What's New? - June 2001

Sat 30.06.01 News

Featured Quote - 01/07 02:05

This time's quote is something that I have been hearing often recently at NIIT, so often in fact that I can rattle off the whole thing without even thinking in between!  /etc/rc.d/init.d/ is the path where all the daemons are stored, so to start a particular daemon, like the http daemon, you say /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start.  Why would anyone feature a Linux path/command as a quote on a site update?  I don't know.

College Stuff - 01/07 01:20

I wanted to make an update about this long ago, but was busy.  Anyway, I did well in my Operating Systems Practical Test today.  I had to do a simulation of Shortest Job First CPU Scheduling - and my program worked pretty well, although I think for certain combinations of input values it might not have been entirely accurate.  Today was a pretty long day - after college I went to NIIT and tried out some interesting things in the machine room - like telnet localhost in Linux, and logging on as root through telnet (all you got to do is to rename /etc/securetty to something else and there you have it - root login through telnet!  Obviously this is something that is not in the courseware, this is among the interesting things like changing the root password - linux s at lilo followed by passwd - that you learn when your faculty tells you all this cool stuff!).  I also modified /etc/motd to display my site addresses.  The Message of the Day that I set was - "Visit my sites http://karthik82.tripod.com and http://www.newdoom.com/karthik - but of course you will have to do that through Windows, unless you configure Apache server to use a proxy and access the internet through Linux!"

A few days ago we got the official time table for next week at college.  I am not one to complain (especially not on my site!) but had I made this update a couple of days ago, I would have!  Now I'm in a good mood because I did well in OS Lab today.  We have classes up to 12:10 PM every day.  Then, 12:10 - 1:30 PM is lunch.  And then, we have two exams - Fifth Internal Test (20 mins.) followed immediately by a 3 hour prefinal exam!  That leaves just the evening to study for the next day's exams.  Next Wednesday, we have the privilege of writing THREE exams on the same day!  I have NIIT classes on some days too, and I don't want to miss those because they are a lot of fun.  So, I am just going to take a glance at my books before these exams (well, all I have been doing this whole semester is just glancing at my books).  I don't think I'm even going to study for C++ - last time I hardly did, and got 20/20 anyway.

On 26th and 28th I did quite a number of drawings in my notebook (I used to do so many drawings a couple of years back)!  These were all done during the classes when the professor or lecturer was not looking (I'm in the first bench in the class, and I managed to do all this) - a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and I'd used up a lot of ink in my pen to do these.  But they turned out really well, and everyone I showed them to said they were very good, but, strange.  These drawings were all inspired by Doom and horror movies like Evil Dead II - they are twisted but funny at the same time!  I've been told that these creatures I had drawn shouldn't come to life...  If I could get them scanned I would have put them on the site - maybe in the future.

Rephrased: A few days ago we got the official time table for next week at college.  We have classes up to 12:10 PM every day.  Then, 12:10 - 1:30 PM is lunch.  And then, we have two exams - Fifth Internal Test (20 mins.) followed immediately by a 3 hour prefinal exam.  That leaves just the evening to study for the next day's exams.  Next Wednesday, we have THREE exams on the same day!  I have NIIT classes on some days too, and I don't want to miss those because they are a lot of fun.

On 26th and 28th I did quite a number of drawings in my notebook (I used to do so many drawings a couple of years back)!  These were all done in college - a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and I'd used up a lot of ink in my pen to do these.  But they turned out really well, and everyone I showed them to said they were very good, but, strange.  These drawings were all inspired by Doom and horror movies like Evil Dead II - they are twisted but funny at the same time!  I've been told that these creatures I had drawn shouldn't come to life...  If I could get them scanned I would have put them on the site - maybe in the future.

Today I didn't take part in Doomworld Speedmapping because I wasn't in the mood - I started having dinner at nearly midnight, and the topic would have been announced just 40 minutes later.  I wanted to write this on my site anyway, so I didn't think it was a good idea to spend a tense 100 minutes (until 3 AM) making a map.  I installed mIRC a couple of days back just for today, but well, I'll get a chance to use it next week I suppose.  I'll play all the maps tomorrow, so if Pablo and Tobias took part, I'll be looking forward to playing your levels!

