T-minus 2 hours

6.30 AM! Physics class begins at 8.00 [aka 8.30 Sri Lankan time]. I am currently getting ready, or at least getting ready to get ready to go to class. Surprisingly enough, I woke up at 5 AM sharp today – pretty good considering I stayed up all night watching “Warrior”.
My A-list for the day:
[*] Pay attention in class
[*] Meet up with team Oxide to discuss the website [they love the design, which is great; I learned a lot about hosting and scripting and the whole nine yards, which is awesome.
[*] Keep an eye on the Maze. This has been giving me some trouble lately. Bugs, bugs, no fault of mine – the pseudocode, and indeed the GM D&D tree, is perfect and logically SHOULD run perfectly – but I have no idea what the hell goes on in that CleanMem.dll. Some global variables are getting reset.
Right, off to eat summing now. Mushroom curry and rice, anyone?

The Daily Noose

Is this mike on?
Right.
Starting from two days back, me and Kalana aka Subzero have resolved to STUDY. Standard talk among all doing A/Ls, but we actually put it into practice by getting together at subzero’s house and doing maths. A girl I know gave me her IT papers from grade 12 [no idea how she gets my number OR seems to know what I'm up to in society, and she's not telling]. Hmm. Anyway. Where was I?
Ah, yes, studying. These past two days have been a satisfactory marathon of partial fractions and history of computing bwaha. And Karoshi: the only game where your goal is to kill yourself. Trust me, it’s bloody hard, and your brain feels like it’s being put through the wringer – until you get that oh-so-simple solution and go like “LIGHTBULB”!
I’m also building up a website for Oxide, the COD4 clan in which subzero and a lot of other friends play. Forums, the works, everything. Let it not be said that Yudha did half a job.
Oh, and one more thing: 666 downloads for the Maze. \m/ Even Satan rocks, provided he downloads my games first.

Girls, STRAYZ, and brainfreeze

What do teens and stray dogs have in common? They all shop at ODEL. Seriously, guys, girls [and anything else]: having 150 rubber “I’m Homeless” and “Dogs are Cute” bands from your wrist to your elbow isn’t hot; it merely makes you look like an outcast from a rubber tyre factory.

AND  OTARA SAID UNTO SRI LANKA, “LET STRAYZ BE COOL,” AND THE MONEY STARTED ROLLING IN, AND OTARA SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD.

Seriously, fantastic woman. Imagine being able to turn mangy street curs into a brand. I should start something as well. Come here, chicken. EGGs aRE aWSUM
========================================================

Right. Thurday, and I got ready to go to #class. Yes, #Twitter is #rubbing off on #me . For the record: at 6.30 am I jumped in the shower. It was 7.30 when I came out. I am still trying to thaw my brain, with only marginal success.

My cat has given up all hopes of driving me to class on time and is now curled up on my T-shirt, the lucky bugger. Oi, You Up There. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if it’s the trend, sign me up. I’d like to be a cat. Domesticated. Three square meals a day. Nothing to do but eat and sleep and worry an occasional mouse. All your philosophical questions, like “What’s it all about?” and all crap about the human condition are neatly resolved into a vague interest in getting patted on the head.

Interesting: I’m getting spambots on this page. Advertising sex sites, and for some reason, rubber boots. Anybody want any boots?

Now for some blatant advertising from out sponsors. Visit 4250 Games! Indie Game development, witty sarcasm, and more. Seriously. Follow me @yudhanjaya on twitter. Don’t add me on Facebook. Indie game press, coverage, reviews: Indiegraph.

======================================================
Automated footnote: Yudhanjaya is a slightly psychotic overachiever with a 4 page CV. He also codes in 5 languages. Give the man a break. His sanity hangs out at 4250.
======================================================

 

Webstarts: Studies: I am suspect

Every time I go to Wikipedia, they’ve got personal appeals from the founder up top. How many of you actually read it? Please do. Wikipedia is in a near-crisis situation. I know we all use it; hell, why not make sure it stays up? It’s possibly the noblest thing on the Internet, if it it were up to me the founder would get the Nobel.

/resume madness
/madness: loading psycho – 100%
/ok, madness online . . .

