what i was doing lately....... (Jade Empire & CnCTW)

Lets see..... I chased away an alien race and freed the planet from them...... and then I saved the Water Dragon the Sheperd of the dead and the Jade Empire from the evil Emperror Sun Li....

Command and Conquer - Tiberium Wars:

It was quite sometime since this was released.... and got my hands on it recently only....

in sequel to the Tiberium series.... CnCTW continues the story of Tiberium started in 1995.
The story is woven very nicely to make it a continuation of the same story... the small plant like tiberium and changed to a crystal form and kane the bad guy is still at large.. its very interesting how they've connected everything together... and once u finish the 3 campaigns you have 3 sides of the same story..... :-)

The game play and graphics has improved marvelously from Tiberium sun... (Renegade was more RPG than stratergy!) The details of the units and the terrains are good.. you get a 3D view where u can rotate the camera angle.. so u know which unit is where... You will not miss out anyone who is behind tall buildings or uneven terrain... You can "zoom in" to a decent distant to see the units and characters clearly too.... and i like the effects of the shadows of the clouds running across the terrain.

Game play... well.. Its not all that CHALLENGING... I finished the game in medium or the default skill level and the game did not have any nail biting tight spots.... and some of the levels were plainly dumb ones... you can really get ur way around easily to achieve the mission objectives.... The Scrin campaign was slightly challenging than the rest.

I played almost all of the CnC series and all the games of Tiberium series.... and I must admit that i've enjoyed them... I think the Music was better when Westwood studios was handling that game... anyone who played Red Alert will agree with me...

8/10 if ur in to strategy games i know that you've already played this...



Jade Empire:
Remember Grey Matter studios??? yes!! the ppl who developed "Return to Castle Wolfenstine" and Bio Ware developed this amazing RPG game....(The X box version was developed by Microsoft)

Jade empier is the extreme opposite of what i've metioned before... Based on ancient Chinese mythical background and traditional martial arts. You start by selecting a character, either male or female. Who is the best student of a grand martial arts Master.

Splendid graphics as you can see from the screen shots i've taken. Thats how it looks on 1024X768, 4XAA (high quality settings), on a nVidia 7300GT, 1Gb DDRII, Windows Vista. For that kinda look the games runs VERY smoothly. way above 20fps unless it comes to some specific places where you have to fight against four opponents who sends flames and other particles. other than that the game is smooth. If I had to compare.. I'd Settle to Prince of "Persia Sands of Time" graphics. Very nice and runs smoothly.

Game play is awsome... you're on a quest trying to full fill your unknown destiny learning about you and your past. The martial arts fighting styles can be learned, upgraded and any combat with an opponant can be turned in to a Hollywood action movie sequence. You get to chooose how you want to continue the story and the development of your character. Good Guy or the Bad Guy... The path of the Open palm - the good way or... the Closed Fist - the Bad way... Depending on how you choose to develop your character and the descitions you make the game will give you several diffent endings. I tried three different ending. Good, Bad and well... rather Ugly too...
Apart from the main all mighty fighting and seriouse quest; you get to play this "Raptor" style flight missions. its fun... I thouroughly enjoyed each and everyone of them...
Its all there... Action, Betrayal, Conspiracy, Wisdom, Romance.....

There are some little bugs here and there... you have to save every now and then coz some times the camera seems to loose its sense of direction and location. All of a sudden you find yourself staring at a ceiling or a floor or some wall... and there is simply no way of fixing it... Unless of coz you reload the game... but it can be easily forgiven....

Overall.. it is a VERY good experiance... Its one of those that will keep you up till 5.00 AM and you go to work after only an hours sleep... If you're in to RPG... try not to miss this one out...
9.5/10

(Click the image for a larger view)

Noah: [humming] Bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum,bum.
Allie: [laughing] You're a terrible singer.
Noah: I know.
Allie: [laying her head on his shoulder] But I like this song.

Becoming Insane....

