Pakistan Blues

it is 14th december and i am sitting in my brother's apartment in Quetta. The room is too darn cold even though I have kept the heater running for the past 1 hour or so. He has some guests over, thus I thought that I should get down to writing a blog. The poor blog has been neglected for quite some time. There was nothing much to write anyway as there was nothing special that I had done, apart from that Heidelgerg trip to Germany, where I met up with Kutts. I should have blogged about that, but I could not find the energy to do that then.

My trip to Pakistan started on 11th of December, when I got up at 340 am and got ready to catch the bus 514, which picked me up from my doorstep (almost) and took me straight to the airport. The first flight was from helsinki to Frankfurt. The second one was from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi and finally the last one was from Abu Dhabi to Karachi. By the time I arrived at Karachi, it was 5 am in the morning and I calculated that I had been travelling for more than 24 hours. I spent 2 days in Karachi and then headed off to Quetta. From here, I will head to Islamabad, where I will meet up with my father and the other brother and also, my nephew Ahmed. 

Speaking of Quetta, the things are really tense. The militants are doing targetted killings. Whenever they see someone who looks to be from the military, they shoot them. They stop a bus, take out people who are from the army and shoot them on road-side. My brother was taking risk just by picking me up from the airport. He will take the same risk when he'll be dropping me off. I do hope that everything goes well then.

I can hear the guests going so it means that we will finally have dinner...yummy! This place is really really cold ... that is the thing to hate about Pakistani homes... no central heating and since these are all brick houses.. they get cold very quickly. Brrr.. I just got a shiver run across my spine. I guess this much blogging should do for now... talk to you guys later!

Fly off! O penguin of the North Pole!

I know that penguins do not fly, but it is I, who is flying off soon to Germany this weekend. It is a trip that was planned last year, but only materialised this year. The whole point of this trip is to meet up with Kutts (Kindly refer to the Kutts Facts to the right) and pigout together in a KFC for old time's sake. It will be a meeting after 3 long years, during which, a lot has changed.

For once, I was a Bachelors then, now I am Masters, he was married then, now he is a dad. If Sameer is reading this then he might remember that the last time all three of us were together was in Islamabad when they treated me at the Cinnamon restaurant. 

The flight is from Tampere as I am going through Ryan Air and will arrive at Hahn Airport in Frankfurt. Then hopefully we will have fun. I will take pictures and maybe put them up here. Otherwise you can check them on facebook.

Then, on 10th of December, I will be heading to Pakistan after a year. It will surely be a quick trip as I need to be at a lot of places and do not have much time. Some important things to do there, which you will get to know soon.

In other news, my job is going well and I am enjoying working here. Gyming is also going well so am currently doing good. Nothing more to say for now, maybe one day when I have something interesting to tell, i'll let you guys know.

Nokia 3110 Evolve

I recently bought Nokia 3110 Evolve as my previous phone, SonyEricsson T230 finally gave up after 5 years of abuse. Since I got that phone for 5000 Rs, it cost me 1000 bucks a year to use it. That is quite an achievement for a low end phone. The reality is that, the phone is still working fine, but its keys cannot be pressed anymore, which is quite problematic if you want to send an SMS.

So I went for some phone searching and got this one from a sale for 99 euros. It also came with a free bluetooth device which I have not used yet. This phone is made up of recycled material, which makes it exceptionally light and the keys are really big and easy to press, which makes it superb for smsing. Its is a series 40 phone but performs much better than some of the earlier series 60 2nd and 3rd edition phones. The best thing is that, its menu isn't cluttered with useless applications, so it is really easy to use.

On top of that it is also an mp3 phone and supports an FM radio with 1.3 megapixel camera. Plays video, browses the net and runs Java games. I test all the java apps that i make on this phone and trust me, they are really easy to install. just put the JAR file anywhere and it runs it. After a full charge, it easily runs for 4 days under normal use, otherwise it has a 370 hours of standby time! And finally, it can be connected to a USB wire and then to your PC for easy data transfer.