Five days online non-stop, a record even by my manic standards. Tweeting left and right and poking my nose into every corner of the web. Result: 4250 is kicking, and I’m getting insane increments in presence everywhere. +1 for theALCH3MIST Unfortunately, this is all eating into my studies. Managed to cover upto the second unit of the IT syllabus – I should put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, because there’s only 8 months left. Bummer

Surprise! I also know how IRC and Skype’s VOIP encryption works! [Totally random, but this was all the off-shoot of me getting into the #gmc chat channel and seeing how this stuff came about]. I participated in the RDC Rapid Development Challenge; didn’t win, duh, but it was a truly unique experience and I’m never giving up.

I’m also starting up an indie game news ad reviews site. Nothing too fancy, but I’m bloody fed up of sites that consistently cover the top-collar hotshot indies [all due respect and all that]. So hence indiegraph.webstarts.com – helping out the little guy. Let’s see where this goes.

By the way, WEBSTARTS IS AWESOME \M/

King-fucking COCONUTS

Ever gone out to celebrate a friend’s birthday and had a car driven over your foot?
That happened to me.
And then you spent the next six hours fragging the driver on CounterStrike?
Yeah, that happened to me too.

=====================================================

OK, time, please, because my head feels weird right now. After being diagnosed with fever, low blood pressure and the whole fucking nine yards I’ve been feeling like a needle in a haystack. Read: LOST. Spent three days doing NOTHING WHATSOEVER, unless you count marketing my latest game; and then it was Roshan’s birthday – we went out for pizza, and rotated around Galle Face for no particular reason, and then the dude accidentally drove his WagonR over my foot. It doesn’t hurt that much. The poor man feels very bad about what happened – had to do some heavy duty pretending I was OK to wipe that depression off his face. I mean, come on, it’s his birthday. A man’s got a right to be happy on his bday. Even IF you accidentally develop a habit of driving over feet.

======================================================

Only enough, my foot is NOT the problem, my head is. I can’t think straight. The whole world feels slow and jerky like a cheap action movie on Fast Forward. And my parents are driving me down the path to Sarcasm and Depression again. THEY’RE IDIOTS.

THIS IS ALL FUCKING COCONUTS.

The Maze has been released!

FINALLY! Ladies  and gentlemen, THE MAZE HAS BEEN RELEASED! Look no further than http://gamer.lk/index.php/topic,15447!

To hell in a handbasket [Part 1]

Warning: the title has no relation to what I’m gonna talk about. I have no intention of making it all the way to hell in a handbasket. By the time I arrive on the Nether Slopes I expect to be rich, older than 75 years old and prefferably driving a Ferrari.

However, when used as a metaphor it describes my life to the dot. Take today: It is Sunday, 9.30 PM. We have the term tests tomorrow. Chemistry, which I intend to drop [after 2 years of wasting money on tuition, it's hit me [like a load of bricks] that I really, REALLY HATE CHEMISTRY].
After tomorrow, we shall have Maths, and then Physics. None of which I have studied for so far. I spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at a friend’s place, where among other things we ran into a bottle or two [I forget] of Smirnoff’s; I crashed back into the house yesterday, remarkably upright, and fell asleep. I also woke up to discover that my mom, aka Chief Secret Agent of the YIA [Yudhanjaya Intelligence Agency] has discovered the existence of a hitherto unknown creature: my girlfriend. Aaargh! Mollifying her took all my charm, persuasion and a medium-sized chocolate as a bribe.

My mind, in the meantime, continues to wander like a drunk driver on an empty road. I fell asleep in Maths class today [note: the Piriton was to blame] and my sole achievement for the day has been finishing off two of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Hell, here I cometh. Beware the damn handbasket.

Yudhanjaya >>> the ALCH3MIST: my evolution

This is a post about me.
Some time back, there was this kid called Yudhanjaya. Bit chubby. Hell, let’s call me fat and get over it. Said kid was a genius, by exam standards, but a loser socially. He didn’t belong. He never did. He was always the last to be picked for the team. Remember those movies you’ve seen about the dorky kid who spends his life at the edges of the cool crowd?  The kid was techy when it was not cool to be techy. The kid was a nerd where it was uncool to be one. Well, I was that guy, with an added, highly volatile temper and +40 kilos or so.