Infected mushroom - The Israely duo... I enjoy their music....
becoming insane Ep 2007
Quite a video too!!!!

The reason why i went brownish.....

Yep... I've switched from black to brown... I don't think I got tired of black... I won't get tired of black... it's a lovely color... or can we call it a color?? Both Black and White... can we call them colors??? Its more like either presence of all the colors or the absense of all the colors...

anyways.. I finished the below painting yesterday... and I liked the colors... probably thats the reason why I've switched to brown.....


Gauche colors on medium grain french water color paper... Click on the image for a larger view...
One thing that I like about this is the movement involved.. Its everywhere... the earth and the sky... and amidst of that wild moving back ground the single tree stays rooted motionless... alone.. lifeless and still against the fading skies....

The long story short....

Assasin's Creed...

From the developers of Prince of Persia...



I'm waiting for a PC version.....

Hidden Emoticons In Skype.

Most of the people around seems to be unaware of the fact that there are a few emoticons in skype that are hidden... infact there are about 12 of em till now. I don't know if there are newer ones.. if anyone knows pls let me know...

(mooning)
(finger)
(bandit)
(toivo)
(drunk)
(smoking) or (ci)
(rock)
(headbang) or (banghead)
(poolparty)
(fubar)
(tmi)
(swear)

Top 10 Torrent sites of 2007

1. Isohunt.com
   May, 2007: Isohunt has over 400,000 torrents in their database. Also noteworthy: any Isohunt torrent listed as "ISOhunt release" means that it is a file verified by the administrators...a nice feature to help you locate authentic torrents and not fake files. On a sad note: Isohunt is being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for copyright infringement. If you want to use this tremendous Canadian site, you better use it while you can.
   January 22, 2007: Although Isohunt was suddenly shut down by its original ISP before the weekend, the administrators have relaunched the service on a new ISP with new hardware. There are still problems, but Isohunt does live for the time being. The MPAA lawsuit is slated for a March summary judgment, so make sure you use Isohunt now, while you still can.
   
   
2. Torrentspy.com offers over 420,000 torrents in its database, the largest torrent index that is readily available to the public. Enjoy it while you can.
   
   
3. Torrentscan.com (a "meta-search" engine, which is a search engine that searches other search engines)
   
   
4. Snarf It! (born from previous Suprnova influences)
   
   
5. Torrentmatrix.com
   
   
6. Mininova.org has 190,000 torrents indexed as of April, 2007. Mininova is the successor to Suprnova, one of the original big torrent databases of the Web.
   
   
7. Demonoid (a personal favorite of many About.com readers, Demonoid is also a major tracker database that supports thousands of swarms around the globe. Even better, the Demonoid community polices itself by monitoring how much each member actually shares files. ("Leeches" are not tolerated at Demonoid). Note: because new memberships at Demonoid are scarce, you will need to be patient and committed if you wish to join.)
   
   
8. Torrentreactor.to (Torrentreactor has made a comeback from a hijacking and an uncooperative hosting service. They have moved to a different server setup and a Tonga country domain outside the USA. Read the details on their home page.)
   
   
9. Torrentportal.com
   
   
10. BTjunkie

The Wandering Monk.....

Moving in to light.... Fading in to white.... The wandering monk in a timeless odyssey in to himself....

Honey I think I want to have Kids...

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Nice Guy Eddie: C'mon, throw in a buck!
Mr. Pink: Uh-uh, I don't tip.
Nice Guy Eddie: You don't tip?
Mr. Pink: Nah, I don't believe in it.
Nice Guy Eddie: You don't believe in tipping?
Mr. Blue: You know what these chicks make? They make shit.
Mr. Pink: Don't give me that. She don't make enough money that she can quit.
Nice Guy Eddie: I don't even know a fucking Jew who'd have the balls to say that. Let me get this straight: you don't ever tip?
Mr. Pink: I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.
Mr. Blue: Hey, our girl was nice.
Mr. Pink: She was okay. She wasn't anything special.
Mr. Blue: What's special? Take you in the back and suck your dick?
Nice Guy Eddie: I'd go over twelve percent for that.

