the cursor is blinking_

Save the "!"s

2011-07-21T23:56:00.002-07:00

"Out of office for next few hours!!"

"having lunch at thai place!!!"

"Here it is! The OS we were all roaring about. Just upgraded!!"

"Robin hood !!!!" (means - watching it right now :/)

These are real updates, from real people. On emails/social networking sites. What is wrong with the world? Why are exclamation marks used out of place almost all the time, like there is no tomorrow? It's like the Lays chips commercial, no one can eat just one - no one stops at just using one. Like there is some kind of medal tally of how many "!" one uses.

I'm no grammar nazi. This blog is filled with all typos and types of mistakes. I don't like to correct people's its and it's. But for the love of god(or whatever you believe in) please be sober with those exclamations. You know how you feel, when someone uses too many smiley's in a text conversation. Like after every other word. Diabetic. With exclamations, it is something similar. High blood pressure.

My respect for a person's sensibilities is inversely proportional to the "!"s they use in their words. Yes, I'm judging you. Be sensible. Make the internet a better place - for you and for me and the entire human race.

An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

PS: And now you can laugh at how uptight I'm with this thing, which is true :D. But I get irritated seeing a million of these everyday, and so the rant.

What is Evil?

2011-05-20T20:28:00.005-07:00

Just finished reading 'The Immortals of Meluha' by Amish Tripathi. It's an interesting read, blending mythology and fiction like I've never seen before, except may be in 'The Great Indian Novel' by Shashi Tharoor. It's a new genre of sorts.

But that's besides the point. I was intrigued by the concept introduced in the book by Tripathi, that evil is a relative term. What one person or community thinks is evil or bad is probably just a different way of doing things, which they aren't comfortable with. A good example would be, capitalism and communism. The capitalist world considers the communist as backward and bad as a way of living with highly restricted freedoms. The communist world have their own views of how capitalism is bad, leads to tremendous social inequality and stuff. There have been wars, many of them, over these differences and their incorrect interpretations. Why? Just because they don't believe in each other's opinions and feel that the other's influence may increase if they don't stop them. I'm probably over simplifying this, but it can't be completely denied.

Evil, if you look at it this way is then a difference of perspectives. Of course there are exceptions like pure badwill. But then it's just circumstances and perspectives causing distortion of 'what is right' at such an immense level that entire civilizations are blinded.

Evil is relative, just like everything else in this universe, conditions apply.

I await the next two parts of the 'immortals' trilogy, to see where the author takes the definition of evil to.

PS: This post was written on a phone with a brilliant predictive keyboard, SwiftKey.

Innovation & Art

2011-02-04T19:00:00.002-07:00

I've these really neat conversations with my instructor at the art studio that I go to. She likes to dive into philosophy when explaining approaches to art, and what can be more interesting than that :) We have had many such conversations, I'll some day write on the others, which were equally interesting, but let me elaborate on the latest one which left me thinking for a while.

So, few days ago we were talking about a new piece I'm working on. I told her I know exactly how I would go about doing this, and I don't want to do it that way. I've this concept, which now in hindsight doesn't seem all that right, of not doing the the same thing again. By that I mean that, if I do use a certain idea and style I use it once for a piece, I don't go about exploiting it as such. My intent is to keep things dynamic, and to venture into as many things that I can(perhaps to learn more?).

But people like to make a series of paintings on a idea that they have, and they use a similar style for all of those. So you get a nice set of pieces that go very well with each other, and form what is called, a 'body of work'. This is what most artists seem to be doing, and that is how someone gets interested in their work. It's like Hitchcock making a series of suspense thrillers.

So, what she was trying to imply is that, dynamic ideas are good, but the dynamism should be paced out. In other words, she was implying that innovation is not always a good thing. If we innovate something, and keep working on that idea, we refine it and make it more sophisticated. And that makes for good art, which is appreciated and understood.

To conclude, innovation should be accompanied by refinement. And refinement reaches a stage where we call it 'art'.

Talk about refinement, here's a Hyundai commercial for that. Needless to say I really dig what this company is upto.

Design of a Wallet

2010-11-20T02:20:00.004-07:00

Now this is one thing really dear to men, the wallet. It pays to have a good one, literally. Mine was tethered and tortured over the last few years, and it was finally time to get one before someone at a cash counter said something embarrassing.

I never really bothered about how my wallet should be, till now. It happens to be that all the ones till now were given to me, and all of them had plenty of room. Sometimes more than required. When I decided to get one for myself, I wanted something really slim and 'non-disturbing' to the seating arrangements to be precise.

Men's wallets, are inevitably fat and they keep swelling till one day the dude realizes that he can no longer sit straight. The contents are then pruned. It's an interesting exercise. Delayed free or garbage collection in more technical terms.

So now with a slim wallet, I've fewer compartments. And my priority goes to fast access to cards, since that is what I (or any sane person these days) use the most. So I had to group them by priority. High priority cards should have fastest access. By fast access I don't mean fast to look at, but fast to take out. If you keep a card in the card holder, boy your cashier would've a soda by the time you swipe your card. So keep it free, like where the cash is, just this one card that you use all the time.

Or you could use two wallets, one for the cards, the other for the rest of the things. I've seen a friend use two wallets, and I think it's just too much maintenance, and as Cartman would say, it's gay.

And please for _ sake, use a bifold or lesser, no triflolds, they have too much self-baggage, and they don't look like men's accessories in the first place.

So do yourself a favor, get a nice slim, tight, snug piece of soft leather, and be happy. I bumped into one at a Macy's store, and it made all the difference. The make - Perry Ellis Portfolio Slimfold- recommended.

G.C.

2010-10-21T00:12:00.005-07:00

Her curvy figure,

glitters with all the glory.

She exudes an aura,

when she walks by the light.

She looks in her element,

when she is in fury.

The piercing eyes,

the thunder, the aplomb.

Her contenders burn with envy,

when she whooshes past their egos.

She is the real deal.
She is,

the Genesis.

PS: Absolutely love my new car :)

Sham

2010-07-15T22:18:00.001-07:00

Sham bhi koi jaise hai nadi
Lehar lehar jaise beh rahi hai
Koi ankahi, koi ansuni
Baat dheemi dheemi keh rahi hai
....
....
Suhani suhani hai yeh kahani
Jo khamoshi sunaati hai
Jise tune chaha, hoga woh tera
Mujhe woh yeh batati hai
Main magan hoon par na jaanu
Kab aane wala hai woh pal
....

- Sham, from the soundtrack of Aisha
Music, Vocals - Amit Trivedi, Lyrics - Javed Akhtar

Ever since I heard DevD soundtrack, I've been looking at the work of its composer, Amit Trivedi. He has been entertaining, very. Checkout is his new compositions with new sounds and arrangements, in Aisha and Udaan(which just got a official selection at Cannes), and while you are at it check the soundtrack of Aamir.

Going back to 'Sham', it's a brilliant composition. Seemingly simple words, turned into a great piece. Look out for the pauses, the highs and lows and the mood in the voice, sung by the composer himself.

The unreachable 'z'

2010-04-03T02:38:00.003-07:00

Talking to a friend recently, he came up with a question that has left me thinking. A question for which I don't have an answer.

'What do we do with the things we do?'

'What is the ultimate aim of things we follow so passionately, spending so much time and effort?'

I, for the life of me, don't have answers to these questions, perfectly right questions to ask. These days I spend a fair amount of time on my 'hobbies'. Time, the most valuable thing in the universe you can expend, you spend so much of it on following your passions. What do you do with that?

It's forthrightly easy to say that the destination doesn't matter, it's the journey that really counts. But I think that this is a feel-good, but overrated, and highly flawed argument. After thinking a bit over this, I find asking these questions is important to bring things in perspective. Though just asking such questions will not make things concrete, for most things.

