Review: Gratuitous Space Battles

Gratuitous Space Battles

If you’re a sci-fi fan like me, then one of the things you probably love about the Genre are the space battles. There’s really no greater thrill than watching ships flying about, explosions filling out the blackness as something or the other goes down amidst cries of “Shields down!” and such. But all too often such scenes are fleeting in movies; only present for a few seconds or a minute at most of film footage before it’s gone to leave us either in the midst of good or horrible characters..

In games, that feeling and thrill is almost always overshadowed by something else – if it isn’t the pressing need to complete objectives or protect a ship, it’s the need to manage one’s resources and base back at home – or sometimes just going “WTF” at the horribly bad plot and/or voice acting. Either way, something always serves to divert one’s attention away from the space battle at hand while the few games where it doesn’t are rarer than hen’s teeth.

Enter Gratuitous Space Battles. Developed by Positech Games, Gratuitous Space Battles (or GSB for short) pretty much cuts through all that. Its goal is simple: get to the space battles and don’t bother with anything else.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

It’s the wee early hours of the first day of 2010 and I’m pretty much spending it alone in this town house, playing Torchlight and chatting with a few folks on IRC. Its quiet, with little to no fanfare here apart from the distant burst of crackers somewhere in the city and the constant hum of my laptop and the cooling stand’s quite swish-swish-swish. It’s tempting to switch off the cooler and place the thing on my lap – heavens know I could use the warmth right about now given the weather outside and the lack of warmth inside. The cold is what gets to me though – not because of how it feels; but because it’s so familiar.

Happy Diwali

Its a Saturday morning and its freezing outside (approaching 5 degrees centigrade) with a side order of miserable raining. It isn’t too much better inside either, considering its already middle of the afternoon. Still, if there’s one thing to keep warm about its that its now (or was yesterday) Diwali.

To the two or three readers of this blog out there, have a happy and safe Diwali.

A Status Update

Its been almost 4 weeks since I set foot in Fairfax, Virginia and over a month since I left my family back in the searing hot deserts of the Arab Emirates. My journey across the Altantic was tumultuous and fraught with grim luck – but it is an adventure which will be detailed in a different post – but I’m here and I’m still alive.

A wee bit of dubbing

This took a fair bit of time to finish off, but ’tis finally done. Behold my friends, the Matrix Fortress:

Part 1

Part 2

This was a triumph!

Well, not really. But At the very least I’m no longer poor and Irish, thanks to having gotten my first hat in TF2. After god knows how many hours of playing, all I have to say is: about damn time!
For those who may be wondering which hat it is; its the Texas ten gallon which is awesome since my most played class is Engineer. Here’s a screenshot; although for some reason the hat didn’t show up on the engy in the backpack (works in game though) :s

Yeehaw!

The UK Stopover Day 2: Of Temples and Cruisers

The following post is being done a fair bit late – this is largely due to the fact that the last two weeks have been busy as hell and I intend to get this out of the way)

Day 2 started fairly quiet, but would prove to be somewhat eventful. I headed out with my cousin on my first trip on the London tube. My first impression upon looking at the map was this: the bloody thing is complicated! Lost count of how many darn lines they’ve got going through the entirety of london – thankfully my previous experiences with the Singapore MRTs (which was blessfully simpler) allowed me to read through it easily enough. At least the ground principles of public transportation are the same in most places!

The UK Stopover Day 1: Green arrival

The flight from Dubai went well, despite the last few moments being a slightly tearful one of saying goodbye. Still, it was somewhat fortunate that only the first step was the hardest; the rest were fairly smooth so far actually. I got to try out the camera in the plane (albiet after take off, and after missing out an oppurtunity to click a beautiful picture of the Palm Jumairah on our way out.

As beautiful as the Palm may have been though, it was nothing compared to that of Europe. Rolling green hills, countless farms and rivers and streams – the sheer amount of green was a very welcome change to the depressing  browns and yellows of the Arabian desert. I took several photos at this stage; but similar to the ones before most of them were of very poor quality and mostly for reference.  However, there was a particularly interesting one here:

The picture was taken from about 11 kilometers up and is of what I suspect is Brussel’s nuclear reactor, as that is where we were closest to at the time. For 11 kilometers up, its a surprisingly clear shot. A lot of the other pictures suffered from problems of too much atmospheric haze and being taken from a generally cheap camera (6 megapixels my ass!).

Regardless, it was an interesting sight, albiet it a short one before we finally landed at Heathrow Airport at London. The first thing that struck me about the country was the weather. A somewhat cool breeze greeted me off the airplane before I boarded the bus to Terminal 5. It was a breeze that reminded me just how long it had been since I’d been somewhere actually cold. Sure, Bangalore was cold – but that was only there in the middle of night and then also it was with that tinge of sulphur and countless other pollutants that served to make you feel more sick than refreshed. Ras Al Khaimah was a bit better during winter, but the ever-present dust didn’t help it any.

The breeze here, though…it was a sensation made even more viscerally different due to the fact that the last breeze I had felt had been a hot one originating from the 40 degree heat and humidity outside of Dubai’s Terminal 1. The contrast was incredible, to say the least. And it didn’t stop there either. My aunt had come to pick me up and we headed out towards Southall, otherwise known as the “Little India” of London. Along the way we passed by greenery the types of which I’d rarely seen before. The only place close to it is maybe the Kranji reservoir area in Singapore, but even there it wasn’t as green as this. Either way, it was a truly fantastic sight to see.

The rest of the first day was spent in fair bit more mundane pursuits. My aunt brought me to her house at Southall, I met the many cousins that lived there and much unpacking was done. Turns out I’m staying up in a loft,  A bit later my elder cousin took me out and showed me around a bit more of Southall, including the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurudwara. Its the biggest outside India, a fact clearly evident from the outside.

Front view of the Gurudwara - there's a section leading to underground parking to the right

The place is gigantic, to say the least. We went inside and paid our respects on the upper floor, which had enough room to accomodate several hundred people easily. Couldn’t get a good enough photo there, but did take some of the ground floor. In order:

Library entrance on the right side

Main entrance and stairs leading up

Me standing in front of the Langar hall, where the food is served

There was also a mural of sorts at the center of the main hall, right in front of the entrance.

Operation Blue Star Mural

The service had already passed by several days earlier, sadly.

We moved on from there and saw a bit more of Southall, including another, smaller Gurudwara. I was unable to catch the full name, but did grab a picture of it.

After that we headed home for the night – its not safe out on the streets at night, supposedly, so returning back was probably a good decision. Either way the next day would promise much, much more things to do.

Hello World

12^th of August, 2009.

The weather’s been horrid lately. At well over 44 degrees, the searing sun’s rays are only made worse by the latent humidity in the air; one that sticks to the skin like glue. I can feel it even when I place my hand on the hot windowpane next to me; its oppressive force held back only by the valiant efforts of the air conditioner that rests above it. The heat’s not something I’m going to miss much when I move out of here – at least, for now. There’s a good chance when winter hits in Virginia and I’m freezing on the sidewalk somewhere, I’ll end up begging for a heat wave like this.