Two tests over, four more to go at college. I did well in the Discrete Structures & Graph Theory test, but for some reason I couldn't complete the paper on time (20 questions in 20 minutes, I answered about 16). I should have done better. Today's Mathematics II test was good - I did very well. And the nice thing about having two free periods today is that it gave me time to complete some work I had to do, and I also finished studying for tomorrow's COBOL test! (Which is why I'm at the computer now...)
After doing that design change sometime ago, there were a few pages on the site that still had to be modified. I took care of that now, so everything's in order. I added more links to the Links Page (it was quite out-of-date). And I also added a link at the bottom of the home page that allows you to stop the music or resume playing it. I've received some good feedback on the new design - Nagesh told me that it's loading faster now. Personally, I think this design is a lot cleaner and less cluttered.
Got some interesting messages in my Yahoo! Messenger - from vs18_2000 and a girl named smal_wonder. Wonder who they are in real life...
Tomorrow my friends in NIIT, in batch B005, will have their Module Test I (Linux/C++/CGI). If you're reading this, Best of Luck to all of you! I'd have been in their batch too, but I took a break in August, and it looks like I'll have to wait until mid-November to join another batch. (Right now, there's no batch that's starting the second semester).
I just finished writing a review of director Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys on the Movie Reviews Page. I also changed the look of all the Movie Review pages. And the list of reviews also is categorised by Alphabet.
Varun was doing some experimentation with DoomCAD today, and he created a short Ultimate Doom level with just a few rooms and a staircase. He'll be incorporating all this into his new WAD, but that will be after his exams get over on November 9th.
Yesterday I got an Instant Message in my Yahoo! Messenger from someone with the id smal_wonder, who just said "Hi, how r u". I don't know who that person is - whether it's someone I know already or someone who got my id in a search... anyway once the mystery is solved I'll let you know!
Director Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt is a brilliant film. It got over just sometime ago on AXN Action TV's Diwali Movie Marathon. I had seen the movie before in 1997 (when I was in Little Flower Junior College - I Year), but you should see this movie more than once to really appreciate it. It's such a well-made film, with an excellent script (David and Janet Peoples), direction, acting and of course, music (Paul Buckmaster). X-Men was a good movie too, with some really nice effects and visuals. I've never seen an episode of the animated TV series (it comes on Saturday mornings at 8:30 AM - I'm usually fast asleep then!), neither have I read the comics. I enjoyed the movie (although Varun felt the TV series was better). X-Men was directed by Bryan Singer, and the screenplay is by David Hayter.
So I've updated the 2000 Movie Lists Page. As for other modifications, I got rid of a redundant style sheet (now) so it's one file less to load for displaying the page. Also I changed the background music. You will hear it only if you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer. The song is called 'Message For The Archvile' and it's from Map 20 of Doom II, composed by Robert Prince.
My first internal exams at college are starting on 30th. Here is the schedule -
- 30/10 - Discrete Structures and Graph Theory
- 31/10 - Mathematics II
- 1/11 - Data Processing and File Organisation (COBOL)
- 2/11 - Linear and Digital IC Applications
- 3/11 - Switching Theory and Logic Design
- 4/11 - Managerial Economics and Principles of Accountancy
Better make this quick, because 12 Monkeys is going to start in another few minutes on AXN! I've got quite a bit of news to write about today. I was going to write a Black Adder review and take care of some unfinished business in the design change. But this afternoon I opened up DoomCAD and started experimenting - and I found out how to do certain things I didn't know to do before. So I started making a new level for Ultimate Doom - it is going to be a larger and much better level than my first one. This time the architecture will be more realistic - better looking doors, more height differences, staircases, etc.
I have put up a page here that will have the latest from me, whether it is a WAD, a desktop theme or something else I've written. You can go there right now to see screenshots from the work in progress on my WAD.
I saw X-Men today, and I really enjoyed it. I'll write another update a couple of hours from now. Right now I've got to go to watch Terry Gilliam's excellent movie 12 Monkeys....
[Written with reference to 27 Oct.]
