My Ice Cream Sandwich

A couple of weeks earlier, Google released the next version of Android, named Ice Cream Sandwich. In honour of that I made my own Ice Cream Sandwich :-D.
I hope Samsung ports ICS to my phone soon!

FIFA 12 Demo

Firstly, if you didn't know already, the demo version of FIFA 12 is out.

Secondly I tried it out on my ps3. And finally I was very very disappointed.
FIFA 12 is the most awaited game of this year. I was excited with all the new features they had mixed. Precision dribbling along with tactical defending and player impact engine was too much to resist. It seemed very nice. Moreover I think the bits of info the Twitter account of EA sports were giving was indeed interesting. With such excitement I began the download of FIFA 12 demo from the PSN store yesterday.
As usual I left the download to complete through the night. I installed it, first thing in the morning. The game started, selected my favorite club as FC Barcelona (Manutd not available in demo) . It was FIFA time (-morning 7am, glad my mom didn't see me playing).
Not so fast EA wanted to teach me some defending skills. The new defending skills are confusing and the worst part of the game. It took me 10 minutes to finish the tutorial itself. According to me, the standing tackle concept is removed. They have replaced with a new 'tackle' concept using which the players keep their foot front regardless of where the ball is. Yes it sounds so idiotic that it makes the defending impossible. After the tutorial I started the exhibition match thinking that I could survive the 6min match.
Barcelona vs OM.
I had to take the first touch, my routine game began, set my styles as counter attack and team pressing, made the move which usually creates crossing chance early in the game. Missed the header. And the AI got the possession of the ball. And after that I just made three touches on the ball. All three of them by the goalie.
Yes it was shameful, but atleast I didn't concede any goals ibm the match. Needless to say the match was draw. The defending is tough in the sense that there is no clear move to recover the ball. You get it if the AI throws away the possession or if he shoots and your goalie holds on to it. Your defenders keep running behind the AI.
A couple of games in the evening made me understand I had to keep a little more possession. This is when I saw the bad effects of tactical defending. The AI defenders don't press your team very much. You can dribble past them by using the sprint button. This is worse than FIFA 11 defending. However if the game build up is slow the defenders indeed covered ground and gave some competition. But still the wings are unprotected (untouched).
Also another bad thing I saw was the buggy graphics. Players tend to mix too much.
The good thing you can take away from the demo is the fact that the game is a demo version and the full version will usually be bug free and complete. The game is so buggy that Fabregas plays for both Barcelona and Arsenal. Some of the transfers are not yet effected.
The defending has to be different else there will be total chaos, every dribble has a chance of becoming a goal.
Even with all the complains I have I would still buy the game. I just want to see what is there in this game that it won 20 awards at the E3.

My new phone

I previously had an Nokia N95 mobile which i liked very much. Though it didn't have touch, a new trend among mobile phones, it had a pure multitasking experience. It runs all the applications in the background and you could close them when you wanted them to close. Moreover, it had a beautiful camera 5MP.

Well if I had such a wonderful phone you must be wondering why did I replace it. Sometimes I seem to have "butter fingers". When you drop your phone flat on its screen from 5 feet above the ground, you don't expect to see it again in one piece. At least my N95 was not in one piece :-(. After this incident i had no choice but to change my phone. But, I changed to an old model phone from Nokia. No multitasking and no 3G, but it was nice for messaging. so there started my search for a better phone.

After 3 months of waiting and pondering over which phone or rather which OS I must be using, I settled on Samsung Galaxy S2 running Android (Gingerbread). Why this phone particularly? This is the best phone on paper, beats even the iPhone4. And also that iPhone 4 was coming to the end of its lifecycle, no point buying it before the release of a newer iteration of iPhone. Another nice phone was HTC Sensation, but I didn't consider it because HTC doesn't have a service centre in Bengaluru.

It has been nearly a month with my new phone and I love it. Though I have not explored it very much, I have made myself familiar with some apps. The best part of the phone is its weight. It feels like a feather but with a large screen. My favorite apps include Twitter, Dolphin Browser, Handcent SMS , Google Maps, Places, Gmail, Google Plus and of course the (8MP) Camera. Android lacks Games unlike iOS. The first game everyone links Android with is Angry Birds and yeah I have them. I expect many more games to be released in the coming months.  