Deadly Breed on STAR Movies - 01/07 01:10

Written and Directed by Charles T. Kanganis, Produced by Joseph Merhi, Richard Pepin.  Director of Photography Rick Lamb, Music by John Gonzalez.  PM Entertainment Group, 1989.

Today I came home from NIIT very late.  Almost 11 PM because I was talking to Vivek... anyway, I got to see the last 15 minutes of The Craft on AXN, this seemed like a nice movie.  After that, I had a choice of Desperado to watch on AXN, or this movie, Deadly Breed on STAR Movies.  I've already seen Desperado - many, many times.  And I'll watch anything that says "A PM Entertainment Group Release" on the credits.

So, I saw Deadly Breed, and it got over just a few minutes ago.  A very low budget movie about a parole officer, Jake Walker (Blake Bahner) who finds that the convicts he's releasing on parole are being brutally murdered just on racial grounds.  He soon realises that the man behind this is a police officer himself - a mean, nasty, sadistic guy named Kilpatrick (Addison Randall) - who has secretly managed to assemble a band of mercenaries who have sworn to wipe out whatever's plaguing America!  A pretty good movie, made good use of it's budget, watchable.

Mon 25.06.01 News

Newstuff - 26/06 00:25

I finished my Fourth set of Internal Tests at college today and did well in today's DAA test.  On Saturday I have my Operating Systems Practical Test.  And they will probably start off another set of tests next week.  The reason we're having such a tight schedule at college is because we're supposed to complete 5 sets of tests in this semester, and we hardly have a couple of weeks before the University Exams start!  This can get quite irritating at times, as you can imagine.

Harry redesigned his site, it now uses frames for easier navigation.  And Jai's Site also has some new song lyrics and other stuff for you to read.  I also slightly changed the colours on my page here, I don't think you'll notice because it's a very subtle difference, but believe me, it looks better.

I haven't been updating my Doom site recently because I've been busy with tests.  I took part in Doomworld Speedmapping this week too.  This time, my level became MAP09 in dwspd005.wad.  Also, I'm working on a project with Varun, Pablo Dictter and Tobias Münch - we're making an Episode 4 replacement for The Ultimate Doom.  I finished my E4M1 yesterday.  I really must put up our webpage for the project soon.  I have started making the site.

I watched Ring of Fire II again today at 5:30 PM on STAR Movies.  That is a fun movie.  They're also showing There's Something About Mary on Wednesday.

I had over 100 mails in my Yahoo Inbox (just for this month, and that's after deleting all the junk mail) and I cleared them all yesterday and today.  The messages are copied into HTML files (so that the fonts are preserved) that I keep in a folder that keeps getting bigger and bigger (5 MB plus now, and that's mostly HTML files, GIF and JPG images).

Recently, my faculty at NIIT, Mrs. Kalpana, started an email club called Imagination.  She sends us all the wallpapers and the other pictures that she creates using Photoshop.  I really liked every single picture I received so far, they are all great.  Nowadays, I only have those wallpapers on my desktop (half a month with the same wallpaper on my desktop must be a record of some sort for me, I remember about one and a half years ago I had more than 100 desktop themes and I used to keep changing them so often).  Take a look at this pic of my current desktop, captured today.

Miss Congeniality Review - 26/06 00:16

All thoughts of studying for the DAA test (in which incidentally, I did well today) on Sunday afternoon went out the window...  As I mentioned before, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the NIIT Secunderabad Centre, they gave all the students and faculty tickets for Miss Congeniality at Anand Cinema, 4 PM show.  I had been wanting to see this movie, and it was fun, especially with everyone from NIIT in the hall!  I also said I'd write a review once I saw the movie, and I did - you can check it out here.  It was an entertaining comedy, with good acting from Sandra Bullock who also doubles as producer.  The trailer of Exit Wounds (Starring Steven Seagal, DMX, Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak) was nice, I'll be waiting to see the movie when it comes out here.

