As I download the Doom 3 G4 Tech Video at the Computer Centre, I thought I would make this post.  Next class is at 11:50 AM and I just finished doing some work for Episode.  Episode is the first major event at TAPMI for the freshers, and it's the seniors responsibility to see that it achieves the underlying objective.  Of course, I cannot reveal much about it now for fear of leaking what we are working on.  It's enough to say that we seniors have been working really hard for the last week, designing promotional material (paper and electronic!), planning out other things, etc.  I slept at 4:30 AM this morning because of a major task!  Anyway, tonight at 8:30 PM is the Induction into Episode for the freshers, where everything that we have been working on will be revealed.

I would also like to now congratulate my brother Varun - he has now got admission into CVR College of Engineering and Technology in the Information Technology branch!  This is really good news because you can never predict the result of these things - there is so much competition that it is not really possible to be sure that one would get a seat in the college of one's choice!  So I'm really happy for Varun and I wish him all the best for his Engineering course.  I heard that my parents and Varun went and saw Spiderman 2 yesterday.  That is something I have not yet seen, but I am waiting to watch it!

Srikanth, one of my very good friends, left for the U.S. (Los Angeles) yesterday morning at 4 AM.  I gave him a call at around 3:30 AM (I was awake, working on Episode stuff), wishing him all the best, and I am restating that here!

Hmmm... as soon as this download finishes (about 10 minutes left) I will write this and some other stuff that I've saved/downloaded onto CD.  There is also a video of the Freshers Party that we had some days back lying on this computer.  I am going to write that as well.

EDIT: I'm looking at several interesting posts at Doomworld, regarding some long awaited projects such as Millennium and RTC-3057, and news about Opulent's demosites.

All right, I know I'm a little early, but I wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother Varun... he will be 17 tomorrow!

I couriered him a birthday package a couple of hours back, and it will reach Hyderabad on 22nd.  I won't reveal the package contents here until he receives it because I don't want to spoil the surprise!

Oh and Varun, if you are reading this, you can track the package by going to DTDC.biz.  The package will be dispatched tomorrow, and the consignment number is B13832395.

And I just remembered something that I wanted to post earlier.  My cellphone number in Manipal is 98801 30802.  I haven't updated that on the site because FTP access is restricted on the college computers.  Once that's enabled then I can make the changes on the respective page.

Gayab CD

My MIP Presentation got over on 15th evening and it went well.  I've also got my MIP Report almost ready to print.  Tomorrow, we will all have our photos taken for the Placement Brochure.  My slot is at around 10:45 AM, so probably after that I will get my report printed.

Tomorrow evening is a Fresher's Party for our juniors at TAPMI.  That should be fun.  Preparations for the upcoming Episode are also under way!

Reservoir Dogs DAT files from VCD NTSC to VCD PAL.  Needed to tinker The Thing and The Ninth Gate.  Got Manipal T-shirt yesterday, with Mini CD-R.

Over the last couple of days, we had the forum and committee presentation for the juniors at college.  I helped out in the Litcom and Omega Forum presentations.  I wasn't able to see all the presentations though, but the ones that I did see were very well done.

Speaking of presentations, I have my MIP (Management in Practice) Phase 1 Presentation today - where I will get to talk about all the work that was done as part of my summer project at TCS Hyderabad.  I made the PPT for this yesterday and I took printouts of the slides a few minutes ago.

After making the PPT yesterday, I watched the Director's Cut Edition of Drive on CD last night.  Excellent movie, although I think the music in the other edition is better.

I have a Strategic Management class in 50 minutes from now and there's some reading to be done for that.  So before I go to do that, I will just mention that Doom 3 has Gone Gold!

I have Consumer Behaviour class in about fifteen minutes or so, so I will make this quick.

Doom-wise, the last major thing that happened was the release of Reanimated, the two-level collaborative WAD by Varun and me.  That has got some excellent feedback from a lot of people and I'd like to thank them all for it!  Rich Sham and Richie Agnew also sent demos of Reanimated, thanks for that; and Ismaele did a review of the WAD on his site.  As usual it is a detailed review, thanks a lot to Ismaele for it.

Also, I happened to notice earlier on that Colin Phipps of the Doom Underground did a review for my map, Congestion Control 2.  Thanks cph for the review, having one of my maps reviewed by him is a really cool thing!

Ah, we meet again.  And again it is my fault for waiting so long to update.  Anyway, this time I am not going to write a million page long update with all the news from the past months.  Rather, I will just focus on the important stuff.  So here we go.

I spent a wonderful two and a half-plus months at Hyderabad and had a good experience at the Phase 1 of my Management in Practice Programme at TCS Hyderabad.  After that, myself and eight others worked on a two-week project (June 1-15) for HelpAge India.  After that, until June 23rd, I basically watched movies, played Doom and did the usual stuff until it was time to go back to Manipal for my second year at TAPMI.

I left Hyderabad on 23rd along with my parents and Varun, and we reached Manipal the next evening.  On 25th, we went to a few scenic places in Manipal and Udupi.  On 26th, my parents and brother came along with me to the institute and we met most of the faculty.  They left back to Hyderabad that night.

On 28th June, the new term started, and it's been good for me so far.  In this term, there are a few compulsory courses that everyone has to take... the others are determined by the choice of elective subjects that one takes.  I've taken two HR subjects (Organisational Psychology and Strategic HRM), two Systems subjects (System Analysis and Design, Enterprise Resource Planning) and a Marketing Subject, Consumer Behaviour, this term.  I guess my schedule is less hectic as compared to those who have taken Marketing and/or Finance.

At Hyderabad I read Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, and just yesterday I finished reading the same author's The Mechanism of Mind.  I guess I've developed an interest in this kind of psychological stuff!  I am also currently on Chapter Seven of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, which I find to be an absolutely amazing, fantastic and fascinating book.  And after getting this far into the book, I think that it was a work of genius on the part of screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher, who adapted the book into the equally amazing movie.

That's more or less all the important stuff that I can remember now.  More about Doom and other things in a later post!