Major site design change! Some people have told me that they've had trouble accessing this site - they said the whole page wasn't downloading properly! I haven't experienced any problems myself, but anyway, I suspected the Javascripts had something to do with it. So I removed some of the Javascripts and simplified the page design. Now the page looks cleaner and it's nice even in 640x480. Too bad I had to remove the music script, but of course, all the MIDI files are still there on the Music Pages. A lot of people are going to react to this design change - I don't know yet whether they will like this new look or not. Anyway it took me a lot of time to do (a few hours!) - I came home from college at 6:30 PM, and after watching Black Adder Goes Forth (this week's episode "Corporal Punishment" which was great) I started redesigning the site. I still have some work to do on the Games, TV and Music Pages, but I'll do that tomorrow. You can send your comments on this design to me at karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com.
Wednesday's Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode was a repeat of en episode from the second season (the Halloween episode). I didn't see it again on Wednesday because I was tired when I got back home from college. Ganeshan tells me next Wednesday we're finally going to see the episode we've all been waiting for - Graduation Day Part 1!
Tomorrow I'm going to see X Men at Sangeet!
... This is going to be a BIG upload!
Today being Diwali I couldn't find the time to update this site, except as I write this. I hope all of you enjoyed the day. In the evening my family and myself spent some time lighting firecrackers - after that we watched a special 90 minute Diwali episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati - featuring Sonali Bendre (she won Rs. 25,00,000) and Aamir Khan (who won Rs. 50,00,000) as the contestants. After that I watched a bit of Mars Attacks! on HBO. It's going on right now as I type this. And I can still hear the sound of crackers going off all over the city.
Cartoon Network always comes up with some really clever material - this time they've actually created shorts with characters like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls participating in Kaun Banega Crorepati! The short segments are in Hindi and are very well done. I've not yet seen Mojo's appearance, but Varun says it's better than Shaggy's. I wonder how Dexter would do if he were to participate in KBC - or even BBC's Mastermind...!!
This evening I did a drawing of Quentin Tarantino. I drew it in just about half an hour using a blue ballpoint pen - my "Cello Gripper"! At Sangeet Cinema X Men releases tomorrow. We booked tickets on the internet for Saturday, 6:45 PM. You can book tickets at http://www.sangeet70mm.com if you're a registered member - it's just Rs. 5 extra per ticket.
I'm also about halfway through Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a really good book.
One of yesterday's Doomworld articles by Linguica pointed me to this Doom Quiz. I answered 6 out of 10 questions right - some of the questions are quite easy, but you may get caught off guard by some of them!
There's lots of things I want to add to the site - but my First Internal Exams are starting on 30th. If I'm not too busy I'll try to add some new pages to my site.
[Written with reference to 25 Oct.]
Happy Diwali to everyone!
I have a holiday tomorrow, so let's see if I can add something nice to the site. If you were in my class in St. Patrick's High School in 1994, you'd remember we had to do a page of handwriting everyday... well, I kept one particular book with me all these years because I had a lot of fun writing in it. Yesterday I was talking to Ganeshan and Srikanth about it, and after I came home from college I started reading what I'd written in it. A lot of the pages in that book are all about movies. Speed and Robocop are often repeated, there's stuff about our old cable operator (!), STAR Movies beginning it's Indian Broadcast, and many reviews - some from movie guides and some written by me. There are a lot of other things that I wrote - very amusing things like my "Scrambles" :) I showed them to some of my friends at college today, and Ganeshan told me I should put them on my site! So, I will, soon.
I added a BeSeen.com Quizlet (as I said I would), you'll see it the moment you open the main page. I will keep changing the questions now and then (email me at karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com if you have any ideas). I removed the pollGEAR off the Guestbook Page, because this Quizlet is better.
[Written with reference to 23 Oct.]
At college our First Internal Exams will start on October 30. I don't know yet how many holidays we'll get for Diwali. If we get Thursday and Friday as holidays, I will have some time to either add a lot of new pages to this site, start writing something nice in Java, or maybe build a Doom website. Let's see.
