Travelogue

My wife has an excellent writeup about our europe trip, so go here to read up on the trip.

For more snaps from our europe trip go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gromhellscream/collections/72157605716301730/

3yrs have passed since I went to Tahoe last and this time around I am not single anymore!. Aruna was very very excited about this trip as she has never seen snow. We headed out in the wee hours of the morning towards Tahoe. As we drove up the CA-50 we started seeing snow in the hilltops but the best was yet to come. As we drove further the view changed dramatically with trees all around us covered in snow and all we could see was a white landscape like a scene out of a movie.

Though this snap doesn't do justice to the view but it should give an idea. We stepped out for a couple of snaps and realized how cold it really was! My sneakers were no protection against the cold and within minutes we could feel the cold seeping through. We quickly took a couple of snaps and jumped right back into the car and drove on towards Tahoe. By now the traffic was increasing too and we didn't want to get caught in a long train of cars heading into Tahoe.

After checking into our motel sometime later we all headed out to rent our ski gear and hit the slopes at sierra. I was kind of skeptical about my skiing abilities after last time's disaster but as it happens I was comfortable right off the bat and was able to ski without any major problems.

Preparing to ski :)

What came next I was completely unprepared for :) Trying to teach Aruna how to ski!. Now that was an adventure. We got to the beginner area slope and I started teaching Aruna how to put on her skis. For about 10 minutes I struggled to get her left foot onto the ski and lock and as soon as I would ask her to put on her right ski she would start losing balance and fall. Soon for some reason she was not even able to her ski boot to lock on the ski. This was really frustrating and as we came to know later her boot for some reason kept collecting a lot of snow on the sole and hence making it very difficult for her to lock her boots onto the ski.

Only snap of mine on skis I think!

The beautiful sierra slopes!.

After spending about 15-20 minutes trying to teach Aruna we both decided it would be better if she signed up for learner lessons. After we signed her up for beginner lessons I decided to hit the slopes and I was surprised how comfortable I felt and was able to come down the slopes without falling!. Skiing becomes so much more fun when you don't fall!. I pretty much spent the day coming down the slope multiple times and watching wifey learn skiing. I must say its pretty entertaining to watch people who are learning to ski:) Especially my wifey who managed to fall in every possible angle! But at the end of the day she finally did manage to learn skiing and was able to ski a bit without fallling! I managed to capture the attempt in a video :->

Continue reading "Tahoe & Skiing!" »

As I had mentioned earlier after I quit WOW I was trying to find a game that would hold my interest beyond a few days. About 2 months back I bought Supreme Commander and though it was nice too look at and had good gameplay it was not much fun. It seemed like a souped up TA with pretty graphics. The sides were not distinctive enough the economic model was still the same etc and somehow I didnt like the fact that your units had no character. It felt like playing a board game and as a result I soon got bored of it and didnt play it much.

Enter Universe at War: Earth Assault
This has got be the most fun RTS I have seen since WC3. Warcraft 3 set the level for the RTS genre and I think UAW has borrowed the best from WC3 and Starcraft and then enhanced it more. The heroes concept from WC3 and the distinctive units from Starcraft. There are 3 sides namely Novus,Masari and the Hierarchy. The hierarchy are the evil race that invade earth to harvest it for resources and the Novus are a race of sentient machines who oppose hierarchy and come to earth to stop hierarchy. Masari are a race that at one time saved hierarchy but later were betrayed and the remanants of Masari were slumbering in earth and the coming of hierarchy has awakened them.

Humanity sadly has little to no role in the game!. Each side has a unique economic model and resource costs. Where hierarchy sports Giant walkers which serve as garangutan war machines as well as production centers, the novus build flow networks and their units can flow along these networks to redeploy rapidly across the maps. Masari are the slow bloomers in the game and are like the protoss in Starcraft. They have incredibly hard to kill units but are expensive. Each side sports different super weapons and different heroes. Where novus relies on viral attacks to shut down enemy machines/take control etc the masari hero can teleport units around the map.

