There will be two more episodes of Dragonball Z airing on Cartoon Network in about an hour from now :) which I am going to record and watch tomorrow. Anyway, here is a summary of things that happened in the last 4 episodes. There's also a review of Gen-Y Cops. And I found out a couple of days back from Pojo.com's Dragonball that the events in Dragonball Z all take place in the 8th Century A.D.!!
- Dragonball Z - The vicious Frieza and his gang terrorised an old Namek and his family, making them give up their Dragonball. Of course some more Nameks came to help, but they were no match for Frieza. The old Namek cleverly destroyed Frieza's gang's scouters - so that they wouldn't be able to track the energies of the other Dragonballs! Frieza's henchman, Dodoria, threatened a young Namek boy. Gohan and Krillin couldn't take anymore of this and they went into action, rescuing the boy. There was a high speed chase with Dodoria, but Krillin used his Solar Flare to distract Dodoria and they escaped. Dodoria flew about and tried to search for them, but instead, found Vegeta! Vegeta fought with Dodoria, but then Dodoria told him a secret - that it was Frieza (not a meteor) that destroyed Vegeta's home planet! Vegeta anyway, sent Dodoria to another dimension - but not before learning that there were earthlings on Namek. Vegeta can sense energy even without his scouter - and he tried to find Gohan and Krillin but luckily, he couldn't get to them. Krillin, Gohan and the Namek boy found Bulma's hiding place and she gave them good news - Goku would be there in 6 days! But on Goku's journey, a problem crops up - there's an opening in his ship that he goes outside to fix. But the ship goes way off course and goes off on a collision course with a sun! Goku used the Kayoken attack to throw himself away from the star and get back on course. Meanwhile, back on Namek, Vegeta sent some poor Namek warriors to another dimension, and managed to get his hands on a Dragonball. And Frieza has FIVE now! Looks like everyone's after the one remaining Dragonball. Next episode - King Kai's unusual students!
- Gen-Y Cops (2000) - A terrific movie from director Benny Chan (Who Am I?'s co-director)! The RS-1 (a very powerful robot with an arsenal of weapons) is brought to Hong Kong for a Weapons Exhibition. Unfortunately, one of RS-1's developers, the psycho Kurt (Richard Sun) steals the robot, and it's up to Hong Kong's craziest cops - Match (Stephen Fung), Alien (Sam Lee) and Edison (Edison Chen) to track Kurt down and recover the robot. There's also the FBI, led by Ian Curtis (Paul Rudd) breathing down their necks. But the cops have their own way of dealing with things, and they intend to get the job done! One of the most "fun" movies I've seen recently. Lots of action and comedy, with some stylish sequences thrown in. Amusing bits of dialogue too, for example, in one scene Curtis, who's disgusted with the inefficient Hong Kong security systems says "You see that bulletproof glass over there? One sneeze from a fat guy and it shattered!"
Thank you very much, Pablo Dictter! Pablo was the 5000th visitor to this site, and he was kind enough to send me a big (1280x1024 resolution) screenshot of it! Also, Vivian Jason caught the 5002nd hit and he sent me a screenshot of that. It was nice of both of them to send me screenshots, thanks to them, and also thanks to all the people who visit the site regularly!
Look at how the time flies! I really don't know why I find myself so busy. Something always seems to come up and I'm unable to keep this site updated as regularly as I'd like to. Actually, I started writing this update six days ago, but I didn't finish it. Anyway, here is the news for the past two weeks -
- Sat, 2 Feb - Something I forgot to mention in the last update was that I took part in an Essay Writing Competition at college. The topic was "Influence of Terrorism on Young Minds" which I had fun writing. At times I got a bit carried away and started writing sentences which didn't make a lot of sense, but then they sounded good so I left them in. The prizes haven't been announced yet. I worked some more on my Doom Episode 1 style map. Also downloaded Chuck Dodgers' Monster Condo Remix (actual song is called Waiting for Romero to Play).
