character-driven. In fact, the characters are done so wonderfully that even the portions of the game that feel cliched are wonderful to experience.

Anyway, I’m rambling. The point I wanted to make is that after I finished the game, all I could do for a few hours was remain in the aftermath of the game. I looked up the storyline of the prequels and sequels and even considered downloading the 4.5 GB sequel, which is the only other game in this line that is playable on the PC.

But this is not the only game to have had such an effect. I can rattle off a list of absolutely amazing games that make you wish that they were never-ending games that you could play on and on forever…pOrtaL, GTA: San Andreas and Bioshock come to mind immediately, and I’m sure that if I think for a little bit longer, I’ll be able to come up with more. The mark of a truly amazing game is how much it makes you wish for it NOT to end, I suppose. Note that despite the horrible graphics of GTA: San Andreas, it still ranks right up there among the most fun games I’ve ever played.

What is the purpose of this post? Nothing, really. In one way, it’s an attempt to explain to people who don’t understand why people like gaming so much why exactly gaming can be so fun (and sometimes addictive). It’s also a tribute to some of the greatest games I’ve played. Gaming, like movies or music, can be as much an art form when done right, and these are just some examples.

Oh, and to end this post, I’m going to quote an extract from a story. Here it is:

“The truth is… when I play a game, I lose track of who I am. I became the character I control. I can forget about the real world. The game becomes my reality. I can fly at will, kill people to exact revenge. I own cars and have money. I have everything I couldn’t possibly dream of getting in real life. I am invincible…

“Games don’t ask for much. They don’t even care if you play them or not. They won’t ask you questions if you shelve them for months. They don’t expect you to love them. They don’t expect you to score higher than seventy percent in your studies. They don’t care if you pick your nose in public. You can play a game whenever you want, and then switch it off whenever you want, and it will never feel bad that you did. And the best part is… when you get bored of one, you can always put it aside and play another.

“Life should be like a game, you know? Life should allow you to make mistakes and then go back and restart from a checkpoint when you fuck up. Life should let you save your best moments and play them or review them again whenever you feel like…”

(post-published)

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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I’ve caught a cold and I might catch a fever too, because every now and then I feel like I’m getting very slightly feverish. Hmm…maybe I’m hoping that I’ll get fever too. I’m not looking forward to going to college tomorrow, and the strange thing is that there’s no reason not to, really. Sure, there’s no real reason to look forward to going to college, but throughout the last three years, there rarely ever has been. So why now, after three years at college, am I suddenly waiting for it to be over?

I wonder if I’ll miss college life when I pass out. I’m sure I’ll miss the people, my friends mostly. I’ll miss my classmates and the other weird creatures that inhabit the college from about 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM everyday. I’m sure I’ll miss the bus ride to and fro, the 1+ hour I spend listening to music, sitting beside people I consider friends, people I genuinely like. Heck, I might even miss the specimens we have come to call lecturers. Will I miss the walls, the atmosphere, the dress codes, the management faux pas, the shambolic administration, the hilariously late announcements from the library, etc?

Then again, I think that college life is like life itself. It’s unfair, it’s got its share of days which make you feel like you just want to stay in bed, and its share of phases when you can’t wait for tomorrow to arrive. Its got more than its share of injustice, trials and obstacles, heartache, pain, sorrow, but in the end, it’s all worth living. At every transitory point of life, I’ve looked back on what I’m leaving behind, mostly with the fondest memories. I used to think that the human brain has an amazing capacity to remember the best of memories and forget the hurtful ones. Now I’m not so sure what to think. I’ve seen people remember nothing but the worst of their past. Oh well, I’m rambling now, and since this is my blog, it’s my right to. You’re just unlucky that you’re reading it.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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I was replying to a thread on a website just a short while ago. Some dude started a blog and wanted to know how to promote it. He apparently writes one post a week and started the blog pretty recently. I gave him the following advice:

1. Blog more often…twice or thrice a week.
2. Find blogs with high traffic and high PRs and post comments on them. Backlinks improve your own pages’ rating.
3. Find and exchange links with other sites/blogs that deal with the same topics or subject matter that you’re writing about.
4. Love your blog.

