Has it really been one week since I updated last? Well, I've been busy with tests at college, so here's all the news for the past week or so...
- Sat/Sun, 25/26 August - On Saturday I watched Beverly Hills Cop on HBO. Really nice to see this movie again after so many years! Excellent action comedy with Eddie Murphy as Detective Axel Foley. Pablo told me about this site called Simply Scripts and so I stopped by there on Sunday night and downloaded a few screenplays... Stigmata (which I haven't read yet), Bloodfist VII: Manhunt (rare!!... I've seen the movie), the first twenty pages of Big Trouble in Little China (great!), and one scene from a possible Alien 5 (don't know who wrote it, but it was OK).
- Mon/Tue, 27/28 August - Monday was IMP test at college, this went well. Tuesday's Operations Research test was OK, I didn't do that well. At NIIT, we discussed about our ISAS topics - and I decided my topic was going to be Doom again! Last time in March I gave a presentation on that, I will be doing something similar to that again. And I also read a new article called "World of Colours" at http://justkalpana.tripod.com (my teacher's site). This was a very interesting article on painting.
- Wed/Thu, 29/30 August - Not much to write about... because of exams. On Wednesday Data Communications was an OK test. Today I found out my marks in that - I got 15/20. And on Thursday, the Theory of Computation test had 4 questions to be answered in 20 minutes - I could only write three (same problem for many people in my class). So I didn't do that well in that test. That evening at NIIT, we had a machine room class. Our Sem B faculty, Mrs. Kalpana came there to meet us. Her site crossed 500 hits that evening (in about a month's time)! And we also downloaded Doom shareware and ZDoom there (doom.exe won't work under WinNT, you see) - hopefully they'll allow me to play it while I'm giving my presentation!! The next step is to convince someone (either at college or NIIT) to let me play multiplayer Doom on a network as "a serious study of networking with IPX"... heh :). In fact, you should see this - I went to this webpage on 26th... it's about PSDoom - Doom as a Tool for System Administrators - written by Dennis Chao. This person is a University Professor, and he got funding for doing research on Doom as an interface for sysadmins! This tool shows all the process id's and names (for example, emacs, bash, etc.) as monsters in Doom - and by killing a monster you kill the corresponding process!
- Friday, 31 August - Principles of Programming Languages test today - I wrote well. Tomorrow is a holiday, and the next exam is Systems Programming which is on Tuesday. So, today I got two videos to watch this weekend. One is Hannibal - which I saw, and wrote about (just scroll down to see it). The next one I'm going to watch tomorrow is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which seems very nice. Rush Hour 2 was there also, but I'll wait for it to be released in theatres.
Harry and Vivek - I already sent you guys the Dumb and Dumber script I said I would, and for anyone who wants to download Doom, it's here (about 2.4 MB). Windows NT/2000 users will also need ZDoom - you have to unzip all files from both zips into one directory to use. And thanks Joel for telling me about Evil Dead: An Ode to Ash.
We (me and family) wanted to watch Hannibal on the big screen... unfortunately we were a bit late. Anyway, I got it on video today, and I just watched it. For those of you who haven't already seen and heard about this movie, it is a sequel to the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs (Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, directed by Jonathan Demme). Anthony Hopkins is once again the very intelligent, man-eating serial killer Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in this sequel that takes place 10 years after the events in the original film. Julianne Moore plays FBI Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster's role in the first movie), and she returns to tracking Dr. Lecter down when an old victim of his gives her some information on his whereabouts. After living peacefully in Florence for 10 years, Dr. Lecter decides to "return to public life"...
Directed by Ridley Scott, based on the novel by Thomas Harris, screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian. I just watched the movie now and I have mixed feelings about it. The movie looks so good (even on video) that it's worth watching just for that! It did keep me involved for it's entire two hours plus running time, and was nicely acted too. But at the end of it all, it didn't really make the impact that the first movie did. It's very different. The character of Hannibal Lecter was intriguing and terrifying in the first movie - but this movie just bases itself on what was already established there without adding anything interesting! Also, the last "brains for dinner" scene was just too much. I expected a better movie. Anyway, this is definitely worth watching, although you should be warned that it contains some strong scenes of violence and disgusting gore...
