Thursday, November 19, 2009

Some iPhone games

Recently got the following games, most of which is pretty interesting:

- Rat on the Run (especially the "Rat on the scooter" mode, very challenging but still fun with the most minimal of controls, very addictive)

- FG Free (Family Guy platform shooter where you're Stewie, easy controls - annoying voiceless, unskippable intro between Brian & Stewie)

- Spikey (Challenging semi-puzzle, semi-hand eye co-ord game. couldn't get past "Introducing wasps" level yet)

- Wurdle (Very nice word game, you make words from a grid with whatever way you can link them).

- Camelot (Bricks game, but pretty nice with varying level graphics and powerups)

- Archmage (Last but not etc., this is a somewhat silly, cartoony-"graphique" :P but really addictive game where you're the skeletal mage guarding your castle by juicy-electrocuting human invaders. sounds violent? it's not, try it. You can upgrade your spells, mana and buy even helper skeleton archers! and 10/10 for the sounds of this game)

Monday, October 26, 2009

Beezer source code uploaded

Finally.. :P Uploaded the code, can be found online here.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

New Beezer site

Since Geocities is going to shutdown permanently, it's high time I started moving stuff from my geocities page to elsewhere. Google sites. Started with the more important project: http://sites.google.com/site/appbeezer

Really like Google Sites, making pages couldn't be simpler. I was up and about with screenshots, downloads all in a matter of minutes. Hosting images, binaries, zips - no problem. One place. Google Sites. Nice.... anyway, time to put myself into sleep mode.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Things I like and dislike about Germany

So I've been in Germany for over a year now. I know it's not all that long a time, but still an opinion can form within seconds so a year is not that impulsive. What I like and dislike about Germany. Actually more like what I like & dislike about the place in Germany where I stay and work.

Obviously none of these would be applicable to other parts of Germany or to anyone else besides me.

Likes:
Climate - After staying in an extremely hot and humid climate for years, the climate and weather in Germany is way more than just a welcome change. Yes, I like rain, overcast, cloudy, windy, snowy. Winter is refreshing. Why and when the hell did "bright and sunny" became the definition of 'beautiful weather? Rain is serene. And I couldn't care less if you can't go out when it rains. I can.

Autobahn - No :( I've not yet driven on it. But I will. I will... Einige Teil in der Autobahn haben keine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. Achtung Baby! And yes I constructed that sentence myself... with help from the teacher :P But wait.. I got only "haben" and "der" wrong.

Trees - Yes not a big deal you may think. But in Chennai and many other cities in India they replace trees with concrete or tar. I hate it so much I cannot express what I want to do those who cut trees here. There is lots of greenery here.

Cars - :D Can't stop grinning. Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, BMW as common almost as common as Santro in India!! Didn't see any Bugatti Veyron though :P and missing is the Corvette ZR1 for eye candy.

Public Transport - Sure they tax about 50% of what you earn, and the trains are pretty expensive but still I don't mind. They have pretty good local trains, buses and trams. The taxis are expensive but for an emergency it's a reassuring backup. One can get along pretty well without a car here. The place where I like is very conveniently placed: supermarket, bus stop, train station, post office, the Rathaus and Auslaenderamt (local authority office and foreigner office), haircut saloon, bank, everything within a 10 or 12 minute walking distance and _yet_ it's not all that heavily populated.

Rooftops - Well they all over Europe, but these pointy roofed houses are a lot more interesting and uniform than flat tops.

Work - I really enjoy working here, no cubicles! Plus people here don't ask irrelevant questions at work (well or anywhere else for that matter). The exact opposite of 99% of Indian IT work places.

Credit cards - Unlike the US, credit cards here are not forced on you.

Dislikes:
Some of the things I dislike about Germany so far.

Food - Being a vegetarian here isn't that much fun. A couple of the vegetarian meals I get at work are pretty nice but for the most part even the Indian run restaurant and pizza places are by no means anywhere close to retaining the Indian taste. To be completely honest the food in Lufthansa was more enjoyable than the Biryani here (despite asking persistently to make it spicy/hot). I could probably travel for a couple of hours and find a more authentic Indian restaurant but clearly Germany isn't the best place for vegetarians unless maybe you're in some city like Frankfurt.

