Real Guitar Heroes

Sumit sent me a link to a YouTube video of a guy playing the most difficult song on PS2's Guitar Hero 3. It's Dragonforce's
Through The Fire And Flames.

So I'm going to put the videos up here. Watch them in sequence to get an idea of the about of skill required for both of them:



Both the videos blew away my mind so. Pay special attention to the solo after 3:02 in the second video [drool].

Bidi Quotes

Found this image on a friend's album on Orkut. Found it hilarious :):

For those who don't know, a bidi is a like a tiny (very very cheap) cigar. :) Beauty in all things LOL.

The Sufferings of Famous People

My very close friend Sumit Mehra is quite a famous personality on the Indian game scene. He is a game designer/producer and is currently working for Microsoft India Development Center for its Casual Games department.

Now, being such a prolific figure in the game industry has its advantages as well as drawbacks. He is called up by magazines for interviews (an early example is on his website and another one here). Very rich people call him up and offer to give him pots of money to become a producer for their games (all of which he has refused, until now).

He posts on several forums as PurpleBlade (gamedev.in is currently giving a database error as of writing this, but I'm sure they'll fix it soon. Here is another as PurpleBlade at DesiGameDevelopers), and is quite nice to the people there actually, considering that they, more often than not, are extremely stupid. His philosophy is that people should be allowed to make one correctable mistake, however stupid that mistake is.

What he frequently laments however, especially when I goad him about it, is the sheer stupidity of some of the people who bother him on his orkut scrapbook. He's put up examples of good questions and bad questions in his "About Me" section:
Bad Question: I am an Animator. Should i also learn programming?
Good Question: I am an Animator, I like programming too. Do you think I would be preferred over other animators and programmers who are as good as me at time of interviews?

But he still gets so many bad questions that I make it a point to go to his profile every few days just to have a good laugh. Here are a few examples:

• "u know how to skinning our won application in visual basic
  please tell me" --[What? Who? Why? What kind of digital butcher are you? The poor, poor 'won' application.]
  


• "...I want to ask you that what is the initial procedure to start a web site on the www & how can I be able to access it & manage it..." --[And I want to know why you think I'll unleash you upon the net...]


• "BTW why u r aka purpleblade?..." --[The same reason why your mother named you "Blood" of all things. The same reason why she probably had you in the first place. 'Twas all a big mistake, I tell you. All a big mistake!]


• "plz gv me ur number .. as my testomonial i will call u juzz once ! belive me plz" --[Oh really! Thanks so much. I'll tell you what. You give me your number and I'll give you a call in around a hundred years. Hopefully by then you'll learn to spell correctly.]


• "hey, cud u plz help me out.
  i wanna know if someone is a talented j2me programmer and wants to get into the mobile game programming industry, but is not a graduate, can he do so?
  means is there any hard and fast rule that to be a programmer in a mobile games development company (good comapnies like ea, gameloft) one has to be a graduate even if he or she is talented? " --[Nopes. Don't even try it. We'll be very well off without an apathetic person like you in our fledgling industry.]


• "...can u tell me which game engine is free for downloading .... " --[God said "Search!". Man therefore invented Google. It's still there. I promise.]


• "...I am new in this filed so plz co-opreate with i know basic about the programming plz tell me about gaming Action script. Becasue i want to make a new game..." --[You should start at the beginning. Look for "Make game" command under the Tools menu.]


• "hey there this is xyz here kind a game freak nd learner too ...
  can u help me in better understanding in game programing... " --[You should also start from the beginning. Write a program to print to the screen the following string, "I'm an idiot".]


• "iasked our sir , they said .. we r nt here to teach u g.d u have to learn languages 4 that . then i said .. i will .. bt juzz tell me .. wher .. i mean whch iz good institute 4 dat .. wher shud i have to admit but they r nt ans me properly !" --[There is a mental hospital at N M Road, Thane. They'll gladly admit you. I'll gladly pay to get you to use more vowels.]


• "hello sir, i hav completed my 1.5 yr course from arena multimedia in animation n i think am a good 3d animator. what would u advice me 2 do next. I want 2 work here in hydbd. where shud i apply 4 jobs" --[Try joining the Indian Army. You'll get to see for yourself how to animate for games like "Call of Duty". Also, the Pakistanis will hopefully 'get' you before I do.]


• "Hi, I am an avid game player and really would like be a part of a game development team. But I don't have game development experience per se. What are all the companies could possible consider me for their open position?" --[Where is that baseball bat?]


• "i have read u r webiste.. learn lot of things but i have one doubt.. to be come programmer.. can i get any degree. in college..? or shud i get only engineering college..??" --[What I'd like to give you is the third degree. However, the law forbids it. But if you're still interested, contact Munna Bhai in Mumbai and call him some bad names.]