STAR Movies is going to show Return of the Jedi on 28 September, and I was watching it today. That's why I have a quote from that movie this time. This is from the beginning of the movie. Luke Skywalker and his friends go to his home planet of Tatooine to rescue Han Solo - who's been frozen in carbonite and is now a decoration at the lair of the gangster Jabba the Hutt. When the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 arrive at the entrance to Jabba's palace, C-3PO tells R2-D2 "If I told you half the things I've heard about this Jabba the Hutt, you'd probably short circuit!".
This is what happened between now and the last update...
- Wednesday, 22 August - Holiday from college. Varun is working on a new design for his personal site (which hasn't been updated for a while now). I downloaded three songs at night - Take a Look Around (the theme from M:I-2) by Limp Bizkit, That Thing You Do by The Wonders and Gettin' High by Pablo Dictter.
- Thursday, 23 August - After I came home from college, I saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer on STAR World - this was the concluding part of the story in last week's episode. At the end of this episode, thanks to a little magic and luck, Faith and Buffy switch back and things go back to normal. Lots of action in this episode. At NIIT I learnt some more interesting features of Visual Basic (control structures, loops and StrConv). When I reached home, Commando was going on (STAR Movies Hollywood Heroes). This Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is one of the first movies I remember watching - and it was the first movie I bought - I must have seen this about a hundred times by now! It was nice to see it again after a long time. Brought back memories...
- Friday, 24 August - Fridays are always nice (at 4:20 PM when college gets over) because Saturdays are holidays... I watched Murder at 1600 (Friday Night Premiere on STAR Movies) at 9:30 PM. Wesley Snipes stars as homicide detective Harlan Regis who is called in to investigate the murder of a young woman at the White House! In his efforts to find out what exactly happened he has to deal with cover-ups and the staff of the House who don't want the President and his family to be dragged into the investigation... or does someone want just that? Costarring Diane Lane, Alan Alda, Daniel Benzali. This movie has a lot of twists from start to finish to keep things interesting, the acting is good too. Directed by Dwight H. Little (Marked for Death), written by Wayne Beach and David Hodgkin. I saw this movie a few years back when it came out, and I liked it then. It was nice to see it again.
I actually wanted to work on my Chaos Punch II level in the evening, but got caught up in recording demos of Opulent's md.wad (Mustache Doom). I did skill 1 speed (0:20) and skill 3 speed (0:46). After watching the movie I sent the demos to him, you'll see them (and others) on his site soon. Got 5 of Pablo's WADs (The Gate series). I cleared all my messages in my Rediff (about 22) and Yahoo (44 messages in about 10 days) Inbox, copied all of them in HTML files as usual.
- Saturday, 25 August - This afternoon, I watched Thursday's episode of Angel. A nice episode with lots of fights as Angel becomes a gladiator, forced to fight in violent matches against other demons! I also did some more editing on my Doom level, the WAD's size is 70 KB now.
On Monday, my First Internal Tests at college start. They end on Saturday, and the order of the tests is like this: Interfacing with Microprocessors, Operations Research, Data Communications, Theory of Computation, Principles of Programming Languages, System Programming.
Tomorrow at 9 PM on HBO they're showing Beverly Hills Cop, next Friday on STAR Movies is Starship Troopers. All through September on STAR Movies, it's a Star Wars special, they're showing the entire series: Star Wars (7th), The Empire Strikes Back (14th), Return of the Jedi (21st) and Episode I: The Phantom Menace (28th). The first three are all being shown in the 1997 Special Edition versions.
One more quote from Evil Dead II (since I was watching that some days ago). Ash (Bruce Campbell) is locked in the basement of a cabin... only to discover to his horror that the undead corpse of Henrietta (the wife of Professor Knowby - who was in the cabin translating the Book of the Dead, because of which all the demons got resurrected) was buried there too! And sure enough, the monster comes after him saying "Someone's in my fruit cellar... someone with a fresh SOUL!!".
Some new pictures I'd like you to see... click on the links below and they open in a new window!
