Karthik82.com Reloaded
Since August 2006, I have been making all my blog posts on my own website,
Karthik82.com, so please go there for the blog, my artwork, movie reviews, Doom content, and lots more!
Shifted to WordPress
Been having trouble publishing to my blog recently... so I've created an account at WordPress.com.
The new blog is at
http://karthik82.wordpress.com.
V for Vendetta: Buying the book
No, I haven't seen the movie yet, this post is about the book
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, which I finished reading today.
I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie, so last Wednesday, I went to Landmark at Spencer's Plaza with the intention of buying it (I had seen copies there a couple of months back). However, on that day, all copies of the book they had had been sold out, so they said they would get a copy for me in a few days' time. I told them that it was a bit difficult for me to come to Landmark as I live far away — so they offered to deliver the book home! I got my copy this morning, at around 8:30 AM. Must say it was really nice of them to deliver the book home!
The book is pretty expensive here — it costs Rs. 845 (one more in my collection of expensive comics — after
Watchmen,
Crisis on Infinite Earths and
The Art of Hellboy). I finished reading the book in the morning, and it was a wonderful piece of work! I will write another post on this, but anyway, I know that re-reading the book will definitely be even more rewarding.
Needless to say, I'm very happy to have got the book! Looking forward to watching the movie now (I hear it's very good, though some articles say that the anarchist themes in the book have been diluted/simplified/misrepresented in the movie).
DOOM³
I've been playing
Doom³ recently. It is an awesome game. Of course, the older games still appeal to me more as they run better on my computer, and they present an altogether different experience to the player.
Anyway,
Doom³ is far more horror-oriented than action — the cinematic quality of the graphics and the superb sound effects all combine to produce an unforgettable experience. Simply put, it's like being immersed in a horror movie, and the game has made me jump in fright on several occasions.
I'm reminded of what
Trent Reznor said on the
Doom III: The Legacy video a few years back — the game focuses on getting into your head and making it a scary place to be.
I'm still at an early stage in the game, so I don't know how things will be as it progresses. Hopefully the "monster suddenly appearing out of the dark"-type jump scares won't get too repetitive!
I also love the theme music for the game, by
Tweaker.
SIDE NOTE: Speaking of Tweaker and Trent Reznor, over the last few months I've become quite a fan of Nine Inch Nails. Favourite songs: "Closer", "The Hand that Feeds", "Heresy", "Only", "Head Like a Hole".
Command Control Picture
I had trouble publishing to the blog in the past few days, so I couldn't post this photo. The problem seems to be fixed now, so here is the pic (click for a larger image):
EDIT (8:50 PM): Perhaps a bit of explanation of the items in the picture will be good —- The various items shown in the picture (yes, including the table itself) have been purchased over the last 6 months or so.
- The picture was taken with Sandip's camera.
- Command Control is the name of Episode 1, Level 4 of Doom.
- The two laminated photos are by my brother Varun. I actually bought them from him — that's how much I liked the pieces!
- The RIPPLES award was for painting.
- An earlier photo actually showed the table with a full mug of tea, but unfortunately the picture was not good (besides, I forgot to keep the USB drive there).
- The Batman toy I bought, the Pokemon toy came free with a "Kiddy Meal" at Marrybrown Restaurant.
- The desktop wallpaper on the computer today is not the Doom one — it is now a scene from a Hellblazer comic (issue #27 if I remember right — the story is "Hold Me" written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Dave McKean).
John Constantine: Hellblazer
Started reading
John Constantine: HELLBLAZER. Read three issues so far, they were good. I like the atmosphere in the books and the dark humour.
I especially like the stylish writing by Jamie Delano.
Also read Warren Ellis's
Orbiter. Good book.
Command Control
I had taken a photo of my table at home with all the electronic equipment set up. This is called "E1M4: Command Control". Wanted to post it earlier, but there was some problem publishing to the blog so this didn't happen.
Will put it up next chance I get.
Watched
Varun's latest video,
Drive recently. Nice stuff!
I will be going to Hyderabad again on 23rd (the flight is at 5:45 AM!). Will be back in Chennai on 26th night.
SPACE — The Final Frontier
The "space" in the headline refers to computer-related storage space, which I managed to accumulate more of, over this weekend.
