Tennis the menace

I secretly love sports. Watching football and basketball is fun but playing just about any sport is awesome (except for when you play with competitive killjoys). I signed up for a new intramural league sport every semester in grad school and that turned out to be quite useful in a jack of all trades sort of way. I blew my knee out a couple of years back though, as a result of which there is a narrower range of sports that I can play now. No cutting-jumping motions - so no badminton, football, ultimate frisbee, soccer, basketball, and sprinting. Unfortunately those were my favorite sports and now I was forced to find new ones that fit better. I can still play racquetball, racquetball is fun.

I have been trying to get a grip on tennis for close to six years now and most of my best cricketing shots have happened on a tennis court. The muscle memory from playing other racquet sports makes you even more clumsy on the tennis court. Only recently I have managed to get enough of touch that I can actually return a hittable ball to the opponent. But my play is not of exhibition quality, so I mostly pick late evenings and hidden courts to do my dance.

This week, we started playing at the apartment complex court at about 8:30 pm. Twenty minutes in, I was starting to find a groove. A couple of rallies happened. 'I must be getting better at this', I reflected. Just that moment, a balding man with a white t-shirt and frayed shorts walked up to the enclosure. He said something inaudible, so I moved closer. And then the horrifying thing happened.

"Can my son play with you guys?", he requested. He moved aside to reveal a scrawny 8-year old kid clutching a racquet, his pockets bulging with tennis balls. Ignoring all niceties, I inquired seriously, "how good are you?". "Actually, I'm really good", the kid replied nervously. I spat inside my mouth and probably made a face too. "Why not?" my wife said and the kid propped open the gate and entered the enclosure. "Thanks", said the dad and stayed outside to watch.

Now I don't really hate kids and I definitely don't mind playing with them. I just have some scars from my past. I remember playing a reluctant chess game with my (then) 6-year old cousin when I was about 17. He beat me in less than ten moves. Thrice. It hurt bad. I am a pretty competitive person, it is just that I am also simply incompetent. The sensitive ego makes it worse. From then on, I restricted myself to handicap games that still look fair.

So I now had to manage this crisis. I signaled for my wife to join my side of the court. The kid held two balls in his hand. It was surprising that he could fit one in those tiny hands but he held one firmly and bounced the other one on the ground in preparation. He arched back in a perfect semi-circle and let loose his cannon serve at me as I skipped slightly in my spot so nobody would notice me shivering.

BANG! It rammed into the net. I smiled in relief. BANG! The second serve hit the net too. And a third. And a fourth. "Can I just serve like this instead?", the kid asked nervously and motioned to make an underarm serve. "Is that allowed?", I asked my wife with a grin. She ignored me and nodded at the kid.

It was not too bad a game as things turned out. I let the wife serve the entire time. This kid had a talent for apologizing for everything. He raced around the court to take my erratic returns, often with a sorry when he missed (and I chuckled). The dad got his workout around the court enclosure as he picked up and returned balls from my home runs back to the park. I noticed that my wife was a better player than I thought. With a proper opponent, she was able to hit the ball back with a lot of zip on it (though she did not get as many apologies as I did. Ha!). I mostly stared at them play, occasionally chipping in and making the kid run more. Half hour later, it was over and we walked home. I was still grinning.

Lets do this again sometime kid.

 

Tech retrospection

This day, a decade ago, I did not have a cell phone. Two decades ago, I did not know what the internet was. Just about six years ago, I did not know what a smartphone was. While, it would seem that my personality has not changed much over time, my lifestyle has been undergoing a massive transition over the last decade in quick jumps to become a lot more minimalistic. I have had a sweet affair with minimalism, at times with borderline OCD-level tendencies to organize and use one tool to its death. This is my love letter to all the technology that has made my life today.

The extremis Iron man. Except it is me.

While I have always stayed regularly updated on tech news, my fanboy tendencies have not involved much purchasing. Somehow the purpose has always been to become an informed buyer, so when the need arises the geek-gadget bought is one that will last its true life with minimal upgrading (and my handling); a long-term release. So when cellphones became commonplace at the start of the millenium, I bought one four years later when multimedia cellphones were being perfected. The main priority has mostly been, to avoid a prototype and find a smooth and lasting experience. My favorite tech picks:   

PSP: I bought a Star Wars: Battlefield limited edition PSP-2000 in winter 2007. I did not want to use my computer for gaming and I was looking for something versatile. I still use the PSP for most my gaming. The experience has not slowed down over the years and some of the titles (GTA: Chinatown wars, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank: Size matters) have had tremendous replay value. The portable media capabilities alone would warrant the buy. Just a great piece of hardware that has lasted its value and more.

Macbook pro: Child please, I am not a mac person or something. I just want a device that works smooth and lasts long with minimal maintenance. The Mac experience has been a hard one to beat. I have used this one for five years and it still has not become crusty despite constant use and abuse. It tend to use shell-scripts and home-made scripts often and the unix base has cooperated well. Zero virus issues, mostly bug-free, fast-enough load times - it has allowed me to focus more on what I am doing rather than how.