- A new picture of myself (scanned July but taken in January)
- Chaos Punch II pictures! 1 - 2 - 3 (the map will have E1's sky)
This is the collected news from 18 August onwards...
- Saturday, 18 August - Happy Birthday Rajeev and Kumaran! Most of the day, I was working on my new Doom level, Chaos Punch II! That's right, this is my most detailed job yet, and as I said in my interview, I will be working on this in between my 9th Gate maps. Anyway, I'm happy with this level so far, it's got some nice tricky situations, and I've also chosen a possible music for it. Release date: When it's done, but I hope to complete it in a short while. That day, we had Machine Room at NIIT, and I explored a little bit more of Visual Basic. After coming home, I watched Star Trek: First Contact on HBO - I missed the first 20 minutes, but this was a terrific movie.
- Sunday, 19 August - More work on Chaos Punch II. Do you want to see screenshots? Maybe I'll put some up soon. Anyway, I also noticed that http://justkalpana.tripod.com (website of my Sem B faculty at NIIT) crossed 250 hits, and though I know that she doesn't play (or like) computer games, I sent a screenshot of cpunch2.wad in progress (waiting for feedback :)). Since our printer was repaired, I also printed out my interview, The 9th Gate interview and some screens of my First Gate map and Chaos Punch II to take to college. And of course, the drawing I had done for The 9th Gate (go to the downloads page on that site to see it).
- Monday, 20 August - Happy Birthday Sunil! At college... I showed off the printouts I took :). And then, I did some C++ stuff in the last two periods. After coming home, I watched The Evil Dead once again - great, great movie! I've got so many movies on tape - and I used to watch them so often. Nowadays I don't have the time... but this was a refreshing change. Pablo Dictter also set up a personal site at http://pablosky.8m.com (thanks, Pablo for linking my site on your links page). The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II were great, weren't they! You should watch Army of Darkness too. In Tobias' latest mail regarding some maps, he also sent two songs that he made using Impulse Tracker, and a nice picture of himself too. http://justkalpana.tripod.com has 290+ hits now.
- Tuesday, 21 August - At college today, Systems Programming Lab was interesting. We were doing Advanced Screen Processing... and in that, I made the computer hang about 3-4 times (because I'd forgotten to give those last two instructions mov ax, 4c00h and int 21h). And in one more program I wanted to display my name on the screen a number of times, each time changing the attribute of the text (blinking, changing colours, etc.). In the first couple of attempts I made a small mistake in the loop - which resulted in the entire screen giving a brilliant display of colours (fun to see)! Ratna Kishore gave an interesting seminar on Curl today (this is a new internet language that Dr. Kumar Eswaran had told us about). After coming home from college, I watched a bit of Evil Dead II before leaving for NIIT. Today the servers were down, so we didn't have a VB class, instead, we discussed about the ISAS topics we could choose. Just sometime back I downloaded Tobias' Map1 and Map3 (both for Ultimate Doom E1M1)... and played both. Nice fun. Then I saw that http://justkalpana.tripod.com got 335+ hits... if only my site would get that many hits per day :)
Since Vivek and Harry were talking about Search Engine Rankings a lot recently, I did some checking on Google for my site. If you type the keywords as karthik doom, nearly every link on the first page points to my Doom site! And if you just search for karthik, my Doom site shows up in the top ten results.
This time's quote is again something that is a little out of the ordinary (like sometime back, you remember, I had a quote from the script of Dumb and Dumber that was not in the final movie). This is from Doom/Doom II. When you choose Quit Game from the menu, you are shown one of several messages like "Are you sure you want to quit this great game?" and so on. John Romero was the one who wrote all these messages... but aside from the messages that actually appear in the game, there are several more that are commented out in the source code! One of these is "Don't quit now! We're still spending your money!".
I'm learning Assembly Language at college, so that's the reason for the assembly-like code here. Well, enough of that, let me get on with the latest news...