Regular Feature - Quotes! - 26/06 00:10

New update, new quote.  Well, not a quote exactly, this time it's a statistic that Windows 98 was kind enough to give me.  I right-clicked on my folder D:\Karthik and selected Properties, and got this.  I never realised I'd accumulated this much stuff - it's 361 MB in size and contains 5027 files and 421 folders!  For the record, E:\Doom is 227 MB in size, and D:\Songs is 807 MB in size, with 987 files (about 800 must be MIDIs) and 33 folders.

I don't think quotes like this were what people expected when I started this feature.  I believe Sriharsha mentioned something like wise sayings, etc.  There may not be anything wise in saying All your base are belong to us - but it's fun to read stuff like this!

Fri 22.06.01 News

Regular Feature - Quotes! - 23/06 01:55

You might have noticed in the last two of my updates that a small quote appears just below the date and time on the main page (if you haven't noticed, go look now).  I've decided to make this a regular feature of the site now, and I will have a new quote whenever I update.  This time, it's a quote from the movie Rush Hour.  The previous two quotes were "All your base are belong to us!" and "All right, Dr. Do-Good... your point has been made".  To read about these quotes and about the current one, you can see this new page on the site.  It's listed in the Other Content section, and you can also access it by clicking on the little * just beside the quote on the main page.

Schedule! - 23/06 01:05

What will my schedule be for the next few days?  Let me see.  Today I had my Electrical Technology test at college and I did well in that.  On Monday, I have Design and Analysis of Algorithms (called DAA and we pronounce it just like that).  Tomorrow, Saturday, is a holiday, and I have NIIT class in the evening.  After I come home, I will be most probably taking part again in the weekly Doomworld Speedmapping exercise (which means I'll sleep at 3 AM again!).  Then, on Sunday, I will be going to Anand Cinema at 4 PM to watch Miss Congeniality.  This is because NIIT Secunderabad is celebrating it's 10th anniversary, and they gave all the students tickets for the movie!  I've been wanting to watch the movie, and after I do, I will write a review of it on this site.  On 30th, I have my Operating Systems Practical Internal Exam.

Buffy this week, and The Protector on STAR Movies - 23/06 00:51

I saw Thursday's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer today.  This was a very good episode which starts off with Spike being held in some sort of military facility.  He manages to break out of the place and tries to come after Buffy.  Buffy has her own plans of luring him into a trap and stopping him.  And in between all this, we find that Riley, a normal student by day, is actually part of an elite squad that hunts demons at night!  These were the guys we kept seeing often in the past few episodes - armed to the teeth and in full combat gear.  And not only that, one of the heads of the squad is none other than the Psychology teacher Maggie Walsh!  Great episode, where Riley finally realises that he likes Buffy, but well, both of them don't know each other's secret identities.

And after that got over I watched The Protector on STAR Movies' Friday Fury (7:30 PM).  I had seen this movie many many years back, and a little recently in 1997.  But it was only today that I watched it properly.  A Golden Harvest Films release, written and directed by James Glickenhaus.  Starring Jackie Chan as Billy Wong, a New York cop who, along with his good friend and partner Danny Garoni (Danny Aiello), travel to Hong Kong to bust a big drug ring.  Nicely done movie, but of course an "actual" Jackie Chan movie is always better (what I mean by that is a movie directed by Chan himself).

Birthdays - 23/06 00:51

Sai Kumar and Kishore celebrate their birthdays tomorrow, 23 June.  I wish both of you a very Happy Birthday.  All the best for your exams!  And Kishore has put up a webpage here.

Wed 20.06.01 News

Ring of Fire II on STAR Movies, other stuff - 20/06 21:37

If you've read what I wrote earlier about Deadly Bet, you know that the words "A P.M. Entertainment Group, Inc. Release" in the titles of any movie is reason enough for me to watch it.  And when it's a movie starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson, that's even better.  As part of Tuesday's Hollywood Action Night on STAR Movies, they showed this 1992 movie called Ring of Fire II: Blood and Steel.  I had seen it some years back on video with the title Rage: Ring of Fire II.  I remember I didn't like it much then, but now I've come to appreciate this kind of low-budget action movie.

