New Blog, New Content, Same Old Me

Hey! I'm glad you found this blog, but I've stopped updating this blog for quite some time. (Oh wait, you already knew that, right?). So head over to my new blog: Design Notes by Rasagy Sharma - where I'll be sharing my thoughts on Design, experiments with programming and lots of sketchnotes!

Since you've been following this blog, I would really appreciate some feedback on the new blog! So feel free to comment/Tweet to @rasagy!

PS: If you're reading this via a Feed Reader, here's the link to the new blog's feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RSDNotes.

Have a great holiday! :)

Mysore Memories - Youth Hostel Sketch

"Change is Nature"

Over the past few days (months) without a constant (even occasional) internet connection, things have been pretty different. I completed my summer internship/Practise School - 1 (part of my Engineering degree at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus) at CFTRI, Mysore. It's one of the many CSIR Research Institute in India (hence you haven't heard of it :P). And it's been a refreshing experience, to say the least!

Anyway here's a sketch I made of the Youth Hostel, where I was staying during my Summer Internship in Mysore. Oh & this is the first Youth Hostel in India (they recently celebrated 100 years of Youth Hostels across the world!). I was living in a dorm with 12 other BITSians, and considering we have single rooms in my college, it sure was a different (== fun!) experience.

More on the Mysore trip later! (This cyber cafe's making me sick :x)

PS: Gave this sketch as a gift to someone I met at Youth Hostel. Oh & for the record, this was the view from my favorite spot in the Youth Hostel - awesome place to play flute in the night! :)

Run Chef Run - My Game for CodeChef Contest!

Been a while eh? It's been more than two months since I last posted (Ironically about one year of blogging!). For those who're still following this blog hoping for a good post, well here it is!

Coming to the point, the past few days have been pretty different. A lot of things have changed, for example the fact that I've hardly been online lately (Can't help it, I don't have net access at my Institute in Mysore, where I'm doing a Summer Internship). So I've been spending a lot of time exploring things not in the World Wide Web.

And I finally succeeded in completing one of the "10 Things to do before I die" (Okay I don't really have such a list, but I guess now is a good time to come up with one!). So well, I made a game. Yup. Yes. Yeah. (Yoyo?) Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting something greeattt. :P

CodeChef, a Directi Initiative, offers regular coding contests (aka codejams) apart from a huge collection of practise problems which you can solve in your free time. This May, they decided to do something different, and held a Browser Based Game Contest (Flash/JS Games). I was eager to take part in it, but couldn't take out much time from my summer internship. Anyway, I made a small flash game (1 Day of Photoshop + 2 Days of Flash) and came up with this:

CLICK TO PLAY!

The game is pretty simple. You are the Chef, you need to run all the way, jump over Binary Heaps and slide under Dangling Pointers (A little too geeky names eh?). And if you notice carefully (I'm sure you didn't :P), nearly all major objects are made using TEXT/KEYBOARD Characters ONLY (Like the Trees using "#" and Mountains using "&"). Sadly gif compression really (REALLY) screws up the detailing, so maybe you should wait for a while for better graphics (yes I'll make a new version soon!).

As for those who're thinking about the code, well basically everytime you play, the Environment objects (Trees/Clouds/Mountains/Bushes) are generated at random, and so are the Enemy (Or whatever you want to call that). So sometimes it'll be a little hard to play the game and sometime you'll just be plain lucky :P

Anyhoo comments about the game are most welcome. And please don't hesitate to criticise it! (Though a little description about what's not good will be better than the more common "This is $#!T" comment :P)

Oh & not to forget, I got an "Honorable Mention" for my game! You can check out all the Winning Games at the official blog post.

Thank you CodeChef for the mention! (I get a T-Shirt too! Yipee!)

PS: If you're a student at BITS Pilani, Goa Campus, gear up as CodeChef student Chapter will be up & running next sem! (You should know that by now! :P)

Lemme know how the game was! =) ;)

5 Beach Pics - Celebrating 1 year of Blogging!

Yay! It's been a year since this blog's been up! *dances madly*

From Sketches, to Tech posts, to Photos, it's surely been lot of fun to blog! (And I hope it was fun to read the blog too!) :D

I wanted to go the conventional way and list down the "most popular posts" and blah blah, but I'm sure you aren't so lazy that you won't click the above links. :D

So instead, I decided to pick a few of my favorite pics clicked on a recent Beach trip to Majorda (Goa).

So here are 5 Beach pics to celebrate 1 year of Blogging @ Irrashonally Urs! :D

Flying

It's hard to get someone to pose for you when you go for a fun trip ("Stop clicking Photos re.. Let's go in water!"). But I was lucky to spot one of my seniors jumping around and got this shot!

PS: Check the feet's reflection!

Sunset

A conventional Beach Pic, but I like the Sun's reflection, so decided to share it.

Let's take a walk till this world ends...

I love the straight coastline of this beach. And the trail left by a horse (I think) adds more meaning to the shot! :)

Score!

Random pic of the slippers we used for the "Goal posts" while playing football (or futsal?) on the beach. Loved the hue! :)

The Giant River!

Err.. well, it isn't a river. Nor is that edge of a huge mountain range or something. It's just a foot wide stream of water flowing into the sea and I held my cam just above the stream to get the effect :D

Hope you enjoyed this and all other posts on my blog! Don't forget to comment about what type of posts you like, so I can focus on them more!