Random Links

Random Stuff
1. Hitler on I-pad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4
2. Music Fun: http://www.incredibox.fr/
3. Location based games on your phone: http://www.wherigo.com/
4. East vs. West Myths: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/devdutt_pattanaik.html
5. Hexic Videos : http://www.hexic.info/spotlight.html

All izz well

2nd Jan 2010. After almost 18 months, living in Redmond, wife and I went out for a Movie in a movie theater. Our 15 month old Aryan behaved well and slept throughout for the 9.30PM show of "3 Idiots".

What can I say, I'm not a big bollywood fan, but of late have been by some good movies. 3 Idiots was simply outstanding, I do not remember when was the last I was so thoroughly entertained by a Hindi movie, maybe it was "Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar".

Probably the first time, I wanted the movie should not end and just carry on. It brought back so many memories of my college days (1997-98-99).

Kudos to the film production team and the actors, you guys deserve a standing ovation.

Welcome back Me,

After over a year of taking a break from blogging, forum posting, virtual networking etc, I welcome myself back.

Before picking brains on some interesting things, this post is about listing things worth listing that happened to me since last time I blogged. In no particular order:

• I gained 12 pounds. (Too much beer and cheese, must cut down on it), I’m now 30 + and time to start taking health a bit more seriously :)

• I changed my day job from making and shipping games, called production, to research and prototyping new game ideas, called Incubation.

• I drove 1014 miles with 2 friends – from Redmond, Washington to Sacramento, California via Portland (OR), Sisters (OR), Reno (NV), and Lake Tahoe. It was a lifetime worth of a drive. Some snaps: http://picasaweb.google.com/purpleblade/RenoRoadTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCIGwvfPc4-3gYw&feat=directlink

• My son, started to sit, crawl, walk, run, talk and break everything that he can.

• Travelled to India and spent time in Jaipur, Delhi, Bhopal, Dibrugarh and Calcutta, celebrated my son’s first birthday with his grandparents (both mines and Tanu’s side of parents)

• I played 19 Xbox 360 games and out of that completed 9 of them earning only 1890 gamer score. Batman Arkum Ayslum, Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Forza 3 and COD MF 2 were some of the games that stood out.

• Still did not buy a PS3, will wait for God of War 3 to release.

• Repaired a broken toilet, a broken tap, a broken door knob and a broken toy

• Learnt how to clean the house more effectively, this one deserves a full article for itself. More later

• Added 7 new board games to my collection. Stone Age still being my all time favorite.

• Formatted and clean installed my laptop with 6 different Win 7 builds, while it was in development. In process became a fan of the OS. “Bagwan ke ghar der hai, andher nahi”, Finally Microsoft shipped an OS (other than XP, SP2) that I think is worth being called an OS.

• Did not change my mobile phone, still using Blackjack (Samsung), yes not using an I-Phone :)

• Only watched 1 movie in a movie theater.

I'm Dad and It's so much fun

I have not been blogging for a while, there are many things keeping me happily busy. The greatest of them all : I'm dad now, this is fairly old news. Me and Tanu were blessed with Aryan on Sept 24th 2008.

Aryan turned 7 months and I'm must say "time flies".

Who says creative games are dead?

Do not blame me if you get hooked onto this and it takes away your work time :)

Simplicity meets music meets puzzle meets great execution

Result : A awesome game :)

http://playauditorium.com/

Root Causes

After the tragic Mumbai terror attacks, the world is speaking - they are angry, they want to see a change, they want to make a difference. There are blogs, IMs, chats, forum threads on who is to blame, who should own the responsibility, who failed and what should be done to fix the issues. Well to be fair to myself, I do know the answer to "How to stop terrorists now". However I do have a vision of a better future....and this is what I think...

SOCIETY
For any society to be truly successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy and peaceful;

• Knowledge is infinite (In my opinion, I might we wrong)
• Being healthy is a direct by-product of being knowledgeable and is also dependent on resources provided by mother earth which is finite.
• Ideally both these should result in being peaceful.
  