I found that asking these questions, makes you think where you are with your 'hobby' and how much better you can get at it by setting some tangible goals. This ROI oriented talk sounds all very management-training-styled, but no. Think over it, the more you think, you'll make your passion for the things you love stronger. You'll aim for the rainbow, in process you might just cross couple of mountains and valleys, but you'll be well off than before.

But then this brings me back to the original questions. At the end of it, you might manage to get from 'a' to 'g' instead of 'd', but there is no 'z', not in this lifetime. Or put other way, the 'z', the relative 'z', is always unreachable from where you stand. Then what do you do, does that make all of this futile? I think, reaching far enough is satisfying enough, you don't need a 'z' to attain, and even if you did you wouldn't know!

The future of DSLR

2010-02-12T03:13:00.005-07:00

There are fewer times I get this excited.

This is one of them.

Got a Panasonic GF1 recently, and I'm absolutely in love with it. I remember those days when I had a sad analog camera and I had to restrict myself to a max of two film rolls, and then develop-print-digitize them, painful. I used to envy my friends having digital ones. I got my first camera, a $100 point and shoot, some Samsung 5MP and I used to love it alongwith its shortcomings, I had learnt to work around them. Later on, I got a Fuji Finepix with an unheard of 18x optical zoom and okay-ish manual controls. But it had its own shortcomings, and I used to get irritated working around them, because by this time I knew a little more about the pins-and-points of photography and I knew till what limits it could go. A DSLR was an obvious next.

Recently, while casually amazoning(this is a dangerous thing to do by the way, invariably puts a hole in your wallet) I came across micro-four-thirds. Later realized that it was the same technology that I had read about a year ago. I was sold, and decided that a micro-four-third would be my DSLR. As I like to say it, which for some reason some people find funny, I've moved from almost-a-DSLR to the future-of-DSLR. I'm quite convinced that this is the future, and it looks darn impressive. We'll be looking at even more compact interchangeable lens cameras soon.

You can read some interesting reviews of the GF1 here:
Techradar Craigmod SteveHuff

And like one of the reviewers says

"It'll rekindle your love of photography, and if that's not the hallmark of a fine camera, we don't know what is."

I've been trying to be regular in playing with it, documented here.

The art of titles

2010-01-24T03:42:00.003-07:00

I'm a movie buff, no arguments there. One of the most intriguing things in movies for me are the title sequences. Some darn good films have plain boring titles at the beginning or the end, to save reel length or perhaps because the production went over budget, but some of them carry the mood of the film. I'm talking about the latter.

A movie is a product, and the more polished it is, you know that lot of thought and effort has gone into it. And the custom designed titles are a part of this attention to detail. Recently, surprisingly, I have seen good movies, and quite a few with good title sequences.

Sherlock Holmes, has a brilliant one where the video shots freeze and morph into water-colored pencil-textured drawings. Up in the Air, has one of better aerial picturizations I've seen. Catch me if you can, another beautifully animated piece, while Fight Club explores the neuron structures. Spiderman movies have webby webby titles, quite nicely done. Zombieland wins the best slo-mo, while Hellboy 2 has the coolest gears-in-gears sequence I've seen till date, simply amazing.

On the bollywood side, I like Rang De Basanti, which has a punchy background score and Don(the remake) which has monochrome greens. Bollywood tends to use scenes and songs often in the titles, I guess to save reel time and to add that one extra song.

The ones which take the cake hands down are the Bond movies though. Style, personified.

2010

2009-12-29T00:45:00.001-07:00

Aah.. another instance of blogger's block hitting bad at me. The only savior was the no-brainer topic one can absolutely write about, new year resolutions.

I generally don't fall for such hocus-pocus cause generally these are self-motivational with lesser focus. But this year it is different. It is different because I'm freakishly dissatisfied about the current year and I really need to make some resolutions. 2009 has undoubtedly been the fastest year in time with a lot of activity and scaringly less achievement. Not that I'm a achiever with bunch of trophies on my shiny desk, but this time it actually feels like there was a lull. May be it has got to do with the phase I'm in, which by itself won't have any peaks, unless off-course I drag myself to do something. The key being initiative, and a sustained one at that.

2009 hasn't been that bad on the creative front though. I've been delving deeper into my pursuits, and I'm quite pleased looking back. Now what I need again is, sustained initiative. Hope 2010 keeps it going and further.

I really want to do something, or at the least start doing something, which can some day count as an achievement. Now if you look at the wording of that sentence, it reflects a typical me as people say it. Lot of probability. I would like to change, no, I want to change that. In terms of tangible things, I want to be more fit, proactive, creative & productive.

Happy new year.

Hero

2009-11-02T00:26:00.004-07:00

Talking about heroes, I got one of mine :)

HTC Hero. It is the best phone I've ever owned. I'm in simple words amazed by this device. May be its cause I jumped generations of phones, my previous was a shameful Motorola Rokr (even Steve Jobs got pissed at it :P)

You'll find all sorts of superficial and in-depth reviews about this device. But to summarize it has good hardware, has a great UI(HTC Sense), a stable platform(Android) and a great app store (off-course nothing beats Apple's app store). I was so much sold, I decided to switch to Sprint from AT&T for that, which can now be regarded as a wise move considering Sprint's network and plans.

Recently I wanted couple of things, a GPS, a pocket camera, a portable music player and a new phone, and this sweet device does it all. Why not iPhone you would ask, wouldn't you?

Well, my hatred of iTunes ranks first in the reasons I have. I don't use iTunes even on my Mac, simply don't like it. Secondly, background apps. This phone(Android in general) has background apps that can do magic, like put the phone on vibrate when at work, turn wifi on at home, mute notification sounds in sleep time. And the not so magical but essential things like listen to internet streams while doing other stuff, have notifications for tweets/facebook/whatever-you-want, chat without getting logged off on switching the app, and use a GPS/maps app while using other apps. Thirdly, iPhone is just not cool. There, I said it.

There are fourth, fifth and some more reasons, you may have a look at the fantastic Droid ad to get a hold.

Heroes

2009-10-07T23:49:00.001-07:00

I'm back to watching Heroes again after almost a year. Just done with season 3.. and I'm surprised that it still manages to keep me entertained without sucking. The story is actually well laid out, and like how they suddenly introduce lots of things in a single episode and then pace it out over the next couple of them.

For me the best part of Heroes has been the voice-over by the character 'Mohinder Suresh', sounds like a punjabi born in a southie household :P, but interesting character nonetheless. His monologues are outstanding for TV quality in terms of content and delivery. Here are some excerpts:

The Earth is large. Large enough that you think you can hide from anything. From Fate. From God. If only you found a place far enough away. So you run. To the edge of the Earth. Where all is safe again. Quiet, and warm. The solace of salt air. The peace of danger left behind. The luxury of grief. And maybe, for a moment, you believe you have escaped.

Where does it come from? This quest? This need to solve lifes mysteries when the simpliest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we would be better off not looking at all. Not delving. Not yearning. But that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here. Yet still we struggle to make a difference. To change the world. To dream of hope. Never knowing for certain who we'll meet along the way. Who, among the world of strangers, will hold our hand. Touch our hearts. And share the pain of trying.

Inertia

2009-08-18T18:26:00.006-07:00

I'm dead tired. Tired with this thing called inertia. And its not the Newton's inertia, that is slightly better. There, if you are in motion, you keep being motion. The inertia I've currently makes me stop if I'm in motion, and makes me stoop if I'm stopped.