It seems that the most popular colour scheme for my site is the one I've changed it to now - many people have told me they like this a lot (so why should I argue?). This is the colour scheme I had a couple of months ago (when my hit counter was somewhere around 100...). I also fixed a few odd spelling errors and other "bugs" on the site (thanks to Varun for spotting them out) - I don't think anybody would notice them even if they were there, but I like everything to be just right. I also made more additions to the FAQ and Dictionary, and added a Personal FAQ. Of course, if you want anything to be added to those pages, all you have to do is email me at karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com.
By the way, I'm liking Discrete Structures and Graph Theory (one of the subjects we have this semester in Computer Engineering) a lot. I even wrote something about Tautologies and Contradictions in the back of my book yesterday - something amusing which I'll put on this site later.
I am also planning to get a message board/discussion forum for my site. The only thing is I don't know how many people will actually use it. But one thing I am definitely going to add here is the BeSeen.com Quizlet, which you will get to see soon.
[Written with reference to 21 Oct.]
I added quite a few pages to the site today, which means more lyrics on the Music Pages (lyrics of songs by The Beatles and Boyzone). I will keep adding more song lyrics there. I also added some pages of Scene Transcripts - which describe scenes from my favourite movies (mostly in screenplay form). Right now it consists mostly of scenes from Quentin Tarantino's movies. (Quentin Tarantino is one of my favourite filmmakers). Speaking of Quentin Tarantino, there's a really excellent site at http://godamongdirectors.com dedicated to directors like Tarantino, John Woo, Robert Rodriguez and Martin Scorsese. They have articles and screenplays you can read. I got a very interesting Quentin Tarantino FAQ (by Simon Gleave and Jason Forrest) from there. It has a lot of very interesting information about Tarantino's life, his filmmaking career, relationships between the movies he's made, things like what is called the 'Tarantinoverse', how Reservoir Dogs got it's title, and a lot more.
I installed the Java 2 SDK today, along with the Java documentation I had downloaded, and The Java Tutorial from a PC Quest CD. I've been meaning to write either an applet or an application in Java, so you might see that soon on this site. Of course at this point I have no idea what it will be. I might probably write an enhanced and updated version of my earlier Fortune Teller, with not just the answers to your questions, but also predictions and more. You'll just have to wait :).
Varun is going to begin work on his new Doom level called The Anomaly Part II soon. I'm one of the few people who's played his first Anomaly, that's because it's not been put up on any website yet.
[Written with reference to 20 Oct.]
After watching 19 October's episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati at 9 PM - 10 PM, I also watched the second half of Alex Proyas' excellent film Dark City on HBO. And today the fourth Black Adder series - called Black Adder Goes Forth - started on STAR World, and the first episode of this, "Captain Cook" was excellent. Episodes of Goodness Gracious Me are being repeated now. I also made some changes on the site -
- Modified colours ever so slightly, especially for font class=small!
- In Netscape the Pic of the Moment looks better because the border colours are different.
- Reorganised the TV Page, Movies Page and the Personal Page.
- Updated the Black Adder Episodes Page.
I also downloaded a few of my themes from my own themes site, and also the freeware MIDI editing software, Anvil Studio.
[Written with reference to 18 Oct.]
I downloaded something really nice yesterday... Would you believe I now have a playable version of Digger! This 1983 game from Windmill Software was one of my favourite games - I used to play it on an old PC-XT 10 MHz about 6-7 years ago. Since the game will only work on XTs and ATs with a CGA card, no new computer can run it. But I found a website called Digger.org (The Official Digger Remastered Homepage) which is run by Andrew Jenner. Jenner has recreated the game to work with DOS and Windows. The download size is very small (just 77K for the DOS version), and the look and feel of the game has been preserved. There are a few new options too. Anyway, I was very happy to be able to play the game again. At the site you can also find a Java version of Digger, as well as source code and many other links and related pages of information. It was so nice to play this game again. My top score right now is somewhere around 12,875 - which is very less compared to the score of 3,91,400, the minimum required to enter the Digger Hall of Fame.
