Varun's Blog Feed

On the Surfeit of Good Games

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-11-03T00:39:40-08:00

As Gabe & Tycho have so accurately pointed out, we find ourselves in a dire situation - there are simply too many good games to play. For a time I thought I would be immune to this, but I too have succumbed.

Are all three games I'm playing sequels? Yes, but that doesn't make them bad. In fact, I picked the three most promising titles to fritter away my precious spare time. All RPGs, but only one turn-based one. My interests have been steering more towards action RPGs in the past few years, and it is starting to show in the games I choose. But Mother 3 is so excellent - a dark, intense story-line presented in the fun, light style of Earthbound.

I finished the main storyline of Fable II (I picked the Love ending, by the way), and so most of my console time is now being devoted to Fallout 3.

I Made Ravioli

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-11-03T00:26:39-08:00

I don't mean the kind you get in the grocery store.

I used this recipe for the dough and a modified version of this recipe for the filling. I need an actual cookie cutter to make them better, these came out highly irregular, but still delicious - surprisingly a lot better than store-purchased pasta. Next step is to get a pasta maker so that I don't have to roll out the dough by hand, and so that I can make noodles.

Since it's now going to be immortalized in the blog, it's not going in my recipe wiki.

Seriously Netflix...Wow...

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-10-29T21:11:16-07:00

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/30/netflix-watch-instantly-coming-to-tivo/

Netflix clearly has a brilliant partner engagement team. Bravo.

Food tastes better when eaten off of a knife.

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-10-29T20:54:40-07:00

If you don't believe me, try it.

5k Time down to 25:30

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-10-22T22:29:35-07:00

Yay. My previous goal of 30:00 was met some time ago. It was pretty hard to make it this time. I would love to reach 20 minutes for 5k, but that works out to 9 miles per hour. Can I run that fast?

Hank Paulson: The Incredible Hulk?

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-10-14T22:09:00-07:00

Most of you know my opinions on the motion of our economy and if you don't then I probably don't want to tell you :P

I know that Hank Paulson is your and my favorite Secretary of the Treasury. This is a picture of him. Beyond the fact that I have an incredible level of disdain for him and the way he does business, look at him. Doesn't something look a little strange to you? Either this man has hit the gym and seriously bulked up, or he really needs a new tailor. He looks this way in every picture of him that I pull up.

What's going to happen? I don't know. Maybe Paulson will get a better suit and figure out what the Treasury should actually be doing.

Wait a Second: Is Mozilla Corp. in Trouble Because of Google Chrome?

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-21T15:08:44-07:00

I think I'm finally starting to put some of the pieces together on Google Chrome (which I have yet to try).

In 2006, 85% of Mozilla Corporation's revenues came from Google. Google has a contract until 2011 to pay for every ad someone clicks on after using the Google search box in Firefox.

If Google makes its own browser, which they have, and it costs them less than they pay every year to Mozilla Corp., they might not renew that contract again in 2011. Mozilla is heavily dependent on the revenues from Google, and I see this as a brilliant way for Google to hedge its bets on the future.

Bravo.

Finished Too Human

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-20T22:52:47-07:00

Finished my first run-through of the game. Did it as the Commando.

Though Ben Croshaw (not safe for work) is spot-on in picking out issues with the playing the game, it was still really fun. I think it took me about 15 hours, and it got a lot easier towards the end as I discovered all of the power in the Commando class. I think next time I will play as a Berserker. Only read more if you care about this game:

As a ranged-weapon specialist I always had a lot of trouble dealing with hordes of enemies. While I could shoot and immobilize one of them, the other would keep getting closer, and the Commando really can't use melee weapons effectively. Finally I realized the power of my battle cry, which gave me extremely high ballistic knockback. I combined this with a rifle that had +100% ballistic air juggle. The result was that I could fire at a bunch of enemies, knock them all away from me, then shoot each one up in the air the finish it off. The battle cry also added knockback to my Commando's grenades, so that each one would send enemies flying off of ledges and into the air.

Jack in the Box Ad: Annoying

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-20T22:32:14-07:00

http://www.jackinthebox.com/pitasnacks/

If you've seen this ad on TV you know what I'm talking about. If not, then don't click on this link - seriously.

The cry of a baby/child causes some kind of powerful reaction in the human mind. We find it particularly harsh as a species so that we are driven to act to care for a child in trouble. This is one of the reasons we all hate playing Yoshi's Island 2 for SNES - whenever you lost baby Mario the cry was so intense that you frantically tried to get back to him. The process was so frequent and annoying that you eventually stopped playing out of dread of it happening again.

If an adult imitates this act, it does cause the same reaction to some extent. It is also very agitating, and no doubt will hurt their ad campaign.

