I want them Fireballs.

I always wondered how this was done when I saw the guys hold the note to light. I knew about tip 1, I just verified trying the others.

1.     The notes that have Mahatma Gandhi on their front, also have a watermark of Mr. Gandhi on the left side, in the white space.

2.     Look for a green line running through the note vertically, to the left of Mr. Gandhi’s picture. This line is the “security thread,” and when you hold it against the light it will read “RBI”, Bharat (in Hindi) and 1000 (or 500).

3.     The bank note’s value is hidden in two places. On the left side of both the 500- and 1000-rupee note, you’ll see an outline of a flower. When you tilt the note, this flower will show you the respective denomination. There is also a  large blank space on the left, where the denomination is written vertically. To see it, you’ll have to hold it against the light.

Playdom’s coming to town in the Game developer conference. Our creative director, Eric Todd, will examine the development of our most popular game of 2011, Gardens of Time. The focus this time is going to be browser games in general.

This is just so cool. Definitely one of the best series along with Sherlock and House MD. I raced through the books and have reached the last one. I like the way Sherlock takes a twist on different things compared to the book. They have made minor tweaks that achieve a major effect.

The Game of Thrones differs in the sense it cuts out the irrelevant but doesn’t tweak the storyline. Here’s the season 2 art direction trailer.

This is one of the best songs I heard in 2011. I have it on infinite loop or in every play list I have. This is a compilation of the best songs around the world (all tributes) put together.

The guys are just hilarious (and some are quite bad) but some of them are amazingly good.

I think one of the best renditions is by Shankar Tucker which is a mashup.

eSports =Electronic Sports.

A cause I believe in for the last 7 years of my life is now undergoing a ground swell. Many months back, on Kickstarter, a cause was started to record the behind the scenes event for Starcraft 2. A look at the community shaping up and the direction forward. It involved many interviews with people behind the scenes at the MLG events across the USA and now they have returned with their new trailer for the IPL. Another awesome event  and fantastic editing.

They showed us a teaser trailer today with their IPL documentary.

I love these guys, you should support StarNation on Facebook. And show some groupie love by visiting  their website.

This was their first trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Steve Jobs was a zen student. He studied under Kobun Chino for a long time. The interesting thing is that Kobun Chino was a calligrapher and designer himself who turned to Zen Buddhism. Some guys from Jess3 productions put together a comic book that illustrates the life of Steve Jobs during the time he was ousted from Apple and made a return.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. This book is available on the Kindle now and while you watch the trailer, i’ll download the book.

Yours truly had an interview with an Indian gaming website called GamesOrbit recently along with my good friend Elroy Pinto.

Here’s a snippet

Game Orbit: Lastly, Talking particularly about Starcraft, where and how do you think India is lacking behind? As an individual gamer, what measures can be taken to bring this game up? And probably adding up to the question, how exactly can E-Sports in India rise?

Karthick Gopal: Elroy wrote it well in the thread. We are not serious. We don’t have a single top tier competitor player that can compete with the best in the world. We thus have no exposure to anything in tournaments. As Indian or south Asian players, we need to unite the community participate in foreign tournaments spread the word among friends, make it a mission to bring one new person into the game and spread the joy of gaming together. This is a social sport, just like you play cricket and compete, we should infuse that same spirit. As an individual I think we should learn to become better at the game and strive for excellence. The highest league is Grandmasters which no Indian player has reached, if we have 15 grandmaster players, and then we have a good competing field and a pool of talent to help other players come in as well

For E-Sports to rise we need an ecosystem of gamers, organizers, marketers, players and support from people to take it to the next level. We don’t lack talent, we lack unity and organization. For those people that have passion the means to do this are currently very hard because of the lack of support. Once this picks up though, I see no reason why we can’t be world level or elite. But it starts with professionalism, social cause and then unity to bring people together for a greater good, uniting people through gaming not just winning tournaments.

 

is now a movie!

On Mark Zuckerberg’s profile and many interviews, you hear him mention “The Ender’s Game” as a book he took inspiration from. Well now according to Variety Magazine it’s coming to a movie with a stellar cast.

Harrison Ford stars in it. The director of Xmen and Wolverine are in it. I’m particularly excited about this because this talks about colonisation of a race vs the humans led by tactical geniuses (a colony led by power hungry intelligent group of humans against another colony of insectoid beings). This is like Terran vs Zerg in Starcraft 2 made into a movie!

The story according to Wikipedia is

Set in Earth’s future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind who have barely survived two conflicts with the Formics (an insectoid alien species also known as the “Buggers”). These aliens show an ant-like group behavior, and are very protective of their leader, much like Earth ants protecting their queen.

In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world’s most talented children, including the novel’s protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room where Ender’s tactical genius is revealed.

I don’t think you should make resolutions because they are designed to fail by being too stringent. What you can do, however, is take steps towards reevaluating the self and have personal goals.  You can have goals that would take a year or so and have some end in sight.

A goal I had back in 2008 and 2009 was to read one book a week. That’s 52 books a year (52 weeks in case you are wondering). In 2008 I read one book every week for 44 weeks. I slacked on the rest because some  books were just really boring and some just took too damn long.

This year I want to change things a little bit by tweaking the system.

I want to read 52 books that are non fiction only. The fiction thing I can read on the side (I highly recommend the GRRM Song of Fire and Ice series) to help me sleep but that doesn’t count. These are books that’ll help me with insights into business, management, gaming, photography and other areas of interests.

I’m not going crazy here, the whole idea is to increase my knowledge and help my blog develop with sharper opinions by reading more. The book I’m starting with is an autobiography by Gordon Ramsay, that loud chef, called Playing with Fire. I will still post the learnings I get from each of these books and my notes like Derek Sivers does so well.  You can find them starting next week here.

And if you are looking for book recommendations, here’s a good list.