I am not too fond of expensive mobiles. I want a good phone that does everything without much fuss and has good voice quality. This phone fits perfectly for all these tasks and I strongly recommend it if someone has similar requirements to that of mine. Otherwise... happy phone hunting!

The new apartment

I just moved into the new apartment with Zac. Things have been going really well and I finally feel that I am at a more permanent place for a change. It is one thing to share an apartment with a total stranger and another to share it with a good friend. We have our long discussions about anime, series and movies and other things in life ... mostly about me missing out on all the 'fun' that I could have.

Yesterday we finished the Gears of War campaign on my xbox and it was a lot of fun. Today we started playing bionic commando, which is turning out to be really tough. I must say that GRIN has done an excellent job in making the remake of this game. It looks good and the controls are quite good and intuitive. We have found some levels to be quite hard though which really pissed us off today.

Anyway, we went out, had a fun time, came back, watched House MD and heroes and now Zac has gone to sleep while I type this blog. One thing that Zac got me into doing is to start relearning all the stuff that I once did during my bachelors. You know, once you are so far ahead in your professional life, you start to think that it will just take a lot of time to learn all that stuff again and that your life has a well defined path. But he got me into thinking that if I keep thinking that way, I will always have that deficiency, and all I have to do is to read a good book to fill that gap. so note to self, "MUST READ A GOOD BOOK!"

on the entertainment side, I vow to read the foundation series by isaac asimov

Noog!

The social networking thing is all the craze nowadays. Everyone seems to be trying to get into it one way or the other which is not necessarily a bad thing, but with all those options available, it is hard to find the best networking site that suits your needs. I have been using Orkut for about 4 years now and I like it for the community support that it provides. The only other site that I use is surprise surprise, facebook. But i am not hooked to it. The only reason I use it is because I get to share pictures on it as it is really easy to do.

Anyway, a very good friend of mine, Abidoon, is going to launch his own social networking thing, known as Noog. Noog is only targetting the student community thus letting them to share academic information and keeping in touch. From what I have seen, the site looks extremely professional and well managed. it is not only that, its look is totally different than what you normally see. Abidoon is planning to launch it in a week's time and I am wishing him all the best. once you ppl get your hands on it, you will understand that how outstanding is the work that Aby has done.

Lead on Asif!

Recently, Mr. 10%, also known as Asif Ali Zardari, became Mr. 100% as he became the President of Pakistan. This gave me an idea to start a blog about the state of the Pakistani nation under the supreme policies of one, Asif Ali Zardari. But this blog is with a twist... I am playing a game called Galactic Civilisations II, which is one hell of a turn based strategy game for galactic conquest. So I made a race known as The Pakistani and made Asif Ali Zardari as its leader.
Now I will be playing this game and posting on how well the Pakistani nation fares under the supreme leadership of Asif Ali Zardari. This will indeed involve a lot of underhand dealings, political back stabbing and opportunist approach to all the problems. from the screenshots below, you might get the idea that it will go pretty good...but, only time will tell.

Before and After

As you might know that I had started gyming some 2 months back. These days I am taking a break because it is ramazan and I cannot work out during it... I can in fact, but it is very tough and does little to improve the physic. Anyway, the picture below is a comparison of how I was before I started my dieting and then weight training routine and after it in a lapse of 5 months.
I have managed to lose 9 kgs and my pot belly has gone down considerably. I plan on restarting the gym routine once ramazan is over. you can still see a slight hint of doublechin which will go in the days to come as i lose more weight. 8 more kgs to go and then I will be in perfect shape!

Blog deserted!

yeah! been a while since i wrote anything here ... even though I have been to quite a few places in the past month. I should get back to some serious blogging in a while. maybe, after I move to a new place.

A definition on gait

I was recently defined by a friend of mine (Kutts) on the basis of how I walk. this is what he had to say:

Saqib: youre a tip-toe-ing penguin man-boy-pehelwaan

I know one another person who has called me a penguin for a long time ... but hearing the penguin reference again solidifies that comparison.

