Hari's Corner

Here's my next Geeky and Meeky episode, entitled "The Secret Formula." Hope you enjoy it. Yes, I know it's been a while

A couple of Linux/cross platform SDL games I found in the Debian repository recently were quite entertaining. Not everybody might know about these, but I think they're worth mentioning here.

XMoto - This is a 2d sidescrolling motocross action game with challenging, yet addictive gameplay. Controlling the bike is an exercise in gravity management and balance. Try it and see for yourself. You won't get anywhere if you just keep trying to drive fast. Completing levels can be really, really challenging or frustrating (depending on your viewpoint). It also has a level editor which can be installed separately to add your own challenges.

Abe's Amazing Adventure - This is very similar to the old-school sidescrolling arcade games of the early 90s. Plenty of platform hopping and avoiding enemies here. Simple, yet fun. Shows how much you can do without all the fancy and flashy effects of 3D accelerated graphics.

FooBillard - This is a realistic 3D pool game for Linux. You can play one of 8-ball, 9-ball, Snooker or Carom, but there is no AI implemented as yet, so you have to play for both players. Still, it can be a challenge to aim a shot correctly as it doesn't provide a whole deal of assistance. Has all the table and ball physics you expect from this kind of game.

An (imaginary) reader writes in with the following question:

Dear Papa Hari,

I am a new script writer for television soap operas and serials. What advice would you give me? I currently feel very uninspired and cannot write good dialogues. How should I go about rectifying this problem?

Regards, Uninspired Writer

Dear Uninspired Writer,

The key to writing for television serials is to use 10 words where 1 would suffice. Let us take a scenario and analyze. You need to write a farewell dialogue between two characters and you need to stretch it for the last five minutes in order to conclude the episode. Most common newbies to script writing make this mistake.

Mistaken approach

Character 1: Goodbye, friend.
Character 2: Yeah, goodbye...
(Both of them shake hands and leave)

The above will not fit into a ten minute slot. Now you need to think of creative ways to extend this in even more meaningless ways as follows.

Correct approach

Character 1: Goodbye, my friend.
Character 2: Goodbye, my dearest friend. I will miss you...
Character 1: I will also miss you. You spoke truly, my friend.
Character 2: Yes, you also spoke truthfully, my friend. Truth is such a great thing.
Character 1: Isn't it? Truth is indeed a great thing.
Character 2: (Sobbing) Yes... yes... (slowly) Goodbye, and all the best...
Character 1: (Sobbing) Yes... yes... indeed. Ahh... (slowly) Aaaaaaaahhh...
Character 2: Aaaaaaaaahh... (hugs character 1)
Character 1: Ahahahahaha... my friend... goodbye...
Character 2: Goodbye... That's right. It's goodbye for now.
Character 1: Ahhhahahaha... my dear friend, you spoke so truly. It is indeed goodbye for now...
Character 2: (Slowly) So... (wiping tears) that's all is it?
Character 1: Yes, that's all...
Character 2: Do you feel sad now at our parting?
Character 1: Indeed, I do feel very sad at our parting...
Character 2: Never mind, my friend. It's not that bad, is it?
Character 1: Yes, it's not that bad.
Character 2: Good that we agree on that, my friend.
Character 1: Yes, it's a good thing isn't it?
Character 2: Then see you at the office tomorrow, my dear friend.
Character 1: Indeed, we shall meet at the office as usual, my good friend... Goodbye...
Character 2: Goodbye...

You will go far. Very far indeed. In fact, you will go extremely far in your chosen career. May God bless you and may the luck be with you. Indeed, I sincerely hope that you will be a great script writer for mega serials and soap operas on television. Once again, Papa Hari showers his blessings upon you. So do well in your careeer of choice. Indeed, you must do well to be a great script writer in the soap opera field because you need to have a way with words. It's not just the words; it's how you use them. Indeed to be a good script writer you need to say the things you keep saying again and again and again and yet again if needed. Don't just repeat for the sake of repetition - just repeat for the sake of repetition. Indeed, repetition is the key here. It is indeed a great key to success in your chosen career.

Best of luck. All the best. Good luck and may you do well in your chosen profession, career or whatever you choose to call it.

Good luck.

Regards,

Papa Hari

P.S. Bye for now P.P.S. Till we meet again.

I've never been a big fan of Orkut-style social networking websites where you create user profiles, add friends and exchange messages. Somehow, I've not got into them. These social network sites, in spite of being so feature-rich and user-friendly are nothing more than glorified online contact lists. Yes, you collect a whole bunch of "friends", but what does that really achieve? A simple e-mail address book is a much better social network tool and much less clunky. After my initial burst with social networks, I've not found anything to draw me back to them. I hardly log into Orkut these days. Even the excitement of discovering my old school mates through such channels has died down. I feel that those sites are nothing more than self-centred networks. Your main focus is your own profile. And everything else centres around you. To me, at least, these self-centred networks don't have a great deal of attraction. My blog does a better job in that case.

