Has anyone seen the movie "The Kingdom of Heaven"? Besides the thing that the movie is very well made, the character of Salahuddin acted very well in that movie. I liked the character so much that I got tempted to keep the name of this blog after it.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

I watched this 'I am legend' recently, and I liked it. It is as close to SciFi as I have seen (apart from the aha films like Matrix etc...). After watching these Red Planets and AVPs etc..., this movie came as a welcome surprise for me. The storyline and the near-future-ness of the movie, set it apart from those. Ok, what is shown in the movie:

1. Cancer cure (feasible near-future)
2. A virus that eats cancerous cells and keeps a check on Cancer (again, feasible)
3. The virus mutates and infects under UV rays (feasible, ok).
4. The virus infects and increases the metabolism rate, forcing people to do more activity (perfectly reasonable).
5. Only some survive the effect, others die (ok, may be feasible)
6. Those folks, affected by the virus, have to do stuff at a greater rate, to survive. Their brains are useless to satisfy their instinct, which probably asks them to rip each other apart. (perfectly plausible). In order to satisfy their instincts, they stopped using brains and acting like civilized humans.

In a sentence, they are suffering from infection. This is not like those movies where, people die and become zombies. And somehow, the virus re-animates them (Very unlikely). Also, it is not like those entirely imaginative movies like, alien technologies (god knows what is the Science in showing those as SciFi), and Matrix type movies (which are great to watch, but, entirely imaginative more or less)

As an aside, the main point of Matrix story is slightly un-justified. If machines are taking energy from us, and making us live life through a program, so be it, many people would say. As the humans are living a life anyway, what is the point of trying to change it, and come to "reality" etc... Did machines kill folks, no. Did they torture us, no. All they want is our body heat, as per the movie. At least they didn't even hint about machines ditching us, and moving to an alternate power source.

This movie revolves around the near-future that gives great satisfaction to view it, and feel the idea in it. Everything in the movie is close to future, and relevant to the contemporary setting (be it social, humanity etc...). I would truly recommend it as a SciFi movie. In my opinion, SciFi movies are better that way, having an angle relevant to contemporary things, and showing somewhat imaginative (believable) SciFi. And, I liked the humanity/social angle in it as well.

There's another movie about 'human cloning' and using the clones to replace the organs of folks, who insured them (essentially killing the clones). It is called 'The island' and I liked that as well. It is contemporary and believable SciFi.

Friday, September 24, 2010



I was playing with my kid on mspaint, and discovered something nice and interesting. Can you believe it, the above image is created using mspaint, and 4 attractive colors. Do you like it? It looks very similar to those window glass art.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

One more addition: Fifteen puzzle. Numbers 1 to 15 are jumbled, and one has to arrange them properly, using an empty slot.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Another addition. Jumbled pictures. Pictures are given which are jumbled, and one can re-arrange the squares into proper pictures, by swapping them. Try playing it.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Added another game, 4-in-a-row. Enjoy

Monday, September 13, 2010

Another one, "Flip and match" hidden entities. This game is available in various complexities, like easy/medium and hard, on board sizes 8*8, 10*10 and 12*12.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

One more addition: Minesweeper! One can play upto 18*18 (on Firefox, and 21*21 on IE) on the space given. Enjoy. However, the algorithm can be bettered (for better boards) for sizes more than 10*10, will work on it later.

Flagging mines with right-click is not there yet.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

New addition: Maze creator, a program that can create mazes (less than 100*100 dimensions). Try creating some and solving them.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Folks, try my new NumberDumber number puzzles collection. One can generate a puzzle for himself/herself to solve, or use the solver to get a solution to a known "digit arithmetic puzzle". Test your math skills.
For those of you interested in designing interior, there is a software called "Home Designer Suite", which is awesome. It can give nice images of 3-d interior, that one can design and see, by himself.
Sorry folks, I got into some Copyright issues with the originators of those interior photos, had to remove them from here. Sorry about it.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

There is another small puzzle that I came up with, it is actually a trick question than a puzzle, and probably for school kids puzzles.

If you go from point A to point B (on road), by taking a right turn, and then a left turn, how do you come back from B to A? What turns will you take in order? (This can be asked as a quick reply question to folks, and see what they say? People say reverse, as in, "first left turn and then a right turn", which is wrong).