Conquering the FIFA 12 Career Mode

The career mode in FIFA has always been really very easy over the years. I stopped playing the career mode back in FIFA 10 when playing as the manager of Accrington, jumped three tiers of English football in three years consecutive years. With the FIFA 11 version being a bit too tough, the current one is just about right!

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

Although I've changed a lot over the years, there was a time I used to recite poems pretty nicely (Courtesy: Mamma). In the competitions, I used to fly past my competitors. Being a child, I even show actions during the course of the poem. If you ask me my favorite, the spontaneous answer would be 'Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. However, the other day, Mamma reminded me of a far more hilarious one that I really used to enjoy during my childhood: 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' by Edward Lear. So, laugh away as you read this (and maybe imagine me reciting it with the actions)...

A Tale of Two Sitcoms

On the 6th day May '05, over fifty million viewers tuned in to say goodbye to six people who had touched their lives in the past decade. That was the series finale of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, something which defined a sitcom and sets the standards for the present ones. Later that year, an evening in September, however, marked the start of another sitcom which defined awesomeness! No prizes for guessing, I am talking of 'how i met your mother'!

the marvelous month that was (Part 3)

Part 2 of this post can be found here.

After I landed in Silchar, it was just enjoyment from the word 'Go'. The next one week really got imprinted in the forgetful mind of mine! It was the one of the best weddings I had ever witnessed. I made a lot of friends there and met so many relatives, it was just great. I am not giving details of the wedding as it'd take up more space than this, for one and secondly, I believe, a picture is worth a thousand words, I think you rather look at the album instead!

the marvelous month that was (Part 2)

Part 1 of the post can be found here.

Even though it was just a few minutes before the scheduled (and revised) time of departure, the security check was finally announced for this (probably cursed) flight. I and Mohit rushed through the security saying we were just 15 minutes away from departure. The Guwahati airport has just four gates for departure, all visible at the same time if you take a strategic location (no need to ask, I took that location). Now, we were 2 minutes from the departure, and I went to check if the god forsaken flight had even landed. I caught hold of an Air India official, and asked him what was going on. He (very politely) said that the airplane was hovering over us and was not getting the clearance to land. It took about an hour more for us to find out a few more estranged passengers and we decided to do what the Indian public does best: wait.

the marvelous month that was (Part 1)

It was the first day of the month. I got up quite late, at about 10, for a C++ exam from 2. I had a haircut, revised a bit and went for the exam. And that was it. The first semester in an IIT was over. For the guys not staying back for the NCC camp, the fun (and the occasional mockery of the guys who had sort of being forced to select NCC) had just begun. I'm talking of a time exactly a year ago: December 2010.

My Technical 404s

Considering I have a blog titled 'Transcendental Tech Talk', you'd have to assume I am quite friendly with electronic goods. Well, you'd be very correct if you do so, but such a state has only been achieved after making certain 404's in my life, errors that I have caused me great mental distress but have certainly helped me learn the harsh reality of the gizmo world!

A Memorable Semester

Back in July, as I came back to Roorkee after a two and a half month long vacation, I was pretty skeptical about moving into a new room (it was, in no way, easy either). In fact, I mentioned about the same in a post which can be found here. Little did I know that this particular semester would end up to be one of the most memorable ones(technically, this was my third with seven more to go, but I've a certain feeling)!

How 'Batman: Arkham City' surpasses its predecessor

A whopping 18 gigs of data and finally, you are ready to play Batman Arkham City. Well, not really. The process was unique. I had to do a Google search for about 2 hours, along with tweaking my system, and only then could I make it work (Phew!). Considering how impressive its predessor Arkham Asylum was, I could never give up, even if it had taken a bit longer (Did I mention  my End Sems are going on?) However, it was well worth the wait, as I realised in the few hours of play that I managed thereafter...

Kolaveri Kraze- a Kritical look!