- Sun, 3 Feb - Went for CAT Class, came back home and watched the first CD of Blade. The previous night I'd seen Blade II being mentioned on the IMDb, so that's why I thought I'd watch the first movie. Watched the episodes of Dragonball Z that I'd recorded the previous night. I also downloaded two more Pablo Dictter MP3s. Mr. Clappy Moe was a very short song but with a nice beat to it. The other one was called There's No More Chinese Goo - this is a remix of one of his own songs. This was a terrific song, with a techno-type background, and some Chinese sounding music too (that part in the song is my favourite). Pablo also re-released his level ...and death came along with some fixes. I worked a bit more on my e1map, mostly aligning textures in the areas I'd already built.
- Mon/Tue/Wed, 4/5/6 Feb - On Monday, I got Nelly Furtado's Trynna Finda Way on MP3. This is another song on the album that I like. On Tuesday I got three Doom themed wallpapers from The Phobos Lab. All these were of high quality and used Quake III's Doomguy in them. On Wednesday, I gave two (yes two) seminars in college on Server Side Scripting and PHP. The first one was in the afternoon at a meeting of our IEEE chapter. This was the first seminar that we had ever since we (the new council members) took charge! The second seminar was in our class itself, and this one had content about Perl also, contributed by Ganeshan. Both these went very well :). I also downloaded some SPECTACULAR TAS Demos for MBF - entire Doom II completed in Ultraviolence mode in just a little over 16 minutes, Episode 4 of Ultimate Doom done in 3 and a half minutes, and so on!!
- Thu, 7 Feb - 5000 HITS!! - After coming home from college I was tired and pretty reluctant to go to NIIT class, but I did go anyway. A nice thing happened. They were organising an IT Fest, which was basically to promote new technologies and their new courses. They wanted to show some of the good projects that students had made - and my K-Test Testing Engine was chosen as one of them! Among the others were Vivian Jason's Test Engine and his Chess Game, and Lenni's Ruby in the Basket. And I checked my site at NIIT (when I was downloading a copy of my software) and found my hit counter at 5005!! Thanks to everyone who's visited this site, and thanks to those of you who keep visiting it regularly. Tobias updated The Worlds of Toby M. - he says that Visions of Eternity E1M1 is done, and he also put up a screenshot of another map of his, and a picture of a keyboard...! Unfortunately I cannot TELL you what the picture is, you have to see it for yourself :). And finally, I got ZDoom v1.23beta33. This will PROBABLY be the last beta before the 1.23 release.
- Fri, 8 Feb - College went on as usual, but then we had an IEEE evening session, that went on till 7 PM. We had arranged for a bus to come to the college at 7 PM sharp, but then it only came at 7:45 PM!! So I got home late.
- Sat, 9 Feb - The IT Fest at NIIT. I didn't go to my CAT class, got up at about 9 AM I think, and I was there at NIIT at 10:30 AM. And soon, my very own K-Test Testing Engine was chosen to conduct ACTUAL TESTS! That was really surprising to me. I'm glad that my software worked properly in a real-life situation :). The program is coded to pick up 15 questions out of a set of 45. What happened was that they needed to ask General Knowledge questions, but I'd filled up the database with questions related to Doom, movies, and a bit of in-depth technical stuff. I had to change some of the questions... but I didn't have time to change ALL of them. And so I felt a bit guilty when people came to write an online test and were faced with a question like Who designed Episode 3 of The Ultimate Doom?. Anyway, it wasn't anything serious or anything, just a general aptitude test. Some people who wrote the test would be given free courses. Later on we switched to questions on paper. It was a lot of fun because we (the volunteers) spent quite a bit of time in the faculty rooms, chatting with the faculty and other staff. In the evening, there was a seminar on Oracle 9i by Mr. Shyam (who teaches my batch). This was really nice to listen to. I got back home only at about 10 PM.