On Saturday, I went to Supreme Computers and bought the following items:
- 40 GB hard disk, with a case that allows me to connect it to my computer through a USB port.
- 128 MB USB drive for smaller transfers of data.
This is pretty cool stuff, and I've given Doom-inspired names to the hard disks (the one on my laptop is called
Phobos Anomaly and the external one is
Deimos Anomaly. The folder on Deimos Anomaly which I use for temporary stuff is called
Containment Area.
Yesterday, Sandip and myself went around Ambattur OT and took several photos of the area on his digital camera. Also took a photo of my table with all the electronic equipment (I call this
Command Control). I will post this next chance I get.
As for movies, I watched
James (pretty good) and
House of the Dead (OK) recently.
Looking forward to watching
Varun's latest video. Planning to download it at the browsing centre tonight on my USB drive and watch it at home.
Empty Spencer's
Kamal is in Chennai on official work for a few days, so on Sunday, he, Rama and myself met in Spencer's Plaza. We had dinner at The Noodle House there.
A couple of things distinguished this meeting from an ordinary one. First, there was the presence of a lot of electronic equipment — I brought along my laptop to show them
Varun's
Dark Machine video, and Rama brought along his digital camera.
It was around 10 PM by the time we finished dinner, so at that time Spencer's Plaza was practically deserted. So we took photos of ourselves in front of closed shops, in empty corridors, etc. Then transferred the photos to my computer before going back home.
First Post of 2006
Well, am I still allowed to post in here?
I feel bad that I've left this blog neglected for such a long time. As I've mentioned before, as I don't have an internet connection at home, I'm not able to post regularly. "Then why don't you do it from office", you might ask. Somehow, it seems that when I enter office (at around 9:30 AM) I am entering into a different world, and my "real" and "normal" self only kicks in after leaving (around 8:30 PM). Also, things are mostly quite hectic so there is not much time for thinking and writing.
But that is probably a mental block, so maybe I should throw these thoughts out and just keep posting anyway. Here is a first step in that direction!
So what has been happening in the past few months (has it been that long already)?
- iCALMS Training in Hyderabad: From Jan 23 to Feb 3, I got the chance to be at home, in Hyderabad. There is a new competency and learning management system called iCALMS that is being rolled out in TCS (it will be operational organisation-wide by March), and when it was rolled out in Chennai I was pretty interested in conducting training sessions on usage of this system. Therefore I was nominated to go to Hyderabad and assist in the rollout there. Besides the fact that I got to spend a lot of time at home, I really enjoyed conducting iCALMS sessions there.
- Movies: Additions to my Movie collection have been numerous (various formats — VCD, DVD, etc.), and I got to see a lot of really good movies. One real standout movie out of the lot is Donnie Darko — I've watched the Theatrical as well as the Director's Cut, and read a couple of analyses of the movie, and it's a very fascinating film. Will write a review for it later. Other good movies watched recently include Mystic River (fantastic!!), Zinda (pretty good remake of Oldboy), Waking Life (interesting, philosophical movie), Office Space (good comedy), Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) (stylish, exciting, and fun Russian horror/fantasy/science fiction movie), Bubba Ho-Tep (great fun).
- Doom-related: Not much happening on this front, though I enjoyed AgentSpork's Simplicity (played all maps on Skill 1, though I cheated with the boss maps) and Jan Van Der Veken's Classic Episode 2: The Singularity Complex and Congestion1024 (wiki). Editing-wise, I have been doing some random mapping, but nothing completed so far.
- Drawing: Did a few drawings in notebook, etc. Maybe I will put these up sometime.
- Comics: A few months ago I read the entire Preacher series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Awesome. Also a fan of Mike Mignola's Hellboy now, and I recently bought The Art of Hellboy for Rs. 1295.
That's all until the next update...
Holiday Greetings!
Another trip to Hyderabad... I left Chennai on Friday morning and reached home that afternoon. After two days at home I am again heading back to Chennai.
My flight (
Go Air) is delayed by 15 minutes, so I am here now in Hyderabad Airport, typing this. Also downloading updates for Norton Internet Security.
I got to see a few movies over the past few days:
Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Director's Cut (very good),
Linkin Park: Live in Texas (super),
Cellular (also good) and
Dus (average).
Planning to watch
Requiem for a Dream and
Land of the Dead soon.