New Microsoft Ad: Actually Cool

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-18T22:07:02-07:00

The new Microsoft Ad "I'm a PC" is actually pretty cool. I use Macs at home, and the commercial isn't going to change my mind, but it was great. It stays on-message for Microsoft's new campaign (which I enjoy), and I really like the background music.

SmartyPig Is Awesome

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-18T19:19:10-07:00

There's this really great website, which I can only describe as a social networking saving application. Get a great interest rate (currently 3.9% APY), share your savings goals, and have a really pretty website that helps make saving more fun.

I recently had a little problem because of…over-zealous saving…that required me to call up smartypig. There was no hold time and they were immediately able to address my concerns. This is by far the best customer service I've ever had when dealing with a bank.

Feelings of Happiness

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-15T21:45:03-07:00

I wonder if this is going to weird anyone out.

Does anyone else randomly feel this strange sensation of happiness? It's not exactly contentment, more a sense of joy that comes from the unknown myriad possibilities that the future offers. Do people feel this way all the time, I wonder? I usually have this experience daily, at times ranging from 7PM to 1AM. I tend to let the sensation wash over me - I never force it, but I never fight it, either.

I think it's weird, but maybe it's normal to feel happy for no good reason...

5K Time Down to 26:54

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-13T15:39:09-07:00

It's not a great time, and you can probably do better, but it's better than my last time of 28:40.

I Made a Soup

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-13T12:10:58-07:00

I don't like most soups, but this was amazing. I didn't have any sausages around, so I made some turkey meatballs (much healthier). The combination of ingredients was great.

Side note: I know that Yahoo does pretty much everything, but is anyone else surprised by Yahoo! Food ?

Sarah Palin on ABC

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-12T22:19:35-07:00

I can't imagine we're going to see Sarah Palin on TV much, or at least not on ABC any more.

I am watching her interview with Charles Gibson on 20/20 right now. I agree that most politicians do a phenomenal job of not answering the question, and Sarah Palin is no exception. However, even Gibson calls her out on it many times, exposing her lack of awareness - and he does it with aplomb. It was pretty clear that the people who coached her for this interview simply did not put enough words into her head. I supremely hope Joe Biden schools her in the Vice Presidential debate.

I'm not getting into an argument on politics. I'm not offering any evidence of my judgements, these are merely my opinions.

Playing Too Human

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-09-04T23:49:31-07:00

I was going to write a review of the critically-maligned Too Human, but this review pretty much sums up my feelings.

One correction, they discuss what Loki's crime is, but if you're not paying attention you would miss it.

Just finished Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-06-08T22:22:12-07:00

Hmm...I guess a lot of my recent posts have been about gaming...

In the last few years, there have been surprisingly few games that I have actually played to completion. The only ones I remember are every Phoenix Wright game and Mass Effect, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is technically a Phoenix Wright (Gyakuten Saiban) game, but it's nice to be in control of a different character for the vast majority of gameplay.

Overall, it was a fun game, but honestly the characters were not nearly as endearing as those from the previous iterations, and this has nothing to do with it. When I was finished, I was still left wanting more, like there were too many mysteries left unresolved. Maybe that's a good thing, as I'll be even more eager to play the next game in the series. As far as gameplay is concerned, there were significant reductions in the pain points I traditionally felt with the older games - investigations are easier, and there are fewer occasions where I have no idea what to do or where to go.

Any fans of the series or genre (all 5 of us) should definitely play this game. Though to do it right you will be best off starting from the beginning with the first Phoenix Wright game.

Mac Version of Penny Arcade Adventures Episode One

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-05-26T22:02:49-07:00

Ugh.

Interaction with the environment is much easier in the Mac version, since you can just click on an object. Unfortunately I didn't see a way to move my character around using the keyboard, which meant I had to keep click on where I wanted him to go...a little annoying, but that meant it was much harder to get your character stuck in some space. Be prepared to click a lot, though, pathfinding AI is horrible. For example, my character couldn't figure out how to move around a box that was on the floor.

Also unfortunately, I don't see a way to fight enemies without clicking first on the attack to be used and then clicking on the enemy. I think the fluid nature of combat on the 360 was one of the things that made it so enjoyable.

Oh well, I might still buy it...

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-05-25T01:38:53-07:00

Dearest Gabe & Tycho, I know you're never going to read this, and it is that knowledge which lets me write what I'm about to write. Having a little spare time today, I downloaded the trial version of this game via XBox Live Arcade. I had seen some of the gameplay videos, and was thoroughly looking forward to trying it out for myself.

Would that I could undo the following hour and the resultant disillusionment.