Today's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a repeat broadcast of "The Wish" in which Cordelia wishes that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale (because Cordelia feels that all her troubles started when Buffy arrived). Her wish is granted by Anya (Emma Caulfield), a powerful demon, which shifts everything into an alternate reality where the Master has risen (Buffy wasn't there to stop him), the Bronze is a "nest" for vampires, and Willow and Xander are vampires too. Giles (who in this reality leads Oz and a small band of people who are fighting against the vampires) is curious when he hears Cordelia speaking about how "it isn't supposed to be like this"... and tries to find a way to restore reality back the way it was.
I changed the colour scheme of the site today - it now looks the way it did in August. You can of course see all the different colour schemes I've created on the Siteshots Page. You can email me at karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com and tell me which one you like best.
[Written with reference to 17 Oct.]
At college today we had three free periods - so for a while I read a bit of MEPA (Managerial Economics and Principles of Accountancy), a little bit of LDIC (Linear and Digital IC Applications), and after a while I started scribbling in the back of my book, which became a small but nice drawing of a Highlander poster (of course, nothing detailed, just an impression of mine). I used my Reynolds Jetter to do the drawing, and finished a lot of blue ink.
The University Exams for the Second Year/First Semester will be in January itself. Considering that we started the II/I just sometime back (October 3rd, to be precise), there's only a short time for all the subjects to be completed. So today I got all the textbooks required. Today Ganeshan lent me Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey - a book I've wanted to read for quite a while. I've started reading it.
Karandeep (a friend of mine from school days) called me up today, and told me that he wanted to see more on web designing and the like, on this site. So now I've written two more pages on the Computers/Web Page - a page about Image Formats, and another one on Manipulating Images. Basically these two pages tell you about what image file types you should use on web pages. I will of course be adding more information to those pages, and new ones, too.
[Written with reference to 16 Oct.]
This weekend was quite a busy one, so I didn't have time to update this site. On Saturday I updated the Linux Elite site with a page about LxDoom. On Sunday, my family and myself were at the NIIT Family Annual Day, which was nicely organised. There were a lot of games, and other events, and Varun won prizes for Academic Excellence and also Painting. I also got to meet my faculty, Mr. Nilesh and Mr. Ratnakar. I had taken a break from the DNIIT course since August (because of the Final Exams), but now it looks like a batch starting the Second Semester, which I can join will only be sometime in November. After coming home that Sunday I saw Highlander on AXN - not an episode of the series, but the original 1986 movie starring Christopher Lambert and directed by Russell Mulcahy. It was a good movie. Over the weekend Varun also downloaded Skulltag, which is a modification of Doom II allowing you to play Doom on the internet in various modes, Normal Deathmatch, Instagib, Capture the Flag, Domination, etc.
And speaking of Doom, I've downloaded a number of Ultimate Doom WADs - out of which the good ones are Atomic Tomb by Brad Spencer (a terrific one, really), Rim and Rim 2 by Frank Polster.
There's a new ISP in Hyderabad now - NetKracker (a Wipro Company). They've got a package for Unlimited Internet Access for one month that costs Rs. 295. We got the pack yesterday, and I registered today in the evening (so one month means it will be active till 16 November). Not surprisingly, it was really fast - for the first time ever I was able to download SEVEN files simultaneously from ftp.cdrom.com - a total of about 9 MB which took only 45 minutes. What I downloaded was - Dawn of the Dead - a new episode for Ultimate Doom by Jan Van Der Veken, and the huge Army of Darkness Total Conversion for Doom. I've not played them completely as yet, but I played a couple of levels of Dawn of the Dead just sometime ago - it is a lot of fun. I just had a brief look at the AOD TC, it seems very good too. I will soon write detailed WAD reviews for these, and provide download links, but as of now, the place I found these WADs is Ricrob's Place. I'm using ZDoom for everything (after applying DeHacked and DeuSF).
[Written with reference to 13 Oct.]
