I have also started tagging my bookmarks on Technorati. I suggest anyone who browses often always faces the problem of transferring their old bookmarks. Also, the problem of bookmarks growing much larger than one’s screen height is also a problem ;)

My browsing habits have become more extensive over the last couple of days. Actually, it has just caught up with the times. I mean, we are talking about a generation who has 1324 contacts in their social networking mini-site (i.e. their profile page in a site like www.orkut.com). I have supplemented my news reading with RSS feeds from most major news sites including Hindu. Other than Slashdot.org, I now also frequent Digg and reddit.

All this is thanks to the amazing open source browser Firefox. Unfortunately for 75% of people out there, Firfox is just a browser that has tabs. But few things which Firefox does, I can’t live without is

• Blocks all kinds of ADs and tremendously speeds my browsing experience.
• Having keyboard shortcuts for everything speeds it even more.
• Takes me straight to ‘Printer friendly’ pages, so no more paging around
• Shows all the downloads in the statusbar

… and much more. Of course all these is because of the extensions

It is so much exciting when websites have sprung up based on simple but strong concepts rather than the all encompassing portal based sites of the dot com days. It is probably what everyone is calling Web 2.0 these days. I welcome this change. Personally, I think has helped budding entrepreneurs like me bring ideas to market thanks to full fledged open source web frameworks like Rails. I have been trying to study Django and Turbogears out there due to my interest in Python (or rather my reluctance to learn Ruby after multiple half hearted attempts).

One of the most disturbing questions most game developers face is whether Video Game is an art form or not. Of course, by Video Games I’m also including computer game and console games.

A very well written essay on this can be found here Video Games as Art by clysm

My 75th post! (or so says my Wordpress engine), a big thank you to all those who have visited my little space on this sea of information. Is it now due to move to Wordpress 2.0? I’ve read all the enhancements and me don’t think so :)

With more and more projects like Basecamp and Gmail, the application space within a browser is limited only by ones imagination. If AJAX sounds greek to you, probably you might not have heard about all the excitement behind it. Basecamp is already net’s most favourite Project Management tool. And you would really need to get out of that rock if you haven’t heard of Gmail.

As a budding game developer I’m quite frankly petrified by the alarming growth of such web based apps (this includes Flash based and Javascript based apps). These days I’m sceptical if a gamer would download a zip file or (shudder) an EXE file and go through the installation to just try a game. All the while when there are many of your favourite games like Pac-man (-clone) and Lemmings already ready for you to play. Well, I guess hard-core gamers would be put off by the slow interactions within a browser, but playing speed might just be a question of time.

Anyways, I’ve decided to try my hand at some cool javascript coding. Right from the moment I discovered the game at E-Scribe I found it quite addictive. I just had to finish coding it. In fact, it must have actually taken me less than 5 hours to code, design artwork and test (in 3 browsers - IE, Firefox and Safari !!!) meanwhile sippping tea over endless discussion in the foodcourt ;).

For the impatient the game below is ready to play, so try it online, try it now ;)

Rules

The objective is to arrange the some jumbled numbers into numbers in increasing order. At each step all you can do is click on a number. As a result all the numbers to the left of the number including the number will be reversed.

For example, if the current list is 2 3 4 5 1 6 7 8 9 and you reverse 4, the result will be 5 4 3 2 1 6 7 8 9. Now if you reverse 5, you win.

Play here, now!

“Reverse” in your website?

Simple! Just copy paste the following code in your site

<iframe src="/downloads/reversegame/reverse-js-game.html"
width = "420" height="100" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">
</iframe>

Please give due credits. The code is release under the GNU General Public License

Learnings

This section would be of interest only to Javascript developers Some interesting lessons learnt whilst developing this game are:

• IDE: Mozilla Firefox is an excellent platform to develop JavaScript apps thanks to the DOM Inspector and clickable JavaScript console
• Presentation: End output is very professional and customizable. This is due to usage of CSS which very effectively separates presentation from design. For eg: I can make any number of “skins” for this game. Also traditional game art resources such as fonts are already present “out of the box”
• Paradigm: Out of the box event handling model need some getting used to, especially for new programmers. This is especially true for timer code which I would expect most games to use extensively.
• innerHTML: innerHTML is not fully crossplatform. It is very useful for debugging hence was often used in alert boxes. Use for node creation use DOM functions such as createElement or appendChild
• Animation: This was one of the primary reasons I wanted to turn the text based game in E-Scribe to a graphical one. It was no clear which digits were being swapped. Rather than go for a full blown fading/translating animation, I opted for a simple blink. As a result the gameplay is faster and more responsive.