However, unfortunately or fortunately, human society requires a fourth measure and that is being "wealthy". This tricky factor of being wealthy spoils otherwise a perfectly balanced equation.

So let's do this again:

For any society to be successful, it requires the society to be knowledgeable, healthy, wealthy and peaceful; and the success of the society is the collective success of the people who constitute the society.

PEOPLE OF THE SOCIETY
I have used the terms White and Black, but since we humans are so obsessed in taking things out of context and proportion I want to clarify this up front. These have got nothing to with the color of your skin, the country that you live in, and the religion that you preach.

The WHITE Beings
There are few humans who can detach themselves from all materialistic needs and attain a higher level of knowledge, consciousness and peace, but I assume it will be safe to say that neither you nor I are one of them and the number of such people would NOT even be a minutest fraction of the world's population.

The SHADES OF GREY Beings
Human beings require materialistic pleasures in order to believe that they are happy. These " tangible needs" vary from person to person and can be anything from having a two course meal to owning a private jet.
Ironically materialistic wealth has become the single most important unit that defines success in the world today.
When people don't get this wealth, for whatever reason - they tend to act in reactive ways which can be considered unethical, unwise, illogical and often illegal.


The BLACK Beings
BUT, when a normal human does not get his/her basic needs - food, shelter and security of continued existence ; when s/he feels that their own or their loved one's life is in danger, they tend to act in ways which are defined to be more animal like and close to being barbaric. Like a man eating tiger, once they tend to be barbaric, it become near impossible for them to turn back even after they get their stomach full.

Of course there are some people who are born with mental disorders (like Ted Bundy) who are in BLACK category without any logical reasons, these people are ill and require medical assistance. And it is not part of this discussion.

SOCIETY and PEOPLE INTERACTIONS
To generate wealth - as in materialistic wealth that we all know off, requires resources.

However, mother earth provides us with limited resources, ideally the math should work simple – take total available resource and divide it by number of people and you get your share, to keep the sanity off this discussion and from all practical reasoning, the resource cannot be divided equally among every living being.

As the population of the society increases it affects everyone's share of these finite resources, indirectly their capability and capacity to generate wealth, creating a misbalance.
More and more people each year move closer towards the darker side of grey.

Each time the stock market goes up and you think you have made more money, it came at the cost of someone else loosing and being pushed down further. But since this is how god created this world, the more knowledgeable people of the society gave birth to the concept of "giving" - when the “haves” donate time, money and/or hope to the “have not’s”- they are unintentionally trying to help maintain this balance.

--- Top 3 richest people in the world have enough money (~180 billion USD) that can feed the entire population of the world (~7 billion) for one month (@40 INR a day), let me know if this math was confusing, I can provide some more bases to the numbers and calculations. ---

However the rate of population increase is not proportional to what people of the society are “giving back”. We need more “givers” and less “takers” to balance our current world scenario.
For example, if you give 1 hour a day of your precious time to teach a poor kid and at the rate poor kids are born, you will be soon run out of your “give” hours OR if you give INR 20 a day to a hungry, you will not be able to afford your own meals, at the rate the world’s population is exploding.

If EACH person, who can afford more than 3 meals a day for his/her family, can contribute in making sure at least one additional person on this earth does not sleep hungry. This world will be a less dark place. If EACH of you, who can read and write, can teach one person a year to do the same, this world will be a better place.

Let me clarify for all those who are reading this and jumping to negate my statement above.

Yes, there will still be barbarians who will continue to harm the society but each day you succeed in helping one person stand on his feet and have his/her stomach full, YOU WILL reduce the darker side - the folks who are young, prefect recruits for the barbarians.

Your Question might be - "Well the terrorist are not poor they are well educated in some of the best colleges in the world, how can you say helping a poor will solve this problem?"

My answer is – The well educated barbarians are driven by blind faith –imparted by sadistic leaders, who are there because they preach wrong to the illiterate and the needy. If there is a terrorist camp, its lowest level recruit is a needy, is poor and is concerned about his/her family’s safety.

Each day that YOU will make a person feel secure and hopeful - YOU WILL make EARTH a more peaceful place.