Oh, I am aware that you can build discussion forums and communities around these social networking sites, but discussion communities are not unique to social networking. Discussion groups and online forums have existed in a far simpler form long before the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon came into existence.

And then there are the link submission-style (social bookmarking) sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Once again, I'm not a big user of those. Yes, they do help you get a link back but most of these links are worthless from an SEO point of view (unless your article gets to the front-page somehow). It's true that you might get a lot of traffic for a couple of days from such sites. But then again, it does nothing to promote real social interaction. Additionally you are bound by the likes and dislikes of those communities. I generally find that the communities who use social bookmarking are extremely unreceptive to topics other than technology (and to an extent politics). Thus they are useful to you only if you follow their trends and write about their kind of topics. Besides most of the visitors who come to read your website after clicking on such sites never return. Finally, to the best of my knowledge (and from what I've learned from others), the traffic from social bookmarking sites never generate much advertising revenue anyway. It's merely the internet equivalent of 15 minutes of fame.

I know a lot of you will disagree with this. In fact, I have no doubt that most people will have made better use of social networking and social bookmarking tools than I have and see them as very valuable online resources, but then this article is about how I see them. It seems to me that the whole social-networking thing is overhyped. I always follow my own path in this - most of my friends online are people who've been interacting with me regularly by e-mail for years and those who I've come to know over a period of time. I know I'm old fashioned

Through a series of links, I found an interesting blog recently:

Blogging Ultima

This blogger has been playing every game in the classic RPG series of Ultima games right from the oldest version and documenting the progress. It's quite an interesting read with screenshots and game stories. These games have a definite historical flavour since it goes back well in time in the 1980s (with truly primitive black and white graphics) and through the 90s.

It is interesting to see how the RPG genre has developed over the years and particularly if you are a fan of Fantasy RPGs. Ultima is considered one of the pioneers of RPG in gaming history and no wonder. The depth of gameplay these games used to provide is simply fascinating when you consider the technology limitations of the MS DOS era and compare it with the modern First Person shooters with really sophisticated 3d graphics where you shoot, hide, shoot, die, shoot, kill, shoot... well, you get the idea.

Papa Hari News Service

Papa Hari said, Papa Hari said, yesterday.

In a surprising revelation that has shocked the whole world and has grave implications for the world after 15/1/2008 (keep that fateful date in mind), Papa Hari said "Papa Hari said", but didn't say exactly what he said. When press reporters questioned Papa Hari at the news conference, he repeated, "Papa Hari said." Again when reporters pressed the question, Papa Hari merely repeated his words, "Papa Hari said."

"Isn't that exactly what you said before? So what is it that he really said?" asked a reporter.

"Papa Hari said," said Papa Hari, most truthfully.

"Is this a lame attempt at humour?" asked a reporter belonging to a rival news agency and he was promptly ejected from the room for his stupidity.

Many social commentators have commented on the importance of this statement. "This is the perfect example of a meta-news item," said one man who loved to use scientitic jargon like meta-physics, para-psychology and gamma-rays without really understanding what they mean. "What Papa Hari said itself is both the news as well as the basis of the news. What a great philosopher Papa Hari is. In one short, three word sentence, he has revealed the secret of the universe, which is hidden in itself, so much so that the secret is not really a secret, but is really a meta-secret which encapsulates the ultimate secret."

Another famous para-metasociopyschosomologist Mr. M.R.V.K.P.S.R.Somasundar said, "The relevance of irrelevance is the irreverence of reverence of the relevant truth of the ultimate destiny of the universality of truths which encompass the parasymbolism of the symbolic nature of the grand sociometric revelations of Papa Hari's truths which are encapsulated in a form that delights the divine nature of the inner soul's tribute to itself in a form that is neither comprehensible nor incomprehensible but stays in a state of uncertainty in a complex cycle of social upheavals in a universe that is neither perfect nor imperfect but is a tribute to the truth of the ultimate truth without losing the value of the relative nature of relativity's absolutism in a form that is neither relative nor absolute but is itself in itself completing the cycle of the zero which is contained in the infinite and the infinite which is an unimpeachable part of the finite."

People who listened to Mr. M.R.V.K.P.S.R.Somasundar's explanation came away saying that they preferred what Papa Hari said which is "Papa Hari said."

Papa Hari declined to comment on the commentary of Mr. M.R.V.K.P.S.R.Somasundar thus showing the whole world the wisdom of neither flogging nor unflogging a horse which is neither dead nor alive but in a state that transcends the unnatural nature of mankind which forms complex stupidity by spinning a spider's web of words which ultimately make no sense in the sense that only nonsense can.