Oh, and here's wishing everyone a very Happy Holiday Season.
Intermittence
Thought I should post this to let people know that I am, in fact, alive.
I had a terrific 6 days in Hyderabad. The fact that it was Diwali on November 1 was incidental. What mattered was I got to spend time with my family, watch some movies (including the fantastic
Saw II), play Doom and Quake 3 over a bluetooth network with
Varun and in general, relax. Varun and myself deathmatched on his own creation,
Short 'n Quick 2.
My laptop has 30 GB more data on it now!
The past few days have been more of the usual, punctuated by the fact that I won the first prize in a Painting Competition, organised as part of TCS' Ripples 2005. The prize was a Rs. 251 gift voucher at Odyssey, and these are the items I ended up buying:
- Many Gotham Comics! So glad to see the newer batch of them after a very long time. The DC titles have the company's new logo on them too! Disappointed though that the latest Planetary issue isn't out yet.
- Fanboy by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones (and a host of other comic book artists). This TPB collects issues 1-6 of the series. I read #1 and #2 last night, it's very good.
- VCDs of The Last Boy Scout and Natural Born Killers.
- A Justice League Unlimited action figure. I got the Batman one.
Movies watched recently (in no particular order):
- Saw II (Fantastic! Better than the original!)
- Equilibrium (very good)
- Red Eye (exciting thriller)
- Ghajini (expected a Memento ripoff but it wasn't, and I liked it)
- Submerged (starring Steven Seagal, low-budget action directed by Anthony Hickox. It wasn't good)
- Akira (superb SF anime)
- Hellraiser: Hellworld (OK movie, part 7, Hellraiser: Deader was better)
I read Thomas Harris's
Red Dragon also recently. It's a great book.
I've also been working on some Doom levels (small ones). Actually, if I put together the scraps of unfinished levels I have, I should be able to get a small 3-map or so episode done! When I went to Hyderabad this time I copied the levels of
The Ninth Gate, including E4M8, which is the only map left to be done, and I plan to work on it in my free time.
I have bought lots of DVDs in the last couple of months. These are the ones which have sometimes 3, 4, or 5 movies on them. One of my favourite DVDs is the one with all four
Alien movies on it!
I do realise this is a somewhat incoherent post. It'll have to do, as I'm sitting in a browsing centre. I wanted to get the
MicroDVD player so that I can watch an AVI of
Casshern with subtitles!
More later.
Posting from Chennai Airport
OK, so it is now 5:05 AM and I am at Chennai airport. I left from Ambattur with Rajith at 3:30 AM. Rajith has boarded his flight to Mumbai.
My flight to Hyderabad only leaves at 6:50 AM, which means I have a good 45 minutes left before checking in. I expected that there would be internet access here, and it turns out I'm right. Downloaded
Varun's "Blur" wallpaper, and reading
The Arrow's
review for
Saw II.
I will be in Hyderabad for about a week. Returning to Chennai on 6th evening.
My new Compaq Presario
I've just bought a HP Compaq Presario V2317AP notebook computer.
The shop here has a wireless Internet Connection set-up so this post is being made from my computer!!
More news later...
EDIT (23 Sep 2005 3:25 PM): This is what the machine looks like... it's very cute!
It's an awesome computer — 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk, with a DVD Writer. I love the widescreen display it has! Was playing Doom and Quake 3 last night on it with earphones. It's a great experience! I'm also going to get a scanner and plan to get an Internet connection soon.
The Universe will Never be the Same!
Worlds will Live. Worlds Will Die. And the Universe will Never be the Same Again...I bought a copy of the DC Comics collected edition of
Crisis on Infinite Earths yesterday at Landmark, Spencer's Plaza. At a cost of Rs. 1078.50, it's a very expensive book, but worth the buy. It's written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Pérez, with a fantastic cover by
Alex Ross. I've read the first chapter so far, and it seems like an awesome book.
I also got myself a lot of other comics, including the Gotham Comics Super Special of
JLA, featuring the story
JLA: A League of One, luxuriously painted by Christopher Moeller. In all, I spent about Rs. 1400 on comics yesterday.
Also watched
Madagascar and
Stealth yesterday at Sathyam Cinemas. On 25th, I got to see
12 Angry Men in a PROPEL session at TCS SNR.
