My God, if I ever hear of Texas Holdem ever again it will most definitely be too soon.

Blogger, as always, is lughably easy to install when compared to the BS Moveable Type kept throwing at me. Wordpress similarly requires intervention from Adnan's side. Blogger it is. Last post hasn't been since Nov 20, 2003. A day when nothing really significant happened. The blog will reside at uzer.org/blog while I contemplate the following:

Should all commenters be forced to register or is comment spam a MT mainstay? Since ~50% of my comments arise from random individuals who happen upon a particular post, this is important crap.

Is my original template superior to this one?

Should Feedburner be used to create me an RSS feed instead of an ATOM feed? What's the difference? Does anyone care?

Why does 'Family Guy' have a weblog?

Seriously, the only games I've ever seen on non-Nintendo consoles that were remotely innovative were Katamari Damacy and Ico. That's a grand total of 2. You say Nintendo is all about Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon? I point out that every Mario and Zelda introduces new ideas (unlike every new Halo, which introduces more guns and less plot), and raise you Animal Crossing and Pikmin.

-Slashdot user
An old quote that should've been posted around when the site died. Related to Nintendo's announcement of its new console, Revolution. Since then, preliminary technical information and a few screens from its initial games have been shown at E3.

I recently finished Men of Valor. Its game mechanic is almost identical to that of Call of Duty and the action sequences are similarly fairly intense. However MoV is probably one of the few games that in any way try to documentarize a war. It tries to teach you about what happened during the conflict both with regards to the soldiers on a personal level as well as militaristically. The former is done at least as well as any other game. Unlike CoD and the MoHAA series where you play the "Unknown Soldier", MoV puts you in the shoes of an African-American draftee: David Shepherd. David Shepherd has a family back home and also has a younger brother. He makes friends in his platoon and laughs with them and cries with them. He writes home about the things he sees in the war and his parents write to him about what they see on the television. As hackneyed as all this may sound, MoV handled this with a degree of class and some not-too-shoddy voice acting.
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Rereading the last passage, I have to admit its the worst piece of writing I have ever written. Ugh, its so cringeworthy I stopped without finishing the passage; its redeemability(?) laying only in either its complete deletion or ignoringation(???!!). I chose the latter. What's a blog for if not posterity(?). I'll try again but in not so many contrived words.

It's nighttime. Two of my squadmates and I have been chosen for a covert assassination of a North Vietnamese communist commander. We pass by a regular patrol harassing a civilian boat. One of them is arguing with the occupants while the other chit-chats with us and asks us to "give 'em hell" or something. They continue harassing the civilians, asking them questions about where they're going, what they're doing out at this time of night, if they have any papers (probably not in so many conversation trees but you get the idea...). Not a happy, sing-a-long sight. The female pulls out a straw hat and tosses it into the American boat while the male unsheaths an AK-47. The lady instantly dies as she is riddled full of bullets while the male probably went under with the American boat.

Intense stuff this Men of Valor.

There are scenes unabashedly pro-war, and there are scenes unabashed anti-war. If there was a balance it would probably tilt towards the war being necessary but nothing is shown with a single, uncomplicated face. Civilians aren't always innocent. Americans aren't always just. War is shown about as grotesquely as any game (in the industry's current maturity) will show. It reminds me of the film Full Metal Jacket in that the message is only what you see and hear, and ultimately the movie (and game) tells you nothing. You make of it what you will.

For once, a game also got the human side right. No longer are you the "Unknown Soldier" doing nothing but receiving orders and listening to breifings and getting medals. You have a family (with problems) and you have friends. The voice acting is solid enough that these "friends" are almost believable and you enjoy listening to their crapola chatter (*gasp* again...).

This could've been a fine specimen if it wasn't for crapola AI (I like this...) and the generally mundane green environements. In any case I am definitely psyched up for the Call of Duty expansion, United Offensive which I'll probably play after I finish Deus Ex (the old one), unless KotoR II comes to Karachi real soon. If anyone does decide to pick it up, not the extensive use of foul language and gratuitous violence.

Heh, Life's not too shoddy. Not even at 7:30 am.
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There well, I guess that has to be at least *some* improvement. This could also be of course because I haven't yet reread the previous passage and don't intend to.