The weekend is finally here. I have some college work to do, but mostly I think I should be able to add some new content to the site in these two days. Today's episode of Black Adder the Third was really excellent, probably one of the best episodes ever. I also saw Thursday's Martial Law episode that I had recorded. As usual, you can find a summary for "Duel and Duality" and last week's episode "Amy and Amiability" on the Black Adder Episodes Page, and a summary for "Extreme Measures" on the Martial Law Episodes Page.
To reduce the time the site takes to load, I've made a few enhancements - first of all, I drastically reduced the number of songs in the Random Music Javascript (personally I was getting tired of hearing the same songs over and over again), and I modified a few of the entries. This will not make any difference to Netscape users, but IE users will probably notice the difference. I also reduced the size of the main page - only the latest news entry is posted, and a link is provided for you to read the earlier entries.
I added a Copyrights Page, where I've acknowledged all the material used on this site (whatever I didn't write myself), and also explained about what sort of information is collected when someone accesses this site. So if you're worried that I might be grabbing some information about you, worry no more, just read that page. Also, there's now an FAQ and Dictionary Page. I've explained many technical terms that might not make sense to everyone, and the page will also have help on downloading things from this site.
People ask me whether it bothers me when I put personal information about myself here on this site for everone to see. Doesn't it bother me? No, it doesn't. Since I write all this myself, I decide what goes on the site and what doesn't.
[Written with reference to 12 Oct.]
College has been going on for the past few days, and after tomorrow, I'll have two days of holidays for the weekend. I had updated the site last on 10 October, just after I uploaded the files, I played Unreal Tournament for the first time on the internet - an actual deathmatch! Yesterday I saw Police Academy, which I had recorded from HBO the previous day. It's been a very long time - I think a few years - since I saw this movie. It's a very funny movie (better than the sequels that came after), directed by Hugh Wilson. And today on HBO I saw Body Snatchers, which was a good movie too. So I've updated my 2000 Movie Lists Page with this new information. (For those of you who are visiting this site for the first time, I have lists here of every movie I've seen since 1998).
Today I wrote my first COBOL program at college. Very different from C, but after all, COBOL (developed in the late 1950s) is meant for a different purpose. We have a varied syllabus at our college - the University has included things like C, Oracle, C++, COBOL, Visual Basic, Java and a lot more very interesting subjects in the four year Engineering course. Right now I'm liking MEPA (Managerial Economics and Principles of Accountancy) and DSGT (Discrete Structures and Graph Theory), although Mathematics II is also nice.
This is just an update to tell you what's been going on in the past two days, I haven't actually added anything to this site. I will, this weekend, probably - if I'm not occupied playing a deathmatch, or watching X-Men (which releases Friday in theatres over here), or the two episodes of Martial Law on tape that I've got to watch, or tomorrow's Black Adder and Goodness Gracious Me episodes, or reading the screenplays of Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction and other movies that I got from Drew's Script-O-Rama. On 28th Oct, AXN is showing good movies back to back (Diwali Celebrations, that's why) - starting from 2:00 PM onwards. But the movies I'm really interested in are Desperado (6:30 PM), True Lies (8:30 PM), and Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (11:30 PM).
[Written with reference to 9 Oct.]
There are now lots of new MIDI music files for you to download, thanks to Varun. I thought I had lost these MIDIs, but fortunately he had a lot of them on one of his older sites. You can go to the MIDI Files Page to see, listen and download the new music, but let me just give you a hint of what I've added - songs by Ace of Base, Michael Jackson, 2 Unlimited, TV/Movie Theme Songs, and a lot more. The number of MIDI files on the site is now well over 100 (there are, I think, close to 150 MIDI songs!). So I also updated the Random Music Javascript with more songs.
Saturday and Sunday was the Cartoon Network's Powerpuff Girls weekend, so I got to see a lot of PPG cartoons. Information about all of those will be up on the TV Page as soon as I get around to it. And I also saw Sam Raimi's Darkman on AXN yesterday - what an excellent movie. There's some nice acting by Liam Neeson, Colin Friels, Larry Drake and Frances McDormand, a terrific score by Danny Elfman, and of course, plenty of dark humoured violent action.