The irony of this is that with the possibly exception of point 4, I don’t follow any of these other points :P. In my defense, though, I’ve got the following replies to those 4 points:

1. This is just a simple personal blog, more like a journal in online form. If there’s nothing of interest to report about life, then there’s not much to write about. However, I think I should write more often at least to improve my writing.
2. Meh, I’m not really very bothered with my site rankings or my PR. I don’t plan to sell links here any time soon.
3. Yeah, I suppose I should go around looking for bloggers who write about…nothing in particular. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, but I’ll tell you something…I just can’t be bothered to do it.
4. I do…more or less.

And that’s it for today, folks.

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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I think I’m in that phase again when nothing seems to matter much. There’s not much to look forward to at college, and there’s not much to look forward to at home either. Somehow, either everything’s faded or I’m jaded. I seem to be drifting.

That doesn’t mean I have nothing on my mind though. In fact, I have a lot on my mind constantly these days, from worrying about how I do in my CAT to the various things around the house I need to do myself now that mum’s not here for some time.

This is just another random update. It’s been twelve days since I last posted.

Oh, and I might as well mention… I watched “The Dark Knight” a couple of days back. It was really good, though I missed the first ten minutes or so. One of the better superhero movies in a long, long time. It’s not only very well done in a commercial sense, but it manages to remain arty and critically pleasing, unlike the Spiderman series. There are plenty of other superhero movies I can name or compare this to, like Daredevil, but they’re so bad that their names should never be mentioned in civilized society. Example : Daredevil.

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Living in India, I hear a lot about the stars not being aligned right, the days being bad (or good), and a whole lot of other supersticious beliefs. I am not imprudent enough to dismiss them outright, but I personally don’t believe much in that kind of stuff…at least I didn’t until what happened today (and the last few days).

For the last three to five days, I’ve not been able to receive some emails sent to @gurdit.com email IDs. I haven’t been able to figure out the problem, but I tried a lot of things. I signed up at EveryDNS to manage my DNS settings and do all sorts of things. As things generally happen when I try to fix technical issues, I made the problem worse, and it took Yunheng (again, the saviour) to finally do some magic and make things right again. He did that today. As of now, I think I should receive any and all mails you send to my @gurdit.com email addresses.

As for the superstition, here’s why I alluded to it in my opening paragraph. I got the strangest error on my cell phone today morning. I had no signal strength even though I was in the heart of the city. Upon switching my phone off and back on again, it gave me a “Unable to register SIM” error. I’ve never seen that before. Just to make doubly sure that the error’s not on my phone, I put my SIM into my friend’s phone, and what do I behold? I get the same error on her phone, except that it was … *Drumroll* … in Hindi!. So, I decided to just give up. In the evening, another friend of mine had to make a call. When I gave him the phone and told him the problem, he restarted it and imagine my surprise when it just caught a signal and started working. Maybe phones have feelings of rebellion sometimes too…

Anyway, see the link? Tech issues, both solved by someone other than me, who pretty much did the same thing I tried to do to fix the issues. Or maybe it’s just me seeing patterns everywhere.

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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Modern myths are quite amusing really. The things people say to cover their asses. The problem is that people perceive too much, and sometimes, they just expect too much, perhaps from themselves or perhaps from others around them. A lot of times, we let others expect a lot from us, and instead of living up to the standards we set for ourselves, we live up to standards set by others. The sadness is that we are so engrossed in pleasing everyone else and listening to what they say, that we tend to ignore the little voice inside us that tells ue what WE want. In time, that little voice goes silent because you’ve stopped listening to it. Anyway, I’d rather not go off on a completely different train of thought here. I’ll stick with my original theme…modern myths. Here are a few of them…

