message in a bottle (02.2003 - 09.2008)

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/YgcJ4TkvRmc/

Dear life,

It has been a pretty crazy couple of months, had to stay away from most of the things that I would normally breeze through, including but not limited to a few aspects of my real life day job, Debian work, movies, the routine yearly Oct-Nov time vacation that I take etc. Obviously, hobbies took a big hit. Also had to let go of an opportunity to travel to one of my favorite places, IIT Guwahati; something that I don't usually pass up. Sigh! But such is life.

Been bouncing back slowly:

I finally moved a few domains that I run (including my personal domain) and their email to a linode and I am quite liking it so far (I would've been great if I had some more disk space at my disposal but 16GB isn't all that bad).

On the Debian front, finished attending to package sponsorship requests, I've been updating packages (there is one elinks RC bug that I'll fix next) and work is finally under progress for the clang ITP in the Debian GIT repository.

There are a ton of pictures in RAW format that I haven't yet had the time to convert to JPEG (I use UFRaw but the output that I got from Bibble Pro is fairly impressive -- perhaps I should consider getting myself a license) but that could wait.

Found a decent place to rent (I should be moving in about a month or so). I would've liked a place that isn't an apartment or at least in a smaller community, preferably something in-town but good places are difficult to come by.

I am back,

Giridhar

Hey folks,

I wanted to share this because it made me laugh so hard my sides hurt. You may have already seen it, but oh well!

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/uncharted-2-hawp/59109

"Nathan Drake is Malcolm Reynolds."

Warning: Contains spoilers for Uncharted 2 & Firefly: Serenity.

I am not a PC gamer at all, but my dad is, and I want to get him a good game for Christmas. Last year, I got him Fallout 3, and he is still playing it, for what must be the sixth time by now. I also got him BioShock awhile ago, which I think he liked, but certainly not to the obsessive extent I did. Which is why I need some recommendations, because I knew nothing about Fallout 3 and he loved it, and I know a ton about BioShock and I loved it, and he kind of liked it.

He likes FPS games, and of his gaming history he has liked Halo, Half Life, Tomb Raider, and some game I think called Gothic or something like that. I was thinking of getting him Mass Effect, but I don't know if he would enjoy that so much. (that's kind of like BioShock -- I liked Mass Effect, so he may only kinda/sorta like it)

Obviously, I don't want to ask him what games he might like, or that would ruin the surprise. XD So, any PC gamers able to give me some recs?

Don't you just love reflections! Makes for interesting pictures. A mingling of subjects that often creates something quite different from what you see at first glance.

Monday! Back again. Cold outside today, finally. I'll have to scrape off the car. Not done that since last winter:)

Our prize list for the BustaMove Big Draw is slowly growing:) Make a donation and be entered:) We have not really publicized it yet. Waiting until this week. Be the first to enter:)

hi everyone~ i just got a ps3 for my birthday and i am a total xbox-nerd so i have no clue on what exclusives are must haves for the ps3. i'm wondering, which games must i play?

i currently have/will have:
- Fat Princess
- Flower
- MGS4
- Little Big Planet

thank you~ much appreciated. ♥

I just finished this game, and while I have mixed feelings about it (which I won't go into here), the world exploration aspect of it was amazingly well done. And since it has a camera mode in game, I took way more pictures than I probably needed to:



Day Two
Day Three

(Nothing from day one since I didn't think to take pictures at the time.)

Day Three has some spoiler stuff under Cut-scenes and Ending, but otherwise it's mostly just environments and random stuff I found while wandering around the world. Gameplay was fun but had a lot of issues, but if you enjoy world exploration I can't recommend this game enough!

With the thesis coming to a close (well almost), I have a feeling that I will have no work left to do. Wonder how my days and years are going to be spent henceforth, and what my priorities in life are going to be. I wonder. One thing, which I can visualise is that research work and career will always be on top of my list and other things will take a backseat. If it is not this way, than I will be a very unhappy person. But if things happen the way I visualise, then again, how happy and contented will I be? I dont have a clue. Can we really change the course of our life ourselves? Maybe not.

Hello fellow gamers!

I just wanted to update everyone on the current status of the community. I've closed the community temporarily to new applications/members because I've been extremely busy lately.

I've been in the hospital since the 2nd of December - long story made quite short, my new darling daughter was born and that has taken a bit of priority. (New future girl gamer! Yay!)