It is damn difficult to get out of it, has an over-powering omnipresence of sorts. Now all this sounds pretty whimsical, but heck it is true. I lose my initiative, my excitement and my enthusiasm, pretty soon after it gets back. Not being able to maintain it, I'm tracing the root cause. And I have a strong feeling it is "motivation".

My posts these days are mostly coming out of random conversations with friends. In a recent one, the conclusion was that, there is no motivation because there is no goal. Then again, there is no goal because there is no motivation. In this typically, what you could call, a vicious cycle the thing getting killed is 'progress'.

To break the cycle need a strong, equally over-powering, momentum that can guarantee an uninterrupted supply of motivation without really having to have a goal or a set of goals. The deal is to find it, and google doesn't help. There is a spoon, and there are forks and knives too, if you care to look the other side.

Dhan te nan!

2009-07-09T22:11:00.004-07:00

On a literally infinite loop of the new track from Kaminey, Dhan te nan. It is so energizing. Vishal Bharadwaj is back with powerful music, and I hope an equally intriguing film, looking at his track record. I admire such multi-talented people. The lyrics, by Gulzaar, defy age and convention:

koi chaal aisi chalo yaar ab ke
samandar bhi pul pe chale
phir tu chale us pe ya mein chaloon
shehar ho apne pairon tale
kahin khabrein hain
kahin kabrein hain
jo bhi soye hain kabron mein

unko jagana nahi

....

chal chal sadkon pe hogi
dhan dhan dhan te nan - 3

Blue Jeans

2009-06-23T01:04:00.001-07:00

I wear a blue jeans
That me seldom cleans
I already have a slew
And then I got two new
Blue jeans!

Dark and light
Cross hatched - stone washed
Loose and tight
But that doesn't hide
That its just a blue jeans!

Day in and day out
Otherwise or when in doubt
I wear.. a blue jeans.
Shirts, tees, rounds and V's
But underneath it is
the same old.. blue jeans.

And its just not me,
the world is at its knee
Everybody is stuck with the blue,
many a man tried to unglue
The blue jeans!

Some say, free your mind
Some say, free your soul
I say, unzip and unwind
There are more colors
than the squalid blue!

Spectacular

2009-06-08T18:33:00.012-07:00

Well there are days and there are days. There are days when my glasses fall down literally 10 times a day and they are still, fine and dandy say I. And then there are days, when two sets break to pieces in 2 days after surviving for 2 years.

Well again, there are days and there are days. There are days when lady luck is with me and I sail, walk over water sometimes. Then there are days when a lady, fine and dandy say I, says 'dood if you handle them like this, they are sure to break pretty soon', and they do, soon.

I'm just playing with words here... So, to end it, I got my vision checked again, but didn't want to make glasses at the optometrist ... they are ridiculously expensive (the ones I liked were 390 bucks :S). Luckily found few online things that work out real cheap. I ordered a rimless pair for as little as 47 bucks with shipping :) And the price comes out cheaper than what I'd have paid if had shipped from back home.

Recommended sites:
1. http://zennioptical.com - CA based, but less variety and customization
2. http://www.optical4less.com/ - Hong Kong based, better variety and highly customizable frames. I ordered from here.

You will need an existing pair of glasses/goggles to come up with all the measurements though to make sure you don't end up looking like a 70's Batman. And you'll have to calculate the pupillary distance(PD - the distance between your pupil centers), which can be easily done at home.

Hope this helps someone.

Short attention spans

2009-04-26T12:37:00.006-07:00

There is pandemic, and no...its not the flu, its the increasingingly short attention span. I'm finding it more and more difficult to concentrate hard enough for a long time on something. I get distracted and start doing something else pretty soon. But for me, I have the awareness that I'm affected and I have been trying to counter-act it and the endeavors have more or less been successful. I worry about the kids which are growing on this, and who may not be able to fight this with trivial effort.

General discussion among friends, revealed that many others are also affected by this syndrome, if I may call it. The primary culprit in my opinion is the internet. You would say I'm just passing the buck of blame on something that is not-me..but wait, let me explain why.

With internet, we are getting more and more used to "going through" articles and information. We don't "read" them, generally. And this is for articles, for other web pages we don't even glance, there are nice shiny icons and buttons where are attention is, and we hit them. They are designed so that we just hit them, and don't have to go through reading what to do at that point. Most of the web is designed to be come-and-go type, you are not expected to spend a awful lot of time on the page, and which is design-wise perfect.

But then it has fall-outs. Short attention spans. How many of you can survive reading a 5 page article line-by-line even though it seems ice-creamy interesting? Twitter is a living, thriving and running proof of this phenomenon. It is growing like a parasite on people's inability to read "long" stretches of information (like this :P), and feeding them with short, sometimes incoherent and mostly pointless bytes of data. Twitter seems to be a nemesis of blogging, but its not, its the short attention span. And I wouldn't be surprised if this internet addicted race of ours, in not so distant future would be turned into 10-second-Tom-o-sapiens.

EDIT:

AG provided a link to an interesting article related to this.

Introducing Liquid Dance

2009-04-18T01:21:00.004-07:00

Introducing "Liquid Dance : http://parasail.blogspot.com", a new blog space for my feeble attempts at the thing called "art". Populated already with some pieces that I had been trying for the last few months, and hopefully I'll keep it updated.

Water, glass and light

2009-02-19T00:16:00.006-07:00

Time for change again. This time it wasn't planned. Suddenly it struck to me that one of my recently taken pictures, is a typical blog header. By typical I mean the ones you'll generally see on Wordpress blogs...grass and greenery in general with macro closeup. But I can never swallow a deadpan plain image for a header, I have to dress it up. Gives me a rare creativity kick.

No colors. I was trying the msnbc spectrum glow effect, but it was underplaying the picture, particularly the dew drop in focus. So I decided to keep all the effects colorless. Glassy squares which give a glittery feel, glassy strip with the heading and glowing lines. So here it is; water, glass and light.

If you are the curious type, previous headers are in the pics link.

Dev-astatingly D-elirious!

2009-02-15T03:56:00.007-07:00

The emosanal attyachaar continues. After a week's wait, I finally watched Dev.D. And I must say, it did live up to the hype, if not more.

I have been listening the songs for the last month[1] or so. The soundtrack of the movie is absolutely brilliant, as many as 18 tracks, and they have been craftedly used in the film. They serve as the background score, albeit loud, and take the story forward. Or its the other way round, the story makes a good gel for the 18 tracks to connect to each other. It is the one of the USPs of the film, and has sounds from almost every genre you can think of.

Initially I thought I could predict what-next in the movie, having heard the soundtrack so often. You know, the songs and lyrics give out the film, generally. But I was wrong, and how! Anurag Kashyap, the director, just blows the lids off. The way, the sweetly "yahi meri zindagi" culminates, with a disturbing reverb and the screaming rock version of "emotional attyachaar" climaxes, with 360 degree blurry still shots, is as classy as it gets.

The frames use colors, saturated colors of all shades, heavily. More colorful than what Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas was. There are direct hints to the SLB's version, and its a slap on his face. Dev.D just screams out, how Devdas the character is, leaving all previous renditions miles behind. Performances are good, not a single lame act.

Anurag Kashyap, before a director is a writer, and it shows. The hard hitting dialogues give the movie a in-your-face feel. He uses a lounge dancing troupe to tell the musical story, where he cannot directly use song and dance. He stops the storm of music at a beat, gives a scene, and starts the storm again, superb editing. Making a movie, remade 8 times is no joke. Thumbs up for the creativity!

All said, its five-shining-stars cinema, but may not be a five star entertainment for everyone though. I hope it rakes in enough money so that we can see such cinema grow.

imdb

PS: how ironical is it to see a d-movie on a v-day :)

How to NOT build a PC in 200 bucks!