Going 3D

I have been at my job for a month now. The good thing about this job is that it is peaceful, I have my own work area and I am working on the stuff that I have always wanted to do and that being 3D graphics programming.

I am using Microsoft's XNA Tools and C# to do all the 3D programming. The good part is that, so far I have been able to create what I was asked and in the time I was asked to do it. The bad thing is that going a bit advance is getting complicated to work in. So far my efforts have been fruitless, but that does not mean that I am going to give up on it. I have created a terrain that changes with the sound input. now I want to do the same by creating 3D bars that change length with the sound input. That part has been both confusing and frustrating. maybe I am trying to do a lot in too less a time and am not giving proper time to think my algos correctly. Anyway, I will get it done sooner or later.

Apart from that, I have also started weight training and jogging. It has been almost 3 weeks and I have been regular so far. I intend to keep this routine up and get in shape. They say that I will start to see some difference after 8 weeks' time. right now,I wish that my left arm was as strong as my right one. it becomes a bit difficult to increase weights while working with my left arm. lets hope that it gains strength soon and keeps up with my right arm.

thats it for now!

Graduated

I was in Tampere for 12, 13 and 14 this week. My graduation ceremony was on 13th at 6 pm and it turned out to be pretty boring. I can't believe that I had to buy shoes for that occasion and it came out to be so boring. I had heard the same, but I went anyway thinking that graduation ceremonies happen only once.


It had speeches, some music playing and finished with wine serving. No, that is not wine that I am holding, it is apple juice, put there specially for those who do not drink wine. Out of my entire batch that came in 2005, only 3 of us guys graduated, including me. here are a few pictures of us.

After the ceremony, we were feeling hungry, so went to ate pizza with tayyab, shehzad, thanya (the thai girl in the picture) the thai guy, vera (the finnish girl not in the picture) and had a good time there. later, me, shehzad and tayyab went to see the incredible hulk in cinema. The movie was okayish, nothing great.

The picture in which I am standing alone and with my tie slightly to the side is the one we took after we came out of cinema. you can see that I look tired in that one.


Anyway, today after having lunch, I came back to Helsinki, went to get the keys for my new apartment. Stayed with Hanan for a while, discussed many things ranging from education to politics and then ran to catch the bus thus bringing the discussions to a close.

I will be doing the hard work of shifting tomorrow so that I can walk to my work place from the next day. yes the new apartment is at a walking distance to my new place, so it will give me the much needed exercise that I want these days.

Ok that is all that i have to say right now and you can tell with all the disjoint paras that I am not in a mood to write a good blog. I thought that i should pen something down before going to sleep and put some pictures up. I have a video for my graduation ceremony too, but it is in mp4 format and I do not know if youtube or blogspot supports that. if it does, I will upload it. till next time, bye!

Guess who is a research assistant?

As I had mentioned in my last post that I needed to give an interview for a research position, and so i did and so I got the position :D Yippee! This is the place where I will be working from 16th of June and you can see that the type of work they are doing is really awesome. I will be working on touch screen interfaces, computer graphics, OpenGl and other cool stuff. The sort of stuff every computer programmer wants to work in.

This solves few of my problems, the first being "not returning to Pakistan" and the second being, "getting a visa so I may not return to Pakistan". I am going to get my job letter tomorrow and then head straight from there to the police station, to apply for my visa. I hope that they give me a temporary work permit so that I may start asap.

With that said, there is one huge problem that has come up. It is finding a new apartment for myself and that too, possibly near the place I will be working. I am leaving the one I am currently at by the end of June. I will not even keep it if I wanted to because it is too far away. I live in one end of Helsinki and the job place is in another city right next to Helsinki, called Espoo. I checked the bus route for tomorrow's trip and this is what came up:


and if you look at the map it looks kind of like the map here. I live in Vuosaari and have to commute to Spektri in Espoo.