- Sun/Mon/Tue, 10/11/12 Feb - Didn't go to NIIT for the second day of the IT Fest but I heard the others (Vivian, Lenni, Jai, etc.) had fun there. Anyway after my CAT class in the morning I worked a bit more on my 9th Gate E4M3, and also watched Dragonball Z (recorded at midnight). Most excellent, as always. I also stayed up till 1:30 AM to start recording Gen-Y Cops on STAR Movies. I watched it on Monday - very good, lots of fun with this action movie! On Tuesday I came home early from college, and went to NIIT at night. We didn't have an actual class but we got to see Oracle 9i Application Server in action. Anyway, I also decided that I wouldn't go to college the next day. Two reasons for that, one - I needed a break :) and two - I wanted to get our college's IEEE Student Branch Website up and running.
- Wed/Thu/Fri, 13/14/15 Feb - Didn't go to college on Wednesday. I got some MIDI files of Gigi D'Agostino's The Riddle (great song). And I downloaded some software that converts WAV or MP3 files into MIDI! But the quality wasn't very good. And as I planned, I finished and uploaded the IEEE Student Chapter of SNIST Website! Right now it's a pretty simple design, but it can easily be enhanced. On Thursday I found out that nothing much happened the previous day at college, because a company from Chennai came to conduct Campus Recruitments. They had an aptitude test it seems, but I wasn't there so I didn't write it. That was why I didn't attend the interview either on Friday. Anyway on Friday we had another evening session of our IEEE members. This was fun, and I made updates on the college IEEE site about everything that went on. You can visit the site at http://snist-ieee.tripod.com and please, give me your comments. One more thing - Doom Center's Bigdog posted a gallery of screenshots from some of the latest levels of The 9th Gate - so make sure you take a look at it - really cool pictures!
- Sat, 16 Feb - Today I went for CAT class in the morning, and in the afternoon I downloaded Phobos Anomaly: Reborn (4 level demo). The trickery used there is simply awesome, you'd never believe that such effects are possible with the Doom engine (well, Boom, anyway). Ganeshan got his internet connection at home properly up and running. And my copy of EditPad tells me that today, 16 February, is the birthday of EditPad's programmer.
This is the first recipe on the site, heh heh.
As I mentioned already, I have been making espresso coffee for the past few days. My mother showed me how to make it, and I tried it out, and I'm surprised how easy it is to make! And it tastes GREAT. All you need is some milk (one cup), sugar and instant coffee powder (Nescafé Instant Coffee is what I use). Put one spoon of sugar and one spoon of coffee powder together in the cup, and put one teaspoon of water in it. Not more, not less. With the same teaspoon, beat the mixture well until it turns yellow! Yes, it will - try it and see for yourself. It's important to take the right amount of water, too little and you can't mix it properly, too much and it won't become yellow.
Keep beating the mixture with the spoon. It will turn yellow and generally look icky and disgusting but don't worry. Boil the milk in a pan now and mix everything together! Pour the milk back and forth (between the cup and the pan) a couple of times and you'll be surprised at how creamy the mixture becomes. That's all there is to it, now drink it - it's terrific!
Dragonball Z and other stuff this time...
- Dragonball Z - I missed two episodes of this and saw 4 episodes after that. In the previous episodes, Bulma, Krillin and Gohan (the Dragonball Gang) went to find Namek, so that they could get a set of Dragonballs to wish back some of the Earth's Special Forces who went to "another dimension" during the fight with the Saiyans. Goku is recovering in a hospital back on Earth (in fact, to the constant irritation of the doctors he keeps trying to work out and train inspite of being bandaged like a mummy!). The Dragonball Gang landed on a planet which they thought was Namek, but it was actually a clever illusion created by a couple of aliens who were trapped on that planet! Those aliens wanted to steal their ship and get off the planet, but they couldn't. The gang escaped from the aliens and got back on course to the real Namek. Meanwhile, Vegeta has fully recovered and also leaves for Namek because he wants the Dragonballs too! But he knows that his enemy - the very powerful Frieza - is already there.