Sundays - As boring as Germany on a Sunday. Open the shops! I work on weekdays. I need food when I oversleep on Saturday and cannot buy grocery before you wonderful folks close up on Saturday afternoons. I also would like to relax at home on Saturday and shop on Sunday. But no I can't. The joy of weekend is completely sucked out. Everything must be done on Saturday :( The gas stations are open on Sundays but all you can get there are former pigs and cows sandwiches.

Houses without lights - I just don't get this. Houses here are rented without any lights with gaping holes in the ceiling with live wires hanging out. Seriously who the heck cares about fancy lighting? The few that do would know how to replace them. Please rent houses with lights. It's a real pain when you move in.

Cut! Take Pizza - Does anyone ever eat pizza without cutting it? I have to spend 10 minutes sawing my pizza with the shitty sorry excuse of a "knife" that you give me while it becomes cold. Even in the pizza places they give pizza without cutting it.

Garbage disposal - Unlimited internet, limited garbage disposal. Well locally. Eight Households, one paper disposal bin. Thanks. Disposal _is_ really efficient and orderly here and people are very disciplined in disposing garbage. But if you're without a car I'm stuck with the elaborate moving & IKEA packaging. I cannot just keep them outside the house and expect the truck would pick it up. I need to take it to some local recycling plant and put it there or take the effort to shred them into tiny pieces and sneak them into the paper disposal. Also disposing glass can't be put in the bins nearby. Yeah I can be lazy sometimes.

Conclusion:
Overall it's pretty good here. The complaints and dislikes are more of pet peeves and personal gripes.

Hmm.. Home sweet home! Can't wait to visit India :)

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

tweet

waiting for twitter to die and not hear that word ever again

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Open sourcing Beezer

Now that Haiku is all set for it's first public alpha (too lazy to link, google, thanks) on September 6th, I thought this weekend or the next I'd publish Beezer's source code under the BSD license into OSDrawer.net or such. I tried to create a project on OSDrawer.net where I aleady had an account but got some stupid error like "An integrity error is occurred, please send a mail to the stuff and report this error: (1048, "Column 'last_update_utc' cannot be null")".

"Send a mail to the stuff". Thanks guys.

Anyway it's not so bad I guess as there are lots of other BeOS/Haiku projects there so I'm not too worried about reliability and uptime.

I'm not going to bother converting the BeIDE projects to makefile at the time of release. I don't have a working Haiku box (running it from a VM without mouse pointer integration is such a pain and I've not yet found time to write them myself :P). So the source will be under BSD, unmodified and should be compilable on BeOS R5. Once I get it compiled on Haiku I'll start fixing it to work on Haiku.

DISCLAIMER:
The Beezer source code, binaries, documentation and other files included (henceforth referred to as 'CODE') is several years old and the author is not liable and/or responsible to any entity for any stupidity, parts of the CODE that may evoke what-the-hell-was-he-thinking, what-the-hell-was-he-smoking and similar reactions that you may/may not find in reading the CODE or parts thereof. By viewing and/or downloading the CODE or parts thereof, you agree you will not hurl unwanted objects, publicly flame and/or spam the author. Other disclaimers are included as part of the CODE. Thank you.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

X.org

Thom was writing about his X.org woes... and a user comments this

For some reason I laughed out loud.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Credit Cards

Seems I finally am going to need a credit card. Bore.

Every online site that doesn't accept my debit card should die. Yes.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Songs

I usually don't make such posts, but what the heck, I think some of these songs are worth sharing.. (Artist - Title).

No Second Troy - The Gardens After Lockout I liked the song so much on Last.fm I bought it. Yes. Pretty obscure band, at least I've never heard of it before but this song is great.

Ric Ocasek - Come On Light. Upbeat. Happy. Get this.

Sisters Of Mercy - Temple Of Love Just the pounding drums and guitar riffs. Chuggy sort of rocker and the shaky singing.

Avantasia - Promised Land High speed Power metal. Enough said. Oh and pretty nice lyrics.


Some poppish songs that I like recently:
The Graduate - Sit And Sink
The Last Goodnight - Incomplete
We The Kings - Skyway Avenue
Claus Eisenmann - Frei Sein

Thursday, June 11, 2009

y0uT00b

The power of nightmares Volume 1, 2 and 3:

Zeitgeist Federal Reserve

n0id

The bee in the room always comes for me.