Funny Videos - Russian "Dream Wedding" TV Show gone Berserk

Now you know why those Americans make fun of Russian Etiquette..

Russian men are real SMOOTH :D

Funny Videos - Revenge of the Gang-Bang Zombies Trailer (No Sex/Nudity)

Super funny Gang-Bang movie trailer ( No Sex/Nudity )

Parallax Engine starts with a bang..

In middle of a discussion on IGDA forums on the need for a game development forums for Indian developers, I had presented the idea of developing a game engine as an online collaborative project. This engine would be a representation of technological prowess of Indian game programmers. It would also serve as a real-time gallery for Game artists to showcase their works. As in, artist portfolio gallery in a real-time 3D world instead of just posting screen-shots.

I had offered to take the initiative & lead the whole thing. People responded positively and we kick started it in no time.


Online community development projects are not easy. In fact, it takes a lot more effort, coordination, professionalism,etc. for such projects to succeed. Comparitively its a lot easier to manage a project & a team in a company than online.

I had written a full-fledged 3D rendering engine all by myself & also made demo worlds for it single handedly. Later on, wrote a Cross-platform Shader renderer for XBox & PC, built upon Unreal Engine 2.5.

But, parallax engine project is unlike anything I've done till date. Its a massive challenge.

As the first step for it, I started creating a community base.. A framework to co-ordinate development online, with developers spread all over the country.

Here is a log of progress..

1) Parallax Engine Wiki
http://parallaxengine.wetpaint.com/

Engine introduction, member profiles, etc. are already up along with initial discussions amongst team members.

2) Parallax Engine Blog
http://parallaxengine.blogspot.com/
This will be the primary news & announcement page for the engine

3) Parallax Engine Forums ( Dev team exclusive )
http://www.boardzero.com/indigo/indigo.html?c=4

This might change to another host in a couple of days..

Unique way to protest. Anti Iraq-War protest on America army Game server

Joseph Delappe has found a new way to protest against Iraq-War.

On American-Army online game server.. :)

US Army also uses this game & online service as a recruitment tool..





News Source article on GameSpy.com http://www.gamespy.com/pc/americas-army/709854p1.html

Joseph's personal Website
http://www.gamespy.com/pc/americas-army/709854p1.html

Rooting out the problems. Setting up a Home recording studio for guitarists - Part 2

In the previous part ( Setting up a Home recording studio for Guitarists - Part 1 ), I ended listing out what the problems were to be not able to produce a studio quality song. Here they are again.

1) Significant amount Noise & distortion in the song.

2) Acoustic guitar track sounds anything but Acoustic.

3) Lead guitar don't have the Rocking punch in them. They sound 'obviously synthesized'

4) In the guitar solos, especially the second solo, sometimes it sounds like I was playing Off-scale wrong notes. In fact, it was irritating to listen that I had turned down volume of the
lead guitar at some locations near song ending.

There was another major issue (which is the harder to fix than rest) is 'Guitar Playing Skills' :)
This, I am in the process of fixing which I will talk about later :)



1) Significant amount Noise & distortion in the song.

There are more than many reasons for this.

- Poor quality guitar pickups & circuitry. My GB&A guitar has three single coil pickups, S-S-S configuration( see the image below), which is quite common with most stratocaster clones. But the main problem is that they are stock GB&A pickups of extremely poor quality(Pic to the right). This can be fixed to certain extent by replacing them with expensive pickups from DeMarzio or Seymore Duncan. But, its only possible to fit in Single-Coil pickups, where as what suit my purpose are Humbucker pickups.

(Bridge picup of my guitar -> )














( Above : S-S-S All single coil configuration on a Fender Stratocaster)


There is more hardware in the guitar that contributes to tone & quality. Volume / Tone knobs, etc. Needless to say, my guitar has extremely bad hardware for its price. Volume knob is useless. The circuits that modify guitar tone add in a shit load of noise when i set tone towards
trebile which is where most of the lead pieces sound good..

Oh, the best of all. Even the pickup selector adds into the noise contribution. I dont know what
I was thinking but, I tried the pickup selector tricks that Jimi Hendrix used to do all the time.
Well, two months later it went for a toss. I can still change change active pickup but, not in middle of a solo, as the switching generates noise like I just broke a microphone.

( WIP : This article is not complete yet )