So, its 70 minutes of traveling if I manage not to miss a bus, which sometimes just happens. Anyway, who does not want to live in a place that is a walk away from your home? you can always work as long as you want and come when you want and it keeps things really simple.

now to celebrate my current emplyment, I brought Dr. Pepper and 6 cans of coke. I had never tried Dr. pepper before and my impressions are that, its just another drink, nothing extraordinary. I loved the coke cans though ... it has been a while since I drank any soft drink as I had been dieting (lost 5 kgs by eating only tuna sandwiches and boiled chicken). I might have regained 1 kg after that many cans of coke however.

I am also graduating on 13th and will be wearing a suite for the occassion. The main aim for which I came to Finland is going to be realised soon. I do hope that I get some pictures and a video for the occassion. Anyway, I had planned toclean up my room and put things in order over this weekend, so that is what i am going to do right now. No matter how many times I clean my place, it always ends up being a mess.

Tampere Visit

I am right now in Tampere as I wanted to get a few things done. First of all, getting my degree and transcripts, and secondly to get my printed thesis. I have already acquired my printed thesis and it looks great! For some reason, my degree is not ready yet, even though I had informed before hand to get it ready. There might have been some confusion regarding it, which, I am going to clarify in about 30 mins. Then, I need to go to my bank and discuss about the possibility of keeping my bank account even if I am abroad. then, I will head home and try to change my ticket for the way home.

I have an interview tomorrow for a research position in Espoo. Espoo is a city right next to Helsinki... it take about 20 minutes of bus ride to reach Helsinki. Apart from that, there is a good Pakistani student community over there which is a good thing if I plan to stay here longer. Lets hope that I am able to bag the that position as that will solve many of my problems, which also includes getting a visa and the inconvenience related to going back to Pakistan.

by the way, Zakariya is also coming to helsinki in September, thus it will be great if I get to stay here during that time. Zac was one of the TAs who worked with me during my GIKI days and we had a good time there. Let us hope that I get lucky in getting that research position which is also one of the things that I want. That's all for now!

The hunt is on

Job hunt that is. I have applied to so many places already that I have lost track. It is not easy to apply to a place. Write a covering letter, attach your CV and send it individually. Plus, many of the companies want you to create an online profile, that takes 30 - 40 minutes just to complete. Then you send the application and do not hear from the company.

Too many rejections already, but that is the norm when you are applying for a job. Let us see if I get a job before the end of next month. If I do not, then I'll need to go back to Pakistan and my foreign trip will be over for good.

The pre-alpha build

This is the pre-alpha build of my game. This does not show much, but should give a good idea about how it plays.

My thesis online

It is now available at my university's website. You can check it out here

We come in peace (Updated)

After a day's hard work, I now have full scrolling background. As you see in the picture below, there is the far off city at the back, which moves the slowest, then the line of trees and finally the buildings, which of course move the fastest.

All the motion of the background and the spaceship has been coded and the fun part regarding the abductions and movement of different species comes now. This is the game logic that we are talking about and it will require some really good code to be put down. I am also going to try and add crowd behavior to the population, let us see if that is successful.

By the way, I am not totally happy with how everything looks in the screenshot. If some one can lend a hand in making them appear more lively, I'll be more than happy to accept the help.

Here is the screenshot:

We come in peace

That is the title of the new game that I am making these days, using the XNA game tool. The idea is that, you have a spaceship and you are supposed to abduct humans. There is much more to it that I am letting out at this time.

as you can see from the screenshot, you control the UFO and there are buildings in the background, also clouds and many more effects will be added later. right now I need to make the buildings scroll as you move the space ship. there are going to be some buildings in the fore ground too which will scroll faster. I am thinking of making some sort of crowd behavior... I still need to come up with a good algorithm and design to do just that. I did not work on it today, but tomorrow's task is going to make a separate class for background objects and then apply proper scrolling algorithm. Lets see if I get it to work.

here is the screenshot:

Thesis Evaluation

That which is done

It is done, it is finished, it is history! That is right, the last exam for my MS is done. I am a free man now. The maturity test is over and now all that is left is to fix the software (if I want to) and fix the thesis(if I want to as well, it is done more or less) and that's about it.