The campaign is average in quality but the mulitplayer gameplay is just superb. I have been playing online on live though the population at this time is minimal the games are a lot of fun. 5 minute rushes that made warcraft/starcraft fun can happen as well as superb end game if you do survive the rushes. Overall a must play for any RTS fan!.

http://petroglyphgames.com for more information

I know its late:) but what the heck... I am a lazy blogger and an even lazier photo uploader!. We went to Yosemite during this thanksgiving weekend and I must say it was an interesting weekend.

We left for yosemite around friday afternoon after standing 9 hrs in the cold for the black friday sale and came home empty handed as the thing we wanted got over before we could get it:(. We reached yosemite around 6 in the evening and checked into our tented non heated cabins. It was pretty cold and we were hungry thankfully we had packed food from Madras cafe and all of us literally jumped on the food. After that we headed into the main dining area where there was a grand fireplace and comfortable couches around it and we proceeded to laze around a bit and warm our cold bodies.

After some time we decided to hit the bed and thats when the fun started. None of realized how cold one can feel in a non heated cabin till we started tucking ourselves in and realized the blankets were damp and the cold was literally seeping in and despite wearing jackets etc we were freezing. Fast forward 30 minutes and we decided we need dry blankets and a trip to the reception was needed. Me/Raghav/Sudhir headed to the reception and got a bunch of dry blankets. Well as it happens even dry blankets didnt help as the night proceeded the dew settled onto the blankets inside the tented cabins and we suffered a cold damp night despite wearing multiple layers of clothing.

By morning all of us had hardly slept and we decided unless we could get an upgrade to a heated cabin we would head back home rather than sleep another day like this. Luckily we got heated cabins later in the morning and we decided to head out to toulumne meadows and tioga pass and time permitting further into the sierra nevada.

I must say it was one heck of a beautiful drive. We started with heading out towards toulumne meadows and saw some very very beautiful sights along the way.

We hit toulumne meadows by noon or so. The meadows look pretty though I hear during spring it looks amazing when the plants here flower for a short time.

We spent some time hiking around and climbing up the small hilltop in the meadows. Its a beautiful place and the views from there are just amazing.

After Toulumne meadows we decided to drive upto to tioga pass and beyond into the Sierra Nevada. I am so happy we decided to do that ... As we drove past tioga we came across a frozen lake and much fun was had at the banks of the lake playing on the ice.

After the lake we drove up a little more into the sierra nevada and saw some sights like the following before we decided to turn back and head to the valley. Someday we hope to do a drive down the Sierra nevada. It has some of the most amazing sights.

The next day was a drive upto glacier point for breathtaking views of the valley and Half dome. We spent a good amount of time there taking snaps from various angles before heading out.

A couple of snaps of the famous Ahawanee hotel one from right next to the hotel and the other as seen from glacier point.

Next stop was Mariposa grove near wawona. The grove has about 500 Giant Sequoias these are the largest living things on the planet and can live for about 3200 years. The trees just look fantastic and are about as huge as a small trailer at the base. A few snaps of the sequoias to give a perspective :)

This last snap was Aruna's idea and it cleary gives one an idea of the size of these trees. Spot us if you can:).

Overall a really wonderful and amazing trip. We got to see more of the beautiful Yosemite National park but a lot more remains to be seen. Next trip shall be in early spring/summer to see the falls in full flow and the tuolumne meadows.

Wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali from our side! My wife made some super badam burfi and now its payasam time tomorrow ! We even had some nice baby corn manchurian which my wife made in the evening..

We managed to get a few decorative lights and have put it up in the patio and it looks very pretty. Once again Wishing you all a very happy diwali!

A couple of weeks back we went on a long drive down south towards Big Sur. It was one heck of a drive with beautiful views all along the CA-1. I tried to capture some good snaps and you can get them here .

I am skipping on the description and you can find that on my wife's blog .