Just a week ago I discovered my phone (or rather the camera has Pink Spot Syndrome. This means that there will be a pink tinge at the centre of the photograph. This is abnormal and no one seems to know the cure for it. Some say on the internet that 70% of the S2 suffer from it. Moreover, you will observe it only while clicking low light pictures. Also the phone has a bad overheating problem. The battery back-up is less than what I expected. S2 has the largest of the batteries so I presume I must be over using the 3G internet.

All in all I feel I have bought myself one of the best if not the best phone in the market. More importantly I like the phone. 

My first freebie

I am usually not good at getting freebies or getting picked at lotteries & similar kinda things. But I do take part in some of the giveaways which some good web sites do. For example, TechCrunch does one or two monthly, usually the latest device in the market. While other than that I have seen in IndianVideoGamer, who hold contests for ps3/xbox/pc games.

When my PS3 died for a day!

Sometimes the most feared events occur to the unexpected times. One such incident was my Play Station3 giving a scare just after SONY announced their "Welcome Back" Package for PSN users. I was really happy with the package as I always wanted to play inFamous and Little Big Planet. Obviously I opted for inFamous and Little Big Planet (and the other games also :P). However, I saw that the installation files were really huge. So I had to download these games only in the night as the Internet is more or less always used in our home. So first games I downloaded were the ones with smaller files - Little Big Planet (and et al) . I kept inFamous for the last; the setup file is 7000+ MB. All other games are in the range of 2GB. After the small games I went on to try Playstation Plus service. First thing I saw was Burnout: Paradise City was free for Plus service. So I decided that first. By the time I saw Burnout on PSN, the other games were already downloaded with the exception of inFamous. Since Burnout was available till 14th June I thought I better finish with Burnout. The setup file was only 3GB so I thought in 1 day the whole game will be done downloading. This is where my problem started.

The next day, I checked the download it was 50% done. I cursed BSNL for some time and went on to my routine. Sometime in the evening I noticed that the PS3 had switched off. No one had touched through the day. So I didn't really understand why it had switched off. Anyways I switched on my PS3 and it started behaving a little abnormal. Every operation was slow. But then I observed a new OS version had been out so tried to install that. It installed correctly, but still it acted weirdly. So I decided to take PS3 into recovery mode. Once there I restored default settings of PS3 (bad move). This was not required. Well we always do stupid things. Maybe I should have called the Customer Care. Restoring Default settings erased the PSN login data which meant PS3 gave new names to all the profiles on my system. I tried to change the names to the old ones. But the system started to give up. I couldn't switch off the system, the light would keep blinking and the system would restart (which happens when it is hung), but still wouldn't switch off. Consequently, I had to pull the power cord. Each time I did this my PS3 became more complicated to handle. At one stage, no icons appeared, just rotating arrows, which usually indicating the software is loading. Even waiting for 10 minutes didn't help. I didn't know what to do. When I tried to ring up the customer care, automated answering machine said the service was open only from 9am to 730pm. It was already 10pm. So I turned towards the Internet community. After despairingly searching for a solution I concluded from various threads that the main problem might be corruption of data on the Hard Disk. One person had suggested that I upgrade my Hard disk. Another source suggested that I try to "Restore File System" from the recovery mode. I tried this option too and prayed it would work. Alas it didn't help. Every time I went into recovery mode I had to switch off the PS3. After few times, I felt very guilty of pulling the power cord each time. So I stopped. I went to bed wishing the Customer Care would serve me a solution.

First thing in the morning I did was to call the Customer Care. He directed me to take the system to the service centre as I had already done the preliminary steps to check for errors. At the service centre, I thought they would give me a solution instead I had an option- Either to keep my faulty PS3 or to exchange it for a discounted brand new PS3. The worst part of the visit to the service centre was that they didn’t even know what the problem was and didn’t really care what it was. All they said was - "PS3 is irreparable in India", "If you want we can provide a discount on the new PS3 you buy". This was not according to my plan. I wanted everything which I had downloaded the past week-the welcome back pack, everything else on the hard drive. So I thought -"My PS3 is dead". Dreadful news for me but I couldn't do anything. It was 18 months since I bought my PS3 which meant, the warranty is not applicable.  