It looked as if a bright yellow galaxy of stars had fallen on the dark surface of earth. These scintillating golden specks of light, however, felt far more alive. Slowly you could make out the roads, the cars and the houses.

‘Beautiful’, I almost gasped.

‘Is it?’, remarked the wide-eyed Bengali girl as she leaned towards me. The airplane window afforded only a mere slice of the full view, thanks to the wings obstructing a fair bit of it. I shuffled quite a bit so that she could catch a glimpse of what I saw. Just to fill the silence, I stated the obvious, ‘Bombay is truly beautiful at night’. She merely smiled sweetly in agreement. I guess it was the thought that she would be meeting her hubby in Bangalore soon; that was running at the back of her mind. Just like it was the thought of me finally getting to see my family after a year; was running at the back of my mind.

You are home, now - once that realisation hits you, every second passes in a crawl. The sights, the sounds and the people around you have suddenly changed. Changed to something you instinctively recognize. An environment to which you were organically a part of. An environment that’s no longer sterile or alien. But one into which you can blend yourself in and be liberated. Yes, it’s like you were pickled and back alive again. I’m already loving this feeling.

Five hours later, I’m home. Yes, this time it is my permanent residence in Kerala. And this time, I’m showered with love and tendered with longing by everyone. After a modest amount of chit-chat, I’ve been advised to take rest. It must have been a tiring journey - they say. Couldn’t agree more, but worth every bit. I change to something more comfortable - like the super comfy lungi.

I lie back on my good old bed and wondering if I’m yet to dream or am I already in one? That I must say, was the best sleep I’ve had in months ;)

[PS: Regardless of the date of posting, I left for India on 17th Dec, 2005. I had reached London on 13th Dec, 2004. So an year had passed. Actually, there was no break in between. So this time, I took a month off. Well, Happy new to year to everybody :) ]

In the claustrophobic confines of an underground train, heavenly music fills my ear canals. Feet rhythmically tapping to those familiar pulsating beats. Fingers playing a salsa to the playful guitar strings. Lips curled to a blissful smile. I’m in a cocoon of music. Creating a small discontinuity from the surrounding space, a familiar microcosm from hundreds of miles across has suddenly surrounded me.

There must be, of course, a quiet rumble of the train outside. An odd stranger’s lips are also moving without a sound. But most of them are in a trance in their own cocoons. Sporting earphones with the classic white wires or simple black ones or sometimes ridiculously large headphones; they can be easily spotted. Mine is a white one. Easily mistaken to be an iPod, but it is in fact a Creative Micro Zen. Nicknamed him ‘Rave’, less technical and much less mouthful. My sole companion for routine soulless commuting. A chore that occupies about one and a half hours of mine everyday. I prefer music to reading. Reading is engaging, but music is both engaging and uplifting. I have come to terms with the weird disorientation I had blogged about earlier. Now, I revel and relish in the pleasure of my musical cocoon.

Unlike well planned officers-goers with a fixed commuting schedule, I have travelled to office at different times of the day. Every time-slot brings up a different set of people. For eg: at the 8:30 slot you will spot the cool-but-busy-business-women, 9:30 slot is for too-late-to-wait-office-goer, 11:00 slot are for casual slackers. Add to this varying traffic patterns, school children, helmet wearing cyclists, road construction workers, windows glass cleaners and the illusion is complete. To revisit the illusion of that particular slot one would have to wait for an entire day to pass. That’s London for you. Never hustle and bustle, never noisy, but a kaleidoscope of life with diurnal patterns.

Once one gets used to the music-induced deafness, your visual faculties grow keener and sharper. The familiar sights would now bring memories and unfurl curious patterns. A study of daily life is more interesting than it seems. But soon this would be a bore and my mind would wander to a different idle pursuit. I hate commuting!

---

They say there is always a calm before a storm. My inactivity in the blogosphere has worried many and excited some. Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not going to pull out a bunny from my top hat. My excuse is the lamest and perhaps most overused one - Been saddled with work.