These are some of my favourite things …

I’m still recovering from my bout of illness but then again, as those who know me are aware, this happens to me about once a year – it’s a cyclical thing :p It happens pretty regularly and has a known time frame for me to get well – I’m on my way to recovery except perhaps for a relapse – and that’s been known to happen too. There’s no joy in life when there are no surprises :p That actually brings up something that a protagonist in the latest book I’m reading – "Necromancer" by Gordon R. Dickson – says, or rather, is said about him. In describing his character, it is said that he can analyze isolates in anything and so he is rarely ever surprised because he knows that something is a logical result of the preceding moment or moments. I sometimes feel like that ….

But to get back on track, since I haven’t been feeling too well and was all alone at home for part of the weekend (my parents again went to the Kurunegala house but came back early because they were worried about me – which was sweet of them but I sometimes think that they worry way too much about me :p), I spent my time doing the stuff that I love to do. I’ve been reading – both "Necromancer" and a trade paperback collection of X-Men stories called "The Asgardian Wars". I finished watching the DVD collection of "Kindred: the Embraced" and also have been doing some PC gaming after a long time. Now the gaming is all Edward’s fault since he’s the one who got me hooked :p

Edward told me about "Dungeon Siege" and that it was a great game. I went and looked at the website and it looked pretty interesting and so I decided to give it a try. I got the game and installed it at work on Friday (it was a holiday and nobody was there) to see if it was interesting and I think I played for close to an hour – I brought the save game home with me and then installed on my machine at home and I started playing it Saturday evening and just couldn’t stop :p I played part of Saturday evening (had to stop when the mosquitos came out in force :p) and then started again on Sunday morning and kept on playing till about lunch time. I think I’ve put in close to six hours by now and while it *is* getting a bit repetitive (I mean the battles and the dungeon crawling) it still is very interesting. The strange thing however is that I don’t mind the repetitive battles and the incessant dungeon crawling on console games but don’t so much like it on PC – maybe it has to do with the fact that it is a bigger screen and a different controller? I don’t know … but I’ll probably play "Dungeon Siege" for a good while yet …

Of work, vampires and various other things …

I stayed at home since I felt like a little bit of rest since I’ve not been feeling too well the last few days – plus, I’ve been at work for almost everyday for the last month or so. So it was time for a little break :p Incidentally, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut – or at least not be totally honest all the time <vbg> This friend of mine from work asked me about my site since he’d seen some of the PhotoShop work I was doing for the SM layout and I gave him the URL – I didn’t realize till after I’d given him the URL that I talk about work and the current situation with the boss etc. here. Of course, it’s no big deal since he’s a very good friend but the problem is that there is the possibility that somebody else from work will visit next and then somebody else and so on till the site becomes an open secret and before I know it, the boss himself will be reading it :p Ah well …

Since I was at home today, I actually managed to get a lot of work done on this new project that I got started on. It’s basically a tagboard system which runs on your server but anybody can sign up for their own tagboard off your server 🙂 The source is based off an existing system called QBoard but they decided to opensource it and put it up as a project on SourceForge. I had picked up the source a while back but couldn’t install it at first because the installer was a bit clunky – I began cleaning up the installer to suit my need, then spoke to the main developer and offered to give him my changes and he added me to the SourceForge project and so I actually sat down today and wrote a full-blown installer for it in PHP :p It all seems to work pretty well but I’ll probably have to do a little more testing and then it’ll probably get released on SourceForge.

Other than that, I’ve been watching the DVD collection of "Kindred: the Embraced". When I first saw the show (must have been five or six years ago) I thought that it was pretty cool but when I saw it this time, I was struck by how bad the show looked and how cheesy the acting was :p At first, I wasn’t sure if it was the second viewing or if it was just the mood I was in but now I think maybe it was just the original show which was so bad. I don’t think I’d seen the original the first time but it was on the DVD collection and I watched it. Of course, I watched the original yesterday (when I was feeling really bad) and I watched three more episodes today (when I was feeling better) and so I am not so sure if my frame of mind had something to do with it or not :p But I kind of like the three episodes I watched today and am again becoming hooked on the story …

Girls and guys …

Nope, this is not a "birds and the bees" type of entry :p I don’t know why I never watched the "Gilmore Girls" while I was in the US (probably clashed with another favourite show of mine <g>) but I do enjoy it very much. Every episode just makes me chuckle or laugh out loud. They have got to have one of the quirkiest cast of characters in a show in a long time :p Probably not since "Picket Fences" though "Stark Raving Mad" also does come to mind but that didn’t have so many characters. Anyway, love the show but unfortunately can’t watch it every week since when my parents are here, my Mom takes over the TV just at the time "Gilmore Girls" is on to watch one of her Tamil soaps :p Ah well … still an enjoyable and funny series – I hope it has not been cancelled in the US.

As for the "guys" part – my current book is really,really interesting – it’s actually a double-edition of two of Timothy Zahn’s books – "Cobra" and "Cobra Strike" and has been released as a double-edition as "Cobras Two". First an aside though (probably to justify the whole "guys" thing :p) but what’s with the name Johnny (or a variation of it) for a soldier protagonist? :p The protagonist in "Cobra" is Jonny Moreau, then there is Johnny Rico in Heinlein’s "Starship Troopers" and Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler in L. Ron Hubbard’s "Battlefield Earth" (a darn good book though huuuge!). I liked all those characters but I was suddenly struck by the fact that they were all warriors and all were named Johnny. But I digress …

I first read "Cobra" almost ten years ago (around ’93 or ’94) and have totally forgotten all about the book except for the main concept – that it’s about a bunch of super-soldiers who fight against some alien enemies. When I took up "Cobras Two" I was tempted to skip the first book since I’ve already read it (even though I can’t remember anything about it) but decided to read it again anyway. I am glad that I did because I find that I love it! It’s an interesting read and I probably see certain things in a different perspective now. While I am never for war (I believe that war should be a last resort and not the first thing you do when confronted by a problem …), the story itself is intriguing – especially the psychological aspects of it. I’m looking forward to the second part since I hope that will not be so much about war as about responsibility – the responsibilities of those with different/higher abilities to society.

Incidentally, cobra is the name of the super-soldiers – they basically are a walking weapon because they have a toughened skeleton (coated with a strong and light metal), super-strength (servo motors implanted in the body to provide additional strength/speed) and implanted weapons like finger tip lasers and sonic weapons – plus, a targeting computer embedded below their brain 🙂 Yes, I know this is all fiction but I believe that the underlying principle, that those with special/higher/different skills owe a responsibility to society (or as Spider-man/Stan Lee would put it "with great power comes great responsibility"), still stands true.