Posts
A little history, just an attempt to ease reading :), the blogger archive is complex :(
Sharanya Manivannan – Long Bio
3 months ago
Monday, May 30, 2005
a few cobwebs
A little history, just an attempt to ease reading :), the blogger archive is complex :(
Monday, May 09, 2005
Confessions of a Software Gamer
It’s not easy to live in the Information Technology generation. Lets face it…I, for instance, will never be a warrior for GOD sent to save the world against unspeakable evil.
I’m not saying I CAN’T be. It might yet be that a messiah will bring the news to me that the END is imminent and it is all up to ME! But my parents have not received this theory with the deserved gravity and I retire hurt.
But after three years of being a dedicated follower of the computer gaming industry, I’m beginning to feel curiously inadequate. Why AM I not a legendary character anyway? Who says legendary characters have faced terrible catastrophes? Has a legendary character ever written a recursive program to crash a computer?
These legends are completely overrated, I tell you! Legends are not built just because of a few paltry great deeds. Legends are built by a dedicated set of computer nerds who allow us different settings for “violence”.
My younger brother first introduced me to the gaming industry. He brought home this game called the “Commandos” that till today remains my nostalgic all time favourite. He installed it in our computer and was figuring out the best way to bomb an enemy base when my mother and I got interested.
Soon we were shouting orders from behind him. No no move your boat there…Don’t kill that guy! He’ll raise the alarm! If we had been generals in World War II, at least the war would have been more entertaining, with troops running around madly and slamming into each other like a knock-about comedy.
My brother soon got irritated (ungrateful of him) and suggested that I try my hand. So he taught the rudiments and I laboriously brought all my men from the high seas onto land and asked them to dismount from the boat. They refused. I double clicked, tapped randomly on the computer and even used the Brahmastra – Ctrl+Alt+Del. They offered to restart the PC for me but none of them budged.
I called my brother. He pointed out to me thoughtfully that three of my men were already dead because the enemy sniper had gotten them while I was still strategically moving them to land right under the eyes of the enemy. Asking the dead men to move was not polite.
My mother was meanwhile sympathizing with the poor soldiers who had to be killed because of generals like me. She thought of all the animated objects as real people. She thought the enemy had “cute” German accents, she refused to kill an annoying dog because she objected to cruelty to animals (Cruelty to the German soldiers was OK, besides they were dead before they knew it. She was actually doing them a favour if you think about it). She also objected that the game was sexist. There were no female commandos.
Anyway I got it right the twenty-fifth time and my troops had landed. Beware Germany!
My brother was just the right age to take up gaming. He was in his late teens, too old to be inspired to shoot his classmates by a violent game and too young to have lost his keen reflexes. He learnt fast and played phenomenally. Me I was passable. No lightning reflexes, just a bit geriatric with the mouse, but I got around. My mom was a revelation.
And she wanted to try.
I have never forgotten the day my maternal parent, who had borne us for nine months, who had held our hands and cleaned up after us and been a friend and guide these many years, first took up “Commandos”.
Mom started by moving the mouse from one edge of the table to the other, like a shopping cart away from an angry mob, and we went into convulsions. After the mouse got to the top of the screen (and the mouse pad) it wouldn’t move any more. So mother took the mouse off the table, brought it back to the bottom edge again and began to push ferociously. I don’t think I have laughed that hard very often again.
Meanwhile her soldiers were heading straight for a collision course with the enemy patrol. Mom shouted in dismay and begged one of us to steer the boat away from the patrol but we couldn’t have moved if our lives depended on it. We were clutching our stomachs and fearing an actual stroke.
Despite the start, mom did quite well, although watching her use the mouse was still the best part of the day for both of us. She used to click very carefully so as to not offend the mouse. And to her, moving and clicking were two different activities. She would move the mouse and watch the screen suspiciously to see if the pointer really moved or it was just pretending. Then she would take her index finger to the left mouse button and press it once. Then she would take a breather before moving the mouse again.
Mom was understandably the slowest mover in the campaign among the three of us. The leader of our virtual team was a Green Beret called Major. Mom fell for him at first sight. Sure, my dad was a brave man, but could he knife a man and carry his dead body into a safe place efficiently and speedily? My dad, sadly, refused to compete for this honour. Chivalry is dead!
The next landmark in her game was when her Major got killed. Mom had never faced an emergency of this magnitude before. The alarm was rung; men were pouring out and looking for her Major. My mother who was steel when I broke my nose, and when my brother fell off the balcony, panicked. She took her hands off the keyboard and mouse immediately, shouted for us, and explained tearfully.