- Tuesday, 14 August - After college (System Programming Lab was fun...), I had my NIIT class in the evening. It was the first class of Semester C - we started with Visual Basic this time, and our faculty is Mr. Shyam. That night, my teacher's site http://justkalpana.tripod.com crossed 100 hits (I think in just a matter of 2-3 days). I took a screenshot of that. And I also downloaded a song that Pablo Dictter made in 1999 using a program called Hip Hop Ejay. I'm listening to the song as I type this... it's a very nice song that has some great beats (it's a mix of hip-hop, jazz). I also downloaded some WADs and demos for Doom - Wim Vanrie's Terrere1, Kaiser's DSV - which I am supposed to review, Opulent's demo of Hell's Arena and a funny demo showing off the weirdest multiplayer engine bug in doom2.exe.
- Wednesday, 15 August - Independence Day. It was also Sravan's birthday, so Happy Birthday Sravan! It was a holiday from college, so I spent some time fixing some texture bugs in my map First Gate which will be E4M1 in The 9th Gate. I listened to Pablo's song probably 20-30 times, it's great! And that night, I downloaded three other songs - Will Smith's Gettin Jiggy Wit It, and the terrific song Around the World by ATC. I also got Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. I must have listened to this one 10 times that night itself, it is a very beautiful song (in fact, Will Smith's song just paled in comparison to this - it didn't even feel the same after I heard Metallica and ATC's songs)!
- Thursday, 16 August - Came home from college in time to watch most of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This was Part 1 of a two-part episode where Faith wakes up from her coma... and soon starts plotting revenge on Buffy and everyone else that thwarted the Mayor's plans to unleash Hell on Graduation Day. Nice episode that ended with Buffy and Faith becoming each other at the end! I've got to see next week's episode. More Visual Basic at NIIT - this is fun. A different sort of experience. You drag and drop buttons, text fields, and connect to a database without doing any actual coding! Also, the scenario this time (all examples in the NIIT courseware revolve around a real-life type case study) is a company called VideoKiosk that maintains a database of actors, directors, etc.! So in the Director table were people like Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2), Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro), and many others. That day there was some glitch so I couldn't insert a row into the table, otherwise I'd have added John Woo's name in there too. And Pablo sent a picture of himself for us to see. Doom Center also did a special feature on The 9th Gate... each member of our team was interviewed! Read Doom Center's Special Feature on The 9th Gate!
- Friday, 17 August - Went to college as usual... today we had the Interfacing With Microprocessors Lab where we did addition of 10 numbers on the 8086. I'm still listening to Metallica's Nothing Else Matters over and over again. It's such a nice song! There were some more updates at my teacher's site http://justkalpana.tripod.com - the guestbook links are now on the main page, and there are many more entries in it. I added my entry too. The counter's crossed 180 hits there. I am glad that she is updating her site often and that she's getting so many visitors. Also, she has added a very nice Article of the Week to the site. Well, I also downloaded EDGE 1.26 and am going to download QDoom too if time permits it.
Also, watch out for many Winamp Skins coming soon to this site! I made some new ones on August 15. There's a third one on Dexter's Laboratory. I made skins on Quake III Arena, Half-Life, Face/Off and Hollow Man.
This time's quote is taken from Evil Dead II... the scene where the evil spirits in the cabin possess Ash's hand is one of my favourites! Written by Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell as Ash, this movie has become legendary for it's mix of gore, horror and slapstick comedy!
This time I have a quote from The Powerpuff Girls - a show on Cartoon Network that I like a lot. This particular quote is taken from the episode Los Dos Mojos which is one of my favourites in the series. The Mayor of Townsville says this when the Robo Jojo is causing lots of destruction!
Yesterday was a lot of fun and I wanted to actually write an update, but didn't have the time. About 11 of us (students of batch B013 at NIIT and our faculty) went to the zoo for a picnic - and this was great. We got there at about noon and stayed till 4:30 PM. There were of course all the animals to look at, and we had a very nice time together. Venkatesh also brought the photos that were taken at and before the UNIITe event (where our band performed). We also took more photos on our trip to the zoo. After getting back home, Vivek and me were talking about various things - music, websites, Doom (I showed him a lot of WADs... he was patient enough). So by then it was night, and later on, I made an update on my Doom site.
Today, I was tired since I slept very late yesterday. Most of the periods at college, I was a bit drowsy... but I got my bus pass done (believe me, after all the trouble I had for the past month, it's important enough to mention). And the webmasters I know have made some updates on their sites...
