नववर्ष की शुभकामनाएँ! आशा है कि आपको नए साल में सुख व समऋद्धी मिले।
Another trip to Gurgaon today and the realization that, if malls keep popping up in that place at the present rate, Gurgaon will very soon have fewer people than malls. When something like this (i.e., deemed to be a fairly positive thing) happens though, it's almost certain that it will have one or two extremely sad and/or ironic features. Recall the skyscrapers of Gurgaon, one of which caught fire and the lack of a fire truck that could reach high enough? The analogous shortcoming for the malls there is the lack of parking space. You're there, the mall's there, but you can't get in because there's no effing place to put your váhan at rest. Meanwhile, lots of cars go by you whose drivers keep their hands continuously depressed upon the horn making it seem like they're either dead and their heads have hit the respective steering wheels of their cars or this is some really twisted form of testing the Doppler Effect. Cars are slow, inefficient, polluting... they need to go. While a nuclear bomb is only a potential threat to the existence of all humanity, we're choking ourselves slowly to death with these gas-guzzling monsters. What we need is that Delhi Metro of ours to expand... and fast. The Metro should aim for something similar to Manhattan's Subway, in that it should be so accessible and ubiquitous that even the idea of owning a car becomes perfectly ludicrous (which, by the way, is exactly how it is in Manhattan).

The whole of the last week of December I've spent fighting a machine which adamantly refused to get a better operating system installed on it. Most of you should know Souvik Da (link on right) who writes incredibly hilarious (but wholly true) stories about life at Punjab U. on his blog. Well, he's got this really spiffy new computer with a Pentium D processor and all the works. Let me put the matter-in-hand this way: Mac OS X (for Intel processors) runs best on a computer which has these three technologies: SSE3, PAE and XD. One of the few processors which comes with all these technologies is the Pentium D. Souvik has a Pentium D processor. Why won't Mac OS X then run on this computer that is practically factory-approved by Apple itself? 1 week and 9 blank DVDs were spent pondering this very question. The computer didn't budge though, and after a week of pounding away with Anti-TPM patches and Bootloader patches and what not, the computer resolutely remained stuck with Windows. Destiny, some call it. One of the better things that came out of this though was a renewed passion for Warcraft, and this lovely gameplay style called "DotA" or Defence of the Alliance. It solves one of the longest-standing problems that I've faced in Warcraft, and that is that, although your heroes have these brilliant spells that you would love to micromanage and use all the time, since you've got this huge hoard of 89 other units to handle, you lose track of your hero and he or she just winds up using regular melêe or ranged attacks. With DotA, you only handle your one hero, upgrade him/her with goodies of marvelous sorts and go out to battle. The best thing about DotA is all the goodies and how quickly the hero levels come. The unfortunate thing about DotA is that, unlike ordinary Warcraft, there isn't much of a Single Player life for this sort of game. Some of the neat things in DotA are the explicit references to the Lord of the Rings, with its Mithril Hammers (+24 damage) and heroes saying things like "Ash nazg gimbatul" and "I come back to you now at the turn of the tide". A must-check-out for Warcraft players. (All the Warcraft references in this paragraph referred to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne version 1.20b). DotA can be found at www.dota-allstars.com.

Meanwhile, 2006 has begun. Yay! and all that. My prediction is that 2006 will be dull, 2007 will be better, 2008 will be so-so and 2009 should be the best of this lot. Personally, I find the ceaseless "Happy New Years! Aapko nayey saal mein sukh aur samridhi miley" (and other such arrangements of words) quite obnoxious and tiring. That's just me - your antisocial blogger.

Cheerio.

Labels: English