Gears Of War 2

About a month ago, I had a dilemma: two sequels to two games that I had loved were about to be released at the same time: Fable 2 and Gears of War 2. In a nod to the general state of the world economy and being a reasonably cheap Gujju, I decided to limit myself to one, not both of these promising games. The dilemma, at this point, is obvious: which one gets bought?

After going back and forth a few times, I settled on Fable 2: I convinced myself that I really had liked Fable more than GoW the first time around, so I was setting myself up for good times.

Big, big mistake. Fable 2 sucked. It was way, way, too easy. There was no penalty for death (other than ugly scars), the money system blew - there were ways to get unlimited wealth right away, the characters got really fat (I am not making this up) unless you ate nothing - in which case you would no recover health in mid battle. The battles were useless - my mage was easily using melee and shooting guns and killing things, all without casting spells. The final thing that killed it off was that it had recurring disc issues which is apparently a well documented phenomenon and reported on various game boards. Great.

Luckily, I managed to sell the game off for $40 or so and got GoW2 instead.

What. An. Awesome. Game.

I cannot believe how much fun this game has been. I just finished playing the normal campaign and it was absolutely great.

Highlights:

• Stunning graphics: The worlds look spectacular. The charachters look great too. They have kept the Gears 1 type of overly muscular, chest-bigger-than-a-gorillas sort of look and it just looks great. The monster art is pretty spectacular and the cut scenes make it look like a movie.
• Great gameplay: I played single player, split-screen co-op and xbox live co-op. All of them were great. The combat is fun and its not difficult for a newbie to pick up (thinking of certain housemates here). I really enjoy the cover-and-shoot style of play that the Gears series pushes, rather than the run-around-and-dodge style that the Halo series espouses.
• Multiplayer Co-op: I got stuck trying to knock out the boss - the AI was being silly (look in lowlights), so I jumped online and found an old friend from Seattle who happened to be playing the game too. Created a multiplayer coop, was is combat with my friend in seconds and a minute later: no more boss. He was cool with playing some more and we essentially finished the game together.

Lowlights:

• AI: The AI that controls the friendlies is really bad. It was bad in GoW1 and hasn't seen much improvement in GoW2. Case in point: revival. When you die in combat, you basically get really hurt and start crawling around. At this point, your buddy has a limited time to come revive, or heal you and you can fight again. You would think that this is one thing that the AI would be able to do well: see a fallen buddy: revive. But no. You will be crawling around right next to the friendly bot, and no revival. Seriously: WTF?
• Story: The story in both the games has been pretty weak. Marcus (the hero, the protagonist, YOU) runs around above-ground, below-ground, all over the place, without a seeming purpose. Saving something, destroying something else, now destroying the thing you saved and saving the thing that you half destroyed - sometimes it just stops making sense. There is a lot of alluding to some sort of back story concerning Marcus's father but we never really get to what it is. And just when you think its going to all come together, it all falls apart even more.

If you have not played this game yet, I would strongly encourage you to get it. Parents: beware. Very foul language (F-word all over the place) and tons of gore (chainsawing through the locust) make this game not at all kid friendly. My best game of 2008 - I wish I had bought this much sooner.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
One of the best books I have ever read. I cannot wait for the next episode in this saga.



Many people read a previous Amitav Ghosh book such as The Hungry Tide(which I loved) or The Glass Palace(which I could not get through) and were generally put off by his writing style. He likes to take his time, likes to describe everything, setup the scene. He does not hurry through the story; thus making Sea Of Poppies anything but your everyday adventure story.



There is so much about this book I liked: the characters are exceptional, all rather strong, explored in detail, and all *interesting*. There is a lot of imagery - anyone who has read any of Ghosh's previous work will immediately understand what I am talking about. What is very interesting here is that the book is set in a bygone era of indian history when India was ruled by the British East India Company and *not* the British Government. There is so much stuff written about India prior to the British and so much about their rule and a bit about post-independence India. However, this is the first book, fiction or not, that I have read that is set in East India Company times. Most of all, however, is the story line. At the end of the day, Sea of Poppies is an adventure book full of pirates and slave ships, action and adventure. Thoroughly enjoyable read and some of the best English writing I have known.