- Ganeshan tells me he updated the Downloads section on his site. I haven't looked at it myself, but I will when I upload my update now.
- Vivian's Savage Garden World has some more updates for you - the look (colour scheme) is different now, and is uniform throughout the site. Most importantly, the games section is also up, with a Javascript Quiz on Savage Garden!
- More updates at my teacher's site, http://justkalpana.tripod.com. There are some new wallpapers, and there is now a notice board, where all important announcements regarding batch timings, test schedules, etc. will be made. As she already mentioned, my Semester C at NIIT will start tomorrow at 7:30 PM. There was also another very important announcement regarding our band The Sparks - we might have an opportunity to perform again!
This time's featured quote is a little different. It's taken from the original screenplay of Dumb and Dumber, and it's not in the actual movie! There's a scene in the movie where Lloyd (Jim Carrey) and Harry (Jeff Daniels) are freezing in the cold - Harry says "I can't feel my hands" to which Lloyd says - "Maybe you should wear these extra pair of gloves. My hands are starting to get sweaty..."! This scene is different in the script. What happens there is that these two guys are in a car, with the windows rolled up, and it's still freezing. Lloyd tells Harry "I guess the damn anti-cold system isn't working". Harry is puzzled and asks "What anti-cold system?" to which Lloyd says "Right here... the A/C button. I put it on full blast about an hour ago and, if anything, the car's getting colder."
I didn't update the last few days, because I didn't really have much to write about. Anyway, this should bring things back on track. On August 7, just after I made that last update, I went to The Lost Treasures and downloaded Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders. This has 5 episodes with 9 maps each, plus E6M1, E6M2, E6M3! More than those levels themselves, I'm more excited about the fact that I can now edit another game, because all Doom level editors will allow you to edit Heretic levels too (both games have a similar engine). Yesterday, I made a small level just to try my hand at it. It had one big room with lots of monsters, and a smaller one, which was the exit room. Editing Heretic is a little different from Doom because the textures take a little getting used to.
Nothing much happened on 8 and 9 August, but yesterday was fun. In college we had our first practical class in IMP (Interfacing with Microprocessors, not the Imp from Doom), and we wrote commands directly to the 8086 processor! Nice. My Semester C at NIIT was supposed to start yesterday (10th), but it will actually start on Tuesday. But I stayed there till 9:30 PM, because we students and faculty of Batch B013 got together in the NIIT Secunderabad library and planned a picnic tomorrow! About 20 of us will be going to the Zoo tomorrow, and that should be fun.
If you notice, I've changed the colour scheme on my site. The previous one had a white background too, but had black text, blue links, a dark blue side frame and red text in some places. I've made the colours more refined now, more elegant. Comments on this? Mail me.
And another nice thing to tell you about - at http://justkalpana.tripod.com there are some new additions... wallpapers!! This is what I was talking about before. There is also a guest book now, so make sure you visit my teacher's site and give her your comments! And don't forget to see those wallpapers, they are artistic and very nice. There will soon be a "tech talk" section too.
Just got back from watching this movie at Anand Cinema. Exit Wounds stars Steven Seagal and DMX, and is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Detective Boyd (Seagal) is a cop who likes doing things his way, and because of his reckless methods of crimestopping, he gets transferred to Precinct 15. And here, he finds a lot of corruption among the cops - so he decides to take them all down. That's as much plot as there is in this movie, so if you are looking for a great story, this is not a movie that you'll like. The first half was dull, but had some good action scenes. It got going properly in it's second half, however, and that was fun. Lots of action! Still, if you want to watch a Steven Seagal movie, I'd recommend the terrific Under Siege instead.
This time, the featured quote is from one of my favourite movies, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Michael Madsen's character, Mr. Blonde, says this to Mr. White (played by Harvey Keitel). You can read my review for the movie, which explains why I like it so much!
I've got some nice news to report on this time! There are some new additions to my Links Page, and the reason for those additions is here...
- Hey, did you see the new buttons at Vivian's Savage Garden World? I'm talking about the blue ones on the side frame. If you see a different side frame just refresh it - there are actually three different designs for the side navigation links and one is chosen each time you load up the site. And I mentioned before that the site has it's own domain now, which is what I've linked to.
