Nostalgia infront of the screen

Even when you sip 100 bucks cappuccino from Coffee day, you would speak those nostalgic words on the 1 rupee coffee from the college canteen shared with your friends. This post is neither about friendship nor about coffee. It is about a similar nostalgic feeling of the computer games in my life. Please note, that by computer game, I meant not only the PC but all the video gaming devices that spawned from the electronic computing parts. Sometimes I wonder how someone came with the concept of gaming in computers. A machine which was entirely used for business and military purposes created an entirely new concept unknown to human kind and took the whole world by storm bringing a new race of people who would not mind leaving the real world as they get immersed into the unimaginable world of gaming and live out their life stuck in front of a screen. I wonder what made the programmer a geeky idiot like me bring in something different outside his purpose of life to introduce recreation inside a box full of zeroes and ones. And will you believe me that the very first computer game was Spacewar developed at MIT in the year 1961. This is true if you do not consider the radar simulation game on cathode ray tube developed in 1951. Anyway in Spacewar, two players control spaceships and have to shoot at each other. A simple but interesting game. So you know the mindset of killing each other in games was introduced with the very first game itself. So let us not complain about Quake and UT being violent. You would be voicing against the computer gaming kind.

Now back to my cup of coffee. Sorry. I meant my gaming memories. I was introduced into the computer gaming world with a cloned version of Sega-1000 at the age of 8. Video gaming has probably just been introduced in India and my uncle bought one for our home. I am not able to recall the feeling of my first touch of the joypad (controller) but I clearly understood that it is something amazing and I was sure that it is going to make a huge impact on the world and my life. The console had a maximum of 16 colors and the cartridge that came with the console had 8 games and there was not even a menu to select the games. You need to press the "SELECT" button on the console to switch games. And the game I remember the most and considered the most advanced game is "Police and thief" as we called it, was about a cop who jumps like a bunny trying to catch a fast running thief before the time runs out or the thief reaches the end of the top floor. It had elevators that you could use. But like every damn elevator in office, it would either close just before you reach it or you would forget getting down in the right floor and end up moving up and down while the thief escapes easily. If you do not want elevators, you can use the escalators available at each end of the floor. Trivial point is that the escalators only go up and there is none to take you down. Wonder how people would like in such buildings. But I don’t think any people would want to live in a building infested by honeycombs on the floor which we used to call as "Jail" for no reason and vans that will hit you taking away 15 seconds of your time not to forget a flying stick that you need to dodge by jumping and sometimes lowering your head. But if you are not scared of these and still keep on catching the cops, there will be helicopters inside the building taking your life away as they hit your police cap. And the bad part is that none of the obstacles would have any effect on the thief. Anyway, how much illogical the gameplay was, "Police n Thief" is the most enjoyed game I have played in that console and have went as much as 16 levels which had helicopters trying to hit my hat every second that I ended up sitting like a duck for the whole level.
As I can keep on talking about the golden days and I have blogged on this many times before, I would do a fast forward to the recent times. After many years of console gaming, and the sudden invasion of Mario and Duck hunt, my gaming interests increased tremendously and I started playing Pacman, Digger and then the legendary Prince of Persia in our PC-XT 386 and upgraded 486 personal computers in office. And here I am moving from Sega-1000, Nintendo entertainment system, Nintendo gameboy, PC-XT, PC-AT, modern games in the Intel Pentium computers and playing with new generation of gaming consoles like XBOX and Playstation 2 which I slowly planning to change to the next-gen PS3 console though which seems to be at far reach considering Chini's liking to see the consoles only at the stores. I need to do some hard work in convincing her that gaming consoles are basic necessities of a normal healthy happy married life. In that way, she can talk all she want and I will never say a word against her and the best way to get my attention is to let me play the games and block the screen for a second and rely what she wants me to do. Of course, please do not tell her that it will be done only after the game is over.
Why this nostalgia all of a sudden you might ask. I saw this post in Engadget about the 8-bit video game console with keyboard entering the US market for just $49.99 which every kid in India has played for years bought at Rs.500 or just $10. Who said electronics cost more in India? Is this some great business opportunity and I should buy 10 consoles in India for 250 each and sell at Rs.2000 or $40 in eBay and become a millionaire overnight? What would I do with that money? What else? Savings for the next PS4 or XBOX 720.

One more from iPhone apps

The world is getting smaller and more activities are coming inside the grasp of my hands. The above statement is not a metaphor as more day to day activities are done inside my palm these days, thanks to the free apps for my iPhone. From browsing on the go, finding routes in the fly to the Internet banking and recent tweeting features have made the iPhone a true companion. And here it is, the blogging application "Blog Writer lite" to keep my fingers busy with more posts for the blog. Another excuse for not blogging regularly is gone! Hope this keeps me attached to blogs for long.