My last post was 25 days back, and I was in no mood for any blog post for another 10 days or so. Reason? End terms! However, certain unexpected events have forced my to come out of hibernation and express my views! For those who love this song, lemme remind you I am not quite something you'd like to call a fan, so chances are, by the time you finish reading this, I'd be on your hitlist (just don't throw stones at me, or my facebook wall/timeline, for that matter). Just as a convention, I would use words such as 'this song' and 'it' to refer to a certain something as I don't wanna name it...

Online Exams: Behind the Scenes

After a quiet Diwali at IIT-R, where just about a fifth of the students stayed behind, it was time to go back to work at IMG, but there was a minor difference this time: this was a finishing touch to something I had been working on for over a semester. After a few hassles (when most of my seniors were home), I could finally do it right: the launch of my first application for the intranet, Online Exams.

New is always better!

Those who are familiar with the TV series 'how i met your mother' will most probably recognise the title of this post as a quote by Barney Stinson, in the last season. And unless, of course, you give the example of  Scotch, there's no denying this!

The 'art' of playing FIFA 12

Being a fan of the FIFA series, I waited in anticipation on 27th September to get my hands on a working copy of the full version of the game, and was finally successful just before the stroke of midnight! My first match was against Manchester United, which I lost 3-0 (oh come on, it was the 'Legendary' difficulty). Ten days on, and a few more wins (and definitely, losses) later, I believe, I am in a position to say that I am fairly comfortable with the game... Although I felt that some of the stuff was similar, quite a few features had suffered a big change.

TRAI's 'brilliant' idea

1st October, 2011, it was just 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I send a message and it doesn't get sent! Got knows what sort of an error it was... Anyways, as I had purchased new cellphone, I thought it was an issue with that. However, I called up customer care, and found out that I had supposedly exceeded the 100 sms/day limit! My last few days before the vacations started had been really busy, considering I had to Python & Django... So I never faced this problem in it's first three days of its 'enforcement'!

Why is Bentley Microstation the worst software on the planet?

It was the start of 3rd semester for me, and one of the seven (tiring) subjects was Computer Graphics (just a fancy name for Computer Aided Design). Although the theory wasn't much of an issue, it was the practical that was the most irritating part... The software being used is Bentley Microstation, after using which, I have started loving Photoshop, seriously!

An ode to my teachers...

5th September, 2011: I got up at 8, had a super quick breakfast and somehow reached class on time. I came back, had my lunch, went to class again for the practicals... Just a normal day. On this day, there was a time when I used to be really excited to go to school for the celebrations of Teachers' Day... And I do not have enough words to express how much I actually miss it! My Teachers' Day has reduced to just a bunch of phone calls, but I believe all that matters is how we keep it alive in our heart...

Google Images: search for images using images

A few days ago, when I was preparing for my mid term examinations, I encountered this image of a Tsunami in the study material of Physical Geology. The waves seem pretty high(as high as the buildings)! I wanted to check if this picture was authentic! Now, all of a sudden, this new image search popped into my head. Turns out this image is no forgery. This a a picture from the 2004 Tsunami(also published in news websites, so it is authentic enough).

Bending the laws of Nature: Fringe Science

My date with Frince Science started just over a month ago when my friend gave me the T.V. Series 'Fringe'. It is totally based on the concept of fringe science, which is a result of bending the laws of nature. It got me so interested that I began recommending Fringe to my friends, but when they asked what it was about, there were not enough words in my vocabulary to answer them satisfactorily! Finally, I ended up giving this status update (but it didn't do much good, now, did it?).

Fringe remains the only T.V. Series I can't explain to my friends (unless of course I go into Fringe Science, which is no way self explanatory)! I can just say it's awesome :P

So I decided to extend that so that I don't have to explain it ever again! And yeah, this is probably the only post which lives up to the title of this blog. Transcendental, indeed!

The Most Underrated Goalkeeper EVER: Henrique Hilario!