2009-02-11T01:09:00.002-07:00

Something caught onto me, may be some old d-i-y testosterone still lying around. And then I was just infatuated with this idea of building my own PC. The primary reason is that I'm just sick tired of using the macbook, its all shiny and sleek, but you can't tweak. Well that's as bad a reason could be.

So here I went off in my pursuit of building a decently powerful machine in as little as 200 bucks. I had few things in mind

1. Small form factor
2. Should not suck on my patience like my laptop

Getting point 2 covered was not much of an effort, at least so I thought. So I went web-shopping to get the nuts and bolts. After spending few hours spread across couple of days I realized three things that you shouldn't miss

a. Keep your configuration which "sounds" like made this year aka bleeding edge
b. Get the cheapest one in that
c. Find the one which comes with free shipping!

Point c is very important, you end up getting better stuff for lesser price overall. So based on this I got a dual core processor, 2 gigs of memory, 320g of hdd and a dvd writer and a motherboard which is reasonable enough. (I'm not a gaming person, so I skipped the graphics card and settled for on-board, otherwise the budget would have been over-board).

Now comes the tough problem of point 1. I wanted my desktop to be portable and not look like hey-I'm-from-the-90's boring box. Small things come at a price and I had to shell out a good 50 bucks for a compact case. A little more could have got me really cute cases, but I wasn't building a Wall-E per se.

After the groceries got home, I started with recipe, which last time I had covered in a flat half an hour. But surprise, this time it took me good 2 weeks to get it to work :( Two of the one-in-10-or-100-thousand things happened, damn two of them, how bad is my luck! The RAM didn't work, cause some pompous companies like Corsair make higher frequency sticks than what the spec says (running at 675Mhz instead of 667Mhz) and I learnt it the hard way. I got a Kingston (1000Mhz) finally which is doing great.

And finally I had a working desktop, or was it...the second coming was the the WD hdd, it was just plain dead, and getting it replaced took ten days.

And finally I had a working desktop, or was it...no the Windows CD was not right. I had to replace it.

And finally I had a working desktop, or was it...no the cheap wifi card that I bought doesn't work. I gave up trying to make it work, and settled for a shared internet connection through my laptop :(

And finally I had a working desktop, yes this time for real, with good old Windows(which has caught a malware and already become unsuable as I write, which made me to write this blog in gmail's composer) and the bling with the greeny Opensuse running KDE 4.2.

If you are interested in the details, the approximate break-up

AMD Athlon X2 4200+ & AM2 socket mobo - 90
2G Kingston - 20
320G WD - 50
Slim case - 50
DVD RW - 25
USB Wifi - 15

Round about 250 bucks..not bad eh? So what if my macbook serves as the router.

Emosanal Attyachaar!

2009-01-13T21:46:00.007-07:00

Yeh Dil Pighla Ke Saaz Bana Loon
Dhadkan Ko Awaz Bana Loon
Smoking Smoking Nikle Re Dhooan
.... ....
Tauba Tera Jalwa, Tauba Tera Pyar
Tera Emosanal Attyachaar!

This number from the upcoming Anurag Kashyap's, Dev D, a new age version of Devdas, caught my attention in between all the endless channel surfing. The rock version is equally well done along with this brass band version.

Interestingly I have liked Socha Na Tha, Ek Chalis ki last local, Manorama Six Feet Under and Oye Lucky..Lucky Oye, all starring Abhay Deol, who plays the lead in Dev D.

The White Tiger - w/o spoilers

2009-01-13T01:33:00.002-07:00

Read it somewhere in the papers that its a good book, and while looking for pirated books on the footpaths of Pune(yes I still buy pirated books) I saw the cover, it said "Man Booker Prize Winner for 2008". A quick look gave me a feeling this book should be more than good, so I went ahead and bought the original.

I'm already in the middle of some 2-3 books but I couldn't keep this down. Not a single page is such that you would read through the lines. I finished half of it in my flight back to SFO, considering I doze off most of the time this was some achievement.

Its a story about how a poor fellow, living a destitute life breaks the shell and makes it big. The story narrated in first person devises the character of this guy. A character which is not good, not bad. A gray character in its real sense. Aravind Adiga, the author, brings out the "two" Indias as he says, the dark-still-lagging-behind and the upwardly-achieving, through the life experiences of this central character. And its amazing how he manages to reveal the stark differences. The thick-black-ruthless humor through the entire narrative was first of its kind for me, enjoyed it a lot.

If you are looking to get out of "reader's block" or otherwise, highly recommended. Get free of the Rooster Coup!

Movie review: Slumdog Millionaire

2008-12-08T00:07:00.004-07:00

Very few times does one get to experience such a thing. The exhilaration, the awe and the mesmerization brought forth by experiencing something you very soon realize is extra-ordinary. In these times when Mumbai and the country reels under troubled times, comes a story set in the same city, that talks of hope, love and the human spirit.

Slumdog Millionaire, based on the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup, is from the very beginning impressive. The strongest point of the film would have been the story, but the way it has been executed probably takes that crown away from it. Intelligently crafted by Danny Boyle, from an angle it almost seems like escapist bollywood masala with all the ingredients thrown in.

The director puts the real harsh life in the slums of Mumbai on reel. He is so truthful you wish you never knew it was that bad. The pace of the story is great and there is not a single idle second, making you feel the chill, twitch your eyebrows and put a smile with effortless ease. Camera work is award worthy, watch the starting sequence of kids running in slums, on roof tops, garbage and what not with the camera capturing all the zing through angles you wouldn't dream of.

Music by A R Rehman, period. He is a brilliant background music designer. Actors are competent, the protagonist, Jamal Mallik, played by Dev Patel, does an outstanding act. Anil Kapoor shows the colors with subtlety, Irfan Khan has very little screen time.

Touted to be the best picture award winner, I would be surprised if it doesn't.

Pan's Labyrinth

2008-11-09T19:21:00.004-07:00

I had watched Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy and Hellboy 2, and was impressed, particularly by the sequel. It is strong in art design and visuals, its like watching a comic book fantasy unfold in real.

His Pan's Labyrinth, a spanish language film released in 2006, is a genre of cinema in itself, incomparably innovative and visually spellbinding. The setting of the film is something I have never heard or seen before. A blend of war drama and fantasy or in other words the harsh reality and the dreamy surreal. Its a true Alice in Wonderland.

The story is centered around a little girl called Ofelia, who lands in the middle of a fascist regime. Alongside she lives in this fantasy world which is equally ghastly, but which attracts her. The two threads in the movie keep running in parallel, and they cut just once, in the end. And a very interesting end it is. For the first time it doesn't sink in. The end is different for the two worlds, happy in one and sad in the other.

All the characters in movie are strong, Ofelia with her sheer innocence and the fascist captain with his brutal nature impress the most. The makeup and special effects are top notch. The faun and the pale man, who puts his eyes on his hands to see(!), are petrifying. The film won three academy awards including one for art direction. There are some graphic scenes in the movie, and though partly a fairy tale its definitely not for kids.

I'm amazed by the effort Guillermo Del Toro puts in his films. For this one in particular he did the story, screenplay and makeup. I look forward to watching more of his films alongwith watching this one at least one more time.

Expectations

2008-11-09T12:35:00.002-07:00

Reader discretion advised

I wouldn't generally think aloud, but I thought this might help somebody.

We take some people for granted. We make up a mind about how they are, how they behave, how they'll react and then we expect. Expectations is always the root cause of turbulence. I read a quote few days back which has stuck in my mind. Cause of all bad is ignorance and laziness.