I came to Tampere yesterday, stayed with Shehzad and woke him up in the morning because I was having a bad dream :/. This is the second nightmare that I had in the past 2 weeks. In the first one, Peshawar was nuked and in this one, I was running away from somemthing really sinister, did not know what.

anyway, after my test, I went and applied for my university degree and also went to get 2 courses corrected which had been marked as intermediate courses where as they were advance courses. Once that was done, I headed for some food and right now I am sitting in the university's study room writing my blog. Yawn! I am really sleepy at the moment, but I have to stay awake for a as Shehzad and Tayyab are going to meet me in 2 hours' time. What to do till then? I think I'll play a game and pass the time that way. Oh, btw, my suprevisor said himself today that he liked my work :D Yaaaaay!

12:45 pm

Thats the time when I started writing this post. I am just waiting for the Zohr time to hit so that I can pray and leave for Tampere. Tomorrow is the maturity test for my thesis and I have not read a thing. I will probably read about it on my way to Tampere. I cannot wait for this test to be over, so that I may apply for the graduation. It is good that all this is coming to a close finally. I will be so relaxed once its done and might even treat myself by buying GTA IV! Which also does not mean that I would not have bought it anyway, but this time around, its an excuse to buy it, otherwise I would feel guilty in doing so.

Nothing much is new however. Days are spent working on thesis and weekends are spent playing starcraft. I just applied to a place in Tampere for a job. Its high time that I find one and that too in time before I run out of finances.

Thesis Defence

Finally, the day has arrived when I am going to do my thesis's defense. It is called a Maturity Test here, which requires you to write an essay about your thesis. The idea is that, if you have done the thesis yourself, you can write about it. Apart from that, they also want to see if you can write good English which they check in their language center. If all goes well, then this is the last exam that I will need to take for my MS.

The thesis itself is under review by another professor and once he okays it, it will be sent for printing. This also requires that I apply for graduation as soon as possible, in order to get my degree by the end of May.

These have been the longest 2.5 years of my life, and it had its series of ups and downs but now it is all coming to a close. It is a nice warm feeling :).

More MS updates

I have been at home for a month now. The main reason for it was to finish my thesis. Writing a thesis and that too in less than 15 days is no easy task. It means that you need to write at least 3 pages a day, which is much difficult than it sounds. Anyway, i just finished writing 52 pages and sent the draft to my supervisor. If he approves of it, then i will apply for graduation at my university. This will bring a long chapter of my life to a close. A chapter worked on and completed all by myself and that too with good overall result.

Right now, I am completing a basic game so that I can display how my software really works. The game is really simple. You have a car and you have to move while avoiding obstacles. I know its really dry a concept, but my aim was not to make a good game, just a demo to show off what my software does. If you still do not know then look at this sample of a screenshot. The car in it looks too bland. If you want to make it look like Ferrari F1, all you got to do is open the in game editor and draw it yourself, no coding or recompiling involved. its that easy.

On the gaming front, I have been playing Starcraft and Supreme Commander on weekends and Call of Duty 4 almost daily. Speaking of which, I am about to gain Prestige a second time, which means that i am going to level up to 56, the second time. Prestige puts your name right on top of the leader boards for everyone to see. But to get that, you have to give up all the weapons and upgrades and start from scratch.

right now, I am about to get 10,000 kills and my kill to death ratio is 1.12 with accuracy of 17.38% oh and my longest killing streak has been 21.

thats it for now, more game talk later... I better get back to work

The Moon

Yesterday, when I was about to sleep, I saw the moon shining brightly in a clear sky. It hit me just at that moment that it had been some 3 months before I had a glimpse of moon in the night sky. The time that I spend inside the four walls of my room has been a bit too much and I should spend some time outside. Another reason for this absence of moon during the nights is the persistent cloudy weather of Finland.
It shone bright last night and it looked really beautiful with its light filtering through the clouds. Sometimes we remain so busy in our daily life that we miss up on some of the most striking sights in our lives.