Trivia: Do you know what is the next applicaion I wish to see in iPhone? ALICE - Artificial Linguistic Intelligent Computer Entity. The AI companion or simply a robot who can chat with you any time you need. Any iPhone software developers hearing me??????

Sent through "Blog writer lite" from iPhone.

iPhone - Gloves insensitive phone

If you are one of those trying to find a reason not to buy the iPhone and neither the 70USD minimum monthly charge by AT&T nor the buzz of Google's Android is helping you, hear this out. As stupid or as trivial this might sound, it is still an important factor when you want your mobile to be handy in all weather conditions especially in the coming cold winter months. Yes. The touch sensitive screen of iPhone is incompatible with your woolen or leather gloves. So if you are walking on the street in the cold weather and your girl friend calls you, chances are very high that you cannot slide the answer button in the screen without hurting your fingers exposing them to the subzero. Though the Apple crazy lovers believe it to be a security feature that blocks unauthorized use of the iPhone by requiring the fingerprints on the screen, not everyone is ready to buy that. So here you go. Now you can be a fox reasoning that you did not eat the grapes because they are sour. All the best iPhone-haters.

As for me, I will be smart enough to use the earphones to attend the call while on the road.

The Apple guy makes a sale!

I made the first iPhone sale yesterday. For people who are not aware, I have been an ambassador for Apple for quite sometime and been helping people get their hands on the Fruit of Knowledge, Apple and its products. It is not a tough job working as a sales person for Apple. Actually I do not even have to lie like an ordinary sales person. If Apple ever decides to pay for my survives even at a rate of 10% of the selling price, I would have already made about 480 dollars that includes 6 iPods, 3 nanos, 2 Macbooks and an iPhone. My next target is to sell at least one Macbook Air. It is going to be hard convincing someone that they don’t need a DVD drive. But a sight at the thinnest laptop ever is good enough to make the sale.

PS: If any of you reading this post learns about such intentions of Apple, do let me know. Your help will be appreciated with thanks as well as 10% of my commission.

who you calling geek?

People call me a geek! Though I like being called like that, I doubt if I am one especially after reading the below mail from a fellow gamer in InfyGamers club. I feel I am not even a dumb noob in this Geeky world.

There is a mouse pad that feels like satin, very soft on top
with firmrubber base at the bottom. It sells for Rs.20 to 25. Try it before you
decide for something more expensive.

It helps if you are a palm player , use 6+ sensitivity and have
a bighand/mouse. The cushion reduces friction due to weight and you needless
force to get the mouse moving from standstill.

Check in some ofthose cheap computer shops. This mouse pad wears
out in 3 to 6 monthsdepending on usage and where you live. You need to wash it
every monthto retain the cushion.

Ever looked at a mouse pad like that????? By the way, this is just a sample for the thousands of mindless techincal jargon chaos that happens in the daily mails of Infygamers, the unofficial club in Infosys with a liking to kill each other only in games.

Touché

I would be damned!
This was my reaction to the Apple event that happened on September 5th. Apple have seriously taken the comment echoed by everyone who know about iPhone.

"Why can’t Apple release an iPhone

minus the phone?"

The main reason why many people didn’t want to (were forced not to) buy iPhone is the bank-robbing service plans from Cingular. 60 dollars a month under a contract for 2 years and another 500 dollars for the device was nothing but robbing you at gunpoint (iPod point here). So when things were so terrible, people prayed for a savior. And now, the prayers answered with a touch. Literally, its answered by iPod Touch. It is everything that the iPhone has except the phone. Now don’t ask about the camera. The camera in the iPhone is nothing but a last minute compliment added with very average quality for 2MP resolution.

And to make you say wow, the iPod touch is just 8mm thick. That’s less than the size of two crackers. Things don’t end there. If you have listened carefully, it has everything iPhone had, which means it includes Safari browser supported by Wi-Fi (802.11b/g). And on top of all these, there you have new iTunes Wifi store to download songs directly to your iPod without the need of a computer. This is yet another proof that Apple is listening to all its customers.

I must mention this is very different than Microsoft releasing WOW Vista and showcasing their product with the VISTA families. If you don’t know what this means, Microsoft brought few families to the stage and said that they developed Vista with the feedback and expectations given by them. Wonder if the whole world’s feedback was represented through few VISTA families. Not even a proper marketing idea.

Ok. So what about the deciding factor? The price. It is obviously apple-priced which means the product is priced higher than its competitors but still will dominate the market.The 8GB model is priced at 300USD and 16GB at 400USD. But it is justifiable to the 500 and 600USD prices for iPhone when it was introduced. And did I mention iPhone prices are slashed by 200USD?