I'm a big fan of Penny Arcade and also a fan of video games. Given the involvement of Gabe & Tycho on the art and writing, I looked forward to both of these aspects, and was not disappointed. However, I personally found the gameplay insufferable. The mechanics of the world are enjoyable, with a fluid (albeit slightly hectic for me) combat system, and much of the polished jokes and effects that do a great job of setting the mood. I only played for about 45 minutes, but I'm assuming that encounters become either more random or more avoidable. What made gameplay unenjoyable for me was what I can only describe as a lack of polish. I had the exact same object interaction problems in this game as I do in Lost Odyssey. It's practically impossible for me to be in just the right spot on the map and facing just the right angle to get to talk to that person or inspect that trash can. Within the first 20 minutes of gameplay, I ended getting stuck behind a row of bushes, and only managed to get my character out after about 5 minutes of joystick wiggling - an extremely frustrating experience. If you don't want users to deal with this, either don't let us explore all 4 corners of your artwork, or just let us walk through the freakin' bushes, guys! I've played MMO's with fewer character sticking issues!

Well this might prove a valuable lesson to someone somewhere: No matter how good you think you've developed your game (or application), your users will figure out a way to break it or make it do something unintended. What's important is not just fixing these problems, but figuring out how to gracefully handle these situations as they arise out in the field. Preferably you're smart and add routines to predict when your game is in a bad state and take care of it dynamically, so that you don't have to keep releasing patch upon patch for games when you'd rather be working on the next one.

Well anyway, I'll try out the Mac version, and I'll post if I experience anything significantly different. I wonder what Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw would have to say about this particular title...

wsdl.exe Hates Me

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-05-25T01:29:32-07:00

So hopefully this post gets picked up by some search engines, as it might be able to help some other unfortunate soul in some small way.

You want to let your .NET application access a web service, right? Well that means either importing directly into Visual Studio via the "Add Web Reference" feature or, if like me you're using the .NET Compact Framework, you'll have to run wsdl.exe. Of all of the other websites I found no one said that it should be in C:\Program Files\Windows SDKs\v.xxx\bin\wsdl.exe. You'll run this application with the URL/path to your WSDL as an argument.

It turns out that this application is very picky about the WSDL file that it will accept. I had used an online WSDL validator which said that my file was just peachy. wsdl.exe was returning a horrible and unhelpful error about how the portType in the namespace was missing. The problem was that my binding's type was missing the namespace.

So I had to change this:

To this:

Now I understand this whole process of WSDL parsing is difficult, but even after this step I had to manually edit the generated code to remove all of the junk it adds about asynchronous calls that the .NET Compact Framework doesn't support. It would be nice if wsdl.exe had added a command line option for the feature, which I would guess a fair number of mobile developers would be able to take advantage of.

But seriously, couldn't wsdl.exe have just figured out that that was what I meant, when an online validator and PHP's SOAP extension were both capable of easily understanding my intentions?

Cars that I'm nicer to

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-05-19T22:47:40-07:00

I've been thinking about this for a while and I've come to realize that on the road I tend to be a lot "nicer" to some cars than others. Here's a small list:

Cars I tend to be especially nice to:

Volkswagens, particularly VW Jettas. Is it because I find them especially feminine?
Most Nissans and Infinitis, except for Idan Beck (sorry). They're like my car's cousins.
Those really, really old cars, where you feel like giving the driver a break

Cars I tend to be much, much less nice to:

Toyota Priuses (Priusi?). I know it's not true but I still feel like every Prius driver has this sense of entitlement.
BMW and Lexus cars, depending on the model. I really don't know why.
People who seem like they might be interested in changing lanes, but haven't signaled. As far as I'm concerned they are going to stay in their traffic lane. Signal, people! It makes it clear to everyone else what your intentions are.

Okay, my rant's done.

Freeduino

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-05-08T23:29:32-07:00

I just finished assembling my first Freeduino board, based on the Arduino platform, but a little cheaper and with some slightly more convenient components. I think this might be the first time that I have soldered something together or apart without burning myself in some way. I guess that means that I'm getting better at this. I'm excited by all of the nefarious possibilities that an easy-to-use microcontroller like this one puts in my hands. Let's see what happens.

Woo-Hoo!

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-04-22T23:31:56-07:00

So this might be an easy task for many of you, but for the first time ever I managed to run 5K (3 miles) in 30 minutes. Yay!

Feeling Super-Amped Up

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-04-21T22:16:56-07:00

So after attending the Seether and Flyleaf Concert on Wednesday (which was awesome), I was already set up to spend the next week or so really excited. Attending Startup School 08 only served to leave me feeling especially amped. The speakers were all great, of course, but the related events I attended the night before and after the conference were really the crown jewels of the weekend for me. Talking to so many people who have been working on their startups, and hearing the passion in their souls as they told me about it was incredibly inspiring. I left feeling like "I can do this, or I can at least try. If I never try, I'll never know what might have happened."

I'm hopeful, motivated, and excited.

More Proof That Weather In The Bay Area Is Frightfully Boring

varun@mehtasw.com — 2008-03-05T21:52:29-08:00

Sigh...

