CS vs Marine

We now have a reputation of making those matches which we are expected to win, really tight (but winning in the end... oh did I spoil the suspense, if there was any ;) ).
This time around CS has lost almost every match in every sport by an embarassing margin. We were the last hope to save face, so to speak. We were expected to win this match as the Marine team only had one (really) good player: Josemon (who had captained the junior Kerala team when he was in ninth standard).
This match was quite dramatic, but not as dramatic as the one which we played against mech last year.
Looking at the final score in the first quarter, some people started having their doubts. But, a margin of just 6 points so early in the game is no margin at all. By the third quarter both teams were playing neck and neck. Josemon (of marine) doing the majority of the scoring. The marine team also had a massive crowd support compared to the feeble turnout which CS offered (but thanks a lot to all those who came).
Then in the final fourth quarter we charged ahead and took a comfortable lead. The final score: CS-48 Marine-32 . I scored 23 points. Guess it was my day today !!

P.S: My dad has just messaged me to go and try out for NBA. I really hope he is joking.

Also check out this cartoon (Penny-arcade). Now evil has the power.

Rang de Basanti

Happy republic day !!! Before I go on and discuss the storyline (of "Rang de Basanti" the movie, if you are wondering), here is my verdict: The first half of the movie is fun. If you loved "Dil Chahta Hai", you will like the first half. The second half is, in short, blown out of proportions.

Spoiler warning: If you don't want to know about the storyline, turn around now.

Now on with the story. The story talks about a firang girl, Sue, who is a person who makes documentaries. She is inspired by the Indian freedom fighters (the extremists, not the moderates) and wants to make a documentary on them. Her idea gets shot down by her superiors and she decides that she will make the documentary anyway. So, she travels all the way to India (saddi dilli, to be specific) in search of actors suitable for the roles of the freedom fighters. There she meets Aamir Khan (DJ) and gang, and the fun begins. This is the better part of the movie, with lots of comedy, and brief interludes into the freedom movement of India. Sue, finally manages to complete her movie and also starts to fall for Aamir (one kissing scene is there :drool: ).
So all is going well, when suddenly Madhavan (who is part of the happy go lucky gang), who is a pilot in the air force, gets killed due to a MIG-21 crash (the defence ministry saw this movie and cut 3 scenes).
This incident saddens the group of friends. When the group hears the defence minister (who has a striking similarity to George Fernandes) saying that the crash was due to the pilot being an amateur, they get very pissed off, as they believe that the crash was due to the corrupt defence minister's actions. This is where the film takes off in a totally insane direction. They decide to exact revenge by killing the minister. And how do they do it? They get on a bike take a gun and kill him on the footpath as he is going for his morning walk. This is where I lost interest in the movie. Too darn improbable, but well I was in a theatre so I had to watch the rest of the drama unfold. Sue, the firang girl, is forgotten in the second half of the movie and she is reduced to a running, crying girl looking for her friends/actors. In the end all of Aamir and his friends are killed by Black cat commandos as they confess, on radio, as to why they killed the minister.

All in all the film is a genuine effort to try and awaken the youth of india to come forward and fight. I think that they have overdone the revolutionary thing, but it is worth watching at least once. The film will do well though, as most of the people in India want to kill the politicians.

Two things worth considering:

1. I wonder whether this movie would have made it to the halls with the same storyline, if BJP was in power and not congress.
2. Aamir Khan's past three movies (including this one) had a "India's freedom struggle" angle to it. What will the next one be like?

Oh yes, I watched the 9 pm -12 am show. The movie is a good 3 hours long.

Windows in HTML !!

Check this out (open with IE and enable popups) it is pretty cool. The guy has made a strikingly similar UI to the one found in Windows 2000, without using flash/java/activex, as his webpage. Pretty impressive.
The booting process although looks like Linux.

Another screenshot

This time on Linux. I had to see if it worked !!!

My world is a mesh !!!

I was trying to get terrain rendering using height maps right, and lo behold I have a screenshot :D
It kinda looks cool, although it is not the final product. Combined with the 3D camera which I made in the morning, one can walk through these hills (read as terrain). Understanding heightmaps was pretty easy and I could get this demo running quickly. I still have to figure out texture mapping, only then will I be able to change this into something more realistic.

The project revisited

After a lot of lazying around I finally put on my thinking cap and sat down to start my project. I had thought that I had almost done the 3D camera part, but I was wrong. So, after a lot of reading about vectors and 3D geometry, I came up with the 3D camera. It does the things which a standard FPS camera would do i.e look up/down, look left/right, strafe left/right, move forward/backward. At least I made some progress.

Ubuntu

A few days back my system crashed mysteriously. Windows just would not boot up, whatever I tried. I thought it was about time that I formatted my drive and re-installed windows. But in the process I said "What the heck" and re-partitioned my whole drive and thus lost my hard earned Gentoo system.
The good part was that I got a chance to try out my "Free" Ubuntu CDs. The installation process was a breeze and everything got setup properly. I had to download and install the nvidia drivers, but that is a given in any Linux installation. Internet is working and I got internet sharing configured right now by following this. Installing apps is also pretty simple (the advantages of having the Debian pacakge manager). Just like everyone else who has used Ubuntu, I also give it a thumbs up.