A VERY rare sight.....

While at one end of the Mag city there was horror and disaster lying.... at the other end there was an amazing piece of history....

Undergoing a restoration process is an Austin Sheerline Luzury Limousine.... Sheerline was in production from 1947 to 1954. It was a luxurious car in the style of the contemporary Rolls-Royce or Bentley but at a much lower price. According to the records only 8000 cars have been manufactured... So its quite rare to see one of these huge machines...

It has a huge 3995CC six cylinder over head valve engine that generates a 125 Bhp, to pull its massive 2 ton, 11 feet long steel monster...

Its historical values shoots up to an unreachable height because it was the car used by late Rt. Hon D.S.S Senanayake... He was the first Prime minister (1947 - 1952) for Sri Lanka .

This is how the Orignal Sheerline used to look like... and probably will look like after the resoration....

Now... I don't wanna be in this car!!!

I saw this at the Mag City service station - Kandy...

Yes.. its a car... to be precise its a Hyundai Accent Gls. Some GE number...

Apparently it seems that the car has rolled down a hill to a small stream some fifty feet below.... Damn... it sure is in a bad shape...

Overture of the Wicked - EP

YES!! after the long waiting... It was "Officially" released on the 4th.... even though it was floating around in the internet since April 24th (According to Wiki)

This is ALL what we expect from IE... The power packed pure brutal, heavy slab of technical Power Metal... nothing more... definitely nothing less!!! Of course the fans of ICED EARTH already know that Schaffer and Co. are something special in the world of Heavy Metal and just why some Metal-fans are wholly ignorant of their recorded output is a mystery and disgrace.

"Ten Thousand Strong" is the single track, and it will appear on "Framing Armageddon (Something Wicked Part 1)", albeit a bit different than the single version. - according to the IE website..-
inline with Ten thousand strong comes the "Wicked Triology" from "Something wicked this way comes" (1998) album!!!!

I first got to hear them in 1995; quite by accident I should say..... and it was one of the best accidents ever!!! loved their music... and the next year.... in 1996 - the KNOCKED me out with Dark Saga... man that was good... I'm sure that each and everyone of you who has heard it will agree.... the power... the complex arrangements, orchestrated passages, emotional interludes, huge choruses and just plain good old fashioned Heavy Metal.... How schaffer has breathed life in to a comic book... gave life and emotions to the beast with music.... was truely AWSOME!!!!! and they continued doing that...

The single - is pure evidence that IE will continue to do what they do the best... knock the bearth out of the listeners and kick them around with sound waves....

LONG LIVE IE!!!!!

Google Blog Search

Google Blog Search
try it

Look what I caught on cam......

This my friends is a 1975 Mitsubish Galanat - It's a third generation Galant (the present is considdered the 9th generation!!)

The stock car is supposed to have a 2ltr GTO Engine, with Mitsubishi's own unique Silent Shaft technology. This technology has been licensed out to several other automobile manufacturers offering V8 smoothness and quietness to engines with smaller configurations. But as you see in this the engine has been replaced to a diesel engine...

The air-intake on the hood is supposed to be a new addition. I don't recall the original version having that!!

At the time, the same model was introduced in US as Dodge Colt, The Plymouth Champ or the Chrysler Sigma.
Its competerion was none other than the Dodge challenger!!!!

The car was in terrible condition, interior is totally ruined!!! ... its a shame... If restored - it can be a very good looking muscle car!!!!

Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

The loooong awaited album by a bunch of guys who reallly won the hearts of people.... They're a (C)Rap–Rock band who really made a scene... People of all ages, fans of all genres; not only metal or Rock fans.. Hip-Hop and Pop fans equally like them!!!!

I got the album yesterday... Heard it once.. Liked it... but not enough to really write a comment or an opinion about it... I found this track to track review thing somewhere on the internet... thought I'd post it...