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Ski/Snowboard equipment buying guide

I originally wrote this as a response to a friend who wanted to know if she could/should buy gear online. She got a much bigger response than she expected (ha!) but I think its a reasonable ski or boarding checklist or at least reasonable to post here.

What are you buying? Skis? Boots? Bindings? Poles? Clothes?

In general, the stuff that I'm okay buying online is clothing / apparel and bindings. Everything else, you probably want to see and have a professional fit you out with good things rather than go online.

Skis: Go to REI / Play It Again Sports / Sports Basement and they'll help you out with the size and style of skis that you need depending upon their level. If you have an iphone around, you can cross check the price against Evo and see if its comparable. I've bought a TON of stuff from
Play-It-Again, both in Bellevue and in Seattle and their service has been excellent (replaced broken boots for me no problem) and their staff has been pretty informative and helpful. REI is the same, though they tend to be busier; however the Redmond staff was great.

Bindings: Most skis now come with regular support and thus bindings are interchangeable. However, most ski systems you buy will come with bindings as a package, so most likely you won't have to deal with this.

Boots: This is the one thing that i would *not* buy online. The fit is extremely important and most places will give you a fit guarantee - they'll custom mold your boots if they don't fit perfectly. You really want this because boots change their fit after the first couple of
weeks of wear - for ski boots, the inner layer will mold to your foot, but the outer plastic won't. Almost all ski boot people will tell you to get a shoe that is a bit tight, wear it for a couple of weeks and see if it "opens up". In some cases, they will have to modify the
plastic itself, which they can do as well. So again, strongly recommend bricks-and-mortar (evo has one too) store over online.

Clothes: Definitely stuff to buy online and cheap. I'm sure you guys have gone skiing before, so you have most of the stuff, but just in case, here's the clothes checklist, especially if it is going to be extra cold:

1. long underwear: silk, performance stuff, REI brand is great, underarmor makes awesome stuff as well. Usually $50 / upper and $50 / lower. Worth every penny.
   
2. Ski pants: waterproof outer ski pants, any brand will do, just make sure they're water proof, *esp* if you are learning.
   
3. Fleece pants: optional, if you're the kind that gets really cold, really fast. Get a pair of these, they're cheap (~20-30), and last forever.
   
4. inner fleece (upper body): you're living in seattle, so you have to have multiple of these lying around.
   
5. outer shell: again, water proof is the most important part.
   
6. ninja mask: http://www.rei.com/product/725711 I own one of these and its *awesome* when its cold and windy. Worth the $20 bucks.
   
7. inner gloves: thin, inner gloves - only if you're the kind that gets very cold.
   
8. outer gloves: most likely you already have this, waterproof is the most important part. I've used the REI brand for years and they're great.
   
9. wrist guards: *only* if you're snowboarding.
   
10. goggles: don't make the mistake of going skiing with sunglasses; it only works in california, if you're lucky.
    
11. hat: common mistake people make is to not get a waterproof or water resistant hat and it gets snow on it and wet very fast. Try and see if you can get a waterproof one. Also make sure it has ear protection.

Also remember that both REI and Play-It-Again will rent stuff out.

Dvorak

This is my first post written using an all Dvorak keyboard layout. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Dvorak is a newer/better keyboard layout compared to good ol' qwerty. I started the switch to Dvorak sometime in late November partly because I had some rsi-type issues because of long hours spent on my laptop keyboard, but mostly because I wanted to learn something new that was not an esoteric programming language.

I cannot elaborate on the reasons to switch to dvorak as well as these guys do If you are remotely interested in switching to dvorak, this is a great (and relatively short) read.

If you do decide to go ahead and take the plunge, this tutorial is awesome. I will strongly recommend doing most, if not all of it to get your fingers used to things.

Finally, one thing I really wanted to do all along is measure how well (or not) I was doing over a period of time. So I used Google Spreadsheets and measured my wpm and error rates using the same measurement tools to track my progress. I used this site (typing the Gettysburg address over and over again) to measure these - its not a good sample for work stuff because its rather thin on the ;s and certainly doesn't include <> and [] or /=. The C language and the Gettysburg address don't have much in common it turns out.