Don't forget to read the Jokes Page.
I got my CHIP CD (October 2000) today, and I just installed Internet Explorer 5.5 from it. There are a lot more programs and games on the CD which I will be exploring tomorrow. The CD also has the Quake III Arena Demo (which was already included in the January 2000 CD), and if you haven't played it, install it right away. It's a terrific game.
[Written with reference to 6 Oct.]
I was working on the site almost the whole day today. Mostly, I've added many more jokes to the Jokes Page. There's now also a page there containing 'quotes' from two books that I have - a Model Papers Book and a VII Class Guide. Just take a look at this example and you'll have no doubt that these quotes belong on a Jokes Page... "Instrument which records and reproduces is called a tape recorder." Most of the jokes are suitable for everyone to read, but I think you'll agree that a couple of them are crude ones. As for other modifications to the site I changed the colour scheme back to it's previous state - white background, black text, blue links. Everyone seems to like this better.
At Dopefish.com (The Official Dopefish Site) I downloaded a 4 MB video of Robert Prince singing the song You've Got To Eat Your Vegetables. I have the lyrics of that song here.
Today's episode of Black Adder the Third called "Amy and Amiability" was very good - but seeing as it's almost 2:30 AM now I don't want to write a summary for that episode right away. I'll add it tomorrow, along with more song lyrics and book reviews. And on TV tomorrow there's The Truman Show on HBO. Cartoon Network starts it's Powerpuff Girls weekend tomorrow, so that will mean a whole day of PPG episodes! That reminds me, PPGWorld 2000 is a nice Powerpuff Girls website to visit, they also have episode transcripts.
The latest news I have for you is that Srikanth's homepage will be up on the internet soon! It is currently under construction and will be ready in a short while.
If the addition of yesterday's Books Section wasn't enough, I've now added yet another section to the site, the Jokes and Fun Page. Here I have put together a collection of jokes and other material I've received through email, in magazines and books, etc. New pages with jokes will be regularly added, and I will mention the date on which the page was uploaded, so you can always go there and read the latest jokes. For now there are already two pages of jokes to read.
I finally completed the Doom II MIDI Files Page, so the entire soundtrack of Doom II is now available for you to download. Of course, a ZIP archive for all the songs will be also included soon for those who want to download all of them at one go.
And I've changed the colour scheme on the page. For the past one month or so, the colours used were standard black text on white, blue links, etc., but this new colour scheme uses a pleasant green. Green is a nice colour, and I like it. Of course, you can always go to my Siteshots Page to have a look at all the designs I've come up with, and email me at karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com with your comments. new shoes, new bag for me!
[Written with reference to 4 Oct.]
We have four days of holidays from college, starting tomorrow. At college some classes were conducted today, although proper classes will only start from Monday 9th. Lots of new things to write about today, first, Varun finished his first WAD and I played it after coming home from college. Titled Anomaly, it replaces E2M2 of Ultimate Doom. On Ultra-Violence skill it's quite challenging (certainly a lot tougher than my WAD). It looks like Varun will be putting some more finishing touches on it, so it should be ready for release soon. I will put it on the site as soon as possible. And I just realised that I didn't mention the software we were using to create these levels - we use DoomCAD (for the level editing) and WinTex (misc. stuff like changing music, etc.).
Today's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a repeat telecast of "Revelations" in which Giles and Buffy's friends find out about Angel's return. Also Faith's new watcher arrives, an Englishwoman who turns out to be someone very dangerous, as she tries to gain possession of an ancient glove that grants it's wearer great powers.
I added my review of Mission: Impossible 2 finally, you can read it on my Movie Reviews Page. And I got around to adding a section on my favourite books at last. I'd been planning to do this for a long time. The first reviews to appear here are of The Black Cat, a story by Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Crichton's excellent A Case of Need, and Terry Bisson's Johnny Mnemonic novelisation. All those reviews are now at the new Books Section.
I made some nice graphics for use on the movie/book review pages. Instead of just plain text saying 8/10, 10/10, etc., you now have an additional small graphic that looks like a bar graph. Those GIFs will hardly affect the loading of the page, since each is just about 870 bytes in size.