Each day that YOU will forgive a man for his sins and give him the guidance for betterment - YOU will make our society healthier.

AND YES, it will come at a price, and the price will be you being less materialistically satisfied.

This world is a very big place; we cannot expect one person or a group of people to fix the world's problems. Even if magically all the politicians (that you speak off) disappear - there will be a new set of such people that will continue doing the ills left behind.

It starts with YOU and nowhere else.

Your Question might be - "If I do this – “give” thing that you speak off, what's the guarantee that everyone else will do it?"

My answer is - You must believe, you must have –hope- that there are many good people on this planet.

To answer your next question - "When will the world be a better place, if we start doing this TODAY and CONTINUE doing it?"

My answer is - Not in your life time, but our kids and their kids will see the difference, they will write in their history books - about us, the society that BELIEVED and brought the change. It has taken us years to ruin the system - It will take us years to FIX it too.

It is your choice to pour a bottle of Milk and make the difference or choose to POUR water instead and think – “well what difference will it make if I alone don't do it.

We come up with a list things that some ELSE should do, we come with ideas that someone ELSE should implement. And we expect the world to change in a blink of an eye.

We try to find the root cause to problems - "Terrorist attacked us - how can we prepare ourselves for the future?"

"Only if we fund more and equip our soldiers with better killing equipments, we can protect ourselves"

"Only if politicians were not corrupt and use this money to buy good killing equipment, we can buy more guns"

"Only if the terrorist training camps in XYZ art of the world can be cleaned"

"Only if we .... The list goes on"

If I can feed a poor kid and impart basic education, If I can make him/her understand that picking up a gun is not the answer, if I can get one less trigger happy terrorist, If I can get 1000 less bullets flying in air, If I can reduce your chances of getting shot by one of these bullets by a 1000th time – I believe that I can help my society.

A great change requires a greater sacrifice - Are you willing to sacrifice?

Are you willing to sacrifice your hunger to buy an HD 50 inch plasma television to fill a plate of rice and a bowl of soup for the needy?

I'm willing to do it and I'm already doing it and I do BELIEVE (the same way I believe in GOD), that if you ask your heart, you are willing to do this as well and you will do it.

It is just that YOU do not BELIEVE in it just yet.

Pure Fun

I thought i had enough of -crazy machines- type, puzzle casual games but then i stumbled onto this: What a killer game: http://fantasticcontraption.com/.

These are the kinds of games that make me go "I LOVE GAMES"

Right Wright!

I agree that I can’t create art in any form to save my life, however I do understand art and able to appreciate good art.
I remember painfully trying to create something (for fun) using 3d studio max and I couldn’t even create anything close to what I can now, thanks to Will Wright. Right!!!!!
Spores! Yeah finally I was able to get a copy and get going. As expected I went from single cell organism to a two legged freak in no time.

My starting organism
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My current P1-100 creature
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I told you i cannot create art to save my life.

Super fun!! I’m expecting lot of my time vanishing, all thanks to SPORES.
I love it.

Uno Rush Announced

My game (well actually I mean Microsoft’s game ;)) was announced today at E3 by none other than John Schappert himself…..Cannot say much about this game before it actually hits the market….meanwhile here are some links to drop your eyes on:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39941/Uno-Rush-Screenshots

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/puzzle/unorush/news.html?sid=6193760

http://play.tm/wire/click/2002225

Time - Where has it gone?

Hi,
It all happens in a flash. Always.

Whenever you are waiting for something to happen, it feels really long, but only till it happens.

After it happens, you go "Hey! That was fast"

Here I'm 8500 miles away from where i was last week. Driving on the other side of the road, sitting in the other side of the car, eating cold food and trying to sleep on top of a sinking bed.

The change is sometimes 0verwhelming .....

On the great side Microsoft has given me a beautiful house overlooking the lake in Kirkland. The view is spectacular. I'm really looking forward for times to come, the start has been great and i wish it continues to be the same. I leave you with some snaps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91306143@N00/sets/72157605418434426/