Blizzard's Starcraft II: Budget? A lot. Schedule? When it's ready.

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-05-24T20:14:48-04:00

Hmm, when asked about when Starcraft II would be released, Blizzard's President, Mike Morhaime, said, "The game will be released when it's ready."

When asked about how much Starcraft II would cost, VP of Game Design, Rob Pardo said, "We don't really have a budget; we'll spend as much time and resources as we need to make this game great."

Okay, I know Blizzard has a history of doing this sort of thing, so to some extent I trust them. At the same time, I hope that internally they have some idea for budget and release schedule, because we all know what happens when you don't.

Famitsu gives 9.5/10 to Resident Evil 4 (Wii)

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-05-24T18:31:49-04:00

So according to this IGN article, Famitsu gave yet another stellar review to a game. Since if you're reading this you have probably already read all of the other blogs, I'll spare you the details.

My one question here: Has anyone else felt like Famitsu's scores have been getting higher and higher? I wonder if it is because of increased quality in games (possible) or game review inflation from one of the world's most celebrated gaming publications (sadly, more likely).

Summer Plans

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-05-24T18:13:19-04:00

So congratulations to all of the other people out there that graduated this month. You made it, good job!

I'll be starting at Microsoft in mid-August, and will be flying out to San Jose on July 25. This means I have a bit of time before leaving New York, and there are a few things I plan to do in that time:

Get my Learner's Permit, again (Done!)
Get my Driver's License, finally
Spend time with my parents, which I haven't done for several years
Spend time with my sister and brother-in-law
Catch up on my reading list, it's been growing longer and longer

I'm sure other things will come up and with a list of this size I'll have time to do some other fun things.

Return from South India

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-09T23:41:13+05:30

Well, I made it back last night. I've been too exhausted to think about posting, but over the next few days I will be posting entries from the journal I kept over the last week as well as the pictures that I took.

My sister will be arriving tomorrow morning, so I will be updating the blog some time after we return. These entries will be backdated, so just look at the entries from the start of January to read them.

South India: Kanniyakumari

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-04T16:59:46+05:30

Since we are at ~8°N latitude, we are smack dab in the tropics here, and life in the tropics is quite different. A big thing most of you know that I have problems dealing with is insect-kind. Here they are represented in full force. Not just outside either, but a fair number penetrated the sanctity of my piece of mind and made it into my little cottage. There is a lizard, too, but he is much cooler and much less annoying - just surprising because it moves so quickly.

We woke up at 5:00 AM (ugh!), and got ready quickly. It's 5:35AM now and we are about to go outside to find a good spot to appreciate the sunrise from. There were 2 interesting "firsts" for me today. Today was the first time that I have seen the Indian Ocean. (It's a nice Ocean). Today was also thew first time that I have ever watched the sun rise.There have been 1 or 2 occasions that I have been awake for it, but never have I actually watched it happen before.

There were a lot of people there, all interested in watching the same sun rise as we were. When we saw the first sliver of the sun, people began to cheer. I suppose since I've missed over 60,000 sunrises in my life so far, I picked a good one to watch.

Something really weird that I noticed is that many of the people who were on the beach watching the sun rise were wearing all black. I'm not sure why they were doing that, but maybe they were part of some sect, possibly devotees of Shiva.

Now that the whole sunrise thing is over, it's time to shower and have some breakfast.

Wow, our breakfast was amazing. Dosas, sambar, and vadas prepared with tender love in a traditional South India way. It think it was less than Rs. 20 each, and was delicious. The sambar was delightfully spicy and the potatoes in the masala dosa were just the right consistency. All of this topped off with 2 cups of South Indian coffee. The coffee here is quite different from coffee in the rest of the world. The flavor is less bitter, and a bit nuttier, definitely preferable to any coffee that I've had in the States.

We relaxed for a while and then headed out to the beach. That statue and that Mandir look really interesting. From talking with the local merchants, it turns out that there is a ferry that runs between mainland India and these two little islands. One of these islands is the Vivek Ananda rock memorial. The other is a statue to honor Thiruvalluvar, an old Tamil poet from about 2000 years ago.

South India: Madurai -> Kanniyakumari

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-03T16:11:26+05:30

Today was a day largely devoted to travel, like most of the days were on this all-to-brief trip.

We visited the tourism office today, and were helped by a very nice Madrasi woman named Uma Devi. Had an 80¢ lunch at the restaurant in the hotel and set out for Kanniyakumari on a $2/pp bus without A/C. Though that's okay because the weather is mild and the seats are somewhat comfortable. The bus has a television set and a DVD player, and they are playing some weird Tamil movie. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that they are playing it really really loudly. At the same time it's kind of fun to have a movie on that you feel like you should be able to understand, but really can't no matter how hard you try. Makes your head hurt in an amusing way.