(pls try to disregard the word "heavy" that they use in the review once in a while! coz they aren't "Heavy". I listen to Carcass and.... well.....!!!)

1. Wake
To begin their long awaited album, Linkin Park choose to gently set the wheels in motion rather than forcefully kick-starting lively music which fans have come to expect. Instead, they present a slow, short intro track with a synth-heavy melody and a nice building ambiance, which gradually increases in volume. 4/5

2. Given Up
The smoothness is soon thrown out the window however when the scratchy turntable sound of this second track transforms into a gargantuan heavy rock riff. This is possibly the most in-your-face song on the entire record – the punk rock style drumbeats are brash, the guitars thrash and Chester Bennington sings his lungs out. When it reaches the bridge, he goes from singing to screaming the line, “You put me out of my misery” over and over again. It’s heated, emotional and enjoyable, but the track definitely feels like it’s missing a certain something. 3/5

3. Leave Out All The Rest
From one extreme to another, three tracks in and we’re presented with a ballad. It’s very listenable pop rock with tranquil vocals and dominant bass guitar. It seems odd to position such a slow-paced tune so early into the album but it’s radio friendly style is bound to be popular with many. The piece of music does end rather abruptly though and you may be left wanting more. 3/5

4. Bleed It Out
This is much more like the Linkin Park we’re used to hearing. Mike Shinoda starts off with a casual rap before trading off with Chester and some insightful lyrics, “I bring it out, bring it in deeper just to throw it away.” The song’s structure revolves around four simple chords with screaming vocals leading up to the catchy chorus. Piano adds an extra dimension to the track but overall it’s a little repetitive and flat, ending abruptly again. Saying that, we can see this being released as a successful single in the future. 4/5

5. Shadow Of The Day
Possibly the most listener friendly song on ‘Minutes To Midnight,’ the style is very soft yet clear with both vocals and bass taking a poppy turn. Percussion comes across clear and dominant, but overall the song remains average in terms of technicality. It seems to offer nothing more than a break-up in the record, but its dreamy nature is quite certain to be a hit with the fans. 2/5

6. What I’ve Done
Generally a hit from the moment it is played, ‘What I’ve Done’ soars with a catchy chorus and likeable verses, before developing into a brilliant bridge and climatic ending. A gentle guitar solo midway adds depth and versatility before another welcome chorus. The haunting piano and synthetic drums combine to create a fantastic addition to Linkin Park’s third album and a perfect choice for their first single. 5/5

7. Hands Held High
The marching drumbeat and simple melody is an ideal backdrop to Shinoda’s poetic rapping and it has certainly developed in the space of two previous albums and his hip-hip focused side project Fort Minor. Again, Chester’s melodic singing comes in later but the central theme of the song does seem to be soldier’s homecoming in the aftermath of war. Maybe it was written to get those arms flailing lighters around at rock festivals. Either way, it’s still an impressive track. 4/5

8. No More Sorrow
Opening up with a creeping lead guitar, ‘No More Sorrow’ rocks heads with a deep double-bass drumming intro switching over to a simple paradiddle on the snare. Definitely the best chorus of the album so far, with an enigmatic riff and emotional shouting from Bennington. The tune flows naturally with a heavy bridge followed by a modulation and even higher pitched screaming. There’s no DJ elements to this song and it has to be said that some of the vocals and drumming becomes repetitive fast – even more noticeable is the fact that the band don’t seem to be stretching themselves in terms of song writing techniques. 3/5

9. Valentine’s Day
After a somewhat depressive two minutes of ballad-laden lyrics and slow-moving guitars, it finally kicks in with another extremely infective hook and harmonious backing vocals. “On a Valentines day” is passionately sung with interesting vocals spoken over the top, before annoyingly ending abruptly and letting the song down. 2/5