If you're a fan of PM movies, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, or low budget kickboxing movies, then this one should be right up your alley.  Otherwise, you might want to give this one a pass.  As for me, I enjoyed this movie from director Richard W. Munchkin - and you can read my review here.

Recently, I've been churning out Winamp skins - I've made many based on Doom.  There are also a couple I made of different movies - Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey) etc., and I will be uploading those in a later update.

Speaking of Winamp, here is my playlist of songs that I am listening to nowadays.  There's a mix of MIDI and MP3 files of different kinds of music!!

Speedmapping! - 20/06 21:30

Last Saturday, after I came home from NIIT, I decided to take part in something called Speedmapping - this is a weekly exercise organised by Doomworld where they give you a theme to build a Doom level on, and you have to do it in just 100 minutes.  The next day, all the submitted entries are released as a compilation WAD.  It's a lot of fun.  The theme will be announced at 8 PM GMT (which is around 1 AM here) and this time we had to build a tech-base themed level with atleast two secrets.  I was doing this stuff till about 3 AM, and my entry is MAP16 in dwspd004.wad.

This update should have been made on my Doom site - but I have to write some reviews before making an update there, and I haven't done that yet, so it ended up here.

Exams and Marks - 20/06 20:18

Lots of tests at college - we finished our Third Internals last Tuesday, and now our Fourth Internals are going on!  I seem to have done better than I expected in some of the earlier tests.  I remember writing that I didn't do well in Computer Organisation at all.  I got 16/20 which is pretty OK.  In Probability and Statistics I got 18/20.  I'm doing well in the present set of tests, and I've got C++ tomorrow.  It's a funny thing - I remember a time back in the First Year when I used to actually study for the internals.  Things are different now - for example, today I had Computer Organisation - and yesterday after coming home from NIIT I watched Ring of Fire II.  After that, I read the book for about 15-30 minutes and then went to sleep!  I read the rest of it this morning - on the bus.

Today the results of the Second Year First Semester Exams were out, and I've cleared all subjects.  It will still take a while for the marks memos to be issued to each student.  And I'm not able to find anything about this on the University site yet.  The site is http://www.jntu.ac.in.

On 30th, I have my Operating Systems Practicals Internal Exam at college.

Fri 15.06.01 News

Movies!!! and other additions - 16/06 02:30

Spiritual Kung Fu!  A Jackie Chan movie that was shown on STAR Movies' Friday Fury today at 7:30 PM.  I might have missed this if Ganeshan hadn't reminded me of it in college today.  An enjoyable movie, directed by Lo Wei.  In this, Jackie Chan is a disciple at the Shaolin Temple.  When a book containing techniques for a very deadly martial arts style is stolen from the temple, Jackie's masters are very worried.  But with the help of some mischievous ghosts, Jackie learns another superior technique and eventually succeeds in guarding the honour of the temple.  An OK movie, watchable if you are a Jackie Chan fan, but I'd advise watching his other movies instead.  Like Rush Hour, which was shown at 9:30 PM on HBO.

Face/Off - yes, you read that right, that fantastic action movie from director John Woo, with brilliant performances from John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, one of the 1997 movies that I rated a 10/10, Face/Off will be shown on STAR Movies in July!

I added a couple of new movie reviews today, these include the Cast Away and Fortress 2: Re-Entry reviews.  Also, there are about 20 short reviews in a text file that I wrote in 1999.  This is all there at the Movie Reviews section.

On Monday, another set of Internal Tests are starting at college.  Recently, I made a few new Winamp skins, mostly Doom-related.  They will be put up soon on my Doom site.  I plan to make some more before I upload them all.  Once again, I really enjoyed talking about Object Oriented Programming at college today...

Monster Thursday - 16/06 02:16

Two Thursdays back actually - only on 13th did I get to see 31 May's episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Millennium!  Thanks, VCR...