Almost everywhere on the internet they suggest you to make a back-up and then use System Restore which makes your PS3 Off-the-shelf (except for the OS). So I tried that, my last hope. But then I realised the back-up wouldn't include any games. So what about the games? I had to download them again. It is even irritating to imagine downloading those games again. I switched on my PS3; again those evil rotating arrows showed up, I pulled the plug. Sometime in the evening I realised that I had some important photos which I had put only on PS3 and didn’t have a copy anywhere else. To confirm I switched on PS3, to my surprise the icons appeared. I waited, and then went back and forth in the menu, to see if there was any lag, there was nothing. Then checked downloads section, Burnout still was at 70%. I was happy all data was as before. The left the download to finish so left it as it is. I checked again after 30 minutes, still found the download status at 70%. This was not good. I checked if other games were downloading. All were fine except Burnout. So I had to do it - I cancelled the download. The offer on Burnout was still valid, so again I downloaded it. I left it to download all night. The download was done. The game installed fine. Next I checked if games were booting correctly. Everything was fine.

But I still can't figure out what was wrong with my PS3. It was not the deadly, YLOD or the Red light of Death problem. Maybe it was corrupted Hard Disk. And, of course continuous use, I had kept it on for roughly 36 hours straight!

Now I am happy, but also cautious.I don't want to struggle with my PS3 again! Oh God not again. Not my PS3. The HORROR!!! 

Trip to "The Scotland of India"

The last time I was on vacation with my friends was to Kerala during the summer holidays. Before that we had been to a trip to North India. Both of these were too long. No one had so much time to spare now, so, we decided to go to Coorg or Kodagu or Madikeri for short weekend Holiday. It turned out to be an awesome plan. :)
Each time we took a trip we always used to go through travels owned my one of my friends but this time we decided to take our own vehicle. So we had to plan everything - food,lodging and itenary. My friends and myself are not the best planners, but you get expertise only when you experience. Before we even got to getting the itenary done, a couple of my friends dropped out and another was close to jumping the ship. But thank God four us confirmed for the trip;Prajwal V,Sushil R S, Karthik V and myself were the lucky ones :)
Since we had only the weekend for sightseeing we couldn't see everything.

1. 26th Saturday

• 5:00 am: Departed from Bengaluru
• 10:30 am:Arrived at Home Stay ,Madikeri. It takes less than 5 hours to Coorg from Bengaluru but we ran into some problems on the way.The Home stay we stayed in - Ram's Hill Top,Jodupal, Mangalore-Madikeri highway, 12kms from Madikeri Town.
  
  I had never been to a home-stay before, so I was a little worried about it. But once I saw it I was very happy I agreed to a home-stay rather than a Lodge. You will have a secluded house all for yourself. There was Cook/server/maid who stayed nearby and served food when we wanted. We could reach him through a door bell. (No network coverage near our Home-stay, it was near the top of a hill).
  
• 12:00pm: Done with the Breakfast - Neer Dosa with Chutney. Left for TalaCauvery and Bhagamandalam. 
• 3:30pm : Finished with Talacauvery and Bhagamandalam. Decided to skip lunch for Abbey Falls (I hope I won't repeat this mistake).
  
• 5:30pm : Saw the Abbey Falls. Worth the time but couldn't stop my stomach from grumbling.
• 6:30 pm: Back to Home Stay. End of first day proceedings :)
  The view from the home-stay after it stopped raining.
  
• 8:30 pm :Camp Fire along with cool breeze really hit the right notes.
  

1. 27th Sunday

• Had a good sleep everyone got up really late - 9am
• 9:30am: My friend Prajwal and myself went for exploring the environment and we found ,to our astonishment, a small stream which later joined the river. Then went for what I suppose they call a Nature Walk. 
• 10:30 am: Everyone were ready to roll. Departed the Home Stay
• 12:30 pm:Arrived at Nisarga Dhama. Strolled the place for a while, enjoyed the walk in the cold water until I lost my sunglasses :'(. Afterwards, went for a Boat Ride, my friends were too generous to let me paddle the boat ;) .
  
• 3:30 pm:Had Lunch at Hotel Caravan, Kushalnagar. Very nice hotel, good ambience and food also tastes good.
• 4:30 pm: Journey towards Bengaluru begins. We reached Mysore by 6:15 but the journey became very slow from here on. I was unaware of the fact that on a Sunday , Mysore- Bengaluru will have huge traffic.
• 9:00 pm: Reached Home safe and Sound :).