• Companies have Upper Cutoffs as well as Lower Cutoffs in their written tests. To be honest, I don’t think this is true. Why would a company have a higher cut-off? Why would they want to deny themselves of the cream of students who appear for the candidacy for their job offerings? Someone once said that most people come up with the explanation of “upper cutoffs” because they can’t deal with the fact that they didn’t clear the “lower” cutoffs. To be honest, I don’t know what’s true. If I ever get into the HR Department of a company, I’ll be sure to let you know, though.
• The more additional sheets you take, the more marks you score. I don’t think this is true either. If at all anything, it acts as a placebo. Yes, there may be some few cases where a very lazy examiner may give marks to a paper that seems to be “heavier” (physically) than most others, but in general, I think we get the marks we deserve. The third year, first semester was one in which I had developed an intimate relationship with most subjects and enjoyed them. I scored higher than almost everyone that sem. This last sem, I disliked most subjects and never knew developed anything more than a polite acquaintancy with them. Having said that however, I seek not to undermine the importance of presentation in a paper. The neater you write, and the cleaner your diagrams, the more marks you are likely to fetch. Your paper’s evaluator may be in a bad mood, but a neat paper certainly does make its own impression.
• You get selected in companies if you don’t read for them. This is not a very common myth. In fact, I was just told this by a friend of mine who just came online who claims that Infosys is “that kind of company” in which you’ll never be selected if you prepare for it. I don’t see how this is possible. Perhaps a lot of students who “prepared” didn’t get selected but felt that others, who didn’t quite “prepare” as much as them, did. Again, it’s a case of sour grapes. Logically, I can’t see how preparation can harm your chances of success. Without preparation, all you have on your side is hope and luck. Be reasonable, people, and use some of that common sense that God gave you.
• I am not an alien, and my future plans do not include total domination by revolutionalizing the way people watch TV. I guarantee you that this is a myth. It is also the reason why I don’t discourage people from watching too much TV (you can never watch too much TV!) and listening to (c)rap songs (u can neva lisn 2 enuff hip-hop, dog!).

(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)

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Well, it happened two days later than I expected it to, but I’ve finally got my braces put today. We’re doing the lower jaw first, and though I don’t really feel any pain right now, I can feel the pressure on my teeth giving me a tingling sensation. I’ve been warned though, that I will probably feel a little pain tomorrow, and I might need to take a painkiller or two. Well, at least I can’t say I haven’t been warned.

Now, I just have to get used to the feeling of external pieces of metal being stuck in my mouth.

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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So I’ve finally got my internet reconnected today on another ISP. I now have no download cap, and do you know what that means? It means I can’t download anything unless I back up the music off my computer onto DVDs or something and create space to download more.

Anyway, another update is that I’ve started down the path towards getting braces. I’ve had three teeth from my lower jaw extracted already. Let me tell you something… the worst thing I’ve ever tasted is my own blood. It’s not so much just the taste as it is the overall flavour of it. It’s disgusting. Gah! I had one tooth removed today, so that means I’m going to be tasting it all day tomorrow. Joy to me.

PS:
Update about broadkast.net email. I’ll get it done in about 3 days. Just need to get other things done first. If you catch me online, buzz me… need to talk to you about something anyway.

(2 votes, average: 1 out of 5)

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The World Wide Web, which is often considered the same as The Internet, can be a tricky place, especially if you’re a fly and the spider’s out to get you. Wow, that was a lame metaphor!

Anyway, this is just an update to everyone. I don’t have internet at home right now because I’m shifting from Hathway to BSNL Broadband. I’ve been waiting for the last 7 days for them to connect it. Today, I found out that the modem we had from Hathway is not compatible with the connection BSNL is going to give us. That means I’ll have to apply for a modem from BSNL after which they will give me a connection, which is likely to take a few more days. In the mean time, I might get to access the internet from my aunt’s house now and then for very short periods (as I’m doing now). But this is only for checking mail and doing other important things. For anything that might require me to be online for some time, it’ll have to wait till I get the connection at home.

PS:
To the chap who wanted the @broadkast.net email ID, I’m working on it. I will be able to get it done within about 2 days of getting an internet connection at home. I know I could have emailed you about it, but I’m lazy.

(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)

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