Once again, due to certain circumstances I could not update the site in the recent past.  Anyway, Atharva 2004 went off very well (3rd, 4th, 5th December) — it was the biggest Atharva yet.  The Quiz on the Beach (with quizmaster Giri "Pickbrain" Balasubramanium) on 4th was fantastic, and on the last day, former Miss World Yukta Mookhey was one of the judges at the Personality Contest organised as part of Atharva.  The TAPMI Systems Group's Treasure Hunt game, which Arun Panicker and myself designed and programmed, was a big hit as well, and everyone who played it had a lot of praise to offer.

Since then, the conclusion of this term at TAPMI has been drawing closer.  By now all the courses have wrapped up and the End Term exams start tomorrow.  After this there is supposed to be a break from 25th to 2nd January 2005.  I have planned to go home during this time.

I got to see some very good movies recently.  One of them is director Vincenzo Natali's Cube, which I never thought I'd get to see.  Then came Team America: World Police, which is, as might be expected from the South Park creators, extremely hilarious, offensive and clever!  I also watched director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell's fantastic horror-thriller-mystery Saw, and was so inspired by it that I made a drawing based on it, which I later turned into a stylish desktop wallpaper.  Most recently I got to see the 2003 Special Edition of The Lion King, and it was as brilliant as ever.

Important Information: When I go to Hyderabad this time, I am planning to upload ALL of my recent drawings and wallpapers.  Trust me, this is quite a big lot of stuff, as many of my TAPMI friends will agree.

Movies I want to see in the future include director Park Chan-Wook's thriller Oldboy, the recently released Blade: Trinity and Seed of Chucky.  I also watched the trailer of the Keanu Reeves starrer Constantine, which seems interesting as well.

Thought I should post just to let everyone know that proper updates will come soon — I am just very busy at the moment.

To summarise quickly what happened between the last update and now, soon after coming back from Vista, everyone here at TAPMI was very busy preparing for BrandScan 2004.  BrandScan got over on 20th and 21st November, and it was the biggest and most professionally done BrandScan yet!  My main contributions to our Coats India stall include three paintings and a computer game, which I built in Doom (Doom used for Disguised Market Research?  This has got to be a first...)!  Pretty soon after that, I got the chance to spend a couple of days at home — myself and five others went to Hyderabad to take part in ICFAI's event Trishna 2004.  We left Manipal on 25th night, and returned on 30th morning.  TAPMI was runners-up for Best Overall Team at ICFAI!

And tomorrow, Atharva 2004 starts here at TAPMI.  And tomorrow afternoon, TSG (TAPMI Systems Group) will be conducting our Treasure Hunt game.  So last night myself and Arun Panicker worked on putting finishing touches on the game's code and I made a Game Manual for it.  We've expanded the game for Atharva, it's bigger and more difficult than its previous incarnation at TechFest.

I've seen some very good movies recently, including The Shining and Hellraiser: Inferno.  Yesterday I managed to procure a copy of Vincenzo Natali's Cube on VCD, which I am waiting to see.  I also bought the VCD box set of Alien Trilogy at Hyderabad.