- I noticed that Jai's Pages have been updated too. Jai talks about our rock band The Sparks in his recent update, and he's now got the whole play of William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet on his site.
- My friend Harry Anthony (who also runs lennistrikes.tripod.com and his site on Air Supply) put up a new site recently. This time, it's a site on Aishwarya Rai and the address is http://www.geocities.com/uraishwarya. I haven't gone through the site yet. At NIIT I saw the home page however, and it looks great.
- And finally... this site, I was saving for last. This is one new site that I'm very happy to write about... it is called Kalpana's World, and is at http://justkalpana.tripod.com. This is the personal site of our teacher at NIIT. She has just started work on this, and it will be updated regularly. There will be technical information related to what she teaches, and much more on the site. Remember sometime back I wrote about the wallpapers that she created? Those will be up on the site too. That is something I am especially waiting for.
Semester B, Module Test 2 in Windows NT and Linux Administration was held at NIIT today at 7:30 PM. That was why I didn't go to college today, and that was one of the reasons why I didn't go to college yesterday. I don't know whether I mentioned this anytime before on this site, but they have a very nice way of conducting these exams. 44 questions, 75 minutes. All these are multiple choice type, and you do everything on a computer, that is, click on the answers, and after you finish, you click the "End Test" button. Instantly, your report is generated, and sent to a printer (technically, "spooled" to the printer... have I been reading that Windows NT book too much?).
I finished my test very early - probably within 40 minutes or so, and I nervously clicked the "End Test" button - and was SO happy and relieved when my score showed up on the next screen! I got 99%!! But then everyone in our batch did very well, congratulations to all of them. We had 5 people with scores above 90%. Overall, I think our B013 batch had one of the best performances ever, and that's not surprising because we had a great faculty. My Semester C will start on the 10th of this month. It would have been so nice if Mrs. Kalpana would have been our teacher this time too, but I guess that was not to be.
The past few days have been very interesting. Just at around the time I made my last update on this site, I got a mail from Doom Center's Bigdog saying that he wanted to feature me as WADster of the Week on their site. I agreed of course, and later got the interview questions and sent in my answers to them. The interview was published on the site on August 2. Also, in the recent updates I mentioned that I was one of the vocalists in a band that would perform at NIIT's event called UNIITe on August 5th. Read on for more on all that!
- Tuesday, July 31 - Got another virus mail (see earlier update)! This time from somebody called Debrouwer J.L. Evening, after coming from college, practised for the band. This time, Sunny got the drums, so we could make a lot of noise! For that reason, Venkatesh said we could practise at his place - on the top floor, there's a room where we could make as much noise as we wanted to without bothering anyone.
- Wednesday, August 1 - Went to college and left at 3:30 PM, and went to Venkatesh's house with Vivek for practising for our band's performance. Got a little delayed because of traffic.
- Thursday, August 2 - After coming from college, Vivek and me again went for practice. This time, we put in some good effort, and the songs were coming nicely! That morning itself, Doom Center published my interview, and it was the most in-depth interview they got! You can read my interview here. Vivek also updated his Savage Garden website with a new look on the main page, and some new graphics, and new info. He also has his own domain now, which is http://www.savagegardenviv.com, and a new email address, vivian@savagegardenviv.com. Also on these two days, I did some more drawings in my college book. This time, it wasn't anything gruesome, rather, some abstract stuff that I got by just drawing whatever came to my mind. They were really nice, however.
- Friday, August 3 - Had a nice day at college, and I couldn't come home early to go to practice. The other guys in the band were practising from morning till evening, so there was no point in me going anyway. I watched Face/Off on STAR Movies that night, it was great even after watching it so many times. I also found out that the guys in our band were singing Bryan Adams' Summer of '69, so after the movie I heard the song three or four times and learnt most of the lyrics.
