A couple of days back I came across something interesting (thanks to Joblo.com) — a "fan film" called Batman: Dead End.  The Joblo article actually mentioned this in a news post talking about a new fan-created fictional trailer called Grayson, which I eventually downloaded.  I then downloaded Batman: Dead End, only to later discover that the download had stopped midway and I'd only got half the file.  Anyway I re-downloaded it (and this time, I got the high-res version) yesterday, and also got the "Making of" featurette for it.  Now for my comments:

• Grayson (Runtime 5:27, Director: John Fiorella, download page [TFN], Joblo article) — A very stylish trailer with some great concepts.  Batman dead, Grayson putting on the Robin costume again and fighting The Joker, Superman and Wonder Woman, Penguin making an appearance... it's all very nicely done.  Pity that it's only a trailer and that there won't be an actual film!  Best shot (you can see it in the Joblo page) is one that comes at the very end of the trailer — this one has the Joker manically laughing with HA HA HA apparently written in blood on the walls behind him.
• Batman: Dead End (Runtime 8:04, Director: Sandy Collora, download page [TFN], official site, Joblo article) — This was not so much an amateur film as others I've seen, since as you'll see from the director's site, he's worked on several films before.  The movie was made for a budget of $30,000 and features Batman fighting The Joker, who has just escaped from Arkham Asylum.  And then Aliens and Predators show up.  There may not be much of a story here, but the film is extremely stylish (I loved the dark, rainy and violent mood) and has some great creature effects.

Well, while all this stuff was downloading, I was working on my second Dark Tales comic called Doorways..., and I edited and computer-coloured 5 panels so far (that's half of the comic).  I also put together a small (two-panel) preview of it and emailed it to a few friends.

I have successfully downloaded over a GB of data over the last three days in the Systems Lab.  The computer that I normally work on, has been switched on all this time, and not only that, I didn't log off until yesterday!  Let's have a small list, shall we?

• Doom 3 Demo, 461 MB in about 17 hours

• Half-Life 2 Videos, 696 MB in about 20 hours

  • Gamespy Exclusive Video, 587 MB
  • Alyx Vance Technical Video, 54 MB
  • Walls Technical Video, 55 MB

• Game Videos, 47 MB (including game speedruns, and a clip of The Matrix Online)

• Movie Clips, 27 MB

  • Trailer of The Butterfly Effect, 11 MB
  • Several Clips from Creepy Clips.com, 16 MB

• Doom Builder (latest version, including patch), 6 MB

• Latest Doom WADs and other stuff, 24 MB

• Movie Scripts and Movie Related Pages, 6 MB

Yesterday, I was very relieved to finish my individual and my group contribution to the Strategic HR End Term Assignment.  While I was doing that, I also read the following Hellraiser-related documents, courtesy The Hellbound Web:

• Concepts & Guidelines for a Horror Anthology Series [PDF], a very interesting write-up on the very fascinating Hellraiser mythos
• Songs of Metal and Flesh [PDF], a dark, perverted and fascinating script for a comic, written by Peter Atkins

I've been in the Systems Lab for most of the day today, though so far I just had one class in the morning.  The next class is Management of Change, at 5:20 PM.

Before I talk about the Doom 3 Demo, I will first say that I successfully wrote all three of Varun's CDs.  As I'd mentioned in the previous post, I transferred all the (698 MB) data onto a computer where sharing folders was enabled, then transferred it from there again onto another computer with a CD Writer, and then wrote the disc.  So now all that's left is for me to make copies of these CDs and send them to Varun.

Yesterday we had the last session of T-Group Sensitivity Training starting at 1:30 PM.  But since I had to work on a Strategic HRM assignment, I got here (the Systems Lab) at around 11 AM itself, and started working on that.

That was not the only thing I started though.  I also started downloading the Doom 3 Demo from FileRush (doesn't require registration or anything).  I let the thing go on, attended the Sensitivity Training sessions (which got over in the evening), worked on the assignment, and left.

This morning at around 6:30 AM I checked the download folder from the hostel and was extremely pleased to see a 461 MB file called d3demo.exe in there!

So now what?  This morning at 9 AM we had an address by the Director to begin the 5th Term at TAPMI.  Then, some black coffee later, I am again in the Systems Lab, going to start another, bigger, download!  This is a 587 MB Gamespy Video of Half-Life 2, which is going to take another 4 minutes to start (I don't have a subscription to FilePlanet, so I have to wait in line for using the public servers).

I have two classes today, one at 11:50 AM and then one at 5:20 PM.  In the mean time I will be working on that assignment while the Half-Life 2 Video is downloading.