Fast forward to today. Has the kid gone? Not really. Somewhere along the line, the kid changed. Became more purposeful. I am still techy; I code games in my spare time, for crying out loud. I whip up forums in a quarter-hour. The difference: somewhere along the line I settles my differences with society and my obsessions, and because better. More purposeful. Now the geeky kid has friends, and the former cool-crowd spends their time saying “Oh, WOW.” Now people listen to my rants. I am the ALCH3MIST now, roaming the net, and slowly but surely carving out my place in the techscape.

It’s quite an interesting evolution, because I have only gotten . . . more myself. The ALCH3MIST IS Yudhanjaya x 2.

My point? Simple: this proves it. If you’re dedicated enough [or stubborn enough, same difference] the world will change for you. No matter who or what you are.
The world is your oyster.
Frankly, I dislike  seafood, so let’s just call it a day.

WordPress glitches? Criminal activity?

7 login attempts and I’m still not in: the page does not give me an “Incorrect password/email” notification, it just reloads. Every time I click login, it just reloads.
This is getting to be  a problem.
This happens on both accounts that I use -this one AND the 4250games blog login,  which leaves me to believe that it cannot possibly be account-related. Perhaps WordPress servers are straining? Or is that too far-fetched? Anyone else getting this problem?

*************************************
*************************************
*************************************

That said, it’s time for my daily update of madness and mayhem. My life appears to be on a general downhill slide: no news from IESL’s Cruncher competition, and hence no money, and hence no new *sniff* gaming machine. Inquiries made by fellow competitors have brought up disturbing news – vague mumblings from the organizing committee about the “prize money being reduced”. I feel like wringing someone’s neck. I need that 60k! I won it fair and square!

Delving deeper, my activity for today reveals something criminal – I handed over an ancient, battered Samsung P3 I built up, wiped the Linux distro and installed XP and gave it away – for free. Not only that, I also spent the entire day doing nothing of use [unless you count reading the new Naruto issue]. Repeated searches for Game Developer issues are also turning up nothing: www.ebookee.org and it’s counterparts have nothing up for download.

Every cloud, however, DOES have a silver lining [in my case, it may not be 24 karat silver, but at least it's shiny]. I got an email from Prithvi Virasinghe, head of Dawn Patrol Games [Sri Lanka], inviting me to a coding test. It looks like my dream job of game designer ay not be too far off after all. I put the Maze up for beta testing – see http://4250games.wordpress.com and I’m already getting a pleasing level of INTEREST. Note the capitals.

Note: read every book Douglas Coupland has ever written. The man is clearly insane, and thus his books are logically enjoyable.

Unfortunately, no amount of blogging skill will keep away Sleep, nor will it drive Morpheus away from my tired eyes. Goodnight, Web. Sweet dreams.
Wait.
You don’t sleep, do you.
Facepalm.

 

My life, girl and the Internet . . .

Internet connection: An Etisalat, a 3GB monthly thingy registered to my name. It’s the first month. And the amount over my usual bill . . . .Rs 939. Dammit. In the darkness of my room I’ve been reading this figure as 539 and been happily playing Megaten Online without a care in the world. Pow. There go my chances of buying a “certain someone” something this month.

Also, I managed to burn someone’s computer and now I have to give my secondary PC to them. More bad luck. And the prize money, the 60k from www.cruncher.lk for the IESL’s gamedev competition – is nowhere to be found. Note my inbox, people: 0 messages from Cruncher!

Bah. People, when you organize a competition, it’s usually considered polite to actually give the damn prizes that you promised.

On top of all this monetary loss, during the course of things I have somehow managed to convince Her that I am pissed off with Her [an issue concerning Facebook and her class teacher] and She thinks I’m not answering my phone. While in truth I was a) pissed off on night one and b) asleep long before She started texting me on night two.

Also: the school IT lab is a mess. Reason: a series of gaming tournaments organized back-to-back during the week where I stayed at home. Despite calls, I felt too lazy to go and watch other people playing Most Wanted – and today I pay the price; 2 broken mice, a missing keyboard, a machine that nobody has ever seen appearing in the lab [thank you, God, but I requested a Core i3, not a Celeron. Check your Heavenly Shipping]. And chaos, disorder, death, etc, etc, in the IT lab. Thankfully, within the course of the day, I’ve managed to bully, threaten and generally order enough of my IT Society about to bring some semblance of order into things. After which I put an MMORPG to download and it started raining and we had to switch off the PCs. At 50% of 1.38 GB completed. Bah.

 

Does this sound like rant? Yes, it does! That’s because it is!

BAH!