Vacation from my Vacation : Long needed GIKI Trip

Last weekend I was at GIK. Croft wanted to go to the ugX[GIK's nationwide lan gaming event]. I thought that I would have a good time meeting everybody and maybe some old students as well. I did intend to go to GIK earlier but wanted to prepare some sort of presentation on something. Having people dependent on you gives you a strong urge to learn something. Thats why people who usually give crashers during the university levels prepare for it really well because of all the dependents or something. I hoped to present something cool, but this time it wasnt possible. I did meet Raptor, Baddie, Junaid and the rest of batch 12 that was present. I was hoping to leave on Monday, but I met Shah during what was a pleasent surprise. Everybody was such a great host and entire volumes can be written on Rappies hospitality :P. We had a great time bugging people too. Playing practical jokes on people with the help of the faculty kekeke. Chuck Norris had his way with a whole lot of people those couple of days.

We had a major gaming session last night of Q3, DOTA and a bit of brood. This was the first time I played brood after something like semester 2 during GIK. And I sucked! Thats an area I need to work on. It was a nice long weekend and a much needed vacation from my vacation. I'll try playing Brood online with UZ and the rest of the people. Its such a fun game, however I dont think that I'll  be able to boost my level a whole lot especially with all the other games out there.

While heading off to GIK, I stopped at Isloo, it was a friday and I got to meet Muji, Athar Shah, Asad Khattak and Ather Shah the 2nd :P. I also got to meet Sameer Durrani, one of my brothers good friends and it was a Friday or else we would've had a great time. He treated me to some great lunch. I intended on meeting a lot more people on the way back but I think that my mom's getting angry and she would'nt let me into the home if i stay for another night outside.

Right now I'm at the Daewoo Pindi Terminal and they have an Internet kiosk which I use while travelling and best of all it's free.

Tragic Demise

I'm very sad to let you guys know that Umair Azfar mother passed away. It is unfair that such things happen to such  nice people. Although I do not know her personally, I am deeply greived and judging by Umair's personality she must've been really kind and caring too.

INNA LILLAHE WA INNA ILAIHE RAJEON
"Verily we are Allah's and verily untoHim shall we return. (Qur'an 2:156)"

May Allah grant her the rewards of her good deeds and the rewards of the good deeds that people she has influenced are doing.

This is the link to Umairs blog. I'm currently unaware of his phone number and contact. I'll post those once I get them.

Defence Cinema

Much better than I expected.

I went there with my mom today to watch that movie, Khuda ke liye that translates to For God's Sake. It was much better than most pakistani movies I have seen so far. The direction was good and all but the plot seemed to have a lot of holes in it. Moreover it wasnt really deep or anything but a great improvement. I'm glad I watched this movie in a cinema and didnt buy some pirated DVD because this movie deserved it. [Not that I condone piracy in any of its forms, but what's a guy to do when the stores are full of nothing but pirated stuff].

And defence cinema, well I guess its the only cinema in lahore where all of the following are true:-

1. Family Safe
   
2. You wont get stung by one of those needles saying you've got aids
3. All of the above, cant think of anymore.

You can find the website at www.dhacinema.com. The phonenumber is 042-5066888 and it is situated on 305 R Block, DHA Lahore. In case any of you googlers stumble upon it.

Regards & Take Care

PC GAMES

Games to be on the Lookout for:-

Crysis
Guitar hero III
Gears Of War
HellGate London

Recommended but not tested Games:-

Oblivion

Games you should already have:-

BIOSHOCK
Company of Heros

PAX 2007 ROCKS!!!!

Hey guy's I'm at PAX 2007.  I've been having fun checking out all the latest games and stuff, but I rather happened to stumble upon this thing by accident. Actually initially I was looking for World of Warcraft video's when I stumbled upon Jonathan Coulton's song code monkey. You can see the video below on youtube :).







I liked it so much that I stumbled across his website . Some of his other songs were also cool like Re Your Brians. You can listen to them on the site and stuff. But what happened ultimately was that I ended up looking for concerts which linked me to PAX2007. I was like hey, I like gaming and I've not been around much so I set off for PAX. It was quite entertaining, the company stalls were great, Jonathan Coultons performance rocked I even got him to sign my zombies shirt and my cast. If you're my parents please ignore the last three words of the previous line :).

I liked the video showcases about the future of gaming, designing video games, 8 bit audio[Which really is a neat thing]. People are using Gameboys to compose 8 bit audio and its actually an art form. Kohina is a great site where you get a lot of old 8 bit game music. Although its not technically the same as people are doing nowadays with their gameboy's its nevertheless equally fun in my opionion.

The atmosphere reminded me about college and stuff, the event team running around with their enforcers T shirts, chicks in dressed up  like NPC's from some MMORPG and others carrying AK-47's. Apart from the chicks, we had stuff like this at my university  back in pakistan at a much smaller scale and it was called the UGX.

All in all it was a great day and a great experience. The part when I actually got to play games was at the end where they had a demo section. They had free playable demo's of old nintendo games from ages long forgotten as well as the latest titles like Bioshock and GuitarHero. It was while playing guitar hero that I made some new friends.

In fact I liked guitar hero so much that I want to have it, but because I spent my annual gaming budget on my laptop, it didnt look like I'd be able to play it until I came across Frets On Fire, the open source version of guitar hero available on Windows, Linux and Mac. You guys can get it here. It hooks up to the actual guitar from guitar hero. And if you dont have one, you can play it via keyboard. The video below shows the code monkey demo of frets on fire:-









Although it does not have characters with guitars and stuff, it has all the basic functionality and I guess it'll work as a substitute for some. I wont think twice about buying the actual guitar hero if it comes out on the PC though.

Anyways have fun and game on.