Have I been busy or have I been busy?

And you thought this blog was already dead.

I've been soo busy the past week (and a few days) what with the DPS MUN website and making a website for a competition and whatnot that I've not even been able to visit my blog much, leave alone posting about all the things I've wanted to (obviously, you must've noticed that bit).

Recently I went to Tagore International for a competition (Digital Photography) and (very surprisingly) came first. The topic was a very absurd one - "Happiness" or "Friendship" and we had to take the photographs in the rain . Yesterday, I went to BVN, and never have I been to a more disorganised place. Besides having me sauntering around most of their school (to find where the competition was) before somebody directed me to back where I'd started, they also made us wait in the heat for three hours before starting the competition, following which the electricity went as soon as I'd inserted my CD into the drive .

Tomorrow, by the way, we have a German test, which (as I've already mentioned) is not something to grin about. So, I think I'd better wrap it up, read my 28 new emails and 283 new newsfeed items, do something about the 44 tabs which I have open (a mind-boggling occurrence) and then go off and study (ew, what a boring prospect!).

Chalo then, if I remember something I've forgotten (the latter more likely than the former) I'll post about it. For now, 'tis time to be gone.

उफ़!

No, really! This is definitely the limit! For, let me see, four days now, I have been unable to visit any blogspot.com blog! This has, you know, been highly irritating, 'cause I can't see my own blog and neither can I go to others - and even the feeds don't work. Till today, I didn't know why this was happening - I thought that maybe it was some problem with the blogspot servers or something...

But the real reason (or what seems to be the real reason) is dumb - just plain dumb. It seems that the Ministry of Communication of the Government of India has banned all these blogs, for some unknown reason. So, because of said unknown reason, all of us innocent people have to be denied the pleasure of visiting blogs!

Hmph!

It's absurd! People tell me that it's been done because of other people posting about the Reservation thingy! What about the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression and all that? And anyway, just because some people have been posting about it doesn't mean that each and every blog should be banned just like that!
I hope they'll get over it soon.

Anyway, while blogs have been inaccessible, I've been doing...well, nothing, actually . Though I did find some interesting sites recently, some time ago and I Stumbled Upon a few, too (this makes it sound as though I've found tons - but really, there are only around 5-6).

1. TuneSleeve: This is a nice program for iTunes. What it does is, it searches Amazon.com for Album Art that is missing from your library and lets you choose among some nice images.
2. The Song Tapper: I read about this one on a blog. Basically, you tap a song using your keyboard and it searches its database and tells you which song you've tapped. I was pretty sceptical about it at first, but it actually works!
3. byokal: This is a 'toy' made by this guy. Drag 'n' drop these images on to this image and you get to see a kaleidoscopic thing on the bigger image . (Just try it out, I know I'm not making much sense)
4. Snipurl: Trouble remembering URLs that are too long? Snip them! I saw this one in a magazine.

Oh, and I downloaded the release candidate of Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 - though I haven't tried it out yet.

And today was the first stayback for DPS MUN - and after a lot of debating, I didn't stay back. I spent the whole of the last period thinking about it - that's 40 minutes of pondering over two words (Yes and No).Now I'm wondering if I should have stayed back after all. And a blighter in my German class broke my glasses, so till seven o'clock I had to do without them.

N.B. I completely forgot to mention - blogs can be visited by going to pkblogs.com. I'm also trying out a program called 'Tor' to accomplish the same thing, though I haven't quite got the hang of it yet.
Oh, and the shoutbox seems to have gone on strike. I'm thinking of applying for a new one, what say you?

June-July Desktop

Yep. Those're Wolverine's claws.

Mars hugs Saturn

Me, I don't believe in astrology, no sir. Probably for the main reason that astrologers are hardly ever right, like in this example: An astrologer said that Brazil was going to win the World Cup, and, of course, when Brazil went for a six, he must've felt really stupid. So here's the pithy way in which he tries to defend himself, "Well, you know, my prediction that Brazil would win the Cup was made just for fun, it wasn't based on any theory as such." Really!
So, well, going by all this, you can't really blame me when - weeks ago - Mars came close to Saturn for the first time in ever so many years, and astrologers said that the World Cup would have an unlikely winner. Slowly, of course, this began to come true as Brazil lost. But, even then, I couldn't have imagined that Italy would take away the cup. Sad...even till the final, I was rooting for France.
Then of course, Zizou had to go and start headbutting people. I mean, he really shouldn't have lost control like that - if he'd been there, France might just have won the Cup (though there's no saying about that - Buffon's a good goal keeper). Still, Zidane did at least win the Golden Ball.

The Red Card

Still, on a lighter and much (much much) better note, Federer, the King of Tennis beat Clay court champion Nadal 6-0, 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (2-7), 6-3. Whew! The 6-0 match was really...cool. Nadal was literally trembling like hell. But Federer did, eventually beat Nadal even though it was only the second time out of eight. But this Nadal, he's a big liar, don't you know? He said that there was no way he was going to do well in the Wimbledon, he just hoped to improve himself on grass - and there he went soaring on to the final and even managed to take a set off Federer! Don't get me wrong - Nadal is one of my favourites, but only when he isn't playing Federer.

The Lost Colony: 30 days left

Another 'inhuman' post, I guess.
Anyway, I subscribe to the Artemis Fowl newsletter, you know (or is that the Eoin Colfer newsletter?). So, it was said that the fifth Artemis Fowl is being released in September. Well, it seems that they've preponed it, so now it's releasing on August 3. Which, by the way, is really very good.

Check out the newsletter here.

8-bit Games certainly are fun

Well, as Diggi says, 8-bit games are fun. I mean, all right, forget the graphics, but there really is something catchy about them. I'm really not going to start harping on about 8-bit games, whatever you need to know can be found out here.
What I did want to say is that some time ago, I found loads of these games on my computer. Their average size being no more than 250 KB (yes, kilobytes :D ), I've decided that if you want them, you've only got to ask. Here's a complete list of all the ones I have:

(N.B. 'Punch_0' is same as Mike Tyson, and 'ULTRBASE' is in Japanese)

Of course, being NES games, you'll need a NES emulator to play them. I suggest you head to Emulator Zone's NES Emulators page and grab one. I'm using FCE Ultra right now - it's pretty decent, but if you use it, you'll need to set the controls (the defaults don't work properly and the controls for the turbo buttons aren't set by default).

Anyway, we still have one exam left (sad, I know). Fortunately, its German, unfortunately, German's no longer the easiest subject that many people imagine it to be. I mean, all right, the level of learning German in our school is much lower than that of French, but as a language, it's a lot more complex. This, is mainly due to cases (nominative, accusative, dative, etc) or rather, the numerous ways a sentence has to be changed in order to make it agree with the case. The syllabus is also (very) misleading - it is, after all, three words. The unfortunate part starts when you realise that those three words are 'everything', 'is' and 'coming'.
Right now, I'm feeling jealous of the people for whom the exams have already ended (in other words, those who are exempted from the last exam due to the JSTS interview - the lucky pigs people).

So then,
Cheers,
-- Sahil.