Nexus: I was fooled into trying out the Motorola Bravo device (awful at best) before I found the Samsung galaxy nexus a year ago. Most cell phones have a very short half-life and the nexus is not one of them. I am a heavy google user; I had my contacts organized on google since 2006 with no idea that this device would someday import and synchronize them; a very pleasant surprise. This device is my mp3 player, gps, organizer, running planner, accelerometer and reading device. It makes a decent communication device too. A lot of my friends and family live far away from me and this device has allowed for smooth, bug-free distance bridging. If only I had more friends using google+.

Google: What can I say about google that has not already been said? I wrote a bit on it some years back. I do not think that google wants to take over the world. They have a bigger agenda than that. I love having synchrony across platforms and devices. 

Wii: When is it OK for the minimalist to have a second gaming device? When you get the second one for free. Babysteak gave me his device, with some excellent titles - Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario galaxy, Kirby's epic yarn. I love the backwards compatibility and the innovative design, well, in games that use it properly anyway (The legend of Zelda: Skyward sword). Just watching my mom beat me and others at video games is a sweet experience. 

I have a draft on the crazy awful side of technology that I will someday publish. Today the world is just beautiful.  

V-day

Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

Exhibit 3:

Coming soon

Try this

When you find the time that is.

Pour ice slush into the lab sink such that the sink drain is clogged from all the ice but you can still see it. Listen to the ice melting and dropping (pop!) from contact with the drain surface. In a few seconds, you can also see the ice bits getting smaller and falling into the trap making it a fun lightning and thunder combination!

Or you can spice it up by pouring a slush of ethanol and dry ice. Brilliant smoke effects! Use a spatula to play some dry ice hockey on the sink surface as you watch the smoky ice rearrangement show.

Or you can make it more awesome by making it a slush of liquid nitrgen and regular/dry ice for some extra hot spring bubbling effects as well! Except that is against lab safety regulations so cross that.

And they thought Tuesdays aren't fun.

I've been missing for the last month because, amongst other things, I have been working really hard. Peace.

Of Worms...

Killing cannot be a sport but "bumping" someone off can be addictive. The fun of blasting the enemy off with a holy hand-grenade or the extremely pleasing prospect of insulting the enemy by merely pushing him off a ledge in the water, allowing him to swim like a brick can give an enslaving high.

Gaming was never an obsession for me until I encountered the worms series. As always, I saw it late enough to say that I wish I had seen it from its very first versions. I first played a demo version of 'Worms: Armageddon' It was unlike anything I had seen so far - starting at its turn-based nature. It was a new concept, a new genre to me. The playable characters - the worms were like typical worms in their movement and jumping (even swimming) abilities, but they were different in other ways - their eyes, clothes and arsenal of weapons were not so worm-like or even humanoid-like. It was that crazy idea from someone in Team 17 that just worked. and how!The first DOS based Worms game brought in that new concept - turn based strategy warfare in a full destructible island map, with an arsenal of weapons - ranging from the usual shotguns, grenades and bazookas to homing missiles, kamikaze worms and even insane exploding sheep. The deal was to bump off all of your enemy's worms and at the same time save yours in your turn time. It was an instant hit and within a year, an expansion pack - worms reinforcements was out, followed by a Director's Cut edition that brought in more bigger/crazier guns and more maps and editors.

The second generation of worms focussed on its inherent comic nature, with a more cartoon look to the entire game, pink cute worms and comment boxes, more crazy weapons, watery graves and explosive (or lung-bursting) results. The graphics were really cool and the voice effects added to the charm. The worms ranged from shy mumblers to full fledged alien motormouths that kept insisting that their kills were personal. Armageddon and World party came out later with more enhancements, sheep and multiplayer support. Added weapons now included prion-infected mad cows, super sheeps (that could fly and even snorkel underwater!) and some most unfortunate old women. As in most games, multiplayer gaming was the real element of worms. The addictive fun of delivering a fire punch to your pals and knocking them into the next world or ushering their early ascension with a bouncy banana bomb pitched it out for Worms.
Worms 3D - the next edition was a blast! It had added new dimensions and not just in graphical display. The gameplay had changed to suit its 3D nature but there were also new weapons. Newer strategies were needed to get the enemy and the weapons had a different catch. A first person shooting ability made it a lot more appealing. But it still felt like a prototype. Some controls were buggy. Land pixels were cubes that showed that the graphics were good but not smooth enough. Worms 4: Mayhem made up for all of that. It had all of 3D's excellence and made additions in the controls and the graphics department. Maps were also a lot bigger than before and drowning the worms wasn't as easy as it was in 3D (there were complaints that the worms seemed to be drowning all the. New, more deranged weapons included the inflatable scouser that did exactly what the name says - it releases a scouser who walks upto your enemy (can be controlled) and inflates into a sort of balloon with the enemy inside and moves with the wind for about 10 seconds. A good wind could see the enemy far out at sea just to drop in for a swim to heaven (though the worms now preferred to just float on the surface and burst their way out of the world instead of glugging their way to the bottom and complaining about how they're supposed to be the superior bunch here).The spinoffs - worms blast and pinball were a fine addition to the games and so was the forts edition which included building forts, factories and science labs in the 3D edition adding to the strategy involved in the games.

Worms has created the genre of comedy in computer games and has still succeeded in making sure that the gamer takes it seriously enough to spend sleepless nights on. The idea of a bunch of soft and cute worms that were serious about killing each other with the same weapons from the typical first person shooter and more, enthralls. Not loving it would be a court-marshal offense soldier!