Never the less, we're home safe and healthy from the hospital and adjusting to our new life. Things will be hectic for a while as we both get into the swing of things, so to keep everything a little more sane, I've closed membership just until I get the current 155 pending requests evaluated. I realize that it's a bummer for new hopeful members and I really apologize.

I won't be passing "leadership" (I'm not really a "leader" honestly) on to any of the other Mods because I still love this community and what it represents - it'll just take me a while to get things back on track after a long stint away from home and everything I'm used to. I promise I'll work on the pending memberships as soon as I'm able to in order to re-open the community to new members. I'm hoping to have it under control within a week.

I hope you all understand.

Take care and happy gaming,
Six

The Tiger Woods' train crash is kinda hard to avoid, considering how it hasn't yet disappeared from the Google News front page. I have been following it in headlines, and have read one hilarious blog post on the marketing aspect and Tiger's statement in full. Other than that, two things have stuck out: the first being what I can only describe as "the unkindest cut of all" - a supposed lover describing the man as being "horrible in bed". The second made me spurt scalding hot coffee out of my nostrils - a supposed lover apparently being hurt that she wasn't the only mistress. One can marvel, once again, at the power of self-delusion, but there really are no comments beyond that.

Human relationships are strange, aren't they? The last time I talked about infidelity on this blog, a month or so ago, I was talking of Nehru and Edwina and the love that had sustained them both. He spoke and wrote of her with infinite love till he died, long after she had left this world. They found his letters on her bedside table when she died. It was private but not clandestine, and never ever sordid. For there was grace and dignity enough to render their bond as the stuff of legends.

And the thought it brings me back to is this: value has to be created, always. By your actions, by the investment of self in what you find beautiful.

And that seems to be the reason why Nehru had his Lady Edwina, and Tiger his tawdry groupies....

Thoughts in 140 characters

• 10:55 Kooli Kelsa begins. #

0:52 KILLED ME! HAHAHA! Anyone else think the elbow/knee pads are AWESOME? Seriously don't watch the whole video you'll just get tired, hahahaa. :)
( Battletoads DUDES! )

So, I play a lot of computer games. I adore strategy games. Now, I recently started playing gPotato's Heroes of Gaia. It's fun, there is a learning curve, but it's not too sharp if you pay attention and read things.

But see, that's the key. PAY ATTENTION AND READ THINGS.

I have to switch out of global chat because it is filled with the same questions over and over that are answered if you a) do the tutorial and pay attention, b) read every thing that hovers or pops up, and c) use common sense.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but I'm not averse to questions. I asked a few myself. But is it just me, or are there just groups of people on games that want someone else to hold their hand every step of the way instead of using a wee bit of brain power and learning on their own?

I recently remembered (well, sort of) a game I played when I was probably five or six, and for the life of me I can't remember what it was called.

So I was wondering if anyone could tell me based on my vague memories of it. And I promise, as much as it sounds like it, it ISN'T Majora's Mask. And I think it's for the PS2, if that helps.

I think the game opens with the main character on a ship sailing to the island where the game takes place. Once you get to the island you meet a few other characters and then I believe there's a princess or something and at the end of a few days some bad guy has some evil plot going down at a party of some sort and you fail to stop him but somehow wind up back in the past, on the ship you were on at the beginning. And you have to keep replaying those few days over and over again until you can finally save the day. And I think there's a magic safe where you can store your items so they don't get lost during time travel.

Sorry for the overwhelming vagueness. That's really all I remember. x___X It's been killing me trying to figure out what the hell this game is, so I'd really appreciate any help. ^^;

Sorry again. >__<
And thanks. Again. xD

So, what are everyone's nominations?

More information found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Video_Game_Awards

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Originally published at Swati Sani. Please leave any comments there.

I keep having dreams about games I played years ago.

This latest one was a computer game (I'm fairly positive), set in midieval times, where your character could either be a maid or a knight. And then you went through a bit of a historic gameplay, where you learned about the middle ages while trying to find puzzle pieces and maintaining your choice of profession.

Really... vague, I know. But it's annoying me, not being able to remember. Watch it be like a game I pulled out of a cereal box or something.

Any thoughts?