Going back, when we have a certain getup of a person in mind, we make expectations of how they are. And when they cross those boundaries we feel they have done something that was at least not completely right, if not wrong. Why am I saying all this mumbo-jumbo, off-course because I happened to experience one of these situations. For me it wasn't the crossing that bothered, but the way it was crossed bothered me, for a while. It bothered me because I had expectations of a certain stature of behavior. Expectations!

But, if we put ourselves in other people's shoes we realize that they do what they did, because that is the best they can think of. This thinking could be the accounted to several reasons, immaturity, apathy, or plain badwill, or fill-in-what-you-think. There are some other interesting reasons, like a tendency to think gray, these people can hardly think black or white.

So the thing to take from all of this is, don't have expectations. Are you serious, no way! We can't live without expectations, it is what leads to joy, sorrow, remorse, achievement.

So to simplify:

Always do the right thing. This will gratify some, and astonish the rest.
- Mark Twain

It remains to test how much of a hypocrite I am.

PS: If this has given you a tasteless tongue or a squint eye, sorry about that.

The Third Act

2008-10-17T19:04:00.002-07:00

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

- Cutter (The Prestige)

Ooh aah ouch!

2008-09-16T22:43:00.003-07:00

Thanks to a "paan", it came to my realization eventually that I'm suffering from "dard-e-akal"(term courtesy, Kunal), the wisdom tooth. I think it is done growing, so I may escape the torture of removing it, though the dentist doesn't think so. Its buried so deep in, I can barely see, I don't know how in the world they'll remove it! Till the next strike, its a "tu-tu-main-main".

Ooh aah ouch!

Patience is a wise man's crown
Is that why you make me frown
For 25 years you lay buried
And you never had me worried
But now, ooh aah ouch!

You look like a white fairy
But appearances are deceiving,
says Agent Smith
You are now real, and not a myth

Strange are your ways,
You shoulder your neighbors with sways
But hey, listen.
Lets make peace.
Be a good fellow
And you don't have to check out.

Be a bad guy,
And they'll kick you out.
'Cause we are programmed to peace
You can always make love,
But you can never deceive!

Think over it and let me know
And I'll ask them to bestow
Till then, I know
Damn you,
and this ooh aah ouch!

Chai-la

2008-08-13T22:16:00.005-07:00

I have been a big chai fan. I gave away drinking milk pretty early as a kid, and have been hooked to chai ever since. In those days my breakfast used to be chai and biscuits, much to the displeasure of my folks. They still remember how adamant I was for chai, even for a matching saucer with the cup..I used to make a scene if I didn't get phool-wali bashi that is a saucer with flower designs...kids you know!

Over time, I grew, so did my passion for devouring different things with this enticing brown beverage. Diwali used to be fun. Mom used to make a big-daba full of the spicy crispy shevai just for me, and I used to finish it, every strand of it, dipped in chai! Spicy hot things dipped in chai somehow became a feast for my taste buds, and I started trying more and more. Next was my ever favourite chakli. These days I can't appreciate "dry" chakli anymore.

People by now had realized this kid is nuts, except for my cousin, who shared my passion with equal enthusiasm and pioneering spirit. She too new this spice-chai combo was fireworks-y. In fact it was her who introduced me to this new "dish"...the world famous Chitale's bakharwadi with chai! (WARNING: Do not try this at home, you'll die of acidity stroke.)

My experiments went on, much to my surprise I found that (bit salty)chapatis and ghavane(kind of dosas made with non-fermented rice flour) and churmure went equally good with chai. Ready-mix dosa and fried idlis dipped in some sweet chai give them a unique taste, I would recommend these to people willing to experiment :)

And then I went thinking...why did I become a chai person. I thought and thought, and then came a realization. I remember as a kid, watching my Dad, eating white poha(flat rice flakes) dipped in chai, he used to like it then. So its the genes, though they seem to be mostly dormant in him. But I remember him dragging us to a Irani restaurant in Mumbai, at dawn time, after we had just arrived by train, for having a maska-burun(a hard bread, donno if thats the way it is spelt) chai. Not that I regret.

After I started work, it used to be coffee most of the time, I had forgotten dear chai, until I came to Tucson, where my roomie Akshay started making chai regularly...for early morning reasons. And then I had the pleasure of relishing the works of great chai-makers Quadir, Vad & Bhavin.

My current roomies are more of filter-coffee annas. As for me, I have been a bad chai-maker till date, and that makes me really be-chai-n!

Blink

2008-08-05T20:06:00.003-07:00

Its dark, can't see a thing. After trying really hard, I see a light. A white light. Suddenly my hand moves and I feel something warm touch me. I hear sounds, strange sounds. A chill runs down my spine and in a reflex my leg moves and hits something. The pain makes my eyes open wide, and in a flash I see it all.

A coffee cup on my desk, the cursor blinking on the screen and colleagues around, playing guitar hero. And my knee pains thanks to the useless cabinet sitting besides me. A sound lunch can make the boring afternoons astounding!

Enterprises that are going to shape INDIA...

2008-07-19T21:33:00.005-07:00

[Guest post by Vinayak Sambargi]

Enterprises that are going to shape INDIA for the next 20 years

This is not a list of stock picks! The list is purely based on my perception of the way the companies might grow and help in shaping the INDIAN economy in the coming 20 years.

This list is not focused on the companies that would create huge revenues and profits, or massive wealth for their investors. This list illustrates companies that would be the face of the new emergent INDIA, companies that would create newer growth avenues not just for themselves but for the economy. These companies, I believe would also generate huge employment opportunities in INDIA as well as abroad, make tremendous social contributions and be global leaders.

ADAG:

This group of company would be at the helm of the major infrastructure and energy reforms that will happen in the country in the coming decade. From building roads to cities, to building 10,000 MW power plants they will always want to participate.

The communications business will not only remain a leading provider of cellular services but diversify to more telecom businesses across the globe. The company will expand its cellular service business to cater to a huge growing cell-phone service user base. It would provide some most advanced cellular services at highly effective rates. It will target some emerging markets and also make huge overseas acquisitions across the globe.

The energy enterprise will build power plants all across INDIA from gas to hydro to nuclear (coming soon!). It will become one of the largest producers and distributors of power. It will make tremendous contributions to the rural economy by distributing electric energy to many rural parts of the nation. The enterprise will influence the energy policy reforms in the country.

Reliance Industries:

The flagship refining company would grow on to become one of the largest oil refining companies in the world. Their next phase of development would also include setting up refining and distribution setups outside INDIA. Oil would continue to dominate the energy-economy around the world and Reliance would make the best out of it. Their next big growth would mainly come from oil refining establishments outside INDIA. They would also invest towards research towards agro-based oil (ethanol) and some other alternative sources. The company will make huge advancements in the renewable energy space too. The untapped solar energy business will see a huge growth in INDIA and Reliance would be a key player in this spectrum. It will cater to the huge energy demand in the country and across the globe. This would also gain the company some credibility in terms of being an advanced player w.r.to securing energy resources.

Beyond market share and revenues the company would largely influence INDIA's energy policies.

Reliance Retail:

Retail; currently the most poised sector that is attracting huge attention of large enterprises like Wal-mart. Reliance is currently taking the slower approach, but it would soon come in all guns blazing to sweep this space. This business would create an INDIAN Wal-mart, perhaps would even be a better run enterprise; since it would cater to a larger mass and a different economy (more complex) compared to current Wal-mart's market. (One would see case studies based on reliance retail: how to effectively manage 20,000(or more!) stores.) The enterprise would be acclaimed for best in class supply chain and logistics management. It would also create tremendous employment opportunities both directly and indirectly.