My brother shouted instructions in her ear. Take your Major to safety, move him, MOVE MOVE..AT LEAST USE THE MOUSE! and that frightened my mom even more. She watched paralyzed as they killed her hero. We all mourned for a minute and then my brother began to shout at her for risking that brave man’s life. In my defense, I hardly giggled at all, but both of them gave me dirty looks and kicked me out of the room. There is no justice in this world.
My mom would have made an outstanding messiah for peace. They should have had her at WWII. Neither camp would have made a move for about a year, except perhaps for peeping coyly around corners at the enemy from a safe distance of a mile. There would have been no war.
After Commandos, I took to other games... plenty of them. I’m totally hardened now. When I first played Quake, I would rise out of the primordial slime, grab a weapon and jump gracefully into an endless void and die. Now I’m pretty competent, I kill a guy before I commit suicide. It’s quite hard for me to understand the fascination with gaming, that hooked even my mom, but then, there’s a whole section of the population dedicated to golf, and I rest my case.
I’m not saying I CAN’T be. It might yet be that a messiah will bring the news to me that the END is imminent and it is all up to ME! But my parents have not received this theory with the deserved gravity and I retire hurt.
But after three years of being a dedicated follower of the computer gaming industry, I’m beginning to feel curiously inadequate. Why AM I not a legendary character anyway? Who says legendary characters have faced terrible catastrophes? Has a legendary character ever written a recursive program to crash a computer?
These legends are completely overrated, I tell you! Legends are not built just because of a few paltry great deeds. Legends are built by a dedicated set of computer nerds who allow us different settings for “violence”.
My younger brother first introduced me to the gaming industry. He brought home this game called the “Commandos” that till today remains my nostalgic all time favourite. He installed it in our computer and was figuring out the best way to bomb an enemy base when my mother and I got interested.
Soon we were shouting orders from behind him. No no move your boat there…Don’t kill that guy! He’ll raise the alarm! If we had been generals in World War II, at least the war would have been more entertaining, with troops running around madly and slamming into each other like a knock-about comedy.
My brother soon got irritated (ungrateful of him) and suggested that I try my hand. So he taught the rudiments and I laboriously brought all my men from the high seas onto land and asked them to dismount from the boat. They refused. I double clicked, tapped randomly on the computer and even used the Brahmastra – Ctrl+Alt+Del. They offered to restart the PC for me but none of them budged.
I called my brother. He pointed out to me thoughtfully that three of my men were already dead because the enemy sniper had gotten them while I was still strategically moving them to land right under the eyes of the enemy. Asking the dead men to move was not polite.
My mother was meanwhile sympathizing with the poor soldiers who had to be killed because of generals like me. She thought of all the animated objects as real people. She thought the enemy had “cute” German accents, she refused to kill an annoying dog because she objected to cruelty to animals (Cruelty to the German soldiers was OK, besides they were dead before they knew it. She was actually doing them a favour if you think about it). She also objected that the game was sexist. There were no female commandos.
Anyway I got it right the twenty-fifth time and my troops had landed. Beware Germany!
My brother was just the right age to take up gaming. He was in his late teens, too old to be inspired to shoot his classmates by a violent game and too young to have lost his keen reflexes. He learnt fast and played phenomenally. Me I was passable. No lightning reflexes, just a bit geriatric with the mouse, but I got around. My mom was a revelation.
And she wanted to try.
I have never forgotten the day my maternal parent, who had borne us for nine months, who had held our hands and cleaned up after us and been a friend and guide these many years, first took up “Commandos”.
Mom started by moving the mouse from one edge of the table to the other, like a shopping cart away from an angry mob, and we went into convulsions. After the mouse got to the top of the screen (and the mouse pad) it wouldn’t move any more. So mother took the mouse off the table, brought it back to the bottom edge again and began to push ferociously. I don’t think I have laughed that hard very often again.
Meanwhile her soldiers were heading straight for a collision course with the enemy patrol. Mom shouted in dismay and begged one of us to steer the boat away from the patrol but we couldn’t have moved if our lives depended on it. We were clutching our stomachs and fearing an actual stroke.
Despite the start, mom did quite well, although watching her use the mouse was still the best part of the day for both of us. She used to click very carefully so as to not offend the mouse. And to her, moving and clicking were two different activities. She would move the mouse and watch the screen suspiciously to see if the pointer really moved or it was just pretending. Then she would take her index finger to the left mouse button and press it once. Then she would take a breather before moving the mouse again.