Thesis update

My thesis has finally reached a stage where I can say that its 95% complete. What remains is XML reading and writing. The code is already there in the project, all i need to do is to make it work. The emulator that I am using for some reason is not running it. I think I will finish this last part in my office.

when this is done, i will go to my supervisor and ask him to accept the thesis as it is, and that being, not adding anything extra. If he agrees, then I will be on my way to writing this thesis and hopefully graduating by the end of May. so this means that I will have the month of April to complete the entire thesis writing procedure. It is going to be hard, but it is still manageable. 2 pages a day will hopefully get the thing done.

3 years in an MS is a long time, better finish it as soon as possible

Naruto: Rise of the ninja

I recenty got myself Naruto: Rise of the ninja. yes, I confess that I am a big fan of Naruto and follow its Manga (Comics) religiously. This game has been out for a while and I had heard good reviews about it. This game is part adventure and part versus action game. that is, you go around exploring and when you have battles, they are played out Street Fighter style. I must say that the animation is really fluid and its a treat to watch all the battles.

Speaking of visuals, the developers have created the entire leaf village, which looks absolutely gorgeous. Then, when you want to make those hand seals, you do a simple combination and fire up your jutsu (super power move).

The game has a story mode that follows the anime's story, but sadly it is not as engaging as the anime was. All the sounds in the game are in English, but i recently downloaded japanese sounds to play when i play the game.

Those who are a fan of this series, should try this game out and those who are not, should watch the anime because it has a great story. I collected a few screenshots and videos, which, you can watch below:

Here is the trailer:



and the review:



and some pictures to let you see how good it looks.

GIK's Parting Memories

One of the saddest things that happened in GIKI was that, I could never get a single graduation picture and the the convocation video made by my brother was skillfully overwritten without taking into account that the video might hold some value.

Anyway, as it turns out, mubeen had a video camera at that time, and even though I remember that he used it, I had already forgotten that I was the one who made the last video of GIKI with him with all of my comments and excellent photography :D. Here are a few videos that he recently uploaded. You can see me in the videos and then hear my commentary as my move around with Mubeen making the video.

Another good thing is that, you get to see Mandi, Kutts, Hammy, Nikka, Piracha, Bharam and a few other guys in the videos. So if you want to have some good GIKI nostalgia, see the videos right now.

Last day in GIKI Part 1:


Last day in GIKI Part 2:


The convocation

Thesis flows

In my last post, I was not too happy with the state of my thesis... now one day later, since I have fixed all the bugs, the thesis has finally started to take shape. The thing to do now is to get the XML parser working and once that is done, I think I will be on my way to completing the thesis real soon. Th problem is that, I need to convince my supervisor that the amount of work that I have done already is enough to count as thesis work. If he agrees, then all that will be left is going to be writing the 60+ page thesis and do the final touches on my code.

wish me luck!

My thesis woes

I do not think I ever explained what my thesis is about so here goes. the idea is to make a game engine that you compile once and then you get to change it as you please. Thus a normal user, who does not know any programming can change the game as he sees fit, without changing any code. the idea is great, if I say so myself but I have been having problems in the so many bugs that have popped up.

Somewhere, some code is being executed twice, which is making the objects show up twice. I want to get this thing fixed before I move on, but finding the wrong code is becoming problematic. oh well, back to work.

Deezer

I recently found out about Deezer, thanks to Saad Kiani, who was having problems installing anything on his office's computer. The idea is simple, have an online music player that keeps track of the songs you hear. So, you do not need to install any music player, just log into the site, make your track list and start listening, as simple as that. Those who would rather listen to songs that are according to their taste but not exactly what the have on their playlist, they should check out last.fm. Its a good way to listen to the new songs as it picks up songs according to your liking and plays them. Enjoy!