Item Numero Uno:


My great hope, when I started this exercise, was that I would be able to prove that learning dvorak does not imply that I couldn't do qwerty. Something along the same lines as learning French isn't going to make you forget English. Bzzzt. The data isn't very good at this point and I'm pretty close to DISproving my hypothesis - assuming you can count my experiences as "proof".

Item Deux:


The dvorak error rate has been under 10 for quite a while now and what is most interesting is that it got to under 10 within 2 weeks of starting to learn dvorak. I don't know if this is the strength of the dvorak layout or the power of the human brain to learn something completely different so quickly (it certainly isn't me - I am typically not a fast learner with anything involving motor coordination), regardless, I think the low low error rate is astounding. I am interested to see if the error rate stays down as the WPM goes up (I suspect it will).

One more thing for the (extremely) nerdy: I didn't switch any of my emacs keybindings at all and its not been too bad. Definitely had periods "discovering" some key combinations that I "knew" but it doesn't take too long to adjust.

All in all, I can't wholly recommend or disrecommend dvorak at this point. I have definitely had my share of frustrating moments - typing at 20 WPM is slooooooooow - but then again my rsi hasn't kicked in and I've been hitting the laptop pretty hard. I think I'm on the positive side and am definitely past the point of no return in my conversion, so its unlikely that I'm going back, but I feel that the journey has not been easy and you'll want to be sure about it before diving in.

Google's Collaborative Spreadsheet Art

Pretty cool!

Egypt

Egypt-140, originally uploaded by Rooosh.

I'm back from a trip to Egypt for about two weeks. Egypt is amazing, magical, old. I loved it - it was like going back to India except with 3000 year old monuments.

Over the next few weeks, as I develop my 1000+ pictures, I hope to start writing some posts about the various places we visited, with pictures, of course. So stay tuned.

Why Do Indians Get Boned For Green Crads

Dear President Elect Obama,

A few days ago, the latest status report from the INS came out. If a person from India, qualified with *at least* a Masters Degree or equivalent work experience (around 2+ years) applied for a Green Card in June 2003 they are now eligible to get it. This means that they would have been waiting in line, patiently, for almost 6 years, chained to their current employer, fearful of getting fired or doing something wrong and losing their job, because then the wait resets!

In comparison, if you are a European with equivalent experience, you get your Green Card right away. If you are a less qualified European, you would have had to apply in May 2005, almost two years later! Finally, if you are an unskilled European, you are at about the same place as a highly qualified Indian.

And here's the kicker: Most of these Indians with Masters Degrees got them from US Universities. If you kick us out, or force us to leave because bonding ourselves to the same employer for 6 years can get a bit stifling, you will lose US educated and trained talent. From whatever angle you look at this conundrun, it doesn't seem to make sense. The only reason I can think of is that the INS is prioritizing Europeans over Indians and Chinese, and the only reason you can think about for doing this, is because the INS is trying to maintain some sort of racial equity in the makeup of immigrants to the US, an equity in which Europeans are more equal than Indians or Chinese.

As a President, you will, hopefully, have the opportunity to fix this. Please do. Giving us Green Cards can only help the US as we start companies and employ people (usually US citizens) - note that we can't start companies on H1-B visas. It would be nice to be free of the INS bogeyman and feel welcomed into this country.

Even John Doerr seems to agree.

