The Rain Machine

Its march and its still cold. This is great! Its raining in almost every part of Pakistan. Some of the northern areas still snowing. End of february: murree was full of fresh soft fluffy white snow. What is it today? the 15th? 16th? According to forecasts another cold wet spell is on its way! This is brilliant! :D

I'm back in the jungle and I miss the internet. Its only me and my ipod. I miss my podcasts. I'm all out of date :/ ... But I've been listening to 1970s to 1990s classic rock. From the legendary Sabbath and Zeppelin to Steppenwolf, Kinks, Kiss, Tom Petty, Steve Miller, Blue Oyster, Doors, Clapton, Beatles ... actually I got hold of a huge album full of great songs. Top 500 Rock Hits. The name says it all ^_^ ... And guess which track is # 1? ... Stairway to Heaven! Seldomly listening to the heavy/thrash/alternative metal genres. Then again its mood dependent. Ashar has me hooked on Porcupine Tree (eventually). Its an interesting group. "Every album's a different genre" and I agree with Ashar there. I've backed up my songs in my ipod in case some shit hits the ceiling. Its a pain when you lose your entire collection. Its never ever the same. Floola to the rescue. *applause*

I'm slowly (really really slowly) phasing away from the heavy metal genre and creeping towards jazz & blues & soul... (why?) *coughs* and its not only me. Everybody I know who shared the same taste in music is moving that way.

Stone Sour's new album is good... NIN's album releases this month! Filmazia is the best channel on cable (only when there's a corny punjabi movie on).. shit they've actually got a website going.. and its kinda good :S ... Remember those funny dubbed shows on STN/NTM called "hashar nashar"? Someone on youtube has a couple of them uploaded. ^_^ ... oh and 300 is in theatres this week. [trailer] "This .. is .. SPARTAAAA!!!!!" *kick* ... Must keep myself away from as many reviews/spoilers as possible... And that cold rain spell is coming too (again) haha!! w00t w00t!!!

Organizing stuff is cool. Especially when you've got a Toshiba PDA from your khala who doesn't use it anymore which runs Windows Mobile. And Microsoft has actually done a pretty cool job. The OS is really good in terms of features and resource consumption. Plan stuff you have to get done, events you have to attend, deadlines to meet. The interface is really good! Then you have a recorder built-in the PDA. Attach interview/lecture sound clips to your notes. With built-in wifi, bluetooth and gprs support its great and the battery lasts for more than 4-5 days and its quite light too! Now I know what I'll buy once I start a job, a brand spanking new PDA :D ... 5 years ago I had this crappy LCD Palm III... Hassan had the one with the color LCD... Since then features in PDAs have matured alot! Staying connected to the internet, 24/7 online on skype with a quality GPRS/GSM connection is all you'd need. *yawn*

Oh and some of you know about the Fu Manchu. Its days are numbered. The eliteness is over. First Topi, then Islamabad, then finally home: Lahore. Everyone I met recognized me after a second glance. Weird at first, but then everyone gets used to a new look and it doesn't look that bad after all. But in a week or two, it'll be gone... I have a couple of interviews coming my way.. *fingers crossed*... so *coughs* must look presentable... who's going to hire a truck driver engineer anyway :P .... ok i cant remember anything else *yawn* ...... must..... sleep.......

x_X
(yes, picture-less post this was... bleh~~)

Hello again. Welcome to the new monthly edition of The Rain Machine. *keeeelaping*

The last month I've been with friends helping them out with stuff. Last week we performed 3 short plays of Anton Chekhov at Alhamra (Mall Road). Most of you guys might remember Tughral Turab who did "The Bear" at GIK's drama festival. He directed the three plays - namely: "The Proposal", "The Dangers of Tobacco Smoking" and "The Festivities"... Cast included polly, amin hussain, sidra, aleem.. 2 months of work finally paid off. The show was a success. Though all three days we never got the hall more than 80% full (approximately 350 people.. not sure.. oh and it was during the weekdays) the audience remained glued to their seats for one and half hour and left the hall with smiles on their faces. The sense of accomplishment was overwhelming. We had quite a media presence there. We got interviewed by some youth magazine (dont know what the name was) and also by PTV (yay!!.. but they said it'll be aired around 8 in the morning... eh). I'll be getting the photos and probably the video too and I'll host them here. Right now it only has the sounds used for 2 of the plays and the hall music :P

I've started using last.fm. Its good for tracking your music listening and helps you find bands you might like. Its a social networking site but unlike orkut, it revolves around the idea of networking people based on their music listening habits.

Holiday season is reaching its peak and there are so many things to buy. The most interesting of all is the new nintendo wii ... This console isnt for couch potatoes and button mashers! The controllers pick your arm movements and sends them to the wii's sensor bar wirelessly. Nintendo wanted to bring something new to the gaming industry and something that would be fun. For just $250 compared to the other next generation consoles, the wii is worth it ... Most people who play video games, dont play for the realistic graphics or storyline alone. Its the fun factor. The gameplay. And the gameplay depends alot on the storyline, the graphics, the sounds, the controls and the camera view...