The angry baby

On 12th of February, another family member has been added to our family. This time its Ahmad Jamal, My second nephew, who arrived at 7 pm. My brother was exhausted on that day for obvious reasons, so it took him 2 days to gather the pictures up and upload them for all to see. The kid is really angry. He has smiled twice in 3 days' time and right now when I called them up, he was crying his heart out. Looks like people will need to be really careful around this kid.

Ever since I saw the pictures, I really want to hold the kid in my hands, so it looks like that I will need to go to Pakistan quickly. The kid is really healthy Mashallah which is good and I pray that he may stay healthy like this all the time.

Its funny in a way that my other nephew, Rafay, came some 7 months ago and now, 7 months later, he is already a bhaijan.


Sigh! if only mom was here, she would have been really happy.

Company of Heroes: The must have strategy game

In the real time strategy gaming world, where the norm is to build up a base, set up economy and then churn out forces, we have to agree that it has become too stale. We hoped for a breath of fresh air with the coming of Warcraft 3 which, in my opinion was a complete disaster with its extensive use of magic, buffs and all sorts of stupid icons being displayed on your units’ heads.

Then comes Company of Heroes, a breath of fresh air, a game so different that it totally changed the concept of real time strategy. Gone are the high tech science fiction weapons or crazy ass magic spells that sorcerers fire from their behinds. Here we have World War II era weapons, battling it out on mountain tops, country side and small towns. If you have played any of the WWII games, all the weapons are here and even some that you did not know that they existed. But rest assured, all are tied in well with history.

The basic mechanics are the same. You have a base, you build buildings and, you make forces. What is different is the resource mechanic. The developers used the Warhammer 40,000 : Dawn of War resource mechanic, where capturing the territory, gives you the resources. If the captured territory is not linked, you will not get resources. So the idea is to capture as much of the map as you can and keep it linked to keep a continuous flow of resources. Then there are three types of resources, munitions, fuel and manpower. Fuel is very important for all researches. Munitions is very important to use those researches. For example, if you researched grenades, then every time you throw a grenade, it costs 25 munitions. Also, the special abilities cost munitions and manpower too.

Then, when you battle it out, you gain experience points, much like in C&C generals, but you use these points after selecting the doctrine that you want to use. May it be Infantry oriented, armor oriented, defense oriented, it all depends on your playing style.

Speaking of playing styles you have 2 playable sides in the original (German Wehrmacht and Americans). The expansion pack, Opposing Fronts, adds the British and the Panzer Elite as 2 more sides. There is no buildup time. The game starts and you get right into the action and trust me the action in this one is extraordinary. There are so many things that need to be considered just like in real warfare. If your units are moving, they have less accuracy. If they enter a building, then the number of units that can shoot outside depends on the number of windows in that building. The infantry gets suppressed by machine gun fire. Tanks take more damage if you attack them from behind. There are three types of covers, green (strong cover), yellow (medium cover) and red (negative cover). The damage inflicted on the troops also depends on the type of cover they are in. It is these minor details that really make the game stand out.

And finally, the graphics; the game is beautiful and now with DirectX 10 support, it looks remarkable. But if you have a low end machine, that is, a machine that has nVidia geforce 6200 or equivalent, it will still run on it.

I have played enough multiplayer to decide that this game shines in that department as well, in fact, it is 10 times more fun than any RTS that is out there today. So if you are an RTS enthusiast, buy this game without a second thought and play it today. For more details, do visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_of_heroes

Coding when sleepy causes some frustrations

I have always enjoyed coding till late at night, but today, a little part of my code had me totally pissed for the mistake that i was making.

public ColorRectangle(int red, int green, int blue)
{
red = this.red;
green = this.green ;
blue = this.blue ;
}

this, along with the sudden mood of eclipse to not compile my program due to some unknown error that got solved all by itself after a computer reboot, had me busy for quite some time. In the end, both problems were solved and I was able to make my color picking menu:

Previously, it looked really cool due to some unknown paint glitch in my code. all the colors appeared to be in a shade which gave a cool 3D feeling. anyway, the menu is running, which is good enough for me, for now. On to making the menu navigation...