Tech Notes

So there I was, trying to use the World of Warcraft downloader and it telling me some of my ports were blocked. It apparently needs a set of ports to be open and enabled. I googled and found that I need to setup port forwarding for faster downloads. But that assumes a static IP for my computer. My setup is something like this:

Airtel --> Huawei modem with DHCP enabled --> Netgear router with DHCP, which doles out IP addresses to my VOIP adapter, my laptop, my desktop and any rogue machines in the wireless vicinity that are aware of my SSID.

Fixing a static IP for my desktop was the first step. I could set it up in my Negear router itself, by assigning a fixed ip to the MAC id of the desktop. Then I moved on to the Huawei modem and went into the Virtual Servers section. Added the ports needed by the WoW downloader. Restarted the modem. Moved to the router and went to the Port Forwarding section, ditto. The final part was configuring my Comodo firewall to allow TCP-in on those ports. Everything worked like a charm and I felt so proud of myself.

Until I found the Vundo trojan happily resting in my machine. Sigh.

Peruvannapurathe Visheshangal

Inspired by , here's my nation !

In other news...

Kichan cleared the mains exam of the civil services, surprising everyone and making all of us very proud. The final stage, the interview, is on April 10. Went out a few days back and bought him clothes to wear for the interview. A pink shirt, red tie, black trousers and brown shoes is what he is going to wear, in spite of his brother & sister-in-law's advice to look sober and serious. Apparently, he wants to be himself. It has worked so far, it should work in the interview as well. Insha Allah.

The baby is extremely active and kicks his/her mom at every opportunity. Sindha says her insides must be black and blue by now. I can also feel the movements very clearly, its as though the kid is practising karate inside. Or maybe trying to bend it like Beckham. Sounds like its more of Sindha's kid than mine. But then it appears to be hungry all the time, so maybe its got quite a bit of me too.

Gave the Palio for its first service today. The dealer I bought the car from - Manx Auto - had closed down, as predicted. Sundaram - the other dealer - will service the car, but they will also charge me for it. I'm supposed to take the bill and the warranty coupon, go to Manx and convince them to reimburse me. Great. On the positive side, the car hasn't given me any trouble so far. Its a great drive and the mileage isn't all that bad - I get about 11 to 12 km in the city, without a/c.

Stephen King's Everything's Eventual sucks. Kichan tells me From a Buick Eight sucks worse. My next book is most likely to be Llosa's Feast of the Goat or Gunter Grass' Tin Drum. Yum !

Played Serious Sam - the Second Encounter on Saturday. Went to the second level after vanquishing the Mayan firegod, Whatshisname. Sam rocks. However I don't like the jumping around and clicking on levers stuff thats been added in the second part. The first episode was a pure shoot-em-up. One of my all time favourite games.

Whats a good program to convert mp3s into .cda format ? I was thinking of burning audio cds from my mp3 collection. Tried out some shareware stuff from the net, didn't like it very much.

AoM

At last ! Read the review here. The game costs over Rs 2,500, which prevents me from buying it outright. Available at Planet M, Music World et al.

Have started on blackandwhite again. The tiger is my creature of choice. I havent yet decided to be evil or good this time round. Maybe I'll be a mix of both. What fun !

Gaming sure helps in releasing a lot of stress. Oh yes.

Been a long week

Lots of work, lots of chores and hardly any time to put my feet up and relax. Well, thats not completely true. I did get some time to sack out and play Warcraft 3. Would love some more, though.

Bought a cd of the Rolling Stones album Forty Licks and a cassette of Elvis' No 1 hits. Both sound good. I've never listned to Stones much before. However this collection is really good. The Elvis album is of course a great listen - Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender are some of my all time favourites

Doom 3 screenshots

Awesome !

Game Show

Back to playing Age of Empires after a long time. Keep switching between AoE and AoK:TC (Age of Kings:The Conquerors). If all goes well, hope to get my grubby paws on Heroes IV and Return to Castle Wolfenstein pretty soon. Buhahahaha !

Reminder - watch the 8 hour comedy starting at 8:00 p.m. tonight. Rumours are that Dravid will keep wickets and Laxman will share the new ball with Zaheer.

Serious Heroes

Got the demo of Serious Sam: The Second Episode from a friend's Digit CD. Have heard rumours that the game is available in Mumbai. Heroes IV is also out in the US, the review looks great. Cant wait to get my paws on both.

Current book - Soul Music by Terry Pratchett

Game time

Am feeling the urge to get back into gaming. At home of course. There's this large collection which I have only sampled, never completed.

I'm trying to think of games I've completed - very few, really. And most of them are the older games:
- Prince of Persia 2 (yeah, that was fun)
- Wolf 3D and the Spear of Destiny series
- Doom (but not Doom 2 !)
- Age of Empires (completed the campaigns)
- Heroes of Might and Magic III (the default campaigns)
- Grim Fandango
- Serious Sam

Games which I've played a lot but never completed:
- Doom 2
- Quake
- Quake 2
- Halflife
- Alice
- Caesar
- Age of Kings: The Conquerors
- Hexen II

And games which I have sampled and liked, but put off playing in earnest:
- Starcraft
- Homeworld (both 1 and 2)
- Diablo 2
- Myst
- Riven (wanted to finish Myst first, sigh...)
- Black and White
- System Shock 2
- Empire Earth
- Undying
- Civilization 3
- No One Lives Forever

Must be more in each category, cant think of the names right now though.

Hope to get Max Payne shortly. I have the no-cd crack downloaded. Waiting for the CD from a friend...

About last week

My home PC got fixed last weekend, phew ! Immediately installed Clive Barker's Undying. Resumed where I left off on Halflife. Burnt a few CDs. Kreegah !

Saw Mani Ratnam's Kannathil Muthamittal last week. Good movie, one of his best. Its extremely difficult to extract good performances from children. Its tougher to get the likes of Simran and Madhavan to act. However Mani Ratnam has managed both in this movie. The camera angles are good, the photography first rate and the music excellent.
The title song is haunting and you don't mind listening to it twice, once in either half.

The characters are natural and people whom you can identify with. Emotions are underplayed and the whole issue of adoption is handled quite delicately. The director doesn't appear to take sides in the Tamil-sinhalese conflict, which is another blessing.

I think Ratnam could have been inspired by the Elian Gonzales story which happened in the US a while ago. Quite possible.

73 on my scale.

Acchhooo...

Spent the morning cleaning up my bedroom and the afternoon sneezing it off. Nose still runs. Dust in peace.

As predicted, the Necromancers fought against the Barbarian horde today. Finally beat the computer. Yessss ! (why does this remind me of Dilbert ?)

Blues Bros is a classic

Actually, guess what. Blues Brothers is a true modern classic. Great music, great comedy, great cameos. Up in Smoke doesnt have any of these. However I still see why it falls under a 'cult movie' status.

Ravi Pai, thanks for giving me the opportunity to watch both movies, albiet at different points in time and in different houses. (inside joke)

Tomorrows a holiday. No plans yet. Maybe I will spend the entire day waging war against the Necromancers and the Barbarians. Maybe I will go to office. Oh well. Frankly, I dont give a damn. Tomorrow is another day