Mom was understandably the slowest mover in the campaign among the three of us. The leader of our virtual team was a Green Beret called Major. Mom fell for him at first sight. Sure, my dad was a brave man, but could he knife a man and carry his dead body into a safe place efficiently and speedily? My dad, sadly, refused to compete for this honour. Chivalry is dead!
The next landmark in her game was when her Major got killed. Mom had never faced an emergency of this magnitude before. The alarm was rung; men were pouring out and looking for her Major. My mother who was steel when I broke my nose, and when my brother fell off the balcony, panicked. She took her hands off the keyboard and mouse immediately, shouted for us, and explained tearfully.
My brother shouted instructions in her ear. Take your Major to safety, move him, MOVE MOVE..AT LEAST USE THE MOUSE! and that frightened my mom even more. She watched paralyzed as they killed her hero. We all mourned for a minute and then my brother began to shout at her for risking that brave man’s life. In my defense, I hardly giggled at all, but both of them gave me dirty looks and kicked me out of the room. There is no justice in this world.
My mom would have made an outstanding messiah for peace. They should have had her at WWII. Neither camp would have made a move for about a year, except perhaps for peeping coyly around corners at the enemy from a safe distance of a mile. There would have been no war.
After Commandos, I took to other games... plenty of them. I’m totally hardened now. When I first played Quake, I would rise out of the primordial slime, grab a weapon and jump gracefully into an endless void and die. Now I’m pretty competent, I kill a guy before I commit suicide. It’s quite hard for me to understand the fascination with gaming, that hooked even my mom, but then, there’s a whole section of the population dedicated to golf, and I rest my case.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Be Different
“Be Different” This is the new age dream. We take tutorials for it, watch TV programs, whose characters we can copy for it. Every other clothes/shoe/lifestyle commercial is featured around a variation of this theme.
There was a quotation I saw someday, somewhere that said – “These days, what’s so different about being different anyway?” Who says we never think twice about quotations?? I haven’t stopped thinking about this one for two years now…
I keep torturing myself – “Ok so maybe I’m different. But what’s different about that? EVERYONE is being different…It’s the same thing. But then, it would have been called ‘Being Alike’…Why is it called ‘Being Different’? What’s the difference anyway?”
It’s the ideal way to amuse oneself during a busy day. You are pondering a deeper question, not wasting time (Heaven Forbid!!) You are a sincere workaholic who actually cares about this issue J
I mean, think about it. Previously we were told to buy a brand of chocolate because it was the BEST in the market. Now we are told to buy it because its “Different”…Just WHO asked for a “different” chocolate?
The worst part is there will be a whole bunch of people trying it out for this very reason. It builds mystery and curiosity…It’s like an Arabian Nights chocolate…Filled with grapes and snakes and semi-naked ladies. Forget that it tastes exactly the same, only squishier. The mirage of difference has been painted. The marketing concept is made!
And so, our markets are shifting slowly from quality to difference…Biscuits called “cookies” are more expensive, because the name is different!
The point is, very few are actually being any different. We have the same boring jobs, the same pressures in school, work, family…The same problems, the same clothes, hairstyles, attitudes (Or the same lack of it). In short, we are almost exactly the same as countless people who have and will, live and die on this earth.
Then why the “Difference” mania suddenly? Why are corny marketing concepts working?
I think it’s because our egos are slowly enlarging. No one really notices their egos very much unless some fool tries to overtake them on a highway. Then the ego becomes a SUPEREGO that changes in a phone booth “What’s that? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! NO ITS SUPEREGO!” Flying in the air and overtaking the jackass who started it first!
The growing ego demands an identity, a presence, a fan following, a “different” (read more expensive) life. We all want to be remembered in posterity for our choice of shampoo. (remember employee no. 2716325, who died? He was “different”..)
It puzzles me. Here I am, this amazingly talented accomplished human being; Unique, brilliant, lovable, witty, charming, yet I have no fan clubs and websites following my daily activities? Weird! I KNOW! I’ll become “different”! I’ll buy the “different” toilet cleaner! THEN they’ll all love me and worship at my shrine. HEY! When the ad says this, you believe it…Should I add some semi-naked ladies to convince you? Huh? Huh?
The average ego size swells and subsides 23 times a day for an average male and 20 times for an average female (Needless to say, we’re fighting for women’s equality so that we can have 23 a day too)…This is normal and controllable. What is dangerous is the slow overall growth of the ego. It is threatening to take over the world and is responsible for global warming. All the ecologists are kidding us with the greenhouse theory. Everyone secretly knows it is because humans are getting hotter and hotter for smaller and smaller reasons until the global temperatures register a change that even the seas cannot cool.