"Something that never surprises me is that Apple never fails to surprise me"

PS: I have to wait for few more months to watch for any price drops in iPod touch before I can give my iPod to my dear ones.

Show and Tell - Blackberry

Fruit(Berry) that makes you work everywhere. I am not sure why they kept that name. But why not? When there is a computer named Apple why cant a internet communicator be called Blackberry. Atleast the color matches the name here. Blackberry had been one of my awed gadgets. And that was until I got one. After that its been a hook thats pulls me to work day and night. At the heart of it there is the email which keeps us connected to the outer world though restricted to the office world by our boss. Instead of thinking that a person with Blackberry CAN respond to emails anytime, they think that a person with Blackberry MUST respond all the time. The one that should help me in work is making me work. As its a business gadget, they havent given much thought of appeal. But they have done a good job in ergonomics. The keys though small are comfortable enough. Everyone will get used to it fast and the wheel on the side is easy to operate and is a very good idea.


I do like the Blackberry a lot and here are my reasons for that.


1. It is something that not everyone has. It makes people turn their head towards me.
2. I can browse the internet easily on the go. Damn! I cant play flash though :(
3. It has games too. Brick breaker is really addictive.
4. Gosh! I love to send short replies appearing as if I would lose million dollars if I delay any second.

Gadgets - Life made easier?????

Sometimes I wonder whether the latest hi-fi gadgets make us work more than making us work less. Isnt the computer industry supposed to reduce manual labour. But guess what, computer industry is the highest job provider here. May be there would have been more jobs if there werent computers. But still I think they had add more work on humans. Consider how I passed last weekend.
I have bought the new iPod and was trying to organize the songs for it. If I had been using the sony walkman cassette player, I would just have to buy a cassette and play it as and when i want to. But now there are lot of features in ipod that requires a lot of ground work before I can use it.

1. I had to download and install iTunes from the net first and have to choose the music folder so that my songs will be organised in appropriate folders automatically.


2. Then I had to download all the songs from the net to make justice to the large 30GB space I have in my ipod. I surely cant have just 10 songs of 50MB in such a huge space. It would be a great insult. So there I went on search of MP3 songs in the net. But guess what?


3. My internet connection was not working properly. So I had to troubleshoot it for few hours to make sure it works properly.


4. Then I realised that the download speed would be faster if I use star download manager. So I downloaded it from the net and installed it.


5. After downloading some 200 songs, I realised that the song titles, album and arist names were not correct in the downloaded songs. So I had to correct them in iTunes.


6. But my knowledge on music was very much limited that I had to rely on internet again to find the correct artists for each album. This task was the tedious one which took more than 4 hours to find about each and every song I have.


7. Phew! Atlast, I had all my songs with correct titles. But there is something more in iPod. You can view the artwork for the album you are listening to. I dont want to miss this good feature of iPod. So I went into the internet again to get the images for each album and add it to every song(I have a total of 809 songs) I have. This took another 3 hours.


8. When I thought that its all over, I found that all my songs have not taken more than 4 GB of space. With my iPod's hunger not satisfied, I decided to add some movies into it. And there we go again. Where can I find movies? iPod needs the movies to be in special format(.mp4).


9. So download the video convertor software and convert the movies which I have in .avi formats. Believe me. This is a very tedious task and I still havent got any proper software that can convert the video with proper audio-video syncronisation. They are always out of sync that sometimes I hear female voice when the hero is speaking to the heroine. Imagine what if the hero says to his wife "I am pregnant". That too in a lady's voice. The romantic movie would become a comedy movie.


10. I decided to download trailers from Apple instead and downloaded most of Apple advertisements from www.apple.com. It came up to 100MB only and I didnt want to work more on this.


11. Then there was this "Photos" section in iPod. Thats the section that I can fill easily. I have a total of 2333 photos so I can fill up atleast 1GB of space in my iPod.


12. So after a long time of collecting all music, movies and photos to fill my ipod, I copied them all to my hifi iPod which took about half an hour to copy into it.


13. So atlast, after 2 days of hard work and most of the internet bandwidth squeezed for the music, my iPod was all ready to rock my ears.

Was all these stuff worth it. Yes! It was worth every bit. The music turned out to be wonderful when heard in iPod. And the photos were very crisp and clear which I couldnt see in my laptop. My 2 days of hardwork didnt go in vain.

Moral of the story: hi-fi gadgets make you work more than before. But its all worthy when thinking of what more you get from it after your hard work.

PS: Now I need to download more movies and convert them into mp4 format. There is still more than 20GB of free space left in my iPod.