I am now in the Systems Lab, sitting with the intention of making a set of three CDs for Varun.  I compiled the data for the three discs, and have already written two of them.  The problem is, for the other one, I keep getting a "Session Fixation Error" with Nero Express.  I've managed to get four unusable CDs this way.  So what I am doing now is transferring the files to another computer on the network, transfer from there to another computer with a CD writer so that I can write the data.  Ah.

The data, by the way, consists of hundreds of MBs of videos that I downloaded (Doom 3 and other game videos, trailers, etc.), drawings, Doom WADs, and lots of other stuff.  I am going to courier him the CDs with a Manipal sweatshirt that I got for him two days back.  On that day I also got 50 CD-Rs and five comics — Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Batman, Tarzan and JLA.  I don't remember the issue numbers but they are the latest ones.  By the way, these are the ones published by Gotham Comics in India.  They are the ones who publish MAD Magazine here, and are coming out with Spider-Man India later on this year.

Well, T-Group Sensitivity Training has been going well for the past few days.  Tomorrow we will have the last sessions, and on 24th, college reopens for the 5th Term, the penultimate one for my Management course.  Varun's Engineering Course is also going to start soon.

Well, just a short post before I go for dinner.  My T-Group Sensitivity Training course started yesterday.  There are fourteen of us who have taken the course.  We had about six hours of this workshop yesterday, and about three and a half hours today.  The instructor taking this is Prof. Dilip Lahiri, who is a guest faculty.  He is taking a structured version of the training, where the focus is more on analysis of our responses to questionnaires.  There of course is some amount of group activity and transaction analysis too.

Now that it is vacation time, the hostel is considerably emptier than usual.  And those of us who are staying back are having a grand time, watching lots of movies.  For instance, yesterday I watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels again.  Though I've seen this movie many times, this was the first time I'm watching an uncensored version (the TV versions had excised some of the scenes containing violence and language).  Of course, it is a brilliant film.

Last night in the Systems Lab, I got ZDoom working on the network, and played a bit of deathmatch (on Doom II, MAP01) with Kuldeep and Kamal.  Unfortunately we started at around 11:30 PM, so had to wind up by midnight because we had to be back in the hostel!

I just found out that the Doom 3 Demo is out!  Here is the 3D Gamers page with the download links.  The file size is 461 MB, and I am sure I can download it overnight if I wanted to, but I don't think I will.  Firstly, I cannot play this, and the only reason for downloading would be to send it to Varun on CD.  And I don't think it is worth doing that, because Digit magazine would probably have it on their next issue's CD or DVD.

Speaking of Varun's work, I just had a look at some of his recent (excellent) photos on his Bytephoto gallery, and he also sent me his latest wallpaper called Cyanosis, which is is best work till date.

I finally got to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse — twice!  Yesterday when I went to return the Event Horizon CD to Dollops, I noticed that he had just got the CD of this movie, and I immediately rented it.  Watched it last night, and finished watching it a second time with a different "audience" — mainly those who had Financial Markets exam today (so they could not watch it last night).

So how is it?  Well, after having watched it twice by now, I would say it is a really good movie (probably almost as good as the first, which I also thought was really good).  It takes place shortly after the first film, with the sinister Umbrella Corporation re-opening the Hive and unwittingly unleashing the T-virus on the entire population of Raccoon City, and turning everyone into flesh-hungry zombies.  And then Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up and walks out of the experimental lab at Raccoon City — and finds devastation (this is the first film's ending).  Umbrella realises that the infection cannot be contained — so they close off the entire city and plan to nuke it by morning.  Meanwhile, some of the Special Tactics And Rescue Services (S.T.A.R.S.) members, including Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) remain inside, and all must work together to get out by morning.  There's help in the form of one of Umbrella's top scientists, Ashford, who asks them to find his daughter, Angela (Sophie Vavasseur) who's somewhere in the city, in return for which he will help them get out.  Trouble is, Umbrella sees the outbreak and quarantine of Raccoon City as a perfect opportunity to test out their latest creation — Nemesis, a huge bazooka toting monster (who was once Matt Addison, played by Eric Mabius in the first film), against Alice (who has also been genetically reengineered).

As you can make out, the movie has a considerable amount of intriguing storyline behind it (written by Paul Anderson, who wrote and directed the first movie).  There's quite a nice link between the Ashford characters here and the first film as well (which I won't reveal here).  The movie's feel is different from the first.  I think Anderson gave his film a more slick, polished look, while this movie — directed by Alexander Witt (because Anderson was busy directing Alien vs. Predator) — has more a B-movie-like feel.  That's not a bad thing since I thought an atmosphere of dread came through quite nicely.  Of course, there are plenty of cool action scenes, and two strong female lead characters, a music score that suits the movie (though I don't think it compares to the awesome score of the first), creepy zombie scenes (a standout is the scene in the school with the kids).

