Empire Earth III is out !!!

I started playing civilization building games when I was 17. After 4 years, I still continue to play them. I started out with Caesar III. I played this game for about an year, then felt bored of it. Later I shifted to civilization. I felt this also to be boring. Then I started out with Empire Earth, and I play this game even now when I find some time. I tried out Empire Earth 2 also. But I found the game-play of the first version to be more satisfying.

The third version of the game is out now. Time to check out what this game offers.

Why I hate IPod???

I wonder why so many people go GA-GA over IPods. It’s nothing more than an audio player with some good extensions. “It comes with a huge hard-disk space and supports many different audio formats, and blah-blah-blah…..” is what the IPod users have to say about it.

If one really wants to listen to good music, why can’t he/she use his PC or home-theater system? Whenever I ask this question to people, they come up with the same lame excuse – “I travel a lot. I don’t have time, or the patience to sit at home and listen to music all day long!!!!”.

Consider the life-style of a typical teenager. He/she might spend a max of 1.5 to 2 hours per day to travel between home and office. Even I spend about 2 hours per day to travel between home and office. I have chosen other better alternatives to IPod. I normally use MP3 players, or better still, my mobile itself. If I use my mobile or a tiny MP3 player, I don’t need to carry a pouch, which I had to use if I was using an IPod. This would definitely relieve me from some serious extra baggage J Moreover I can listen to a max of 20 songs in that time. Even a normal MP3 player has a hard disk space of 2 to 4 GB nowadays. And 2GB cards are common with almost the music-edition phones nowadays. Moreover these MP3 players are a lot cheaper than the IPods. Even a 4GB IPod Nano costs around 7k!!!

I’ll never ever buy an IPod in my life. Now a new version of IPod is out – Ipod Video, which can play video files. Honestly, who would like to play movies on such a small device. I would rather prefer to watch them on my PC or TV.

Awesome flash file

Just check out this link:

http://home.iitk.ac.in/~hussain/fav/Animation.swf

Hats off to the person who created this....Never seen anything so interesting before.....

Technology that empowers me

It's high-time people started using the technology to their full potential. Let me start with the mobile. If you think mobiles are just to make and receive calls, and occasionally send a few SMS, you are absolutely wrong.

I got a Nokia N73 recently. It's a damn good phone with so many features, that makes it look like a tiny PC. The music player is real good and is a good substitute for Ipod. The loudness i.e., the speaker quality of this phone is awesome. Another interesting think about this phone is that the current day's calendar entries are shown in the welcome screen. This keeps me reminding me about my current day's plans, whenever I use the phone.

I find the 3.2 MP camera extremely useful. Although the Carl-Zeiss optics don't do much justice to the camera, they are a valuable addition. Picture quality is really good, and pictures are amazingly very bright even though taken during night time. The integrated Yahoo search saves time when browsing. The PDF viewer and Quick Office are a real handy addition. I now carry all my personal documents with me, and I can access them on-the-fly, without any need to go to a nearby PC. The blogging software is nothing much to talk about. People usually use blogger to blog and not many people blog on Nokia's blog.

Overall, this is a good phone with a lot of features, and really worth the cost.

Please retire

I really wish that the seniors in the Indian team retire. Yes I'm talking about the big three. Sachin, Saurav and Dravid don't have much in them to offer anything now. One would argue that Sachin is in great touch now and looks to be in sublime form. Agreed. But what about the future of the Indian cricket?

When will the other members get a chance? When will Rohit Sharma be able to show what he's capable of? When can Gambhir really prove to the world that he's another Saurav in the making? When will people start to accept that Uthappa is probably a much more dangerous player than what Sehwag was? All this is possible only when they are given a chance.

All these players proved their might in the Twenty-20 cup. It's true that Twenty-20 is altogether a different ball game, and batting in fifty overs is completely different. But the fact is that the big three can't carry on like this, without contributing much. Sachin looks to be in great form today, and I believe that the Indian team should use his services for now. But it's high time that India look upto Gambhir as a substitute for Ganguly, and Rohit Sharma or Robin Uthappa as a substitute for Dravid.

There's a vacancy in the Indian team for a good spinner. I hope that Piyush Chawla takes up this place. Harbhajan looks as though he's in another world just now, and Ramesh Powar seems to be getting fatter by the day. Chawla should be given more opportunities. This lad can be a really good all-rounder, if used properly.

Juniors sparkle

I was really surprised to see the Indian cricket team drop Robin Uthappa for the first ODI against Australia. Uthappa has been such an excellent performer in the Indian team. There was really no point in dropping for the first ODI.

He had fared well in England. I remember an instance when he was asked to bat down the order at No.6 or 7, and still he managed to bat well at that position and India won that match. Right after that match, India went into the Twenty-20, and he performed there too.

I can't forget the way he hooked the deliveries bowled towards the off-side for a six during the Twenty-20 cup, or the Brett Lee bouncer that he hit for a six over the bowler's head during the second ODI in Kochi.

It looks like Ganguly will be there in the ODI tomorrow. I really hope that the Indians don't do the same mistake again by dropping Uthappa, and favoring Ganguly. Indians looked to be in a winning position when Uthappa was there batting against Australia. They soon lost momentum once he got out. This shows how destructive this player can be. I would certainly play Uthappa instead of Ganguly if I were the captain.

World champs lose to world champs

It's true what a great cricketer once said - "Indians always manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory"

How true did this turn out to be in the second ODI between India and Australia. India again had the Aussies in trouble just like the first ODI, after the initial batsmen fell early. But Hayden played really well and got the Aussies out of trouble. I really believe that Aussies are the world champions in the 50-50 format. There is no team that can match up to the might of Aussies, barring South Africa to a few extent. Even SA have to play out of their skins to beat Aussies.

I feel that the remainder of the one-day series will go on the same way as the second ODI. Aussies are the real 50-50 format champs and Indians the Twenty-20 format champs.