Ah, we meet again after several weeks... and here I am with the usual set of long updates!  Days have passed by pretty much uneventfully - time seems only punctuated by assignments, tests, exams, CD writing, and stuff like that.  As you would expect, here is a summary of everything that happened between the last update and now, presented week wise as always!

• Fri-Fri, 9-16 Jan: A week of several classes and assignments.  There was one assignment in Human Resource Management in this week, and this one I felt particularly proud of!  Other than that I had my usual download sessions, followed by writing those downloads on a CD-R.  I also started work on a new E4M8 for The Ninth Gate (more on this later) and played some new Doom levels.  Yoga classes also started during this week and they got over in the next.
• Sat-Sat, 17-24 Jan: 17th was the Founder's Day celebration at our institute and so in the evening there was a function organised at Hotel Valley View.  I got to see the very well (and professionally!) made Brand Video of TAPMI.  The video is part of TAPMI's Brand Building exercise and was produced by Mudra Communications.  That day, Varun also completed a wallpaper he made.  An unusual one because it was based on the BBC show Click Online.  Varun even sent it to their email address and later got a reply (on 21st) from Chris Long, the show's producer!  On 17th night, I started building a Doom map using some of Nick Baker's recoloured textures.  I worked on this off and on through the week.  On Sunday I watched Paycheck on CD.  Later in the week I played Half-Life and on 24th night I watched Ek Hasina Thi.
• Sun-Sat, 25-31 Jan: Was busy with some college work or the other through the week.  In between it all I had the chance to work on some Doom maps and also play some.  On 26th (Republic Day) there was a Blood Donation Camp organised at TAPMI and I donated as well.  On 30th I got some software from Arun Ravindran, most notably Dyne:Bolic, a bootable CD Linux distribution.  This particular CD is more oriented towards multimedia so there is a collection of video, graphic and sound editors.  On Saturday I watched Seven on a very good quality CD.  And I started compiling what would soon become the VarunCD.
• Sun-Sun, 1-8 Feb: On Sunday, I downloaded several movie posters, especially for upcoming movies like Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, etc.  I also bought some CD-Rs, including two with the proper case, for sending to Varun.  The idea behind the VarunCDs as I called it, was that I could send him some photos, scanned drawings, a lot of stuff that I'd downloaded (including some larger Doom files that would be impractical to download on a 56k modem), etc. on a CD.  On that day Varun also made a new design for my site, which I've now set as the default look.  Oh, and some useless information: at around 10:24 PM on Feb. 1, the cumulative time that I'd talked on my cellphone was 33:03:33 hours.  On 2nd I watched History of the World, Part I at The Den, on recommendation of my friend Sameer.  On 3rd I watched Resident Evil for the second time, on CD.  On Wednesday, we had classes starting from 9:30 AM (the first hour was free), so before I left from the hostel, I started downloading Half-Life: Uplink, and it was done by 12:30 PM.  I later wrote that on CD as well.  We had a test the next day, but the previous night I finished compiling the VarunCDs.  Yes, there were two - called VarunCD: Playware (containing general stuff) and VarunCD: Mindware (consisting of software).  I designed covers for the CDs and also drew them with a black marker.  There was also a similar decoration for the discs themselves in the same style.  The covers were designed so that if you took them out of the CDs and placed them side by side, they'd form one big image (with a representation of Varun's face in the centre).  I was pretty happy with the way it all came out!  On 6th, there was some good news, as I found out that I had got the 35th rank in my batch, with a CGPA of 2.9926, for the second term.  35 out of about 140 is not at all bad, eh?  On 8th I got a promotional video about Manipal (produced by Kasturba Medical College).  It's a 104 MB MPEG clip and is really good.  I also downloaded several WADs that day.  I also helped out Guruprasad and Mohit of Finance Forum on a crossword puzzle.
• Mon-Sun, 9-15 Feb: Some of the biggest downloads I've ever done happened over the three days starting Monday.  It all started at around 6 AM when I was looking for a trailer of Alien vs. Predator.  I found that on a site called Horror Drome.com, and not only that I also found a couple of amateur horror movies for download.  The first one I downloaded was Residen Tivol (Italian, 39 minutes, 95.2 MB WMV).  This download happened through the day, and got completed in the evening just after the Finance Forum Crossword got over.  That night I started the second movie download, this was Biocrisis (Swedish movie in English, 33 minutes, 550 MB DivX).  About 400 MB or so of it downloaded through the next day.  I watched 28 Days Later on that day (10th) and later got some stuff on CD from Arun.  On 11th morning (7 AM) I wrote the completed Biocrisis download (it finished at 5:43 AM) and watched in the afternoon.  I watched 12 Monkeys on HBO on 12th night and saved the Resident Evil: Apocalypse trailer on the next day.  On 14th Arun, Anjani, IK and me (Systems Committee) took a photograph for Interface, the souvenir magazine which would be given to the seniors at the end of March, when they pass out of TAPMI.  I wrote these photos and Arun's Photoshop modification of one of them ("Hangyo Wolverine") on CD on 15th.
• Mon-Tue, 16-17 Feb: Mid Term Exams were there, with Business Law (10 AM - 12 PM) and Business Research (2:30 PM - 3:30 PM) on 16th.  After those two exams, in the evening, we had a discussion on the 34-page case for the MISS exam the next day.  Varun's Chemistry Practical Exams got over, I also watched the trailer of Resident Evil: Apocalypse with sound, and read the William Gibson short story Johnny Mnemonic (on which the movie was based).  The next day's exams were Management Information Systems (10 AM - 12 PM) and Written Analysis & Communication (2:30 PM - 3:30 PM), followed by a Human Resource Management Quiz (4 PM - 4:45 PM).  After coming back, me and some friends watched Swordfish, went for the President Elections at the institute at 6:30 PM, and later in the night I watched 3 episodes of South Park.
• Wed-Sun, 18-29 Feb: On 18th, Syscom took another photo in the Systems Lab (my idea of arranging four monitors side by side, with us standing behind them), and later on Arun worked some of his Photoshop magic to put some graphics on the screens.  On Friday Prof. R. C. Natarajan gave us an unusual Business Awareness quiz - the whole thing was in the form of a crossword puzzle!  On Saturday, my group members and myself went to Paradise Isle (at Malpe Beach) along with some of our seniors for dinner.  I also had a long talk with Arun about the proposed Online Election System for the Forums/Committees.  On 24th, I got a Doom-style total conversion for Wolfenstein 3D called Dead World Rising from Wolfenstein3d.co.uk.  The next day, I got to hear the song Kyle's Mom is a B*tch from South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut.  On Thursday (26th) I had a long day, but I was successful in getting some Outbound photos scanned, in addition to scanning Rupak's "Products of a Sound Mind".  I wrote all this stuff on CD.  Also got the Hell Revealed 2 Demopack.  On 28th there were elections for the various BrandScan and Atharva committees, but as far as Syscom was concerned, myself and Anjani were the only two people who stood for that committee, so we were automatically in.  On 28th, I watched In the Mouth of Madness on CD.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed it even more now compared to the many times I'd seen the movie before!  On 29th there was the concluding classes of Business Law, and Prof. Lionel Aranha pointed out an interesting fact - this would probably be the last time in our lives that we'd have a class on February 29th!

That's it for the January and February news.  In the next post, we have all the news from March!