Hey everyone! I am so excited about this comic I've been doing lately and I wanted to share. It's set in post-apocalyptic NYC in the year 2003 and is called Angel. It's inspired by 70s and 80s action movies/comics. I was inspired by the feeling of being a kid and seeing these movies that are like "In the year 2010 when humanity has been decimated by...." and you're all "wow! 2010 is so far away!" But, you know, it's not. So it's like 75% tribute, 25% poking fun of these various tropes. It's totally meant to be ridiculous, know it's ridiculous, and still be ok with being ridiculous.

Anyway. So far, it's been a page a day, M-F on my website. I'm past page 50 now, so enough to give you a feeling and good run-in for the story if you start from the beginning. It'll keep being updated M-F until it's finished (I'm guessing 150+ pages total).

If this isn't allowed I apologize and the post can be deleted.

If selling some figures over on Ebay. I'm selling 2 Legend of Zelda figures by Joyride Studios

Link riding epona
Link

I was thinking the other day of how to give an existing artwork a twist, to add one more item to my shop. The answer didn't take long to surface. Remember the 'Cookies' painting I made not so long ago? Well, a few tweaks to it and it transformed itself into a nifty Recipe Card.




You can print these out individually or bind together to make your own recipe booklet, or simply give them out as gifts to your friends and alike. The cards are up in the shop. Have a good week ahead! :-)

One of my favourite haunts! Libraries and bookstores fill me with intense calm and excitement at the same time. When I was a little girl we would make the trip to the library once a week and I would load up on Dr. Seuss, Curious George and Babar books. My brothers and I would plonk ourselves on the floor and get lost in the possibilities of choice. So hard to decide which books to bring home. I still tend to get carried away and bring home too many books.
This is the Keshen Goodman Library. I've never thought to bring my camera there before.

and.......as I write this it is snowing! Sideways backwards and upside down. The wind is blowing it everywhere. My daughter has to go to work at 1pm. I think it will terrible out there by then:( I am thinking the bus would be a better choice than driving. Those first few winter drives are always nerve wracking. No salt on the roads yet, lots of slippy sliding. The wee reindeer in this picture is a fellow I fell in love with. Covered in birch bark and sparkly salt crystals, I spied him in a window display.

Ooh and my latest discovery this weekend was born out of a desperate desire to recreate this! I had bought a box as a splurge and loved it! So, when it was finished I decided to try my own version. It worked! 2 bags of any decaffe tea, 2 bags of Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea which I adore and always have), 5 green cardamon pods about 4 cups of water and simmer till dark and inky. House smells wonderful. Add honey and serve half milk and half chai mixture. Yum.

December Views

So upon reading the entry a few posts down about parents and kids and blah blah... I got pondering and now I feel the need to pose a question.

Are there any games, either recent or in retrospect, which you strongly did not agree with the ratings of the ESRB rating system?

Now to disclaim, ratings don't affect me either way because I'm adult (at least in the legal sense) so it doesn't much matter, but as ratings are meant to inform those who haven't played the game about the possible objectionable content, they can sometimes give games a worse wrap than I feel they deserve.

A game that I feel should have a lower rating...
would be the original Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps the graphics played a part, but the violence was really limited to shoosting bad guys and one dude's arm getting cut off. Oh and some impaling, but it wasn't really that bad. ... really. The so-called sexual content was pretty much limited to "Snake, make love to me" and extremely pixelated underwear. I feel this game deserved a T. I would also almost argue that its predecessor, MGS2, also deserved only a T rating because other than some pretty tame violence, I can't really think of anything objectionable about that game either.

Also, a game I feel deserved a higher rating...
The original Fatal Frame, holy shit. I almost shat brix when I realized that a game that caused me many a sleepless night was only rated T when there was such content as (oh uh SPOILER WARNING I guess) pretty graphic eye gouging, broken necks, and um... basically really scary shit. Like so scary. I suppose the ratings are pretty arbitrary and "really scary shit" probably isn't something they rate a game up on, but overall I really feel this T rating was pushing the bill. I would've given it an M. :X

So feel free to agree or disagree or argue or give your own pennies, I would like to see some thoughts!

-Mru

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  Originally published at http://tariquesani.net/blog/. Please leave any comments there.

I lost my box with the code for Mansion and Garden Stuff. It's currently installed on my cpu. Is there anyway to get the code off of my computer?

I did not register it with EA.

TIA!