Month: November 2010

Webcomics and Community

Post author By Amit
Post date November 28, 2010

If you are geeky enough and it is either Monday, Wednesday or Friday, the moment your Firefox window opens (yes Firefox!) your fingers move to type in the letters “x-k-c…” to see what new idea the awesome Randall Munroe has dreamt up.

And of course you know that Munroe has been going through an illness in the family since the beginning of the week gone past. When I saw the comic that informed us of this development (this one), I was worried, of course. About the person concerned, and as a reader of that blog, about what would happen to the comic.

Knowing the fate most webcomics go through, and especially what happened to one of my favourite webcomics, Cectic, which had to be abandoned by the original artist owing to paucity of time, I was worried. I don’t think XKCD has ever missed a scheduled update, and it would have been unfortunate to see arguably the world’s most loved webcomic having to break that record.

But no. Randall posted collections of sketches he had made earlier, which kept us entertained. And then, one day, I find a new comic, which looked like a XKCD comic, but had a different style about it. And then I noticed – it wasn’t Munroe’s work. It was Jeph Jacques (of Questionable Content)! Munroe was running a guest week on XKCD! The web’s most famous comic artists were contributing on XKCD while Munroe couldn’t devote time to creating new content for us. Jeph was soon joined by David Troupes (of Buttercup Festival), Bill Amend (of FoxTrot), Jeffrey Rowland (of Overcompensating), thus giving us probably the richest comic content ever! Each of these comics are made in the trademark XKCD style, but are very clearly representative of the artists’ own styles. And the stories are both in the styles of the respective artists and of XKCD.

And when I opened XKCD today, I was elated to see Zach Weiner (of SMBC!)’s comic. Two of my most favourite comics together! And in style! Why don’t you have a look?

Munroe’s crisis seems to be nearing its end as indicated in the page today. Let’s hope he’s back soon, but thanks to him and all the artists for giving us probably the best webcomic week ever and turning a crisis into a basket of delight for us readers!

Tags webcomics, xkcd

Pune Food

Pune Momo Hunt

Post author By Amit
Post date November 26, 2010

If you are in the vicinity of Model Colony in Pune and are in the mood for Tibetan food. Heck, if you are anywhere in Pune and want to taste Tibetan food, go to this place called Batloi, on the corner opposite the Spencer’s in Model Colony.

The decor is like a log cabin, with hip music playing, and decorations that remind you of Jamaica and the North East both, and the menu is replete with almost everything you’ll get to eat in the North East and Tibet. I had some really good steamed momos there, and washed them down with the soup & Fanta 🙂

Prices really affordable. A budget of Rs. 150 per person will get you a stomachful and a bit more.

Tags tibetan

Photography

The Late Sunset

Post author By Amit
Post date November 18, 2010

The Late Sunset, originally uploaded by recaptured.

A picture of a sunset at Om Beach,Gokarna. And my 67th Flickr Explore.

Why don’t you show it some love at 500px | JPGmag | Flickr | NatGeo My Shot

Tags Flickr, Gokarna

News

Proof again?

Disclaimer: The picture in this post is not clicked by me. I found it on the National Geographic site with the article which this post talks about. Thanks.

—

“A routine trip to the water hole recently resulted in a life-or-death struggle for a pair of African elephants when they were ambushed by a hungry Nile crocodile…”, says the National Geographic Daily News page.

Poor NatGeo. They don’t know that this is not the real story. Wait till India TV and Aajtak get their hands on this gem. They will value-add to it in a way that even NatGeo’s CEO would not have thought. Ofcourse this incident is a reenactment of the legendary Gaj-Grah (Elephant-Crocodile) fight from the Bhagvat Puran, where Vishnu comes running barefoot to save his devotee the elephant from the evil crocodile. Just that this time Vishnu was not needed – but that’s how things work in Kaliyug – God works in mysterious ways and thus He does not need to be physically present. The elephant must have been given the idea of running away by God himself and thus indirectly he has been blessed by His intervention.

And this again is irrevocable proof of the truth of the Bhagvat Puran – the incident just repeated itself dinnit?

Does all this sound looney to you o skeptic? Go see this proof story then.

Uncategorized

Fame: klueLESS style

Post author By Amit
Post date November 16, 2010

A few days back I got a call from Krish Raghav of HT Mint. He was doing a feature on klueLESS, the monster of a puzzle I had made back in 2005, if you remember.

It was the first time any media outfit chose to talk to the originator while covering the madness. In my knowledge the game had been covered by another business daily a couple of years back but they didn’t mention me! 😛

Mint decided to set this right.

So I had a nice chat with Krish for an hour or so, and as a result a nice paragraph in this Mint article comprised entirely of my statements: The kult of the Klueless

…
“Right from the beginning, the challenge has been to make it tough enough to engage, but not to an extent where it puts off people,” says Amit Sharma, who designed the first Klueless. It started, he says, as something to fill up available space on the site servers. “But it went viral thanks to posts on forums like PaGaLGuY.com and Team-BHP.com,” he says. “They all said—’if you want to crack the Common Admission Test (CAT), try this!’ In India, that’s a guaranteed bringer of heavy traffic.”
…

Only one minor correction: klueLESS was not started to “fill up available space on the site servers”, it was to fill up available space on the iRising schedule. Minor detail.

Thanks HT-Mint for the publicity. My friends have been going mad sharing the link. And phone calls and pings have been on since then 🙂