There are always those who get more than they deserve, say Javier Hernandez (who has a similar scoring ratio like Daniel Sturridge during his loan spell to Bolton), but there are certainly those who are not as bad as we perceive them to be! If someone asked me who I think the most underrated player is, I'd always have gone with Yuri Zhirkov, who never got the chance to prove himself in the Premier League, his best match being a 7-1 thrashing of Aston Villa, when he won 2 penalties. However, the name of Henrique Hilario doesn't take more than a fraction of a second to come racing into my thoughts...

Gizmos misbehaving: Demons?

This is not the first time such a thing plagued me. Sometime back when I was in class 8 or maybe 9, a similar thing had happened. My PC had suddenly stopped booting. It kind of refused to even start! After two renowned (by Duliajan standards) dealers gave up on my precious PC (P.S. I love my gizmos, but wait, this is more of a brotherly love than what you are possibly thinking), my father finally went to a place called 'Su Dot Com(or Kom, don't remember)'. They fixed it incredibly fast, saying that there were minor issues with my motherboard. Soon after, it was attacked by a virus which was active ONLY on Win 98, but totally inactive when we switched to XP (it is noteworthy that I was indeed using Windows 98 then, and also on 31/1/07, the day Windows Vista was launched). Anyways the only solution was to format the hard disk. I only had a 20 GB hard disk then, it's ironic, but now, I have the ability to download 20 GB in about an hour! Nonetheless, I lost all my data and vowed I would never let a virus infect my PC again, and I have never lost a byte since then!

Third semester kick starts...

It has been exactly a week since I came back from home, and the developments that have taken place in this short period of time are quite significant... In fact, I have had quite a hard time...
Things that I have learnt last week:

Diabetes Terrors

One fine afternoon, I was enjoying an episode of Numb3rs and I heard someone calling out my name faintly. It was my grandfather, sitting at a chair, profusely sweating and saying his vision had suddenly blurred. I calmly went to the refrigerator, took out some sweets and gave it to him (knowing very well that he had high diabetes). He came back to normal within a few minutes. The issue was that his blood sugar has suddenly fell, a condition known as hypoglycemia, symptoms of which include the ones he had. Being very experienced with this disease, I (and for that matter, my grandfather as well) knew for sure it was indeed hypoglycemia.

Create bootable USB drive to install Windows 7 / Vista

Imagine you have a netbook without an optical drive, or maybe imagine yourself in my situation 2 years ago: optical drive of the laptop worn out. And you want to reinstall Windows! What are you supposed to do? Well, chances are, you'd go to Datamation (for non Guwahati-ians, that's a shop where you're supposed to get everything related to IT) or give Dell a call. In case you love Google (just as I do), you may search for possibilities. Well, I did the later and realised the best way to deal with such a situation is to create a bootable flash drive. This is how you go about doing the same!

Dare to think beyond the IIPM!

'Dare to think beyond IITs and IIMs?', oh yeah, there's MIT or Harvard! But IIPM? You must be crazy! The other day (well, it was almost a month ago), I tuned into Times Now to watch 'The Newshour Debate', and for the first time, got a chance to listen to the 'great' Arindam Chaudhuri. The one fact that is pretty obvious about this dude is that he has never learnt to SHUT UP! It is quite amusing to listen to the same fact over and over and over and over and over and over again, with the basic sentence structure being changed everytime (reminds me of the P.E.)... Seriously, we know how awesome IIPM is, that is why I decided to encourage others to join this 'deemed university'.

How to beat Barcelona in the FIFA Series?

Note: This was written keeping in mind FIFA 11, but it would work pretty well in any other version as well.

As a person who loves FIFA, I have played all versions of the game since the year 2000! Back then, all teams were more or less equal, and you could beat Brazil playing with DC United in the highest difficulty level! However, this has drastically changed over the years... In the latest version of FIFA, I find that the most difficult opponent is no doubt Barcelona (after the 'invincible' Classic XI and the World XI).

Heard of Andre Villas Boas and Laura Robson?

Two significant events of the week, which made two previously (almost) unheard individuals quite popular, were the appointment of the new Chelsea manager and the hard fight put up by 17-year old Laura Robson against former world number one Maria Sharapova!

