One of the many podcasts I listen to regularly is CNET’s “podcast of indeterminate length”, Buzz Out Loud. The great thing about it is that they encourage listeners to join in the discussion by sending in audio comments. Well, that’s what I did over the weekend. No big deal, but I do like being on a podcast I listen to. I got the ultimate kick a few months ago, listening to my interview on net@nite on my drive to college. So anyway, check out episode 692 for an interjection by me on Warner Music’s proposed “piracy tax”.

I installed Gelato, a tumblelog engine, at scrap.smarandayal.com (update: it’s no longer online as of 12/4/08) and used it for a week or so. I doubt the issues I had with it were to do with the server my sites are hosted on, “Dasani” on Dreamhost, but pictures and audio files kept disappearing and I constantly got blank boxes where there should have been posts. So, I gave up on it. Tumblr, despite it’s occasional down times, is a far more robust and reliable engine that I’ve grown to like and have been using for almost a year for my tumblelog.

Hopefully, given time, Gelato will get better, more reliable and usable. But right now, it just isn’t.

Update: Incidentally, I came across a cool-looking ‘microblog’ CMS called Asaph. I later installed it and used it for a short while. I like it a lot. I would use it on log.smaran.in, if it supported more post formats. As of now, it only supports link and image posts.

I watched the 2007 film Atonement today. It’s one of the better films I’ve seen recently. On the other end of the spectrum I would place Transformers, which was, aside from the special effects, possibly the most awful film I’ve ever seen.

Eastern Promises was another good one. Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood not so much. Hitman was awesome. I thought it was true to the games.

As the name suggests, it’s your task to build a civilisation and lead it to victory. There are a handful of ways in which you can win a game:

• Build a spaceship and colonise the star system of Alpha Centauri.
• Increase your culture to such an amount that three of your cities achieve the ‘legendary’ status.
• Have such good diplomatic relations that your fellow civilisations vote to make you world leader.
• Collect more points that any other civilisation by 2050.
• Conquer all other civilisations’ cities.
• Dominate a large part of the world by force and negotiation.

When starting a game of Civ, you pick a civilisation (eg. Sumeria, Babylon, Netherlands, etc.), and if there is more than one leader for that empire in the game, you pick a leader too. Civilisations start with different technologies, like, Agriculture, Mining, Mysticism, and The Wheel. And every leader has two traits; Aggressive and Spiritual, for example.

There is one leader I’ve always been at least semi-successful with all the way up to the ‘Noble’ difficulty: Brennus of the Celtics.

His traits are Spiritual and Charismatic. Being spiritual lets me move between civics and religions without anarchy. In Civ, every turn matters, so saving 4-5 turns of anarchy in total can be a nice advantage. The trait also allows me to build temples at twice the normal speed. Remember: temples give +1 happiness. An unruly population can ruin production and research in a city. Being Charismatic, I get a +1 happiness bonus in all cities, and an extra +1 happiness from monuments and broadcast towers. So, ideally, one would want to have a monument, temple and broadcast tower in every city. There’s a really easy way to make this happen. Build Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower.

The Celtics start with Mysticism and The Wheel Hunting. I take advantage of Mysticism by either quickly researching Meditation and thereby founding Buddhism or by researching Fishing or Agriculture and giving my capital, Bibracte, fodder to grow, and then making a rush for Monotheism to found Judaism and adopt Brennus’ favourite civic, Organised Religion. To research Monotheism, you have to research Masonry first. Starting with The Wheel lets me build quarries (if I happen to have stone or marble in my cultural borders) and connect them to my capital with roads ASAP. Hunting lets me immediately research Archery if I spot barbarians near my territory or if another civ declares war on me very early in the game (more likely in multiplayer).

The one aspect of Civ I like most is building wonders. Even though Industrious isn’t one of Brennus’ traits, I am still able to construct a good amount of wonders during the course of the game. I’ve even won a Cultural Victory with him.

Assuming you’re a Civ player, you should now be able to see why Brennus of Celtia is my leader of choice.

Some Civilization links
Civilization IV and its discontents (read the comments too)
Civilization Anonymous

Civilization IV is a computer game I’ve been spending a lot of time on over the past couple of months. When starting a game of Civ, you pick a civilisation and a leader. There is one leader I’ve always been at least semi-successful with all the way up to the ‘Noble’ difficulty: Brennus of the Celtics.

A few friends of mine from Digg, Mu, Andy, and Reg, have a weekly podcast called the Drill Down. A few days ago, I stayed up late to join them on a show about BitTorrent. That show is now live. Do give it a listen.

I was nervous during the recording, and it was the first time I’d talked to Reg and Andy, so excuse the frequent ums and uhs.

Cheers.

This programme focuses on Bhojwani Academy, an alternative school catering to Pune’s more liberal middle class families.

A message posted on the school site:

RBA and Pune featured on BBC

Yes, RBA is on the air! We have been validated by no less than BBC. As is well known, 5 directors from Lion TV UK spent the whole year in Pune last year to cover everything that happens in a typical school year in India. Well here we are then… on International TV, getting e-mails and telephone calls from everywhere, telling us how much everyone appreciates the work of RBA.

We are not of course about to rest on our laurels. The challenges continue, and our persistent effort to meet them do as well.

INDIAN SCHOOL will be available to Indian viewers from 3rd August on BBC WORLD.

Do visit the Open University site to know more about INDIAN SCHOOL.

I Asked Smaran, an author for the file sharing news blog torrentfreak.com, if the number of people downloading and sharing screeners has increased at all in recent years. “It sure has. The funny thing is that there weren’t as many pre-airs being leaked, even a year ago. And of those that were being leaked, none were leaked a year before they were scheduled to be aired. But now, we have shows like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is going to be aired in early 2008, show up on BitTorrent sites.” Smaran said.

The piece is about how the availability of pre-air shows to the average viewer is taking control away from the “professional critics”. I’m quoted once again.

The result is, the voice of the people is now louder than that of the critics in the online community. Professional critics are simply outnumbered by opinionated viewers with access to the same amount of information they have to base an opinion on. The result is, the popular consensus has a tendency to rise to the top, regardless of what the industry leaders have to say.

Is the television market onto this fact already, though? Smaran seems to think so. “It has increased to such a great amount that we’re starting to wonder if it’s merely a coincidence or if TV houses are purposefully leaking them in order to promote their shows. A lot of times, producers try to generate buzz for their show online by uploading teaser clips to YouTube. We’ve seen this with Jericho; its pilot was offered for free on the iTunes Store. Battlestar Galactica also had a series of ‘webisodes’ (short clips only made available online). At this time, one can only wonder if the studios ‘get’ BitTorrent, and are utilizing it as a promotional tool.”

Networks Grapple with Leaked Pilots