Where the heck is the L3 and R3 buttons

Boss Fight against Poseidon. I was almost done with Poseidon, when the I was prompted to click L3 + R3 buttons. Like a fool I was inspecting my controller to find out if there were any key labeled L3 and R3. After a bit of googling I figured out that the controller had two hidden buttons. The Left Joystick and the Right Joystick controls are actually two buttons.

Both these Joystick controls when pressed act like buttons and they are the L3 and R3 buttons respectively.

Number System

Ever since I moved to bangalore I have been always puzzled with characters used to display numbers. There have been many a times when I wanted to note down the number of an autorickshaw or decipher what was the route number of a bus. But I couldn’t. Thanks to the number being written in Kannada. But it was on Tamil New Year’s day which falls on April 14 and it happens to be yesterday that I came to know that Tamil too has a number system and it is completely different from that of Roman numbers.

 

Tamil number system did not use Zero, nor did they use positional digits (having separate symbols for 10, 100, 1000 et.al). Also the numbers were written in the manner they were spoken. To understand the Tamil number system and to learn more about the same visit this link http://www.gnanam.info/tamil/docs/Num_and_symbols.pdf 

 

Also it is interesting to know that Mauritius is the only country that uses the Tamil number system in it currency. Check the right bottom corner of the image to see 50 written as 5(in tamil) and a Zero

The Lost Symbol

Ah! I forgot. Another culprit who had kept me away from my blog is “The Lost Symbol”. I gifted it to my wife the day it was released in India. I was hoping it would be another “Da Vinci Code” or “Angels & Demons”.  Frankly speaking The Lost Symbol isn’t a bad book but it was let down. It is surely a page turner (so that you could finish the book soon). The story moves at a good pace and in parts the book is really good to read. But for most part of the book the screenplay is same and often repeated. The book should have ideally gone through one more round of edits, which would have made the book even more better. Another annoying stuff in the book is that Dan Brown, explains every single characters movement as which street they walked, which turn they took et al.

In most part of the book the setup is the same.

A: Have you heard of X?
B (usually Langdon): Yes, but I thought that was just a myth.
A shows or tells B something.
B reacts with shock.
Then, insert scenes of people walking from one place to another, being chased.
Then, insert the sentence “Suddenly everything made sense.” At least for the next ten pages.

This is really annoying. On the whole, the book is a good read in parts but didn’t keep up to its expectations.

games

It has been quite a while since I posted. Sorry for that. Now where was I? The last update was Facebook. Ah I remember that culprit. Ever since I joined Facebook, I haven’t posted much. I haven’t even posted on my wall much, courtesy Zynga.com. Facebook is loaded with lot of this simple yet addictive community games that have kept me busy during my leisure time and some times even during work. Mafia wars, Special Forces, Farmville, and a lot more. All but Farmville are HTML based games, that makes hardcore gamers like me even sit up sometimes all nit to get the energy up and complete tasks. And whats worse, I even got tempted to use my credit card to buy some favor point and get ahead of the competition. I had even called up a few of my friends to join me in Mafia wars, so that I could buy mission items. Such has been the effect of the social games that are present in Facebook. Now I am forcing myself to login to facebook only twice a day and for 10 minutes only so that I could spend some time usefully.

One for the road

I have heard this statement made by my friends @ pubs / bars, whenever they gulp their last drink. I wanted to find out the meaning of the same for quite some time and finally now I know, courtesy, my wife. So here you go.

One for the Road

Meaning

A final drink taken just before leaving on a journey.

Origin

The suggestion that this phrase derives from the supposed practice of offering condemned felons a final drink at pubs on the way to the the place of public execution in London – The Tyburn Tree, isn’t supported by historical record. The phrase isn’t known until the mid 20th century, long after Tyburn ceased to be a place of execution. It appears to have originated just as a colloquial reference to a departing drink in English pubs, just as ‘a quick one’ refers to a one taken in haste.

The earliest citation I can find of ‘one more for the road’ is from The Times, March 1939:

“Propaganda should be employed to train and fortify public opinion in the condemnation of persons who drink before driving – above all to discourage the practice of ‘one for the road’.”

That piece is as reproachful as a second citation from the same year is comical. This report, of a court case in England, was reported in the Canadian newspaper The Lethbridge Herald, in December 1939:

A cultivated English voice which said, “Come on, let’s have one for the road.” led a Weymouth innkeeper into court. Police outside his inn heard this remark – after closing time. So Landlord Frank Roe received a summons, The landlord’s father explained in court that police had heard the English-speaking announcer of the German Zeesen radio station popularly known as “Lord Haw Haw.” The summons was dismissed.

The phrase really took hold when Johnny Mercer used it in the lyrics of his song One for My Baby (and One More for the Road), which he wrote for Fred Astaire in 1943:

Its quarter to three
There’s no one in the place ‘cept you and me
So set em up Joe
I got a little story I think you oughta know

Were drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road

The phrase has proven popular as a title. It has been used for a 1984 Harold Pinter play, a Stephen King short story and an album title by The Kinks (1980), April Wine (1984), Trouble (1994) and Ocean Colour Scene (2004). It was also the name of a 1995 British television series, starring Alan Davies.

The Australians, ever linguistically inventive, prefer to have ‘one more for the bitumen’.