There's a wrist band in case you lose grip of the wii controller. However, there have been cases of gamers over exerting themselves and breaking their TV sets ... *ouch* !! Wii have a problem is a site with stories of unfortunate circumstances when playing the new nintendo wii :P ... (mostly broken TV sets)

Here's a funny Wii vs PS3 G4's commercial that shows "how a Wii can be cheap and fun, and how a PS3 can be big and well... not fun." A fat nerdy ps3 girl vs a jolly playful hot wii chick.. :P

Now Sony with its expensive Playstation3 is going to be a huge flop. This is highly inevitable. Given that its really really powerful and has a BluRay disc drive. But do I see anything on BluRay yet?? BluRay is mostly to blame if the PS3 sinks. Supply not meeting its demand on the day the $600 PS3 was launched which resulted in a few people getting mugged. A guy waited for 7 hours in line till he got his PS3, then just minutes later 5 people come up to him, beat him up and run away with his PS3. And if thats not enough, a group of people bought a console just for the sake of gaining attention (*coughs* whoops! :P ...) by smashing the PS3 into pieces. *double ouch* !! here's the video. After the huge publicity that followed, they started smashing other consoles :P ... its funny and at the same time stupid..
Videos: Smashing a Wii (lol @ mario sounds), Smashing a PSP ...

On the other hand, Microsoft seems to have won the console war. Something which seemed impossible 3 years ago. The xbox360, its online community and a number of great games coming on that title says it all. I want an xbox360!!! In case your wondering there have been cases of hacking the xbox360 to play pirated games, but Microsoft has been swift in banning machine IDs of hacked xbox360s so beware. By banning the ID you cannot make it to the online xbox live community. I heard Gears of War on the xbox360 is just awesome!!

Microsoft entered the video games market with its xbox. The xbox360 is its second console and in my opinion it has successfully beaten Sony and its Playstation3. Recently, Microsoft also entered the mp3 player market where Apple's ipod has 85% of the market share. A review of Microsoft's "iPod Killer" named the Zune has shed light on some interesting features.

Its got a big screen. Its got a radio tuner. Its got a wifi thingie too. Its User Interface is awesome! Supports xbox360. Allows you to transfer songs to your friend's Zune via wifi. BUT its tightly wrapped in DRM. Though the iPod is also, but the Zune's makes it scare people like me from buying it..

Transferring songs via wifi comes with a condition. Your friend cannot listen to the song more than thrice and the song remains on his Zune for not more than 3 days. Even if the song you sent is copyright or not. Which sort of kills the idea. But since its wifi, there'll be a hack to get that thing right. Oh and you can't use the Zune as a hard drive like the iPod. But there's a hack to fix it. The hack applies to the computer you hook it up with, not the Zune, which means you'd need to apply the hack to other computers whenever you want to access the Zune Hard Drive... Its bigger and heavier than the iPod video. And the Zune has 30 GB of space whereas the iPod video comes in 60 and 80 GB.... Read the review if you're thinking of getting a Zune. I think I'll stick to my iPod for now.

check this video out!! its david blaine!!! o_O !! its like OMFGWTFROFLKOPTERSTFU1337 !!!! a_@ !!! yikesalicious!!!!

And those of you who own an iPod or download podcasts: Which podcasts do you listen to?
Here's what I've subscribed to:



Well its not much. I only have time to listen to these. TWiT is the best. I used to watch Tech TV alot and I loved it. Too bad it got shut down. The people that were in Tech TV now come on this podcast. Write a comment if you have an interesting podcast to share. :D

Yay! I finally took the time to get rid of that evil empty space bug. That "small" bug made my blog look really ugly... But after using my special supernatural powers I added a curse to my .CSS spellbook and voila!!!

I got rid of the extra stuff from the navigation bar... Click on the Sonic Box (or the Ring Box) to make that section expand or collapse! neat huh? ^^ ... Making the blog took sometime collecting graphics from the Sonic video game... Ingame background scenes and sprites were taken from this really cool site called The Leaf Forest Zone that has all the sprites and background images that exist in the game.. I made the Sonic animated gif standing at the bottom of this page using a spritesheet (also from The Leaf Forest Zone). and in case you've noticed: those red, grey, purple gems are called chaos emeralds. There've been lots of Sonic related Flash Animations and Cartoons on Newgrounds! And most of the animations had taken spritesheets and backgrounds from The Leaf Forest Zone.

.. Benjamin Breeg too, but this month or so its the 16-bit Realm. I've gone nuts playing my old Sonic Collection on the SEGA Genesis! This sudden theme change is for the best and coolest game and game character of the mid 90s! The game that ruled the 16-bit Realm.

I played Sonic 3 again then played Sonic & Knuckles. One day I was reading a couple of articles and stuff about Sonic's 15th Birthday, I came across one with lots of hidden secrets that I never knew existed in the game. I did collect all the chaos emeralds, finish the game with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles but wait... there's more???? o_O

The Master Emerald.. So that what they called that 'bigger' emerald.. Apparently becoming Super Sonic wasn't the last thing, there was something called 'Hyper Sonic'... I just had to play as Hyper Sonic and see what other special levels get unlocked.. It was a fun walk down memory lane.. The good old days. The only incentive in getting up early in the morning every weekend was to start playing Sonic and get as further as possible, before the grown ups get up and hijack the Television ^^ ...





K, I'll be tweaking this really buggy template when i get more time.. so far so good :D

A week ago UK MP George Galloway was interviewed live on sky news (video). And after 10 minutes of him on air, he earned oceans of respect from many people who see the current Israeli war on Lebanon as not just a war of aggression and show of military might but as another chapter in Israel's decades old illegal occupation and economic/social suffocation of Palestinians. George Galloway: I salute you! Sky took a really good beating for its clear biased coverage of the conflict.



... sweet pwnage!!! Notice:
1) The newscaster got ticked off and at times her voice stuttered. They stopped showing her on the other half of the screen! lol.
2) Sky kept toying with the volume of the video being played on the left to try mute Galloway.

I cant wait to see Galloway in action on FOX news. Bill O'Reilly would probably mute him and call him an idiot before even letting Galloway finish IFF that ever happens!!