An immediate difference that I'm noticing is all of the greenery outside. Delhi is near a desert and as such the non-urban landscape is largely brown and dusty. Here the landscape is quite lush, and some parts are even full of naturally-growing palm trees. The air is much more humid, and you can really feel the water hanging in the warm air. We are sitting in the second-to-last row and a German family is occupying the entire rear seat of the bus. The seem like a nice bunch of people, but they speak little English. The father seems to understand Tamil, and is translating each dialog of the Tamil movie into German for his children. This still does not make communication any easier for me, though :-( Normally when we go somewhere in India we can pretend to be from that local area, which helps a lot when dealing with local people who like to rip off tourists. Besides the obvious language problem, we look so different in terms of skin that we stick out like a sore thumb. I wonder if the German family actually has it easier because the father speaks Tamil.

It's really interesting, the differences between north & south India. A great example is the dress. Down here not every man wears pants, preferring to instead wear their traditional Lungi. And these don't just come in white, but a variety of colors and patterns. Seems sort of like the Scottish kilt. Another interesting difference is facial hair. I believe in our whole trip down here we saw 3 men without mustaches. Other than the Sikhs of the north, most North Indians will be clean-shaven or have the now-fashionable stubbly look. Again, this seems to be some sort of masculinity things.

In the afternoon we made a little rest stop for people to rest and get a snack. It was hot and sunny when the bus stopped, so it was a relief when the bus started to move again. I'm really excited about visiting Kanniyakumari, the place where the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea all meet. There is a beautiful rock memorial that we plan to take a boat to when we get there, and we will watch the sun rise at our beach-side cottage, something that Kanniyakumari is famous for. Thankfully the weather will be much cooler as we get closer to the water.

As we are moving through some of these really small towns I have noticed something really interesting. Of the 3 big material components of Indian life only 2 are well=represented. Food and clothing are available in abundance, and yet I have not seen one jewelry shop. On that not seen any South Indian wonmen wearing too much jewelry. I guess that part of it is that small towns do not have the population to support such shops and South Indians are less interested in jewelry in general. I've never really been to small towns in North India either, so it might be similar there, as well.

<7.5 hours later>

Arrived at our hotel. Going to sleep early to watch the sun rise, more on all of this later.

South India: The Start

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-02T00:17:56+05:30

(Since I use them interchangeably, everyone please remember that Tamil Nadu is the new name for Madras. Still the same state, just a different name.)

Our South Indian adventure begins with a torrent of confusion. Our flight to Chennai was scheduled to depart at 10:30, so we left home a little after 8:30; plenty of time to get there, check in, and board the pane. Of course, things are never so simple, especially not where airports are concerned. My uncle was driving us to Delhi's domestic airport, but we made a wrong turn and it took us an extra 40 minutes to get there. We arrived at about 10:00 AM and were worried about being too late to make the plane. This is probably the only time you hope for a flight to be delayed and we got exactly what we wished for today. Delhi's infamous winter fog has struck yet again, and every flight out or into Delhi was either cancelled or delayed.

Checking in was an interesting experience. Instead of airport security being done by one central authority, like in the US, every airline has its own x-ray scanners. Before you check in, you must first have your luggage scanned and a sticker placed on it by the scanning staff. Of course, this creates all sorts of security risks, but no one seems to care too much. Strangely, carry-on security is centrally performed.

Because of all of the delays, the airport is packed. I'm sitting on the floor as I write this in a relatively uncrowded portion of the terminal, and many others are following suit. There are no free seats whatsoever in the entire airport.

I guess you have to be careful what you wish for. It is almost 11:10 and there is still no word on when we will be boarding. An airline employee addressed a mob of irate travelers, saying that it will probably be at least another 30 minutes. We have 6 hours in Chennai, so making our connecting flight is no problem at all.

Fortunately it is 11:48 and I am now sitting in my seat. Unfortunately my dad and I are seated in the same row, but on opposite sides of the plane. Delhi's notorious winter fog strikes yet again, as 30 minutes have passed waiting on the runway, with no announcement of how much longer. The gentleman to my right is happily perusing the Hindustan Times. The gentleman to my left has fallen sleep and is snoring quite loudly. In fact, his snoring has drawn the ire of perhaps half of the passengers on the plane, who are directing extremely dirty looks in our row's direction. The obligatory inconsolable crying baby has begun fulfilling his duties. Me? I'm patiently awaiting take-off, whenever that is!

Since our flight to Chennai was delayed by 3 hours, we only had about 3 hours there - not enough time to leave the airport and explore the city. Instead we visited the Tamil Nadu tourism office for some information, and passed the time talking to many of the airport employees. Fortunately, in addition to speaking Tamil the spoke English. No one we talked to could converse in Hindi with ease. We received a lot of good information and advice about what to see and what to do on our trip and have a good idea of where to stay.