SEZ: RIL would go on to create some of the world’s finest SEZ, mainly focusing on cities rather than just industrial centers. With best in class infrastructure and ideal economic environment for businesses to thrive, these centers would become hubs attracting business from across the globe. These centers would also represent the emerging culture of the country. The cities developed would go on to be one of the most excellent and finest in the world.

Infosys, big blue of INDIA:

Infosys would represent the technological face of the INDIAN economy. They will aggressively participate in making technological contributions to the nation. The company will set standards in terms of corporate governance and excellent management practices. The company will go on to become one of the largest outsourcing and consulting company in the world. It might not surpass some of the big IT and management consulting giants but would certainly would be the preferred partner by most of the Fortune 500 companies. It will go on to set higher standards in the IT Consulting and business process management. The company will soon capitalize on the domestic economic growth. The organization might not be a huge enterprise in terms of revenues or profits but it would certainly be the most preferred employer, an enterprise with one of the best corporate social responsibility policies and would set world class standards for management practices. It would also make huge contribution towards the education and research in INDIAN institutions. The organization will make tremendous contributions towards pioneering IT research in INDIA.

TATA:

The TATA enterprise will continue to consolidate its empire of existing businesses and focus on only a few of its best performing assets. (This would mean a few in-house mergers.) They would also focus on expanding globally rather than locally. But they would have a sufficiently large footprint in INDIA too. Their global presence and extensive range of products and services will soon make them a world renowned business enterprise (it is currently too, but it would also be recognized for its sheer size; maybe a Fortune 10 company.) Growth would mainly come from its IT services arm; TCS, Steel; Tata steel, Power and energy; Tata power and Motor vehicle division; Tata Motors.

The Tata group would set fine examples for effective corporate management. They would be one of the best managed multi-national, multi-business enterprises. The challenge for the Tata’s would be to create a management team that would be able to manage and sustain the growth of this conglomerate.

The company will do some phenomenal contribution towards the social development. Their contributions to the social cause will not be limited to INDIA and would go on to become one of the most charitable organizations in the world.

ICICI:

This financial institution has always been on the helm of recent financial reforms in the country and will continue to do so.

The single largest private bank in INDIA will grow on to become a major financial services company in the country. Growth would mainly come from the growing credit appetite of both individuals and corporations, enhanced financial services (mutual funds, forex, insurance and retirement plans, investment banking, investment management), and also largely through micro credit policies. They would find a huge growth opportunity in the rural sector and micro-financing. These segments are currently the least explored by the INDIAN private financial sector.

They will go on to become a highly well managed and most diversified financial firm in INDIA. They will not only provide financial solutions (not limited to banking) to the urban and semi-urban mass but also to the untapped rural mass. Other major growth sectors would be mainly commercial lending (the growing yen for credit by INDIAN enterprises) and overseas banking opportunities. ICICI will not limit it financial services to NRI banking and lending to INDIAN multinationals but would also create a presence in the global banking and financial space.

The main reason for me considering this for the list is not just because of the growth opportunity this company holds but mainly because it would be the financial face of the largest economy (soon to be) in the world. The company’s mettle would be tested when it would have to compete with some of the current world players.

As I mentioned earlier, this list of companies is purely based on my perception of how they would grow as enterprises. I would really love to see all these along with other INDIAN and international companies contribute towards the INDIAN social and economy development.

(The order in which the companies are listed does not represent any form of ranking or favoritism. I hold shares in most (if not all) of the above mentioned companies :) )

take_change

2008-07-11T22:07:00.001-07:00

It was time for change. Cursor was carrying the same look for last one and half years. This time around, I decided to go for simple templates. Hunted to find this gorgeous combination of black and grays. Thanks a lot to the designer and the people who ported this to Blogger, credited below.

In the meanwhile, I have been trying, with really bad results, to get back to painting. One of them, with some color modifications to suit this gray template, is now the header image. Its equally bad, but it has that raw look, which I liked. The previous ones are in the headers album in pictures link at the top of the header.

So, till next comes, its a gray world.

Extra-ordinar-E!

2008-07-04T14:30:00.005-07:00

I have been a PIXAR fan right from the Toy Story days. And in every next release, they have been raising the bar. Their movies are not just technically and artistically marvelous but, they have interesting stories to tell too, that too executed in a manner, even good old movie makers should feel ashamed. Finding Nemo was one such movie where they performed not only good, but the best in every department of movie making, and I believe it was the cherry on the cake.

But, Wall-E takes it to a whole new level. Its the new cherry! A story of a small, inconsequential robot, which is probably the only survivor on a planet. He (yea, its a he, cause there's a she too :) ) keeps doing his routine work of picking garbage and making cubical bricks out of it, that is his directive, his goal in life. And he keeps doing that, for 700 years!

But then something happens...and I'll stop there, I won't spoil a bit of it. What follows is an amazing story of quest for longing, love and spirit.

Technically the film is top notch. Scenes of the desolated planet, the spaceship interiors are surreal. The amount of effort spent on the futuristic technology shown, in terms of robots, machines, their movements is tremendous. The USP of the film is however that, the creators pull off an engrossing tale, with very less dialogue. There is hardly any dialogue in the first half of the movie! It rivals the kind of movie making shown in 2001: A space odyssey with sound, image and actions conveying more than the dialogue.

The first few minutes showing how Wall-E stays on a deserted planet, felt very much like in the old movie "Soldier" starring Kurt Russell, and the later with lots of small cute robots felt heavily inspired by "Robots" from Blue Sky Studios, the guys who made Ice age. But the movie, as a whole is superbly innovative and it has many of its "moments".

Wall-E is truly extra-ordinar-E! Go watch!

Viva La Vida

2008-06-29T00:49:00.004-07:00

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
.......
Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you.
- Fix you

those were the haunting lyrics that got me started with Coldplay. And I have been plugged-in since then. The one great thing that is common to all of Coldplay's songs (discography..a term I learnt recently from Ashwin), is the melody. Their songs are hummable and have a distinctive rhythmic verse...unlike many others in their genre. I was looking forward to their latest album that was getting released, Viva la vida ( which means Long Live Life, wikipedia apparently reported it as Live the Life few days ago). Most tracks from the album have different exotic sounds...right from guitars, violins to even a tabla (or something that sounds like it), and their unmissable meaningful lyrics, other than being melodious.

The title song "Viva la Vida" sets the pace and has an upbeat feeling. "Violet Hill", has a more of a rebellious tune. "Lost!" seems like a sequel to "Fix you" the song which is quoted above...brilliant. While its other version "Lost?" has a piano base. One more that has a literally haunting tune is "Cemeteries of London" which has a captivating music arrangement too. There are more interesting songs in this album...I'll skip talking about them.

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name..
- Viva la vida

These lyrics seem nothing to do with religion, talk about multiple interpretations! Make your own.

I just got lost
Every river that I tried to cross
Every door I ever tried was locked
Ohhh and I'm...
Just waiting 'til the shine wears off
- Lost!

****1/2

More on this album from Bhavin.

Poker

2008-05-20T19:30:00.001-07:00

When you already have "invested" so much there is no point even thinking about a "fold". You keep playing, till you can, either "raising" if you feel the ball can be hit or "checking" if you are not aware of what is happening. And when things are all done, you wait for the "showdown". You wait till you see cards of all players, and hope that the universe is conspiring for you.

And while doing all this, you bear it all without a smirk, without a frown, hence the term "Poker face". All in.

Poker, is so much fun!

Flux Capacitor is now for real!

2008-05-02T15:01:00.003-07:00

Just like there are resistors, inductors and capacitors, presence of another element called as memristor was predicted in 1971 by professor Leon Chau. It took 37 years for someone to develop it. HP labs has done this feat. Memristor, in short remembers the current passing through it and accordingly changes it resistance. The greatest thing about it is that it performs better as you scale it down, meaning high density chips will be easier to make as against what happens when transistors are packed together.