Soon, the Dragonball Gang reach Namek and to their horror see a Saiyan ship landing in the far side of the planet! The ruthless Frieza and his band of planet traders already have some Dragonballs. And Vegeta lands there too after some time! Bulma radios Earth and tells Goku to hurry up and get there quick! Meanwhile Vegeta faces off against Kui and makes quick work of him. Frieza now knows Vegeta's there, and Frieza's band already have found five of the Dragonballs.
Finally, thanks to some Sensu Beans brought at the right time by Yajirobi, Goku recovers fully, and decides to fly to Namek in the Saiyan ship HE crashed on Earth in. This ship has been completely remodeled and fixed up by Bulma's dad - and despite the absence of a coffee machine, Goku heads to Namek in it. What happens there? Next episode!
- Rush Hour 2 (2001) - This sequel takes place three days after the first film, Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) are in Hong Kong on vacation. But back in America an FBI building is bombed, and soon Lee and Carter are on the trail of triad boss Ricky Tan (John Lone). They end up foiling a counterfeiting scam planned by Ricky Tan with some help from Hu Li (Zhang Zi Yi), who has stolen some plates for making counterfeit bills. The cops get some help from undercover Special Agent Isabella (Roselyn Sanchez). The movie is directed by Brett Ratner and has another great music score from Lalo Schifrin, and is a lot of fun to watch. But I thought the first movie was better. Some very nice lines in the script by Jeff Nathanson (in fact, he reworks some of the classic one-liners from the first movie). Entertaining, but not as much as the first movie.
Very busy for quite some time now... so I couldn't update the site. Anyway, as usual, here's the collected news since the last update till today!
- Mon/Tue/Wed, 14/15/16 Jan - Monday was a holiday from college, on Tuesday the first set of tests at college for this semester got over. Got Nelly Furtado's album Whoa, Nelly! - very nice songs.
- Thu, 17 Jan - Pablo Dictter posted screenshots of his in-progress (now released) base-style Doom I level, ...and death came along. Jai sent a small VB program that masqueraded as a Notepad (with an icon, too!) but was actually a program that would shut down the computer, and lock the desktop on next restart! But since I'm not the default Windows user and my Startup directory is different, that didn't happen. :)
- Fri, 18 Jan - The new council members of the IEEE Student Chapter of our college were chosen - and I'm the new Creative Advisor and Treasurer! So that means I'm going to be in charge of getting our Student Chapter's official website up and running. :) Harry (a.k.a. Lenni) made a game called Lenni's Ruby in the Basket v1.0 in Visual Basic - it's available at his site. Pablo released an awesome Doom I map on his site called A Lonely Place to Die. This primarily uses the ICKWALL textures, and I must say I've never seen anyone make such creative use of those textures before! This level was for E2M1 initially, but a couple of days later Pablo re-released it, this time for E4M1. I can't really say anything more about that level except go and get it right now.
- Sat, 19 Jan - Went for CAT class in the morning. I don't like getting up early on weekends. Wait... I don't like getting up early at all! But I can't avoid it :(. Anyway at night on STAR Movies they showed Alien 3! The first time it was shown on STAR Movies was somewhere around 1995 I think, and after that it did reappear a couple of times. It's been years since then that this movie was shown on the channel. Luckily I recorded it those years ago, it is a fantastic movie (underrated by many) that I've seen many, many times. It was the first movie that David Fincher directed. I saw the whole movie and after that I watched Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network. It no longer is on at 9 PM on Saturdays - they've shifted it three hours later! Midnight to 1 AM, I watched this. Summary is in another update on this page.
- Sun, 20 Jan - CAT class in the morning again. In the afternoon, I got Quake! Speaking of Quake, Pablo's started editing for this game and he sent me some of his experimental levels. At night, HBO showed Desperado. Again, this is a movie that I've seen many times, but it was censored so much that I didn't even feel like watching it! One of my favourite scenes in the movie is Quentin Tarantino's appearance as the "Pick-Up Guy" - the scene where he tells a joke. That whole joke was cut out due to profanity!
- Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu, 21/22/23/24 Jan - After coming home from college I worked on The 9th Gate's E4M3 some more. And I made espresso coffee for the first time. How you make it is quite a simple thing, I've written about that in another update on this page. Tuesday was a holiday, nothing really to write about the other days. There was no NIIT class on any of these days (the class wasn't there and I didn't go either). DoomCAD is back in development!! Nick Van Winkle is working on it now and this is the site.
- Fri, 25 Jan - Pablo released ...and death came along on his site. Base-style Doom levels are not all that common to see these days. You can always trust Pablo to come up with great levels. This was no exception - it had flawless texture choice and alignment, and was very professionally made. New music by Broken Angel was included too. However, I thought this wasn't as good as Pablo's other levels, and A Lonely Place to Die was more fun. Still, this new map is great. Tobias Münch also posted some screenshots and updates about his Doom I project, Visions of Eternity on his site The Worlds of Toby M. I am looking forward to VoE being completed and released, everything about it sounds great, and Toby has also written a very Doom-style story for it.
I also got Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition from sol.spaceports.com/~abandonu and Doom 1.2 from selvacamaleon.metropoliglobal.com. Plus, I got Unreal Tournament from Ganeshan.
- Sat/Sun/Mon/Tue/Wed, 26/27/28/29/30 Jan - Saw Rush Hour 2. Lots of fun though I felt Part I was better. Also watched Dragonball Z. On Sunday I started working on an Episode 1 Style level for Doom! More work on that on Monday. I will write more about it and officially announce it (with screenshots too) on Karthik's Doom Pages soon, but before that happens I want to get atleast 75% of the level done. The level hasn't got a title yet, but it's really looking like something right out of Knee-Deep in the Dead. I played with ZDoom 1.23beta31. Gave Ganeshan a disk with some screenshots of this and various other stuff. On Monday the second set of tests at college started, Management Science was easy, but I didn't do too well. On Tuesday I did very well in Computer Graphics, and Ganeshan gave me a disk with some of his latest stuff, including an experimental Half-Life level. Maybe I'll also try out editing with Worldcraft in the future (for Quake, Quake II or Half-Life). On Wednesday I did pretty well in the Computer Networks test, and I got 17.5/20 in the Graphics test. 18/20 is the highest. Opulent posted a demo of Out of Phase II MAP01 on the Doomed Speed Demos Archive, by Mark Thompson (speedrun in 0:58).
- Thu, 31 Jan - Artificial Intelligence test went OK. In Language Processors Practical Class I wrote a program that converts a given arithmetic expression into Three Address Code (but the program doesn't consider precedence of operators, so I'm going to have to write a much better program :( and that's really difficult to do). Went to NIIT after quite a long time and there was no class. That's something I didn't like, so I decided I wouldn't go on Saturday (that's today). I downloaded Doom and ZDoom at NIIT (heh heh) and tried to play (but I was getting a very low framerate - couldn't even move properly!! And the computer there ONLY supported 800 x 600 resolution. What a strange thing). Anyway I noticed that Randy Heit released yet another 1.23 Beta, so after I got home I downloaded ZDoom 1.23beta32. There was an update after quite a while at Kalpana's World, and four new wallpapers (and one picture) have been added.
- Fri/Sat, 1/2 Feb - Friday's test on Language Processors was OK, and so was today's DBMS. But I could have done better. Anyway yesterday I did some more work on my Episode 1 Style Doom level. It's coming along nicely now - there is a pulsating light maze like in the original E1M2! I am going to have outdoor areas too and windows looking up into higher areas, looking down into lower areas... it's going to be cool! Anyway, when I have more of the level done I will officially announce that I am in fact working on a new release. I am not going to NIIT today and I'm updating this site now. After that I'm going to make some more areas in e1map, and then watch today's Dragonball Z.
That's all the news for this update. I have been drinking more coffee lately and I have now started using Outlook Express (very convenient to use - can't believe I didn't use it all these years). Go up this page and see the other updates now :). And make a cup of coffee.