All in all this was one of the most fun-filled trip I had ever been. And I would love to go to Coorg again. From next time onwards I will not miss a chance to stay at a home-stay.

And the Winner is ....

 

The Cricket World Cup is set to begin tomorrow in the Indian Sub-continent (yay!!). The thrill,tension and the smell of victory - all possible this world cup. There are no clear favorites this time. With the defending champions,Australia, already being proven beatable the tournament has just become more entertaining to say the least. So who has the best chance to win this world cup rather who are deserving to be the last four in the tournament?

1. India - Tipped as the "Favorites" to win the world cup this time around.  After the last World Cup (Indian) disaster I can't seem to put them up as a definite finalists. They have the best batting line-up of all the teams. In fact they must make some batsmen rest in order to fit in some bowlers. I'll leave the team selection to the Indian cricket team :D. But what anyone seem to see is that History is against India. A cruel fact of a Cricket World Cup is that a host nation has never lifted the coveted trophy before.(Sri Lanka in 1996 is considered to be played in India). I think,of the last 4 world cups, India has the best chance to win the WC this time with a powerful batting line-up and tremendous fan support at Home.  Also the entire team is motivated to win the World Cup for Sachin Tendulkar (they still think he will retire after this world cup).As they say records are meant to be broken. May India be Victorius.
2. South Africa - The "Chokers" are yet again one of the favorites to win the WC. They have a well balanced team. With batsmen like G Smith and Amla to start the proceedings,Duminy/Kallis to spice things up and Steyn to finish the remaining job ,it must indeed be a easy tournament for them. But huge trophies have always eluded them. Though they have performed very well in India against the Indians too nothing can be promised from them. But they can deliver if it is their day.
3. Sri Lanka - They are a team who perform like a team. Everyone of the playing eleven might not be a match winner but as a team they have played some good cricket against other teams. You cannot write-off these guys. They will also use the Home advantage. What they lack is consistent performance. Who knows they might clinch a thriller and repeat the 1996 feat.
4. Australia - yes they are beatable but they sure have some fighting spirit. Whenever they are pushed down they have the tendency to perform and prove their critics wrong. After the Ashes thrashing, everyone is bantering about Ponting and his men. If Ponting is looking for redemption then right now is the right time. With none of the stalwarts,from the last decade, who made them look invincibles ,ponting has a steep hill to climb if he has to win this one.

Whatever said you can never predict a world cup until the finish. Like before we can see Kenya (or someone else) in the semis but if everything goes according to the paper then the above 4 teams should have it easy against the rest. It is already reported that match and groups are designed to favor some specific teams. So I guess there might not be any surprises in the end. Every senior player will be definitely looking forward to finish their careers on a high. Everyone wants to Win the World Cup. 

All my hopes ride on the Indian team. They have impressed everyone in the warm-up matches. Hope to see more of Helicopter shots,doosras, and the stunning Straight Drives(Sachin) . INDIA for the Win !!

You cannot play Football alone

What do you do when you have no one to play football with and you are just 7 years old ? Call your parents ? really ? Or you can plan for future. Check the video for what i mean :)

You definitely need company to play Football. This kid learns it the hard way. But he(or atleast the ad creator) is smart enough to solve the problem. Remember Every Problem has a solution- you just gotta find it. 

Mob Mentality

The term “mob mentality” is used to refer to unique behavioral characteristics which emerge when people are in large groups. 

The first time I came across this in text is in 10th standard when i read the play excerpt of Julius Cesar by Shakespeare. Caesar is killed by Brutus and et al, they are now conspiring to convince the Romans that Caesar was indeed the bad guy and had to be killed. At this point Antony enters.Seeing the body of Ceasar is shocked and now wants a chance to speak at the funeral of Caesar. Brutus accepts the humble request(BIG mistake Big guy) though Cassius puts in his concerns. After all Antony was going to speak after Brutus finishing his speech. Brutus was confident in swaying the people in his favor;he does it - with ease.