By all that it looks like, it seems to be a revolution in electronics and is going to redefine nano-technology. Here is a intriguing statement by professor Chau,

"The situation is analogous to what is called Aristotle's Law of Motion, which was wrong, because he said that force must be proportional to velocity. That misled people for 2000 years until Newton came along and pointed out that Aristotle was using the wrong variables. Newton said that force is proportional to acceleration -- the change in velocity. This is exactly the situation with electronic circuit theory today. All electronic text books have been teaching using the wrong variables -- voltage and charge--explaining away inaccuracies as anomalies. What they should have been teaching is the relationship between changes in voltage, or flux, and charge."

And surprise. Memristor's technically correct name happens to be "Flux Capacitor". You'll know what I mean if you have seen the "Back to the Future" trilogy. And if the science in that was correct(ahem)..which used flux capacitor as the basis for time travel...Wait a minute, Doc...ah

Tagged, after a long time

2008-04-23T12:24:00.005-07:00

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?
The Great Debaters. Gripping movie, impressive effort by director Denzel Washington. He has pulled off some amazing performances from some new looking faces.

2. What book are you reading?
iWoz, autobiography of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. Its been a long time I'm reading it, and there is still a lot of it to be read. Its the world of an introvert super-geek, interesting read.

3. Favorite board game?
Business or Vyapaar. Known as Monopoly here, incidentally my roomie just bought a set last weekend at Walmart. I have spent literally days together playing it with my friends and cousins when I was a kid. We use to play long-haul games spanning entire weekends!

4. Favorite magazine?
Haven't read hard bound magazines much lately.

5. Favorite smells?
The smell of earth after the drizzle, I'm sold for that. And good food, I keep sniffing...I have a knack of knowing whether the salt is right or not with a smell :P

6. Favorite sounds?
The door bell we have at home, its sounds like a parrot (chic chic chic...hmmm ok, I'm not good at writing sounds), has been there for years now, and gives me the home-sweet-home feeling.

7. Worst feeling in the world?
Uncertainty..when there is an important thing that will impact your life and you are completely clueless about how it'll turn up.

8. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
Without any thinking I snooze the alarm..actually I hardly do that...I disable the alarm, and go back to sleep. Then wake up, intermittently when I hear the bathroom door banging, meaning its occupied and I will get to sleep more!

9. Favorite fast food place?
Radhika on FC Road, Pune. Our ess-pee-dee-pee group particularly used to hang-out there a lot...sipping coffee, eating SPDP and lot of talk. We used be there from evening till it was closing time at midnight!

10. Future child’s name?
Bacchke ki jaan loge kya?

11. Finish this statement. “If I had lot of money I’d….?”
There are some things money can't buy and power can't yield, so forget about it.

12. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
I eat stuffed animals.

13. Storms - cool or scary?
Cool..bring it on, unless otherwise specified and *conditions apply.

14. Favorite drink?
Virgin Pina Colada.

15. Finish this statement, “If I had the time I would….”?
Go back and set those things right.

16. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
I don't eat broccoli...na rahega bass..

17. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?
I wouldn't really dye if I had one color, if only somebody gives me hair like those electric fibres which change color...

18. Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?
Mumbai, Pune, Tucson, Paramus-NJ.

19. Favorite sports to watch?
Not really a sports-watching person, but I like watching tennis a bit.

20. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you?
Natasha...she is a good person and a good friend, and she is pretty good at being friends, her extra-long friend list says it all.

21. What’s under your bed?
Different types of balls my roomie got from career fair. I never ever get even a free brochure there, and he comes home with a bag of things, always.

22. Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Yes, definitely.

23. Morning person, or night owl?
Both is fine, I don't work in any of those times anyway.

24. Over easy, or sunny side up?
Over easy. Hope it means this.

25. Favorite place to relax?
The benches we had in our apartment complex. We used to sit there after dinner, or when the lights were out. (which happened frequently few years back in Pune.) Haven't really found a relaxing place here in Tucson.

26. Favorite pie?
Haven't had too many pies..

27. Favorite ice cream flavor?
Vanilla

28. Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?
I'm tagging TNT & Bala...hope you guys respond.

Once

2008-04-17T14:56:00.010-07:00

I'm not really fond of musicals. Tried watching Sweeney Todd, but couldn't sustain Johnny Depp singing about his barber blade and gave up. But this one, for Once is different. Read about it on Tushar's blog and looked appealing.

The movie has a interesting background. The lead actors are artists, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. "Falling slowly", made by them, which plays through the movie many times, won the academy this year. The movie is directed by John Carney, member of The Frames band, which Glen Hansard is part of.

Glen and Marketa are both amazing as actors, particularly Glen. Both of them are musicians, and how they bond through their love for music, is kind of the story of the film. In brief,

Genre: Musical, Hopelessly romantic.
Music: *****
Acts: Pretty good, I got to know that the lead actors are singers after watching the movie.
Abstractness Quotient^: **
Overall: Recommended

Every song in the soundtrack is worthy of the musical. I've been playing the songs, all day, they just grow on you. Lyrics, mostly by Glen himself are beautiful..here's from "Say it to me now"

I'm scratching at the surface now
And I'm trying hard to work it out
So much has gone misunderstood
This mystery only leads to doubt
And I didn't understand
When you reached out to take my hand
And if you have something to say
You'd better say it now, now

Imdb

^ I should be stating this, 'cause the last movie I saw, I liked it, but many didn't due to high AQ!

Mac quack

2008-04-12T01:24:00.002-07:00

This post is for the make benefit of fellow mac users.

I have a dual boot system, with Mac OS X and Ubuntu running. I had read somewhere that you need to turn off journaling on Mac's HFS+ filesystem to use it from Linux, so I had religiously done that. Yesterday, I used something from my Mac volume in Linux, hadn't done any writes. Today, when I booted OS X, it just refused to go beyond the initial grey boot time screen. I gave it 20 minutes, then I shut if off. I tried it again, gave it 1hr 30min, my patience called off, and I again shut it off. If something was taking so much time at boot, I was pretty sure there was some pain in the filesystem, and turning journaling off was causing hopelessly long recovery times. But I hadn't expected to wait this long! It was getting ridiculous.

Then, I booted Linux, looked for a possible fix. Found a feasible solution, on Ubuntu forums, it was a bit broken so reproducing it here with fixes. Run the following script as su to fix inconsistent hfs+ volumes. You need build tools and libssl-dev to use this, I had to learn it the hard way.

cd /usr/src
mkdir hfsplus_support
wget http://gentoo.osuosl.org/distfiles/diskdev_cmds-332.14.tar.gz
wget http://www.mythic-beasts.com/resources/appletv/mb_boot_tv/diskdev_cmds-332.14.patch.bz2
tar zxf diskdev_cmds-332.14.tar.gz
bunzip2 -c diskdev_cmds-332.14.patch.bz2 | patch -p0
cd diskdev_cmds-332.14
make -f Makefile.lnx
cp fsck_hfs.tproj/fsck_hfs /sbin/fsck.hfsplus
cd /sbin
ln -s mkfs.hfsplus mkfs.hfs
ln -s fsck.hfsplus fsck.hfsn -s fsck.hfsplus fsck.hfs

Then do a "fsck.hfsplus /dev/your_mac_vol". It will take some time, depending upon how much of the fs is screwed, but much much lesser than OS X's boot time fsck. My volume was repaired in around 10 minutes. Reboot, and your shiny OS X should run like a happy kid after a nap.