Other than the tourism office people, we (especially Dad), spent a long time talking to the manager of the only restaurant of the airport. A very pleasant, literate man whom we talked to for well over an hour about a lot of things. I couldn't reach my camera, so sorry for no photos. Apparently this establishment was opened only 1 month ago. We weren't really hungry at that time, but will be in Chennai again on the 8th. We did have a cup of coffee, however. It is worth mentioning that coffee in south India tastes quite different. It's actually a bit more pleasant in my opinion. I wonder if it is the bean that they grow down here or that the actual beans themselves are fresher because they are grown locally that makes the taste so different.

It is now 6:55 PM and we just boarded our plane to Madurai. The flight to Chennai was a jet, but this plane is a little itty-bitty propeller plane, that seats about forty.

It turns out that the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC) runs hotel in all major destinations in Tamil Nadu. It is worth reminding you that India is still somewhat socialist and that is why such a government-owned corporation exists. Apparently these hotels are the way to go when visiting Madras. It is about 10:00 PM and we have arrived in our "Double Deluxe A/C" room. It's actually good for a tariff of Rs. 800/night (about $18). The room seems pretty comfortable, and Dad has taken to the bed straight away. Honestly, even though it is still so early we are both quite tired. The tourism office will open tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock and we will be ready to go and arrange some means of travel for ourselves tomorrow.

My Unexplained Absence, And More To Come

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-01T14:07:04+05:30

Happy New Year! At this point almost everyone on the planet has entered 2007, with some stragglers in Alaska and the Pacific Islands.

Sorry for not writing anything for such a long time, but I had a very good reason. As can be expected of most people who visit India, I came down with a case of food poisoning. This has left me out of commission until recently, including blogging duties. I've been better since yesterday, so I went to a New Year's party with a fair number of my family. We went to a concert event at "Fundoo World", a large theme park/water park outside Delhi owned partly by our relatives. There were many musical performances, including one by Shaan (wikipedia), which a lot of people were very excited about. I had a lot of fun ringing in the new year surrounded by so much family - quite a departure from celebrating New Year's Day in the US.

Since I've been sick, not too much else has happened. We've continued distributing wedding invitations to people. The situation in India in funny like that, unless you give people the wedding invitations in person, they are offended and won't come. That means that we have had to borrow a driver from a relative and have him shuttle us all around the city, going from one house to the next. It would seem like you should be able to do this fairly quickly, but this arrangement is complicated by Indian hospitality. When you visit someone's house to invite them to a wedding, they practically force you to sit down, drink some tea and eat some snacks. This ends up making the process quite long, spending as much as 2 hours inviting one family to a wedding. We have been doing our best to make this process as quick as possible without offending any of our potential guests.

Starting tomorrow, I am going to have yet another lengthy absence from posting on this blog. My father and I are going on a trip to south India, and will return January 8. I've never been there before, so he suggested that we take this trip. We will be visiting many of the oldest and most sacred places in India, including Madurai, Rameshwaram, and Trivandrum. I will be taking my camera with me and will do my best to take pictures of all of the places I go and cool things I see.

Shareware of the Week: Comic Life

varun@mehtasw.com — 2007-01-01T14:00:52+05:30

Plasq's Comic Life ($24.95) is one of those applications that got a lot of publicity for a little while, and has now sort of faded into the background. If you weren't paying attention to the Macintosh shareware community a few years ago you would have missed it entirely and wouldn't know about this really cool little application. Essentially, Comic Life allows you to easily create really good looking comic books. This sounds weird, I know, but imagine being able to put together a family photo album that looked like it came straight out of a Marvel comic book. Comic Life gives you all of the tool that you need, including page layouts, image manipulation, and some really amazing text tools. With barely any effort you can produce a really great-looking comic and with some experience you can produce an amazing one. I've used Comic Life for a few little things before, and I enjoy using it for vacations, presentations, and other places where the tool can be useful.

I like the tools that are available within Comic Life, they really make the job easy. You can import photos from iPhoto and squash and stretch and composite them as you please. The text fonts and colors are entirely customizable, with a bunch of presets that look straight out of a comic book. You can then export your work to straight to images, HTML, iPhoto, or QuickTime, or publish to .Mac.

My biggest complaints come from the design of the user interface. While it is certainly pretty, I would have preferred some parallels in Comic Life's interface design to that of Preview.app. By default Comic Life makes lots of somewhat annoying noises when you drag things around. Fortunately that, at least, can be disabled.

I suggest you try Comic Life out. The price is quite steep at $25, but there are definitely a lot of people who will love this little app enough to justify the price.

Chandni Chowk Market Madness

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-26T09:59:38+05:30

Associated album here. I suggest looking at the album while reading this post.

