The BlankBored™

You may not know who I am, or what I do, but one thing is for sure. I am not a Chinese soldier. I am not one of those 2.3 million who are banned from blogging or creating their own websites, as a soldier or not, in China.

The great internet censorship in China is sometimes dubbed as "The great FIREWALL of China". And they are not joking.

China is a country with extreme dictatorship. Everything is state-controlled. Sometimes good comes of it.

My uncle who had been to China told me that all land in China belonged to the government. You can't own houses. You can only lease them for a specific period. This means that the Chinese, unlike the Indians don't waste their life's earnings in buying a site, building a house etc. They buy other things like fancy cars and (duplicate) gadgets with the same money and help grow their country's GDP. In the end no one loses anything and everyone (who is Chinese) stands to gain from this.

Honestly, that's one heck of an idea. At least to me.

But sometimes, the dictatorship isn't so good. The internet censorship is one example. They have minimal contact with the outside world, meaning that all deals go on in Chinese when you go to China. Unlike India.


The government wants the media to say something that only it wants to hear. And that my friend, frankly speaking, stinks.



It got me thinking...maybe if India didn't have democracy, if the British never invaded India, if we still had (by magic) one country under one (hindu) king, how different would things be?

I guess we would be a bit like China, only better. I guess I would still be blogging, probably in kannada or hindi (or sanskrit??). And parts of my blog would be censored... :P

Yes, life would stink...no controversial books to read, no neutral opinions in the media..but that's about me and you.

What about the non-blogging, non-media savvy type of common person? I guess he would be happy. If the king was not of the villainous (dushtabuddhi) - type that is.

Overall, the aam jananta, the common man (who is poor) would get benefited. Most probably. A brilliant example being the Maoist Kerala.

All our materialistic aims would have gotten fulfilled. Not the intellectual ones. Some of them atleast.




Maybe its true when they say that democracy is not for a poor country like India.


                           

Maybe.

It was a news item occupying a relatively small space in the newspaper today, but it is an issue that is definitely not small.

Professor Frank Fenner of microbiology at the Australian National University, direly predicted "homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,"!

He says that we won't be able to tackle or shake off effects of population explosion and hence result in massive consumption and further depletion of resources.

The guy who said this, Fenner, 95, was incidentally one of the persons involved in the eradication of small pox and he was the one who announced that to the rest of the world.

While I do agree that 100 years is quite a short time-span for anything like that to happen, its not like we aren't seeing its effects today. Living in a country like India makes you realise that fact each and every second that you live. And its not like I am a microbiologist who knows his biology better than Fenner.

The thing is, even if this IS true, we are not ready to accept it, as we don't have any plan-B as of today. No one believes him.

Even if not in the next 100 years, things will begin happening in the next 200 years and it will again narrow down to the Darwinian theory of the "survival of the fittest".

Due to depletion of resources, wars will CERTAINLY take place and only the fittest will survive.

While it is still not clear who the "fittest" are, It is probably anybody's guess that the "fittest" are those who are able to do EVERYTHING. Today's gadget freaks and the rich and spoilt kids don't exactly fit in that category.

The city will probably be at a standstill and (my guess is that) village life will rule again. This means that atleast 200 years from now, India- the land of villages might rule the roost after all. Not exactly as how we imagined.

Or, we might end blowing up ourselves and only a very few people from isolated parts of earth (or people who have managed to isolated themselves) will survive.

Yes, it is unlikely that humans will be extinct, as they have BRAINS (lol), but what will happen is that civilization will probably have to start from the scratch again.

There's nothing we can do about all this now.


Except think.

The inevitable has happened! Now it looks as though our engineering colleges will start about a month late!!

This is too much to take. I mean...we were all kinda waiting for the counseling to get over, choose our colleges and stuff...and now we gotta wait for another month to do that!

Additionally, its more disconcerting to think about what'll happen to the so-called "other" colleges and their courses, which'll fail to get AICTE recognition now.

On top of all that mess, you'll have to wait...which means more boredom for everyone...I hate being bored...thats the third-worst feeling in the world, and don't expect me to name the first two.

I think to avoid getting frustrated due to this long wait...we need to inevitably have some kind of a regular activity where you learn something, like a sport, or a computer language or so. That'll keep you fresh for your new life in your new college!

-post dedicated to all my friends suffering the same fate as me.

Hello once again!



Before playing those, prepare for a mini-lecture...

You see, GBA stands for Nintendo's famous handheld gaming console "GameBoy Advance".
What you do now is (again) illegally download some GBA games on your computer (harldy a few MBs) and then fool your computer to make it believe that it is not a computer but it is actually a GBA console!!


Dont worry...you need not know any sort of programming to do so.

You have softwares to take care of that!

Those kind of "fooling" softwares are called "emulators".


Here I've given a link to such a software :
Visual Boy Advance



Now to download a few games:
Mario Power Tennis (I'd call this the Shaolin tennis!)


Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (A role-playing game where you need to battle with "creatures" to get out of the Fantasy world you are trapped in!)

Advance Wars 2 : Black hole rising (A very good strategy game...reminds you of chess!)

Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (A comical story about the world's most famous video-game
brothers)

Dragonball Z: Supersonic warriors (You'd like this if you like fighting..DBZ style!)

Pokemon Fire Red and Pokemon Ruby
(The most famous games that broke all records ever set! You'll like these if you are familiar with Pokemon)

There are many many..more..maybe even better games, but I suggest you try these first and then google to find the others!

To use VBA software:
1.Open VBA (duh!)
2.Click on File -> Open
3.Select the Game you want to play
4.Enjoy!

The controls:
by default: buttons X, Z, A, S, backspace, enter, spacebar and most important..the arrow keys!

I wont tell which button does what...you just have to figure them out!
These controls might seem a bit strange and awkward at first, but you'll get used to it as you play on!

Adjusting the game speed:
1. Go to
2. Select "Option" -> "Frame Skip"
















3. Set it to a required number.
4. Again Go to "Frame Skip"-> "Throttle" to a particular number from 5% to 1000% (100% is normal speed)




The optimum game speeds vary from game to game, and you need to experiment a little to find out the ideal combination for your computer and current game.

(P.S.: If any game or file appears to be infected by viruses or trojans, then delete that particualar file that appears to be problematic and search for another link)

Hey...I'd like you to answer one question...

How many e-books have you actually read??

Even without you answering...i would say that the number would not be huge. Right?? I mean its boring enough to read stuff on paper (lol) , who on earth actually has the patience to read it on a computer screen?? Reading miles and miles of endless text sitting upright was something that I definitely could not manage.


One day, when my cousin visited me, she gave me a bunch of "e-comics" of Garfield. Those that come on the newspaper everyday. She had them from the year 1978 to 2009 complete- all 365 (or 366) cartoons of one year in one file each!!


It was awesome...I read and read and read it..and before i knew..i had finished reading one year's comics!! That's about 10MB of data!!
This was what I did to get rid of my boredom for a while and I hope this'll work for you as well.

And its a good alternative to e-books!!




Here Goes:

You need to use mainly torrents for downloading these comics ( its illegal reading them for free)
An example torrent (Click on this)

And all these comics are in a type of file with a .cbr extension, and you need a decompressor to view it.
You can use this :
CDisplay comic reader

Alternately, if you want to watch them online and hate downloading torrents and stuff,
Check out these online cartoons


Now I understand that you might not be a big fan of Garfield, or might just be allergic to cat hair. In that case, there are e-comics of other popular characters and some not-so-popular characters as well!! I leave the browsing and searching part to...(you said you were bored).

But still, for the lazy bored: Click on this

Hopefully, this will do...for now!