Feed"Unputdownable" is how I would describe Philip Pullman's superb "His Dark Materials" trilogy comprising "The Golden Compass" (released as "The Northern Lights" in the UK), "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass". I am so glad that I picked them up after all the three books had been released as I cannot imagine how I would have borne the agony of having to wait for a couple of years to find out how this delicious saga unfolds.
News Archive for 2004
[2004-12-26] "His Dark Materials"
[2004-12-04] "The Silmarillion"
"The Silmarillion" by J. R. R. Tolkien is a collection of tales that make up the epic mythology that forms the background of "The Lord of the Rings" (LOTR), this book and "The Hobbit" are a must-read for anyone who wishes to fully appreciate LOTR.
[2004-12-04] "Dungeons and Dragons"
I came across the game "Dungeons and Dragons"
in Landmark (at The Forum, Bangalore). I was quite surprised, to say
the least, as I didn't know people here would be willing to play
the elaborate and never-ending sessions that D&D inevitably leads to.
[2004-11-16] Malpé
Due to a rare and happy juxtaposition of Diwali, the weekend and Eid, we got five consecutive holidays from the 11th to the 15th of November. We put most of these days to good use by staying at The Paradise Isle Beach Resort on Malpe Beach 7 kilometres off the town of Udupi.
[2004-11-01] Srirangapatna
Anusha and I drove down to Tipu Sultan's fort town in Srirangapatna yesterday. It is close to the city of Mysore and is around 3.5 hours by car from Bangalore (with the current state of the connecting highway).
[2004-10-02] Windows Hacking
I decided to try out the demos of a few of the new games like Doom 3, Far Cry and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time on my home PC.
[2004-09-26] Heights of Jingoistic Protectionism
The Kannada movie industry wants non-Kannada movies to be released within the state of Karnataka at least seven weeks later than their release elsewhere in India. Even then, there can be only eight prints of such a movie at a time across Karnataka. As if that was not enough, they want 70% entertainment tax on non-Kannada movies and none on Kannada movies, going as far as to demand subsidies even for commercial Kannada movies.
[2004-08-22] "Uru: Ages Beyond Myst"
This week Anusha and I played Uru: Ages Beyond Myst - the ambitious and open-ended 3D incarnation of the Myst series of games.
[2004-08-21] "The Woman in Black"
The Woman in Black
is a wonderful play - the lighting, sound and acting is very well done and
extremely effective in pulling the audience into the scene. We saw it today
and it managed to scare us a couple of times at least. I wish we could
get more productions of this quality here in Bangalore. Highly recommended!
[2004-08-01] "The Da Vinci Code"
"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown has action, pace and intrigue sustained right throughout and not since "Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets" have I wanted to finish a novel in one day and enjoyed it all along! The plot can be summed up as one big treasure hunt (with cryptic clues leading to more clues, as in the eponymous game) for that ultimate Christian quest - the Holy Grail.
[2004-08-01] NetOne
Only last week did I discover that even BSNL has an "account free" dial-up connection scheme called NetOne that authenticates based on Caller Line Identification (CLI) and is reasonable at 10 paise per minute. This is apart from the normal outgoing call charges for ISP dial-up numbers (17xxxx).
[2004-07-25] "Five Point Someone"
This short novel by Chetan Bhagat tells the story of the narrator and his two friends and their stay in IIT Delhi. While some of the lines did make me chuckle and some made me say "So true!", I still do not feel that all the hype over this novel is justified. Some of the stuff was a bit of an exaggeration too - this is not what generally happens in the IITs people (the coke bottles episode, the making out with a professor's daughter thing, etc.)! Then again, IIT Delhi has always been a bit different from the other IITs, so who knows. ;-)
[2004-07-10] Curvaceous Beauty
So Srikanth prefers the gorgeous new N-Gage QD after all - he is now ready to sell off his otherwise new N-Gage and get the N-Gage QD instead! The N-Gage QD made its debut, at least here in Bangalore, last week and is available at a price of 11,600 Rupees (around 256 US dollars). This would be his fourth phone in less than two years.
[2004-05-16] N-Gaged Otherwise
Srikanth has bought a cool new Nokia N-Gage mobile phone. Side talking notwithstanding, it is a pretty cool device really - much lighter than I had imagined it to be (though about as unwieldy) and with a Multimedia Card (MMC), able to store whatever you care to upload to it using a PC via its Bluetooth interface. Srikanth had loaded it up with some MP3s and that all time favourite action game DOOM. Quite impressive! I still think though that he should have waited just a little while longer for the upcoming N-Gage QD.
[2004-04-18] Accounts
I update my Advogato diary far more often than these pages, probably because I have more things to say on nerdy stuff than on anything else. That diary is now also being consolidated into Planet Classpath, courtesy of Mark Wielaard.
[2004-03-14] Hung Up
As weird as it might seem, William Hung, who arguably gave the worst (albeit spirited) performance for his audition in this year's American Idol, has actually become famous! He has since appeared on various TV shows (including a special reappearance and performance on American Idol) and is even coming out with an album of his own!
Why do people look down upon programming? Why do most software engineers want to "move on" and become managers or architects? Why is it that an interview candidate with hardly four years of experience behind him says "I have done enough coding in my life - now I only want to design and architect systems"?
[2004-02-02] Turning a New Leaf
It is done. Finally!