Today was the first day of II/IV B.Tech. CSE at college (in other words it means I'm in the Second Year, First Semester now). We had classes only for the first two periods, and then I went to the library and read September 2000's issue of PC Quest and an issue of Computers Today. After returning home I put some finishing touches on my WAD, and I have finally released it here! Read on to see what else I've updated...
- As I was saying, my new Doom level is up for download! It's called karthik2 (for lack of a better name), and it's a replacement for E3M1. I think it is a bit easy on Ultra-Violence skill, because there are many large areas (so you can easily dodge those Barons of Hell!). You can have a look at screenshots from the level and also download it here.
- Since I'm now officially a Second Year Computer Science Student, I've updated that information on the About Me Page. Also I've added a list of my marks in the internal exams (they make up 20% of the marks in the final University Examinations) for the First Year. For those of you who are interested...
- And like I said I really liked the Black Adder the Third Episode "Sense and Senility", so I updated the Black Adder Episodes Page with a summary of that episode.
- Likewise, the Martial Law Episodes Page has been updated with a summary of last Thursday's Episode, "Funny Money".
- Every episode reviewed there has also been rated now. Of course, I follow my standard rating system, with 10/10 for the best, and 1/10 for the worst.
I'll add my M:I-2 review too, once I've written it. Also I'm planning to write reviews of Books as well. That page will probably have mostly reviews of Michael Crichton's work, because he's my favourite author. I must also get my drawings scanned into JPEGs so that I can put them up here, but the problem is, the floppy drive is misbehaving and until that's fixed, transferring files will be a bit difficult.
[Written with reference to 1 Oct.]
Our First Year exams finally got over on 29th September. I've done well in these exams, and since 29th, I've been doing many things on the computer and I've also seen quite a few movies.
First of all, Linux Elite is online! This is a site on Linux created and maintained by Ganeshan, Srikanth and myself. I finished the design for the site yesterday (based on an initial design by Ganeshan), and today completed a lot of the content. A lot of the content on the site was written by Ganeshan, and I made a few additions too. Go over there and tell us what you think!
The next important thing is that I now can make Doom WADs!!! On 29th, Varun and myself were experimenting with DoomCAD, and Varun finally made a working WAD with a room. (I crashed the computer twice in the process). Then we worked out how to add vertices, connect them up with linedefs to make sectors, add a door, choose textures, lighting effects, and more. I also found out how to use WinTex to replace music, the title screen etc. So in these two days I've made my first WAD (still working on it), with large rooms, hellish areas, monsters, etc. I must say thanks to John Bishop for his excellent document Getting Started With Doom Editing for a lot of useful information. Screenshots from my WAD will be up soon.
On TV I saw the episode "Sense and Senility" of Black Adder the Third on Friday (excellent as usual), and on Saturday night at 9:30 PM I saw Forrest Gump on HBO. I had seen the movie about five/six years ago. It was such a good movie, funny, witty, very touching and very sad at times. And although I had seen it on 23 Sep., I saw The Mask of Zorro at 11:45 PM, HBO, Friday. This time I saw the whole movie, so my Movie Lists Page lists it as being seen on 29 Sep. (In case you didn't know, I have lists on this site with every movie I've seen since 1998!). And today, I got to see M:I-2 (onscreen title Mission: Impossible 2) directed by John Woo, starring Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton and Ving Rhames. I'll be writing a detailed review for that, but I thought it was a very good movie. Different from the first movie in that there's more focus on action here than the plot (screenplay by Robert Towne, from a story by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga), but the action scenes are fantastic (of course, that's what you'd expect from director John Woo). Although the music is by Hans Zimmer, I felt it wasn't quite as memorable as the score he did for Woo's earlier Broken Arrow. Never mind, it's still a terrific movie.
Seeing as how this post is getting so long (that's what happens when I don't update for a couple of days at a stretch), I'm only keeping the two most recent posts here. I don't usually write this much, although I'd like to!