The question is, how do we battle this ecological threat? Killing all marketing managers in a worldwide revolution is, of course, the obvious solution, but unfortunately, they have legal representation. And FORGET about killing all the lawyers. They will survive nuclear wipeouts and still make more money than you, even if you sold bomb shelters.
So, from purely altruistic motives (that I am going to copyright before you have finished reading this line), I have come up with a solution – Hold your breath – Start a new revolution. We’ll call it the “Be Alike” revolution. The pressure on the ego will be slowly eased, and all the hot air can escape safely and harmlessly… We will all be socially acceptable only if we look the same, dress the same and be the same. Sell this concept and NOW finally, people will HAVE to be different, because we forbade them. We can only hope…
There was a quotation I saw someday, somewhere that said – “These days, what’s so different about being different anyway?” Who says we never think twice about quotations?? I haven’t stopped thinking about this one for two years now…
I keep torturing myself – “Ok so maybe I’m different. But what’s different about that? EVERYONE is being different…It’s the same thing. But then, it would have been called ‘Being Alike’…Why is it called ‘Being Different’? What’s the difference anyway?”
It’s the ideal way to amuse oneself during a busy day. You are pondering a deeper question, not wasting time (Heaven Forbid!!) You are a sincere workaholic who actually cares about this issue J
I mean, think about it. Previously we were told to buy a brand of chocolate because it was the BEST in the market. Now we are told to buy it because its “Different”…Just WHO asked for a “different” chocolate?
The worst part is there will be a whole bunch of people trying it out for this very reason. It builds mystery and curiosity…It’s like an Arabian Nights chocolate…Filled with grapes and snakes and semi-naked ladies. Forget that it tastes exactly the same, only squishier. The mirage of difference has been painted. The marketing concept is made!
And so, our markets are shifting slowly from quality to difference…Biscuits called “cookies” are more expensive, because the name is different!
The point is, very few are actually being any different. We have the same boring jobs, the same pressures in school, work, family…The same problems, the same clothes, hairstyles, attitudes (Or the same lack of it). In short, we are almost exactly the same as countless people who have and will, live and die on this earth.
Then why the “Difference” mania suddenly? Why are corny marketing concepts working?
I think it’s because our egos are slowly enlarging. No one really notices their egos very much unless some fool tries to overtake them on a highway. Then the ego becomes a SUPEREGO that changes in a phone booth “What’s that? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! NO ITS SUPEREGO!” Flying in the air and overtaking the jackass who started it first!
The growing ego demands an identity, a presence, a fan following, a “different” (read more expensive) life. We all want to be remembered in posterity for our choice of shampoo. (remember employee no. 2716325, who died? He was “different”..)
It puzzles me. Here I am, this amazingly talented accomplished human being; Unique, brilliant, lovable, witty, charming, yet I have no fan clubs and websites following my daily activities? Weird! I KNOW! I’ll become “different”! I’ll buy the “different” toilet cleaner! THEN they’ll all love me and worship at my shrine. HEY! When the ad says this, you believe it…Should I add some semi-naked ladies to convince you? Huh? Huh?
The average ego size swells and subsides 23 times a day for an average male and 20 times for an average female (Needless to say, we’re fighting for women’s equality so that we can have 23 a day too)…This is normal and controllable. What is dangerous is the slow overall growth of the ego. It is threatening to take over the world and is responsible for global warming. All the ecologists are kidding us with the greenhouse theory. Everyone secretly knows it is because humans are getting hotter and hotter for smaller and smaller reasons until the global temperatures register a change that even the seas cannot cool.
The question is, how do we battle this ecological threat? Killing all marketing managers in a worldwide revolution is, of course, the obvious solution, but unfortunately, they have legal representation. And FORGET about killing all the lawyers. They will survive nuclear wipeouts and still make more money than you, even if you sold bomb shelters.
So, from purely altruistic motives (that I am going to copyright before you have finished reading this line), I have come up with a solution – Hold your breath – Start a new revolution. We’ll call it the “Be Alike” revolution. The pressure on the ego will be slowly eased, and all the hot air can escape safely and harmlessly… We will all be socially acceptable only if we look the same, dress the same and be the same. Sell this concept and NOW finally, people will HAVE to be different, because we forbade them. We can only hope…
My First Online Thoughts
DUH! Is all I can think of currently as far as senstitive and meaningful thoughts go. Will add more later...Right now I just want to gloat at my first thoughts in cyberspace......
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