10. In Between
If there’s a point in the album where it’s easy to see that the songs are starting to lose their flair, this is it. Those sweetly spoken vocals are back once again alongside grainy drumbeats, but without any differences in tempo there’s nothing exciting here. It’s peaceful, but there’s no denying this is a weak ballad track amongst Linkin Park’s repertoire of excellence. 1/5

11. In Pieces
Thankfully, faith is restored with quite simply the highlight of the album. This is soft yet rhythmic with synthetic drumming you can’t fail to be taken in by. The stirring piano and powerful bass proves to be a winning combination for the band – with vocals at their best only boosting the song further. Another build up after a few minutes adds more magic to the piece, with sweet sounds and eventually more heavily distorted guitars, minus screaming. The song slows down and ends dramatically with a simple beat and ska-style guitar plucking. 5/5

12. The Little Things You Give Away
Acoustic guitar and Linkin Park in the same sentence? You better believe it. One last ballad, with those great mechanical style drums and melodic vocals from Chester rounds ‘Minutes To Midnight’ off fruitfully. When the bass cuts in, the song hits another dimension before ending a reasonably decent record. There’s not many heavy tracks – instead, Linkin Park have shifted to crafting softer, easier listening songs like this one. Despite it not being a patch on ‘Hybrid Theory, ’it still delivers and the fans will almost surely be lapping this up after its release on 14 May. 4/5

Colorful treat.....

Supposed to be in parallel to Chathu's blog.. but there was some a registry error in my computer that took sometime to fix and download the pics...

It must've been around midnight or something... and we were too tired to go around looking for other places.... so we ended up at the great Sampath Hotel Rajagiriya!!!

(Click the image for a larger view)

Fluorecent light, Automatic exposure on my Nokia phone... i like the color scheme.. well... I don't you have to have the "eye" for colors or anything else to notice that...

Rock Unplugged!!! slightly plugged!!!

Yep... I did go... and you know that I'd definitely go...

It was awsome... well... it was sometime since I last saw any of the bands playing live... When the Rock Company had "Rock Saturday"s happenning we did see the bands once a month!!

now they say that these will be happennign every sunday at Clancy's... I missed the gig on the previous Sunday... I simply was clueless!!! lets hope they continue!!!

The band listing was good. they had all the bands that were mentioned in the poster!!!!
All of them were good... we have some real talented bunch of guys out there!!! young pups and "experieced" dudes!!!
all of em rocked equally...

it was supposed to start at three - but started way after 4.30PM (I really won't complain about it.. coz i think 3.00 PM is a bit too early.. and it was awkward seeing clancy's in braod daylight!!! he eh he... and since the very first rock company events.. they NEVER started on time... so its kinda ok...) it ended around 8.30 - 9.00 i don't remember exactly... Stigmata gave a brilliant ending... it was heavy - not the real "Acoustic - Unpligged" thingi that u'd expect though!!!

PE - The boys from Kandy
(well yeah.. u can't see shit in the pics!! I'd say its Iron Maiden and Iced Earth playing you'd still wouldn't know the diff!! )
One of the leading bands in the scene these days...

Stigmata
The Aces in Sri Lankan Metal scene!!!
and they're GOOD!!! VERY GOOD!!!
I don't know since when they got that (new) drummer of their's!!
I remember him from long ago.. i think he's from kandy... one of PE's friends or something like that... carrying water bottles and stuff!!! if i remember correctly... he always gave me an impression of a jackass... did a good job doing that too!! he's just a bit too much "wanna be" type!!! He fucking shows off more that Suresh himself!!!
He's ok with the drums though.. but there are better ppl around!!!

...and now I'm an uncle!! :-)

and its all thanks to this tiny creature... :-)

this my friends is my little nephew, the newest member of our family. He came in to this world at 9.11 PM yesterday and he weighed 2.920 Kilos. A healthy little boy.

Look at him... only 10hrs old!! tiny and pink!!! :-) We've not thought of a name as yet... coz there are alot of "things" involved in naming a new born!! like choosing the first letter according to the astronomical whatever thing!!!! anyways.. I'll let u guys know the moment we decide...