And this one was the best of all:
"hello,

Let me interduce my self this is Mr Sultan from hyderabad(india) working as an associate director since 17 years.I have some very good subjects for telugu and hindi . I have the team to work hard for the success of my film. I have love, family,comedy, thriller and action subjects. we are seeking for a PRODUCER who is very much intreasted to make a movie and gain good name and profits.If u are intreasted please contact me at xyz@gmail.com . waiting for u r reply
THANKING U ,
Sultan"
[17 years in the bloody profession and he still hasn't learned a thing. No wonder all our movies are so horrible. Why anyone would be "intreasted" in getting back to him is anyone's guess.]

The stupidity aside, when will these people ever learn to spell!

I go to his profile often just to read these and many others. I have a good laugh, but I commiserate with his frustration. My heart goes out to you, Sumit.

Until later. Signing out.

Yay!! I'm Famous

They put my picture on the cover of the People magazine:



Nice no? The trick is this website called MagMyPic.

Go on. Become famous.

Know Color, Get Picture

Every decent website that I see has a banner on the top. The problem is choosing a good photograph/picture for the banner that fits with the color scheme of your website.

The process of fixing this problem has started with Color Fields on Flickr. This enables people to shoot photos of a single color and tag it with the color. They can then list it on this group and people can search it.

The searching just became easier. Check out the Color Fields Colr Pickr at KrazyDad. It is an amazing tool. There are other color pickers for specific objects of a particular color, flowers or doors and windows, for example. Check them out at the links immediately below the color picker tool.

And if you want pictures with multiple colors in them (blue and yellow, for example), check out the Tiltomo (BETA) Image Search. Very well done.

Happy designing.

An amazing utility to clean your screen

It uses organic methods to recognize deposits and fingerprints on your screen and compensates by getting rid of them. Very cool. Check out its demo here.

Enjoy, and forward to all your friends.

How Gullible...

This is for all those people who think that this recent photo means that there is life on Mars.

Oh come on. Go back to the days when you still had time to lie down on the ground and look at the clouds. Even if you did think that dog shaped cloud meant that there was a dog in the sky, I'm sure you'd scoff at it now. The human brain loves seeing patterns in random images.

And even if there was life on Mars, it would definitely not be a naked woman.

You can read more about the story here. And this report on IBNLive will show exactly how much effort people went to to find it.

Tornados

I noticed today that I haven't even once blogged about storms. And I felt pretty stupid. So to correct the misnomer that my blog is, here's an amazing video by some very brave storm-chasers:



There are more amazing videos at TornadoVideos.net. Check out the documentary trailer at the bottom of the main page.

Seamas' Sketches

Those of you who like to read fantasy, but still haven't read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, are really missing out on something.

And those of you who have read the series (and even those who haven't), would be interested in looking at the character portrayals that Seamas has done on his blog, here.

These are by far the best sketches of the WOT characters that I've ever seen. Enjoy yourselves.

P.S. One of the characters is provocatively dressed. You might want to be careful in office.

A New Beginning to the New Year

One of my resolutions this year was to blog more often. Having a job in designing meant that my old template really turned me off. I had to start afresh. So after a few days of work, here it is... My blog's new avatar. Hope you people like it.

The basic design is courtesy the people at FinalSense with a few changes for shifting/styling the blog title and description appropriately. Thanks a lot FinalSense.

Intelligent Simians

More Simiand-related stuff.

There's news of a 7 year old chimp named "Ayumu" living in a lab at the Kyoto University. He and some of his simian cousins performed better than college students in a test of memory. You can watch him in action in this video.

You can pit your wits against Ayumu's in the same game. The question though is, would our least favorite Andrew win? Probably not. You know what they say right... "Dhobi ka bandar, na ghar ka na ghat ka".

Boy, I love taking a dig at this fellow :).

Fiat vs. Ferrari vs. Ferrari F1

The Fiat starts at 0s, the Ferrari at 30s and the F1 at 60s. The end of the race is sooooo cool :)

NGM's Pictures of the Year

These are some of the 2004 Picture of the Year winners from the National Geographic magazine. Amazing pictures no? You can find more on NGM's website.

Breaking News: Symonds Business

In a new first-timer, simians all over the world have gone on an indefinite hunger strike following Harbhajan's alleged comment. They consider it a speciest slur to have called Symonds a monkey.

"It is very debasing," the official spokesman for the WSP (World for Simian Protection) said in an interview today. "It is widely known that we monkeys see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. To be associated with a people who sledge like that is intolerable." The rest of the interview was not printable because stars would have outnumbered the other letters of the alphabet.

African Chimpanzees on hunger strike.