A few complaints about the movie though: the fight scenes were edited in a quick-cut manner, and the camera keeps moving so much that it's sometimes difficult to make out what's happening.  And finally, although the movie did have the requisite amount of zombie and creature presence, I felt that there was a bit less gore/blood than there could have been.  Considering that the movie is rated R, they could have piled on the gore but they didn't.  Anyway, the movie ends with a terrific setup for Resident Evil: Afterlife (Anderson said that he always intended this series to be a trilogy)!  Overall, a good movie and especially highly recommended for the fans of the first movie.  Having never played the games these movies are based on, I have no basis for comparison, so I make my comments purely on the films themselves.

I finally finished the End Term Exams today, with Strategic Management (which went not very well... why do all these End Term Exam thingies end on a sour note?).  Varun gave a presentation today on C Pointers and Structures (his first presentation!) at SSI (which I heard went off really well).  As I mentioned before, I won't be going home this vacation as I have T-Group Sensitivity Training.  There was an intro session today and apparently the whole set of sessions requires about 40 hours.  We are free to schedule it though, and so tomorrow there's sessions from 1 PM till about 7:30 PM (with a break in between).  So I better go to sleep now!

Well, I just finished what I call the "comic-ization" of Outbreak, the first in my "Dark Tales" series of one-page (10 panel) comics.  What I did was to clean up the whole drawing (removing the notebook's lines), cut out the individual panels, replace the handwritten text with comic fonts, and then put them all properly together!  While I was at it I also put in a bit of colour in the whole thing.  The whole process took me about three hours to do, and that's why I didn't process Doorways..., the second in the series!

Yesterday I had a couple of End Term Exams, System Analysis and Design, followed by Consumer Behaviour.  SADN was pretty OK, but CRBR I did not do that well in.  Anyway after the exams I made a comic-ized version of Alien vs. Predator Impressions, an earlier drawing of mine.  That came out really well, and I later sent it across by email to a lot of people.

And last night, I watched Event Horizon on CD.  It is a great movie.

Today's exam on Ethics was a really good one.  In this set of End Term Exams, I think this is the first one I really had a good time writing — Prof. R. C. Sekhar had given questions on three cases that we had to write and I did them quite nicely I think.  Tomorrow at 2 PM is the last exam of mine, on Strategic Management.

Today I wrote my End Term Exam in ERP in the morning (9 AM - 11 AM).  And then, I had my usual black coffee...  After lunch, I spent a lot of time in the Systems Lab.  Firstly, I downloaded (and watched, without sound) the latest video footage released of Sin City.  I found it absolutely amazing.  Not just because it was in glorious 640x480 resolution and had great clarity (it was a 50 MB .MP4 file), but because of the stunning images within.

Sin City is an upcoming project of Robert Rodriguez (director of Desperado, Spy Kids, etc.), who is adapting the dark and violent comic series by Frank Miller.  Miller is co-directing the movie, and I read that Quentin Tarantino is also directing a part of it.  It has a big-name cast, including Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Michael Clarke Duncan, etc.  The movie also represents a new trend in filmmaking, called a digital backlot — here the actors are filmed entirely against a blue/green screen, and then all backgrounds are inserted in digitally during post-production.

I have not read any of the Sin City graphic novels, I have only had the fortune of seeing scarce few panels from them.  Anyway the video shows the initial footage that Rodriguez shot (featuring Josh Hartnett) to get Miller's approval on the project, and then shows more scenes from the film and compares them to panels from Miller's books.  The visual style of both had me watching in awe, the film is in stark black and white, and Miller's artwork has been adapted practically to perfection (right down to the lighting of each scene)!  Sin City is definitely a movie to look forward to.

And this is the page I got the video from.  I got to this page thanks to Joblo.com.  On a related note, writer/director Kerry Conran's movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is also one made using the digital backlot technique, and it releases in the US on the 17th of this month.  And finally, one more piece of movie news, it seems the third Resident Evil movie is going to be called Resident Evil: Afterlife, which I think is a very cool title!  I think Paul Anderson will be writing this one as well.

Now for some Doom news: I should have mentioned this in the last post — I played some of Rex Claussen's recently released Phobos Revisited, which is a 9-level set for classic Doom.  This is one levelset I had been looking forward to, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it on The /newstuff Chronicles this week.  I played four levels so far and I am really liking it.  It is a faithful remake of the original Doom's "Knee-Deep in the Dead" episode, and it is done very well (of course, that I always expected, since Rex is a very professional mapper).  I really wish I had my computer back (faulty motherboard, not yet fixed), so that I can play all the Doom maps I downloaded in the past few weeks!