The 'awesome' condition of the Assam State Zoo

On the 'World Music Day'(I intentionally start this post in such a manner because it makes the reader think I did something related to music, but NO), I visited the Zoo along with Pratik and Ved Vyas (OH YES, it was indeed the Mamma's boy, Ved Vyas; he finally grew up enough to come to the zoo, but then, he was, as usual, late trying to run after every city bus...) Being of the few 'natural' places left in Guwahati to hang out, it was certainly a very bad decision(they only good thing was that I could meet the other two guys...)

Let's FIFA 11!

I have been following this series since the release of FIFA 2000. After the huge success of FIFA 2010, following quite a few significant developments, I was wondering what was there to be improved! The first thing you would notice about FIFA 11 is that its size is just lower than its predecessor, but considering the fact that the graphics are far better, it’s a great job done by EA.

From the first bench to the dais: My saga at the ImpaCt Education Centre continues...

It was a Sunday evening...

Sunday- a very tough day for someone who is preparing for the JEE, especially if you are enrolled in ImpaCt Education Centre! One thing needs to be clarified before we proceed. The 'C' of 'ImpaCt' is written is capitals. That's something we follow by tradition. Even Manav Sir (for the record, and for all those who are in doubt, he teaches Chemistry here; in fact the best Chemistry teacher Guwahati has to offer and he's also the owner of ImpaCt) couldn't explain why it is so.

Watch Out- Enter the World of Web Design!

I had completed just 20 odd days in Roorkee when Watch Out came recruiting... WONA, being the official news magazine of IIT-R, I was more interested in getting into Editorial (News, Design, Finance and Web Design being the rest). As you may know, I was 'incapable' of getting in design (to be true, I am not that creative!) or finance (I know only how to save for myself :P), my preference order was Ed, followed by news and web design. The only reason I put web design was that I knew a bit of HTML! After a brainstorming session(precisely what is termed the second round interview), I never expected that I'd get into WONA. However, that night, I got a call from an unknown number...

The JEE shocks- Yet Again!

It was about year ago that I was analyzing what the cut-off for the 2010 JEE would be. Considering that paper was insanely tough, I had expected the cut off to go down from 179 in '09 ('09 JEE was very easy though...). Now, to my surprise, the cut off actually increased to 190. After spending a year at IIT-R, I gradually realised that there was a sort of saturation below the 250 mark line, which explains the unexpected ranks below that mark but marks higher than that corresponded to ranks which could be predicted as compared to the earlier year...

Chelsea's Nightmare comes to an end!

It's over a month I started blogging and considering the eagerness with which I follow Chelsea, it's weird I never came up with a post on Chelsea. Well, I've decided to finally come up with one, it's at a very tough time for the club!

June '09. Many significant things happened among which, the most important one was the appointment of Chelsea's new manager- the experienced Carlo Ancelotti, a.k.a Carletto, with two Champions Leagues to boast in the past decade (with a so-called aging squad at Milan; similar to Chelsea's then)...

Will the World End Now?

All the while I was thinking 21th Dec 2012 would be the end of the world, and suddenly on 19th May 2011, I find the second most commonly searched term in Google is "end of the world may 21st". Among the top 10 are 'may 21 rapture' and 'judgement day'. I knew there are crazy guys out there, but this crazy?

Why using Tables for HTML structures is IDIOTIC?

Maybe a decade ago, when CSS had no existence, people had no other way but to use something like tables in order to implement website designs! However, earlier today, I was discussing with a guy (a so-called professional web designer) about revamping the website of the JEE coaching institute I studied in (ImpaCt) and I was SHOCKED to find that guy was so adamant that he wanted to remain with the table structure even when I said it's plain OBSOLETE! Dude, tables are meant to show data, not design the whole page!

Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04

If you go happen to be in the terminal 1D at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, and want to use the wifi, it is almost next to impossible on a windows a platform. Restart to Ubuntu and it just works wonders. Why? No idea, actually! Anyways, the first time I started using Ubuntu was early this year for my programming needs at IMG. However, I still use Windows because of my gaming requirements...

and then the eee-leaks!