So today we went to one of Delhi's oldest markets, Chandni Chowk ("The moon intersection"). There is a lot of shopping to be done for the wedding, especially with respect to clothes, and so we were off. After a fun and crazy ride in an autorickshaw, we arrived in the market area. Unless you have been to India, you have never experienced a market like this one. From the second you arrive you are immersed in a level of activity that is really intense. People have been doing their business here for hundreds of years, and will probably continue to do so for hundreds more. Everyone is running their shops, buying goods, eating food, and pushing each other out of their ways. The sidewalks of the main roads are so full that pedestrians are constantly spilling into the streets, impeding car traffic but facilitating foot traffic.

The first place we went was to check on my sister's wedding lengha (sorry no wikipedia link) and to buy some saris (wikipedia). The Indian retail experience, as you can imagine, is quite different. When we entered the clothier's shop, we first removed our shoes, and were brought to the person in charge of our work, and sat on the cushioned floor. After inspecting the lengha's current progress and making the deadlines clear, we began looking at saris for both my mom and other people in our family. While we sat we were shown dozens and dozens of saris, laid out in front of us for us to either reject or approve of. This process took a very long time (about 3.5 hours), and so we were brought cups of cappuccino and some delicious specialties of Chandni Chowk to snack upon.

And then it rained.

You would think that in a desert area like Delhi rain would be extremely welcome and make a very dry area a little more tolerable. The problem is the dust. So much dust accumulates in the street that when it rains it all turns into mud, and actually becomes really gross. One or two of the pictures show this pretty well.

Our next stop from here was my maternal uncle's shop, deep in the heart of old Chandni Chowk, where he sells dried fruit, nuts, and sporting goods. Long ago he only sold sporting goods, but as market demand shifted so did his inventory. There we had one of his employees fetch us some of Chandni Chowk's most famous treats, as you see in the album. We also enjoyed paneer pakoras (deep-fried gram flour-coated Indian cheese, sort of the Indian equivalent to a huge mozarella stick), but these were so delicious that they didn't last long enough to take a picture. He and my cousin-uncle run the shop together, and their their fathers ran the shop before them.

Our bellies satiated and our hearts content, we then struck out for what would be our final adventure for the day, getting me a suit. In India suits and other formal-wear are rarely purchased ready-made, and instead are tailored for each individual person. So the first step was to purchase the fabric that we wanted to have turned into a suit. My cousin's friend runs a wholesaler in Chandni Chowk, specializing in fabric for mens formal-wear, so the choice of retailer was a no-brainer. We had to travel into the little alleyways and then descend 3 flights of some pretty treacherous stairs in order to reach his shop. Again we were given the same treatment as the sari shop, but this time looking at bolts of suit fabric. I only took one picture, but his shop is actually about 4 times that size, and the variety of fabrics they have is amazing; the prices were amazing, too. It's funny to think that the amount of fabric he has as being able clothe easily over 3,000 men in really nice suits. We ended up picking two we really liked, and are going to take them to a men's tailor tomorrow for the stitching.

Our business done for the day, we decided to go back home using Delhi's underground, the Metro. This systems was installed only 4 years ago, and it is really, really, cool. Unlike a lot of the city, there are extremely strict rules about cleanliness that are enforced. You are not allowed to eat or drink in the metro, and the result is that the station and the cars remain extremely clean. After taking just one picture I was chastised by a police officer who told me that was also against the law, otherwise I would have taken more picture for you guys. The stations are obviously designed for extremely high volume, with giant underground platforms and extremely wide stairs. Instead of using cards or disposable tokens, you purchase an RFID plastic token that you can add and remove money from. In order to use it you just swipe it next to the reader and the turnstile lets you pass. The trains themselves are spotless, without graffiti, and almost silent when they are moving. No screeching sounds on the tracks, no mice, no homeless people. And it's pretty cheap, our ride was 9 rupees each, or about 25 cents.

Blech

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-25T03:07:43-05:00

At the very least, I suppose it's a good thing that my uncle has DSL in his home. The big problem with it is that I only get out 30KB/s to the US, so many of my routine tasks (reading engadget, checking e-mail, publishing this blog) can take a long time to complete, especially if I do all of them at the same time!

I also find it hilarious how poorly written the articles that I wrote on the plane are. I'm going to leave them uncorrected to document this.