- Saturday, August 4 - In the morning I played Wolfenstein 3D (got it from The Lost Treasures). Then, Vivek and me left at around 12 noon to Venkatesh's house, and there we stayed until 9 PM practising all our songs! This time, we had Sunny's drums, Vivek playing an acoustic guitar, Paul on the keyboard, with Kumaran, Jai, Arthur, Venkatesh and myself on the vocals! It was fantastic, the music - all the songs came out great! Larger Than Life, Truly Madly Deeply and We Will Rock you were finalised, and we also practised Summer of '69. We thought of including Mambo No. 5 as well, that was great with the drums. Mrs. Kalpana joined us at around 2 PM. She stayed until 8 PM there, and she gave our band a name - the Sparks. Also, we decided to sort of remix We Will Rock You - we would sing the three verses in the original Queen song, but also mix in the rap part from the 5ive version. This was because I could sing the rap part well - and I would do it not once, but twice when we were performing! I got home at around 10 PM, and was tired (didn't have a proper lunch at all). But that day was really fun.
- Sunday, August 5 - Happy Friendship Day! It was also the day of UNIITe, the day when our music band, the Sparks would perform! Me and Vivek left at around 9 AM and were at Venkatesh's house at 9:20. We practised the songs again, and they were coming out extremely well with all the instruments. Venkatesh's high-pitched vocals in Larger Than Life's bridge part, and my rap vocals in We Will Rock You were coming flawlessly. We were at Millennium Gardens at around 12 noon. But at around 3 PM, we found out that due to some problems with the organising of the program, our band wouldn't have proper equipment to give our performance! We had just two microphones for everything - for 5 vocalists, drums, keyboards and guitar! So we were thinking of dropping it at one point, but later, we got a couple more mikes, and since we had practised so hard and for so long we decided to give it our best anyway. We did go on at 8 PM on the stage, and our performance went pretty well, but it would have been a lot better if we had a good sound system. We only got to perform Larger Than Life and We Will Rock You, but we did well and had fun. I had a lot of fun, thanks to the other guys in our band! And none of this would have been possible without Mrs. Kalpana, who was responsible for forming the band actually, and for supporting us through everything - she was with us when we practised, and on the day itself, she was there at the venue from 7:30 AM till night! We have our Module Test 2 (Windows NT and Linux Administration) at NIIT on 7th, and for that, she completed whatever she had to teach long before schedule, although she taught us so much more than what was actually in the books (and those drawings I was talking about earlier in this update were done because, after seeing her paintings, I was inspired to try my own).
- Monday, August 6 - Today, I didn't go to college for two reasons. Firstly, after two days of intense music :) I wanted to take a break. Also, I have my Module Test 2 at NIIT tomorrow, and I studied for that. In the afternoon, I watched some of Mortal Kombat, and just before writing this update, I made some Winamp skins. Now I am going to upload this update, study for some more time, and then go to sleep. Tomorrow I won't be going to college either, because I've got to finish studying. The exam is at 7:30 PM tomorrow.
August 4, 2001 at 18 minutes past midnight. karthik82.tripod.com crossed 3000 hits, because I found the counter showing 3002 at that time! So I don't have a screenshot with the counter showing 3000, if the 3000th visitor has one, and if he or she is reading this, please send it to me! My site had 2500 visitors on June 23. And my Doom site hit 2500 on August 2.
Thanks for visiting, everyone! Keep coming back, there's always lots of new additions to these sites!
I was chosen as the WADster of the Week at Doom Center, and was interviewed by Bigdog a few days back. On 2 August, my interview came online, and it is the largest Doom Center interview yet, spanning three pages - covering my Doom levels, the 9th Gate project, my Wallpapers, Winamp skins, C++ Programs and more! You can read the interview at this link (just click it) - http://www.doomcenter.com/features/features.phtml?id=90512.
Just a few minutes ago I completed making a Winamp Skin based on E1M8 of Blood - "House of Horrors". This is the secret level which is a continutation of E1M4 "Dark Carnival". And Caleb (your character) says in that level - "I want Jojo! Jojo! JOJO!!". I made three Winamp Skins now - Dexter's Laboratory (another one), Blood II, and Blood - House of Horrors. In all of them, if you invoke the easter egg, you'll see the date as 5 August, which is wrong, actually it should be 6 August. Anyway, that's why the featured quote this time is the Jojo line.