Update: Looks like I spoke too soon. Surprisingly, Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution, which I have seen, where you will have to install gcc, g++ etc yourself (I mean it is not in the base system by default). Not only that you will have to install the standard header files too. What this means is, if you have a newly setup Ubuntu system and want to run a simple "Hello world" C program, it won't even compile.

Cinderella man

There are times when a movie inspires you so much that you get charged up (hence I had a nice game of basketball today). This was one of those movies i.e Cinderella man. Starring Russel Crowe and Renee Zellweger, it talks how a boxer comes back from the bad times of the great American depression to become the world heavy weight champion. If you are a Rocky fan you will surely love this one.
Among other things B.Tech sports has been delayed to 25th, so we will get some more time to practise.

Yeh hai meri kahani

Of the things which I enjoy in Cochin, spontaneity and freedom will be the ones on the top of the list. If I were to start narrating the events of this day (16-1-06) from midnight, it will be somethingl like this.

Crabs are not an aggresive species. In fact even if you are the aggresor they still would rather step away than try and bite you. A fact which was clearly demonstarted by Ashish, who was trying to catch a crab, in vain, with his bare hands!!!! Yes, he has nothing better to do in life, but that could be said for any one of us.
We were at Cherai beach on a full moon. The beach was empty except for the five of us and the crabs. It was the result of staying at home on a rather long weekend and the availability of conveyance. We returned back home drenched (by rain and the sea) around 1 am.

I had been reading "One night @ the call center" by Chetan Bhagat (his second book, after his much successfull "Five point someone.") the past day, and I thought that I will as well finish it off.

In my opinion the book is nice although it is not filled with adventure and humor, as his first book was, but is surely worth the read. Some people may find it hard to stomach certain details in the book, as they may not seem to be rational, but that was not the case with me. All in all you can read it and not be bored, but don't expect another "Five point someone." By the time I finished, it was 2:30 am. Time to sleep.

B.Tech sports is about to come and the inter branch basketball matches start from 20th of this month. I came to know about this yesterday evening, when I went to the court in an attempt to shed the extra kilos gained by sitting at home and being tempted with all kinds of sweets around me. That was obviously not great news as we (CS) hadn't practised for a while. The good news though, is that others are not practising as well. Today's practise was cut short by heavy showers and lightning. I returned home (drenched) to find that it was not just our practise session, but also the power which had been cut short.

We lay in darkness when we decided that we will as well go for a movie, rather than let the mosquitoes suck our high cholestrol blood. We had to choose between "King Kong" and "Zinda". We chose "Zinda" (surprise!!!!). We had our dinner and left for the 9:00 pm show. Just when the movie was about to start, I got a message from Arun: "Power was back up." Life was playing games again.

About the movie, let me just say that bollywood has finally progressed in depicting sex and violence, the two things which make a good formula movie. Zinda has both in a controlled dose and that's why I say it is worth the watch (not for girls though :P ). It has gore, foul language and the sizzlers. Oh and by the way, Sourav said that "Zinda" had more gore than "Hannibal". I beg to differ. Zinda has quite a few of these scenes, but Hannibal has just one and that one compensates. Those who have seen both movies will understand. I leave the details, as I don't want to spoil your appetite.

This was my first day of the 8th semester, which was in fact our so called "Project day", hence no class. I wish for more such days !!

Freezer to furnace

I left Delhi in a winter which was going to be the coldest one in 70 years, to Bombay. It had been 4 years since I had seen the face of the city and there was little I could recollect except the rush in the local trains. So how does Bombay differ from Delhi? Here are some things which I noticed :

• The auto drivers charge by the meter !!! If someone in Delhi charges you by the meter you can be sure that the meter has been rigged.
  
• Auto rickshaws have music systems which will put a rich kid's hip hop system to shame. No kidding.
  
• People drive on low beam. In Delhi driving on high beam is considered "shaan ki baat" (matter of pride).
• Vada pao :)

I stayed at my uncle's place for a few days, did some shopping and general loitering (Juhu beach and In-orbit mall) with my brother. I returned back to the world of coconuts today afternoon. It was a nice long vacation. Oh wait there are 4 more days of it left !!!

Time to lose some adipose

After a long break of over 2 months, due to exams, monsoon rains, pending assignments and general laziness, I finally got to play basketball. It all started day before yesterday when the plan was made. Yesterday morning (8 am) we drove down to Jawaharlal Nehru stadium (yes, the one with the really big lights and all) and did a lateral entry (through a wall) into the stadium court. Except for the wet court (due to an overnight drizzle), chilly winter and lack of stamina, we had a nice 2 and a 1/2 hours of basketball. The drill was repeated again today morning and most of my body parts are aching till now. Given the fact that I will be leaving for Bombay day after tomorrow, this is all I will get to play, back here.