There is a hole in the sky ...

... through which things can fly!
I am talking about Portal, the latest game from the creators of Half-Life.

Here is the video trailer:


I have loved Half-life, as opposed to Quake or Doom or Unreal, because I love solving puzzles, and I love the first-person perspective. Even right now, I am at a stage in Half-life 2 where I have to kill a lot of zombies, and that is something I am not really interested in.

Portal, for me, provides the best part of half-life, namely the physics and realism in a first-person perspective, without the bloodshed. I am seriously thinking of spending the $19.95 for this game.

But wait, there is more! The good people at Primotech have modded Half-life to be played with the portal gun enabled. More details, and a video are here.

And for those who want to get a feel of the game, but for free, there is the flash version of portal. One of the best things is that you retain momentum while jumping through portals - so if you jump from high above into a portal, you come out of the other end with the same momentum [and kinetic energy]. This can be used to jump very high :-). [I know this sounds confusing. Post a comment if you want me to explain further, or better, play the flash game for a few levels :-)]

Finally, credit is due to the guys at User Friendly, who have been running comic strips on this topic for some days now, sufficiently so to prompt me to look it up on wikipedia.

The Cake is Back!

[Edit: This post has videos. Those of you reading it on Facebook or Buzz are requested to go to the original post on my blog to see them.]

First, the teaser [direct link]


Then, the hands-on demo [direct link]


Yup. Portal 2 is coming! Am so happy :).

And lastly, where we left off last time. [direct link]


[and for those who don't understand what this post is about, some background]

Good Times

Yesterday was a good day by most counts.

First, the France telecom guys showed up (after their crazy SMS to me two days ago that they will come on the 9th of November at 00:00hrs!).

Turns out that the wire was disconnected in the circuit box outside my apartment. They attached it, and my Internet works! :)

The Second (and perhaps the biggest) piece of news was that my journal paper to the IEEE Transactions on Computers, which was under minor revision, has finally been accepted without any more changes. Now just a week more to upload all the files, and it will be done :).

Thirdly, I realized that neuf now allows free phone calls (using the VoIP phone that comes as part of my DSL plan) to INDIAN LANDLINES also!

Fourthly, I finally installed 64-bit Ubuntu Linux on my new desktop, (pre-assembly picture here) and can properly use its 4GB of RAM and 500GB Harddrive. And yes, portal is running well on it :). See screenshot below.



And the final good news came last night, when I realized that the free channels that come with my IPTV (again, part of my DSL plan), include Zee Music! Finally, auto-playing new bollywood video songs in the background :).

Life, in short, is good.

-A
P.S. Tonight is nuit blanche, and I will be meeting Barman and Dalal from my ITBHU days. More good times :)

Of Portals and Pointers

I have talked before about how I _love_ portal. And now, here is some g33ky detail on how it works [ref: /.].


And in other sciency news, here is another post on how animals apparently point north! [ref: /. again]. Maybe there is some wisdom after all in the rule my parents have about not sleeping with my head towards the North.... hmmmm. [NIH link abt magnetic material in humans]


OK then, me off to sleep now, not pointed towards North :).