I also downloaded several comic-book fonts today, most of them from Blambot.  Now I also edited my Fight Club Coffee Scene drawing (which I mentioned in an earlier post) — I removed the handwritten text and typed in the same thing using one of the comic fonts.  While I was at it, I also removed the lines on the drawing (you see, it was drawn on notebook paper).  The final result is pretty cool!  Now what I want to do is to use these fonts to produce a nicer version of my Dark Tales one-page comics.

EDIT (00:29): In the evening I also downloaded the trailer for Seed of Chucky from here.  I have not watched the trailer yet.

On the night of 11th, I watched Kung Pow: Enter the Fist on CD.  This was one crazy movie (written, directed and starring Steve Oedekerk, the man behind Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls), with the Chosen One tracking Master Pain.  The story doesn't mean much, but the movie is really funny.  They actually took footage from a 1976 Chinese movie and inserted actors digitally, and added new footage and effects.  The movie ends with the promise of a sequel, Kung Pow 2: Tongue of Fury.

I've done some more drawings since the last time, and here is the list!

• TAPMI Canteen Lunch (31 Aug): You might consider this a sequel to the "Perfect Evening Tea" drawing.  It shows some of the items I usually have for lunch at our canteen.
• Dark Tales Presents "Outbreak" (4 Sep): This is a one-page comic, with a story told in just ten panels.  As the name of the series suggests, it's a dark tale.
• Kamal's Left Hand of Doom (7 Sep): Kamal had a swelling on his hand and the people at KMC bandaged it up.  During one class he was holding his hand up giving me quite a clear view of it (though he was at the other end of the class) so I drew it.  The name is inspired by Hellboy's "Right Hand of Doom".
• Dark Tales Presents "Doorways..." (13 Sep): The second entry in the Dark Tales series.  This one completed this morning at 3 AM (yes, I read the ERP case, then I read a case for SADN class today, and after I had done that stuff, I got to the important thing, and completed the drawing).  For this, I wrote a script so that I knew what I would draw in the ten panels.  I did end up making some slight changes when actually drawing the comic.

About the Dark Tales series, I already have an idea for the third comic, which I am writing the script for.  Kamal has also started writing a story for another Dark Tales comic.  He says his story will require about 20 panels though.

Tomorrow, the End Term exams are starting.  I have just one exam tomorrow (ERP) so that's why I am sitting here in the Systems Lab typing this.

Yesterday, my site completed two years of being online!  I'd like to thank everyone who supports this site, and all the people who visit it regularly!

I would have updated yesterday itself... I actually DID write a post at about 5:45 PM, but when I tried posting it there was a network error due to which it didn't get uploaded.  Anyway, besides the site, there were a few other important events as well yesterday:

• Resident Evil: Apocalypse was released in the U.S. yesterday.  I read a couple of reviews of the movie, and apparently it's not as good as the first.  I've seen the trailer and it looks cool though, so I will have to see for myself.
• Arun Gopal and myself completed the SADN report yesterday.  We were working on the diagrams, etc. for it until about 3 AM that morning.  I had two classes yesterday, then there was the Business Awareness Quiz and presentation, and after that we completed the report.  Arun went for his SAPM class at 5:20 PM, I got the report printed, spiral bound and submitted it.  I was very relieved after that!
• The ERP assignment submission date was also yesterday.

Well, by now most of the courses in this term have come to an end.  On Tuesday, End Term exams are starting.  I have five End Terms in total, ending at 4:30 PM on 17th.  I won't be able to go home for vacation though, because I have to stay back here for T-Group Sensitivity Training.

XviD'd AvP to 289 MB, added to Hellraiser III CD, planning to do the same for Kung Pow now.

Busy with work the last couple of days, hence no posts.  Anyway today, I decided to try my hand at a little bit of Haiku writing, and I thought I'd post what I have so far.