The late risers of IIT Roorkee (like me) got up on the morning of 1st May 2011 to the news that the AIEEE had been postponed by a few hours due to administrative issues. No one could be a hundred percent certain at what exact time the exam was to start! Such was the chaos at the centres due to the high no of students (and the parents, brothers, sisters, pets, relatives, friends and neighbours accompanying them) appearing the exam.

Dadaaa- the Comeback Czar!

The Prince of Kolkata, the Royal Bengal Tiger, the Dada, and rarely known as Sourav Ganguly, has been a fighter throughout his life. Be it the long time between his ODI and test debuts, the rift with Chappel and his talking with the bat rather than opening his mouth, the ignorance by Buchanan and his eventual return to captaincy- he has proved again and again why he's the best at what he does- COMEBACKS!

25401600 Seconds at IIT-R

Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee! That's a name with quite some weight, isn't it? Well, I was thinking the same when, in the first allotment of IIT-JEE, I was offered a seat in this college! I was fairly sure (and this fact was proved later) that had I applied for the second allotment (according to my choice list), I'd have got a seat in Mechanical Engineering in IIT, Patna, Mandi or Ropar. I thought hard for a few seconds and came to a conclusion that it must be a signal from God Himself (it seems crazy now, though) that I somehow got into IIT-R and decided to go with it. Little did I know what was to follow...

Airports and AJAX

Back in school, I remember having a chapter in English titled 'Poets and Pancakes'. At that moment, the title was quite a debatable topic, but I never knew (then) I'd title a blog post in a similar manner.

Although you're familiar with airports, I'm pretty sure you dunno what AJAX is...

My Second Home

Had I got one more correct answer  in JEE or avoided a mistake, I’d have been pursuing my  B. Tech in IIT Gandhinagar (chances are, I’d have chosen it over IIT Guwahati as well; that is because although I’m from Guwahati my father had been working in Gujarat back then). Almost a year ahead, I feel that decision would have been a blunder, and ironically, I’d never have realised it. Firstly, my father has just moved to Abu Dhabi. Secondly there’s no IMG in Gandhinagar (or any other IIT for that matter).

Conquering Google Search

When I was chatting with a friend of mine in fb, she asked me if I knew of any sites which provided weird facts/news. Being a great fan of Google (I seriously believe Google can solve ALL your problems), I asked her to google it. She then said that the search results were not good enough...

That is when my googling skills came into the picture. With one search string, I solved her problem (precisely the third result in the first page did!) That is exactly when I thought why not share with everyone the little things I know about Google search engine(its available everywhere,including google advanced search; its just that people don't look)!

I'm just a 'Law Abiding Citizen': Movie Recommendation

I have a huge collection of movies, around 140 GB in my laptop and another 160 odd GB as backup. Due to this reason, people usually come to me asking for movies to watch during the weekend, a trip home or a night out. Now, the first question that I ask them before giving them anything is this- "Have you watched Law Abiding Citizen?"

How I came up with the name- Transcendental Tech Talk...

This blog was titled 'Random Thoughts' at first when I had come up with the post on 'Browser Wars', as it was quite random then. Then my roomie asked me to post on the games I had played, which I immediately did! At that point of time, I thought, maybe its time to change the name, which I did at once to 'Random Geeky Stuff'.

That name seemed pretty cool to me then (I know it's a bit lame, isn't it?). After a few more hours and a few more hits (especially the ones from Russia got me thinking), I thought maybe, I don't like it that much.

First Person Shooters: Bulletstorm vs Homefront!

Except FIFA 11, the highest amount of time I waste (or utilize?) is by playing FPS games.
I'd like to share my experiences about two of the latest FPS games I have recently played.

Browser Wars- Which one is best for you?

A browser (technically a 'Web Browser') is an application software which, in layman terms, displays content on the web. In today's world you have a range of browsers to choose from: IE, Firefox, Chrome- you name it!