Do the Dew.

Schafer told the audience: "Sometimes you have to kill your ostriches... as they say." A humorous quote from Tim Schafer's talk on the dwindling creativity and originality in video games. This is the guy responsible for LucasArts adventure classics like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. The former being one of the few adventure games that I could actually tolerate while the latter is touted as being one of, if not the best, adventure game ever. Look out for his latest in Psychonauts.

"An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect," says Hitar. "Along with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect and opinion, you must listen and show interest in what the other party is saying."An interesting article about something we should've been doing all along: fight terrorism with Islam. [via Al-Muhajabah]

Speaking of boredom (or lack thereof) I have finally discovered fiction as a truly viable entertainment option (even as the classic Neverwinter Nights keeps me ever so faithful to the gameosphere). Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was phenomenally exciting from beginning to end. I actually found myself restricting its reading for fear that it may finish too early. My fears were well-founded and I miss it dearly. For a taste of his captivating style you should read his essay, "In the Beginning was the Command Line"

Currently I find myself indulging in a gorgeous piece of literature by the name Perido Street Station by China Mieville (which has also inspired today's post's title - don't shoot, heh). It's hard to describe a genre for this book but I suppose I wouldn't be too far off if I said it was science fiction set in a fantasy universe with a slice of horror pie thrown in. Or not.

Currently, my life revolves around doing things electively. The word 'elective' is defined as, among others,

Permitting or involving a choice; optional: elective surgery

I am currently running along through a Cardiothoracic (CT) surgery elective which has followed a general surgery (GS) elective and which will Insha-Allah precede a radiology elective. GS was fantastic. I had a phenomenal amount of fun not least because of the amazing friendliness and perpetual teaching of the consultant I worked with. Furthermore, the elective helped me solidify my desire for a career in surgery in general and general surgery in particular. In one particular OR day we performed a thyroidectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, and split-thickness skin grafting on the lower leg all in one day: We literally worked on disease processes involving organs from the head (well neck I guess) to the toe. No other surgical profession gives you that wide a repertoire of skills. I'm witnessing this personally in the CT rotation where the vast majority of all operations are CABGs (Coronary Artery Bypass Graftings: Diversion of block around a blockage in a vessel supplying the heart so as to remove symptoms of heart disease such as angina), with a minority of valve replacements. The procedure itself is interesting the first time. It's interesting when you see a CABG done 'off-pump' (without the use of a heart-lung machine: it's literally repairing a motor while it's still running). But that's it. The procedure lasts for ever and the meagre student gets to do nothing more than stitch the skin from where the vein is removed in the lower leg. If, by the end of the rotation I am not allowed to actually incise the skin and dissect a vein free I will have a cow.

The great thing about general surgery is that you're domain is the abdomen in particular and you are qualified to perform therapeutic operations on other areas as well, as mentioned above. A lot of people claim that this makes general surgeons 'jacks of all trades, and masters of none'. Humbly, I would tend to disagree. There is only so much training that you can get before you cease to become any better. A surgeon's who's been repairing hernias for 6 months will probably not be as good as one who has been repairing them for four years, but the difference between the latter and a ten-year veteran will probably be miniscule. The term 'herniologist' (defining a surgeon specializing in the repair of hernias) as has recently been developed in the West, is redundant for this reason.

All this aside, general surgery is one of those fields in which tangible strides are being made. Ten years ago, laparoscopy (or minimally-invasive surgery) was nearly unknown. Now gall bladders are removed almost exclusively through the laparoscopic technique among various other procedures. The scope for improvement and research is enormous. In fact the concept has progressed now to involve something called handoscopy. In this technique the surgeon actually uses his hands to manipulate and feel internal organs as opposed to long forceps and scissors, thus introducing the main advantage of open procedures into the laparoscopic scene.

Enthralling to say the least.

Whether you're a gamer or not, do yourself a favor and visit Half-Life 2: Cookie Edition.

[via Slashdot]

Do The Dew. Man.

-A poster on the Guru3d forumsThis makes me feel very good. I run a GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics card and Half-Life 2 should play as well as CS: Source if not better. Insha-Allah.

Come on, you're not that hungry are you?