The scene starts with Brutus convincing the citizens about why Caesar must not live. Citizens agree completely with Brutus and they even praise him. But then comes Antony starts off with the epic lines -Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; Then spins the web of words which not only make the citizens against Brutus but they also start to praise Caesar for his greatness.
In a span of 30 min the minds of the citizens waver about the ideologies of Brutus and Antony. My ma'am then said Antony played with the "Mob Mentality" of the Romans thus etching Caesar as a great figure in their minds and defeating Brutus and co.
You can read the play here.

Nowadays too I see such "Mob Mentality" still. The main platforms where I notice an impact is Twitter and the electronic media. Twitter has this nice feature called 'Trending Topics' which shows the most tweeted words by the users. Most of the time it will be very useful ones - #goldenglobes ,#oscars, Sachin Tendulkar, etc... But sometimes Twitter is taken over by some small topic which is very irrelevant and most users don't care about it. Then why does it trend? Because there are too many people asking why it is trending ? I know it sounds stupid and people who are involved as dumb but it happens quite often these days. Though Trending Topics itself fuels the users to act like a 'Mob'. Just because it is on the trending topic more users tweet about it.  I had this day when Maple Syrup was trending and I was clueless why would so many users think about something like that simultaneously. Just because some 16 year old ( viz Bieber) wants to have Maple syrup for breakfast it doesn't mean everyone should re-tweet it to show their support (come on everyone isn't eating maple syrup for breakfast!! ).
Such blind following also happens in India too often. There are some people who support organizations/ideologies because some-other person is also following it. (I am not talking about my friend Rohit ). Today Chandrababu naidu says "No Telangana" you shout a "Jai" for him day after he says "Jai for Telangana" again you shout a "Jai" for him. Isn't it time for us to stand for what we believe rather than rally behind so-called politicians.
The media (usually the television) also does this. I observe that for some cases the media gives a lot of (unwanted)attention. I really can't say whether it is intentional or not. We give too much importance to the TV channel reports too. When they have an expose about something then everyone point the finger at the accused and make him almost a criminal. No facts verified,no experts consulted, none. I can say about the Talwars in "Arushi" case. Even without the CBI filing the report "sources" told every news channel that the father was closest to become the criminal until they closed the case. Actually the Arushi's father was even the first to be arrested. At that time every on-looker was pretty convinced he was the killer but later he was released on lack of evidence.

This kind of judgement on our part is very wrong. We  must wait on the facts, weigh the balance and then make a stand. It isn't very nice of you to make the fastest allegation on your opponent but making the right statement counts.

Capitalism II - The game

About a year and a half ago I was in search of strategy- both RTS and turn based games. This was mainly due to my liking of games like Rise of Nations and Civilization IV. But I had enough military action through these games. I was now searching for a more peaceful (I mean no bullets and blood) but more enthralling game. I didn't really care about the graphics that the game presented because I had already played games like Age of Empires ,Wolfenstein ,Doom -Though these games lacked the visual edge, they had the content to make us play these games time and again. Some Google searches and I am introduced this new game - Capitalism II. The first comments on this looked like "The second part way better than the first one". I never plan to play the first part but it was comforting that this was a second installment of the game so I did expect  it to be fun. Moreover this game belonged to a different genre- business. Never really played a business game other than Monopoly. So I grabbed this game.
When I installed the game I told myself this does not have rich visuals. This also brought smiles to my face because my system could run this game without any problems. The introduction video also showed some promise , it was going to be totally about business. The game puts you as the Head of a company. You take all the decisions. You have to build the shops to sell, factories to manufacture and research centers to discover new products. You also get to deal with financial activities of the company like stock options and loans with banks. There is both single-player as well as multi-player. Single-player mode has the campaign mode in which you are given some specific scenarios to complete. You can also start a game with your own scenario. You are engaged in the company activities completely. The best part is the variations you can implement and experience. You can build from a car to a camera, rare sheep and sell leather or sell a silicon chip or the entire computer system itself.

I liked the games idea. I started playing ,but as usual,very early I was totally involved in winning the game (be better than your competitor in the market). Initially it was so difficult for me to really stay up to the computer AI but I learnt the trade pretty quickly. I usually manufacture and sell the items which have more profit margin and try to make more money out of the apartments. I also like to control the manufacture to the root hence will have factories to build from the scratch rather than depend upon the Seaport and other suppliers.

If you want to play a game which is of strategy genre with a difference then this game is worth a try.