Thank you,
Rushabh Doshi

America 2.0

Numerous articles have been written about how Obama's victory was a victory of the Internet as a medium for reaching out to people. Elections in this country (and thus slowly around the world) are never going to be the same again. Three things, in decreasing order of impact, but increasing order of coolness:
1. YouTube: Obama's campaign used YouTube very effectively - diligently posting every single video out there for people to watch on YT. They have gotten ridiculous numbers of views on these videos, never mind all the auxilliary videos that other people made about campaign or parts thereof or Change - all basically selling the Obama brand. The numbers on his YouTube page are absolutely astounding. 1.2M views, 2.3M views - absolutely nuts. YouTube's importance as a medium for communication, (mostly) without restriction, and its gobal reach can only make this an even more important medium in the future.
(Full Disclosure: I work at Google on YouTube, but these opinions are mine and do not represent the views of Google or any of its subsidiaries or employees (other than me))
2. Twitter: Obama's twitter updates were good, but not great. They were more propogandaish and less extemporaneous, the way the rest of the world uses twitter. I think by 2012 campaigns will have fully figured out how to make use of twitter and we will see a *lot* more tweeting going on. In case you missed out, some of the best election time comedy was played out on twitter via FakeJohnMcCain and FakeSarahPalin.
3. Flickr: I only found out about Obama's flickr page today, and its fabulous. The pictures on flickr are so "in-the-moment", its unbelievable. If you wanted to show the "human" side of Obama (not that he has any trouble with image-management), that flickr site is all you would need to point people at. I can only imagine that someone like Flickr will grow as a medium for pictures that are not official and are not shot by professionals at Time and other places.

Technology, or rather, the Internet, has forever changed the way elections are run; the way campaigns get the word out to people.; the way money is raised. I truly appreciate how much the Obama campaign "gets it" as far as tech is concerned. Case in point: change.gov is up and its barely two days after election night. This is truly government that moves at Internet speeds. I can't wait for January. I truly hope that Obama makes good on his promise to open up Government and bring the best of the Internet - openness, speed, flexibility, instant communication and response - to Washington. This really is America 2.0.

Sold on pingg

I used www.pingg.com to host my election night party - send out
invites, manage the lists, you know, the usual sort of thing that one
does while hosting parties.

Pingg is *excellent*. Goodbye evite. I have wanted to kick evite to
the curb for sooo long, I'm ecstatic that I'm finally able to do so.
Pingg provides an unparalelled dashboard to see what the current
status of all the attendees is, manage things like sending reminders
and such. It is very, very usable - about the only quirk was not being
able to easily import my address books from gmail - I used their
import feature, but it could use some work. Other than that, it was
absolutely fabulous.

Party Throwers Unite!!! Ditch stupid evite for pingg.

[books] Brisingr

Brisingr by Christopher Paolini

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
Brisingr is the third book in what was supposed to be the Inheritance Trilogy. However, a while ago, Paolini made the "Trilogy" a "Cycle" paving the way for a 4th book. So the stories do not conclude in Brisingr, contrary to my prior expectations. Disappointment #1.

Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr are, at the end of the day, children's books. And as such, not meant to be compared to fantasy novels such as Lord of the Rings. Tolkien far outstrips Paolini in terms of his language, both English and the various invented tongues. Paolini's invented languages sound rather like German or some combination of Northern and Eastern European languages, far less "outlandish" than they should be. The dwarfish that he invented is interesting though and not quite like elfish (which is what my former reference was about).

However, if my only points of dissatisfaction where 1) that it didn't end the story and 2) the invented languages were, well, not quite fake enough, it would probably mean that the book was reasonably good and not deserving of a 1/5 rating.

I think this book is arguably the weakest of the 3 so far. Eragon was powerful because he was setting up the stage, exploring the world, but threw in some large fights and chases and introducing magic and such.
Eldest was interesting because it introduced new worlds (elves) and new, powerful charachters (Oromis, Glaedr, Nassuada). It moved the story forward and culminated in a big battle (a bit reminiscent of the Two Towers in LOTR where the second book ends with the Battle of Helms Deep). Still good though.
The third (and current) book, introduces only one new charachter, and mostly meanders the story all over the place. It could have been a lot shorter - I have no problems with long winded descriptions of things, but pages and pages about walking and flying with little consequence (waaay too much like World of Warcraft) just drag the middle part of the book to no end. The final "climax" is rather predictable and expected and just leaves you with "meh".

Overall, not a great book, I will probably read the 4th to just finish off the series, but I'm no longer recommending this to any younger cousins or friends' kids. Its not worth the trudge and the return on investment for going through 1400+ pages (all 3 books) is lower than expected.


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