So Disoriented…

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-24T11:23:25-05:00

My watch says 11:21 EST, but I had no clue if that was AM of PM until I opened up my PowerBook just now. Nearing the end of my flight to Delhi, and I guess it has been okay. Getting wine, champagne, or brandy with meals on a French airline is a nice touch. And interesting challenge when compared to flying Air India for a trip like this is the language barrier. There are understandably French-speaking people of Indian origin on Air France flights, and though they may (or may not) speak Hindi, one language they do not speak is English. As you can imagine, when flying Air India through London,this does not pose a significant problem, since British English & American English-speakers can usually almost understand each other :-)

Freeware of the Week: Smultron

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-24T06:16:13-05:00

Since it is still Saturday somewhere in the world, here is my pick for SotW. Smultron (free, GPL) is a useful, full-featured text editor, with features that emphasize writing code. For the Linux/KDE-heads out there, I would compare it to be most similar to Kate, but without the integrated terminal. Smultron supports a variety of syntax highlighting options for many languages, including obscure ones like Eiffel, Haskell, and PostScript. You can create projects to group files together, and find that all-important little piece of text using its powerful "Advanced Find" feature. This is a great, free, open-source replacement for the person who would rather not purchase a software package such as BBEdit or TextMate. Here is a shot of Smultron in action:

If you have downloaded Smultron you'll notice that my version is much much less hideous. That is because of an aptly named option in the Preferences dialog: "I hate brushed metal windows"

As an open-source application on the Macintosh, Smultron does suffer from not conforming to many of Apple's most tantamount Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), but most of these infractions are in the Preferences dialog, so at least you do not see them very often.

Blogging @ 38,000 Feet

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-24T05:47:51-05:00

Hi everybody. I'm making this post extremely offline, way up somewhere over France on my way from Paris to New Delhi. The flight so far has been relatively uneventful. I snapped a few cameraphone pictures of Charles de Gaulle airport while I was waiting to board but even they were not too interesting. Air France's has been average; it's nothing to write home about. The airport's announcement system was something to hear though. They used a sultry French voice for all announcements: quite a departure from the voices in JFK and La Guardia.

With all of these time zone and location shifts, I've now lost all sense of time and space. I have been disconnected from the fabric of the universe itself. Hopefully spending some a few weeks in one time zone will let me locate the universe again, but I'm not getting my hopes up. They are giving me these meals and calling them "breakfast," "lunch," or "dinner," but these words seem to have lost all meaning. Then again, I suppose assigning names and times to meals is arbitrary to begin with, and so this poses no cause for alarm.

I think it is fascinating how willing complete strangers can be to give career advice, as an elderly gentleman did on my flight from New York to Paris. I find his insistence that I follow his advice doubly-fascintating. Perhaps it is human nature to provide advice whenever possible.

It seems strange to me to have passengers put their carry-on luggage under the seat in front of them. Specifically, it makes an incorrect assertion. This procedure assumes that everyone has a seat in front of them, which the first row of each section does not. A more sensical solution would be to use the assertion that every passenger has a seat, and should store their smaller carry-on items under their own seat.

I'll publish this when I have internet access, whenever that may be.

Woot.com sold the PS3

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-22T01:33:17-05:00

I must admit, I'm quite a fan of the folks at Woot, and I am impressed with their Woot du jour: a 20 GB Playstation 3! They even threw in free shipping before Christmas. Wow. I had the option to purchase one (actually got the page loaded at 1:01AM), but it wouldn't really make any sense for me, at least at this time.

Shareware of the Week: RapidWeaver

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-21T18:00:01-05:00

RapidWeaver ($39.95) was a part of the MacHeist software bundle. Since I have some time now, I've been exploring some of its features and getting to know this piece of shareware better, and I must say that I am thoroughly impressed. Those of you who know me well know that I am not the sort of person to shy away from coding a website by hand, but RapidWeaver does a phenomenal job of making website creation a piece of cake. The software itself is extremely intuitive and flexible, and does a pretty good job of integrating with iLife software, without trying to force the integration like many other programs (I'm look at you, Freeverse!). There are a variety of basic website templates, including personal, photo album, blog (which is what I'm using for this site), and file sharing. To any of these pages one of the numerous and attractive themes can be applied. Many people are understandably turned off by themes because it causes a website to lose some individuality, and those people can even create their own themes for use with RapidWeaver, which is just a little CSS and a little XML. RapidWeaver will even handle publishing content to either an FTP server or .Mac, ping trackbacks, and allow comments on blog articles!

Overall, I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to be able to quickly put together really good-looking webpages.

Finals Are Finally Done!

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-21T15:56:31-05:00

Just had my last final for the semester, and it went really well. Now I need to relax for a while then pack for my trip.

Woohoo!

Reply from Feral Interactive re: Republic on Intel

varun@mehtasw.com — 2006-12-20T12:39:38-05:00

As you may remember I had previously e-mail Feral asking about why Republic was running so slowly on my Mac Pro. It turns out that Republic is in fact a PowerPC application, and Intel Macintosh performance is abysmal using Rosetta. Considering that performance was so extremely bad, let's see if they decide to make a Universal version of this game or not.

On a positive note, Command & Conquer: Generals is now available as a Universal Binary, and runs smashingly. Now if only Knights of the Old Republic would become Universal…