Also in other news the bay area was hit by a quake of the magnitude of 5.6 on Richter scale yesterday and a 3.7 quake today. We felt both and it was I must say an interesting experience:).

Its been over 6 months since I quit World of Warcraft and I am still to find a game that can hold my interest. A factor to contribute to it is also the fact that I have been mostly stuck with Ubuntu:) and no windows but still. Over the last 6 months I have been thinking of what made me play WOW for over 2 yrs whereas no other game in the past has ever managed to hold my interest for so long. I have played various RPG's and even bought guild wars about the same time as I bought WOW. But my guild wars copy has hardly been played heck I still have my guild wars and it runs under linux too ( via wine ) but somehow i still can't get myself to play it more than an hour before I get bored of it.

What I have realized is
- Wow was fun. Questing in wow/guilds/pvp everything about the game was fun. Heck even farming/finding friends to quest with everything about the game rocked. What wow got right was the community features in the game. Guild wars chat channel is crappy no linking/no auction house/no in game e-mail etc makes the game rather boring.
- Wow had all the features superbly implemented. More importantly the cities were superb hubs to hang around, the characters had well Character..Guild wars characters look lame...all human is so boring! The mobs in WOW were fun, its certainly fun to kill a 2 headed Ogre than a stupid scorpion or something named Charr or a centaur all of them making the same sounds.
- The regions were gorgeous, the shared world was amazing... running around in stranglethorn vale randomly running into enemy faction characters and deciding whether to be nice or gank the guy had a rush of its own or not knowing if you were the one going to get ganked.
- Essentially I am still to find another game that had the capability to involve a player so much as WOW did. I guess thats why its also known as World of Wowcrack!

Enough about wow now to the new games to look forward to!

Continue reading "Search for the Elusive Next Game To Play" »

Back in San diego within a month but this time on work!. Will be here till tomorrow and will try to upload a couple of snaps of the yahoo musicmatch office!. The office is in like this beautiful spanish villa. First look at the office and I was like "wth! this is like a resort ".

Snaps coming soon!

A forward I came across on bangaloreshutterbugs rather hilarious:) more behind the cut.

Continue reading "ken rockwell ( aka chuck norris of photography)" »

Yea I have been lazy to update this blog. Quite a few things happened over the last couple of weeks.. We went to a wine and art festival here in Santa clara (nothing extraordinary) and a few snaps that I took at the festival can be seen here. Also while trying to install my new motherboard/graphics card I managed to slice my finger badly which converted me into a one hand typist for a week or so and still a 9 finger typist. Will take a couple more days before my finger heals fully!. In the meanwhile I am being pampered and spoilt by my wife:)). But I did manage to get the motherboard/graphics card installed and now I have a brand new flashy ATI 2600 XT 512 MB graphics card on my machine.

But the reward for the effort of building a new box( playing Supreme Commander) will have to wait as I am still trying to get a cheap copy of windows:)...I am not willing to pay 200$ for Windows! especially when ubuntu works for almost everything else that I do and is free!. The only reason to use windows for me is to play games:p and use the damn webcam as enabling video4linux requires a kernel rebuild which I am lazy to do.

But in the meantime, I have explored a lot of linux gaming options and may I say linux as a platform is ready! its the damn game developers who need to get their act together and release linux clients. Guild Wars runs smoothly under wine except for the fact that it has to be run in DirectX8 mode and with no shaders. The other free games that I explored include Regnum Online , Planeshift and recently Savage: The battle for Newerth. The problem with all the free games is as always content. Technologically they are close to commercial games but the gameplay gets boring really fast due to lack of interesting content. As a result I am just going to play a bit of Guildwars till I can get a windows license.

On the War of the cubes:) I haven't made much progress. I need to get back to it and now that my new box is ready and I still don't have any games to play so its time to get back to development. Also I have been meaning to process more of our San Diego trip pictures and hopefully I will get around to it now and upload more of them.

Thats about it for now! hopefully I will update this blog soon with some War of the cubes news:)