For those who don't know what Haiku is, it's a style of writing poetry.  The Haiku poem consists of just seventeen syllables, where the first line has five, the second seven, and the third five again.  I've seen examples of Haiku in South Park and Fight Club, and I'd always thought they were very difficult to write.  Anyway it was after joining a community on orkut related to Haiku today, that I tried my hand at it.  So here goes:

Movie Related Haiku:

• Capcom made the game,
  Anderson adapted it,
  Zombies kill people.
  (related to Resident Evil)
• It's "Apocalypse".
  The second in the series.
  It releases soon.
  (related to Resident Evil: Apocalypse)
• By Tarantino...
  Pure indulgence on his part,
  Fun for us to watch.
  (suits practically any Quentin Tarantino movie)
• A twist at the end
  comes as a surprise, but I
  will keep it secret.
  (suits any movie with a twist at the end, such as Fight Club or The Sixth Sense)

Other Haiku:

• Marketing people
  have a quiz in "Sales" today.
  I'm not one of them.
• The 6:40 class,
  I call it the "night shift" class,
  we all feel sleepy.
• Inside the toilet,
  creative thoughts were coming,
  it is time to flush.
  (hehe)

Well, I am still in the Systems Lab now, but I will leave soon to go back to the hostel.  But first, I must have some coffee!

I finally got to see Hellboy on CD last night.  Actually it was this morning (1:30 AM to 3:30 AM).  Was trying to DivX Anacondas till then, after that took the corrupted CDs of Rakht to Comp Room till 4:30 AM.

I really enjoyed the movie!  Ron Perlman was perfectly cast in the lead role, as a demon from hell who was adopted during WW2, and 60 years later is part of the B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense).  Rasputin and his evil forces want to take over the world and literally unleash hell, so the B.P.R.D. agents must stop them.  I haven't read the Hellboy comics (save one ecomic!), which if I had done would have let me enjoy the movie even more.  Still, I thought the movie had great characters (Hellboy himself, Abe Sapien and Kroenen — terrific concepts), a fast pace, and great action.  There were a couple of scenes that reminded me of director Guillermo del Toro's Blade II (like the scene in the tunnels with the Sammaels here, and the Reaper hunt in B2; the Kroenen "dissection" and B2's Reaper autopsy), which was very cool, and I appreciated the icky effects (though they were limited).

Resident Evil: Apocalypse will be out very soon.  And according to one comment (based on a sneak preview) I read on the IMDb, it's even better than the first!

Yesterday I was occupied most of the day, though I just had one class.  In the afternoon, my ERP course group and me went to meet Prof. Ajoy Ivaturi at 1 PM.  Then after lunch, there was a Strategic HRM class which is worth mentioning in particular.  This is because we (our STHR group) presented a PPT which we had worked on the previous day.  This came out very well, and it was appreciated by the Director as well.

After that there was a lecture by Mr. Sauvik Chakraverti (on "The Errors of Manmohanomics") organised by the Civil Corporations Committee, which went on till about 7:30 PM.  After that, a group of us went to Woodlands for dinner.

Then, I watched The Ninth Gate on CD.  This movie stars Johnny Depp as Corso, an expert on rare books.  Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) is a collector who acquired "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" (a book published in 1666, supposedly co-authored by Lucifer himself) from another collector who later committed suicide.  He hires Corso to find the other two copies of the book to see if his own is an authentic one.  And as Corso goes on this investigation of his, strange things start happening, and he soon realises that the book has some mysterious power.  The movie is one of the most unusual ones I've seen — it has very good photography, acting, etc., and is very absorbing.  But the end is very vague.  I went to the net soon after watching the movie and apparently no one else has a clear idea what the ending is either!  It is totally open to interpretation.  The movie is directed by Roman Polanski.

Sony TV is going to start Indian Idol soon.  When I was in Hyderabad during my MIP (Management in Practice a.k.a. Summer Project), I watched the last set of episodes of American Idol on STAR World.  I wonder how the Indian version will be.

I am going to go to Little Chef in another fifteen minutes or so.  Today I had two classes of Strategic HR in the morning (Madhur and myself had a presentation for one of them), after that there was the Business Awareness Quiz (set by Prof. Badri).  One of the questions asked what Ro-Ro was — it stands for Rail-off and Rail-on — and one of the options in the question said "...the latest rap hit number by Eminem"!  It is probably almost worth giving up two marks just to mark that choice!  After that, I have been sitting in the Systems Lab, checking out some Hellboy wallpapers and other downloads at Dark Horse Comics (Hellboy Zone).  And in the morning, I read a Hellboy ecomic on that site, "The Chained Coffin".  I can't wait to watch the movie now.

Last night HBO was showing Panic Room at 9 PM and I watched that after dinner.  Later on, Madhur and me worked on said STHR Presentation, and after that later at night, I did some artwork for a poster for the Arts & Aesthetics Forum.

There isn't much to report otherwise.  As usual we (the Systems students) have a good time in the Systems Lab in the evenings.  Recently, I joined orkut, a site that allows you to create communities, interact with friends, etc.

The day before yesterday, a community called Spaizen was created, as a fan club for a person.