On Buffy, we had a very twisted Halloween party.  Actually, all Buffy and her friends wanted to do was to have fun at a "haunted-house" party - the building would be decorated with all kinds of scary stuff like plastic skeletons, and the like.  But, when someone paints a demonic looking pentagram on the floor - and Oz accidentally spills blood on it (from a small cut on his finger), it awakens a fear demon that starts manifesting everyone's fears into reality!  A very entertaining, fun and scary episode that had a terrific ending.  The Angel episode featured Angel helping a woman who was tormented by an evil doctor - this guy could actually detach body parts at will and join them back as required!  This was a nice episode too.  Millennium had Agent Emma Hollis dealing with the painful memories of her sister's murder.  She hopes to gain insight into what exactly a murderer's motivations are by solving the case of two trigger-happy criminals.  Nicely filmed episode, but like the end, where Emma discovers that these people actually didn't have any motive, this episode didn't have much of a point to make.  Atleast if it did, I didn't get it.

More links - 16/06 02:06

There are more links on my Links Page now!  My friend at NIIT, Jai Kirdatt put up a site recently, it is a cool one, and it is at http://jai83.tripod.com.  Harry, who has his home page here, put up a site on Air Supply.  And I also added a link that I should have added a long time back.  This is http://indianleaders.tripod.com which is a well-researched site by my friend Satya Srinivas.

/karthik/newstuff - 16/06 01:53

Last time I was talking about exams and various other things - here is the recent news!

Fri 08.06.01 News

Site Address Change! - 09/06 01:09

I am referring to my Doom site, hosted by NewDoom.com.  Recently, NewDoom.com changed servers from their older Windows NT server to a new "kick-butt" Linux server.  Because of this, I will have to re-upload my entire site, and the address will be changed to http://www.newdoom.com/hosted/karthik.  Please note the change!  My Doom site should be back up by the weekend (FTP access was up only yesterday), I hope - watch for a technical article I wrote!

By the way, Happy Birthday, NewDoom.com (3 Jun)!

Missed Updates - 08/06 23:47

2 Jun - Night - I watched Independence Day again.  After that, I saw Nick of Time.   Yesterday, I got some wallpapers made by Mrs. Kalpana at NIIT - great ones!

On 3 June at 1:15 AM on HBO, they showed Nick of Time - a movie starring Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, written by Patrick Sheane Duncan and directed by John Badham.  This had a very interesting plot - Gene Watson (Depp) and his daughter get off a train at 12:10 PM.  A few minutes later, a man and a woman, pretending to be cops, take them both into a black van.  The man, Mr. Smith (Walken) hands Watson a gun and an envelope containing a photo.  Mr. Smith tells Watson that if the person in the photograph isn't dead by 1:30 PM, they'll kill his daughter!  The movie is played out in real time as Watson tries to save his daughter - and the Governor, whom he's supposed to shoot.

Tests at College - 08/06 23:42

Internal Exams started on Monday, and so far the following exams got over -

Electrical Technology on Monday, Design and Analysis of Algorithms on Tuesday are left.  And tomorrow I have my OOPS Practical Internal Test in the morning.

Fri 01.06.01 News

Important days! - 01/06 23:16

It's about time I made an update - college started on 28th, and the old routine has started again.  In the holidays I used to go to sleep at around 3 AM and get up the next morning at around 11 AM.  Now it's back to 1:30 AM and 7 AM.  College is going on fine, and I'm also attending NIIT classes as usual on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  Our third internal tests at college will be starting on Monday.

There are a lot of important events these days -

A big list, isn't it!  There's just a little over a month to go before our final University exams for this semester at college begin, so that's going to keep me occupied.  In the coming few weeks I will also have my ISAS at NIIT - the topic which I have to talk about is WML.  I will still be making updates over here and on my Doom Pages as usual, however, and if I get around to it I might even upload my ISAS document which will have all the information I collected about WML.  I am also at work making maps for a Doom project which you will hear about soon...  And I also want to write more movie reviews here - if only I had more time!