I simply can't believe that OS X is incapable of fixing its own stuff. If you read the FAT fs code in Linux kernel, somewhere on the top there are two interesting words "fscking l'users", they need to be replicated somewhere.

The Hardest Part

2008-03-31T00:33:00.002-07:00

It was holi last weekend. It reminded me of Mom's puran polis, I used to eat so many of them, my stomach used to go smokin' joes. Our bai used to make them, when Mom was busy with work, but she never got the right taste and crispiness, and I used to cajole Mom to make them herself.

This time I thought of making myself, but it turned out to be a monumental effort. The first difficult thing was getting the "puran", which is the stuffing, right. Its a mix of chana dal and jaggery, and needs quite some work to get the right fineness of the mix. It took me a wait of a night to let it dry properly. Making the flour with the right thickness turned out another adventure. It didn't stop there, rolling out circular shaped puran polis with thin crust seemed next to impossible. Somehow managed to get 5-6 of them correct.

But, they turned out less sweet than expected. At this point, I lost it. So there I was, with two things left, lot of puran and no patience. And then I got a idea. I thought, why not make "karanjis" with puran as the stuffing...it would take much less effort, cause making the cover for karanjis is as simple as cutting circular shapes from the ready-to-cook tortilla. So on a nice sunday afternoon, with coffee jar lid as the shape cutter, I set out to make it to the finish line.

But, these buts...they never stop, the tortilla flour dried up fast, and by the time I was frying the karanjis, some of them started folding out...looking like a time lapse clip of a blossoming flower!

Somehow I managed to get some of them to fry correctly. So now things were right, the sweetness and fineness of the mix, and the hard crispy cover...albeit with a shift-of-origin. What started as a endeavor to make puran polis ended up in the discovery of a new dish, christened puran karanji !

Moral of the story...I knew my Mom was a good cook, but now I realize, she does magic.

The Barber Chronicles

2008-03-13T16:25:00.003-07:00

Every time I go for a hair cut, invariably I get along with the chatter barbers do. And the conversations turn out pretty interesting. Back home, the chat used to be about anything from politics to social affairs to sports. Well, its not that I know a lot about these things, but making a conversation with limited knowledge is not hard, believe me.

When I was in NJ in summer, the barber that I used to go to (well I should say, went to, cause I did that only once in the 3 months there!) was an Italian. He kept telling me about his life, how he migrated 40 years back, and how he eventually started his own saloon. Surprisingly he knew a lot about India, apparently the media there covers stories about India a lot. Probably because of the Sonia Gandhi connection. And then we went into how young India is shaping things here and home, how they are making a difference, and where India is headed. Not that I was spicing up things, but he was surprised.

Today, I had a hair cut again, and this time, the shop owner did the honors, cause others were busy. And he too knew, quite some about India. Here are snippets from the conversation:

Barber(Jesus, spelt as Heysoos): You are from Inn-dia ah? See that guy there, he is from Calcutta, where are you from?
me: mmm..my place is near Bombay.
Jesus: Near Bombay...hmm, its a biig city.
me: yup big and crowded...its like new york
Jesus: Do you play cricket...they play it in Phoenix.
me: yeah theres a tournament held there...i know a friend who plays.
Jesus: We play cricket in Mexico too..its not big like in Inn-dia, England..
me: really? i didnt know that.
Jesus: You know the best match, its between Inn-dia and Pakistan..haaha.
me: thats true, its always interesting, i never miss it.
Jesus: But I hate Australia...
me: why? they are great team.
Jesus: they are gay...they chase all other teams!
me: hahah
.
Jesus: San Jose is a great place..little Inn-dia, many Inn-dians there, lots of pretty girls there.
me: really? i'll keep my eyes open!
.
Jesus: No I won't cut more there, you'll end up looking like a chinese girl.
.
Jesus: With American girls you never know what they like..
me: :-) (what else could i say!)

The Window of Perception

2008-03-12T21:04:00.001-07:00

I'm reading too much poetry these days on fellow blogizens blogs. And its showing its effects, bear one more here. Had a running thought, which I wanted to write down before I lose the strings, and prose wasn't helping.

Perceptions are a gamble,
Thoughts with a fumble,
A cheek with a dimple.
Whatever they are ,
They but, always blur the simple.

There was a cat,
Magic under its hat.
Something has changed,
A bit here and a bit there.
And strings have deranged.

I say, aha
I hear, aah
Or was it the other way around,
Not merry is this go-around.

Its midnight now.
And in front of the forces,
One has to bow,
Fight these coerces,
Is life, and how.

Strive through this night,
Long will be this fight.
And then there will sunrise,
No more deception.
Through this window of perception.

The Darjeeling Limited

2008-02-16T01:52:00.005-07:00

Its been some time since I wrote a movie review. Here is one. The object, "The Darjeeling Limited", is a story of three brothers who find a way to togetherness through a journey, a journey through India.

If you are wondering what the weird name means, its the name of a train that the brothers take in their journey. You need to have a little bit of patience initially, to get on the same page as the director. There are witty one-liners through out and light banter every now then, which keeps the movie a light-weight. All the three actors, who play the main characters do it fine. Owen Wilson, is funny and his innocence in trying to get the three of them together is personified perfectly. Its good to see him do some better roles than the stereotype foolhardy cowboy. And why is he always hurt on the nose, that too with a twisted one!

Few of the scenes in the movie are brilliant. Particularly the turning point of the story, where all the three of them incidentally attend a funeral, where they had missed being at their father's. The movie for a change doesn't show the India generally shown in the western films, with sadhus and snakes and elephants and bazaars. Interestingly, it shows all these elements, but not as typically at the least. There is lot of Indian music in the background score which makes the tone of the movie, but its used a bit too much. The slo-mo shots of catching the train, which remind me of DDLJ, are wonderful.

The other two characters played by Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman are portrayed-to-order. The shift, where they start trusting each other is properly etched. Editing is different, which makes a unique style for the film. Screenplay is amazing with quotes like "We haven't located us yet" and the annoyingly repetitive "Lets take a look at the itinerary".

In all, a good one.

IMDB

Lost in a February song

2008-02-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

February is special. It always rings the bells for me. Its a magical month...though its not often that have I seen the extraordinary happen this time of the year. Its this time, that I feel that life is taking new turns, and it does. Sometimes in my knowledge, sometimes a realization that it did, later. Intuition keeps knocking the door a lot..this time of the year. So February, where are we going, this time around...?

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Till he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life

- from the soulful February song by Josh Groban

Back to the future

2008-02-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

Back to the grind. Things are back to where they were, except for the rejuvenating trip to home. And though I had hoped that my last semester would be a bit relaxed, its seeming to be otherwise. With lots of things on my plate and deadlines and more deadlines its going to be a ride....which I must say is without much choice. Or should I say a choice which I don't have the courage to change. And it feels frustratingly bad when you are in such a situation, 'cause you are not in the driver's seat. A Matrix quote for the context, in the words of the Oracle:

"Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it. I thought you'd have figured that out by now."

The driver's seat reminds me, I can't take it yet...one more of my procrastinations, and on my todo list for this semester. The list is kind of overwhelming but I have started acting on it, with few things in place already, should keep that pace, and I should be more than done.

The trip back home was pretty introspective. It made the "big picture" even more fuzzier. I realized that I knew little about where I might be headed than I thought I did, which is good. Getting back to where I left, lets see how it goes all the way back, to the future.

Gone with the winds

2007-12-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Wrote this in a flight from Tucson to Atlanta...had nothing better to do I guess...just contemplating. I hope the nice lady sitting beside me wasn't reading and laughing at it, when she apparently looked like she was napping :P

Gone with the winds

This and that..that and this.
So was the so called bliss.
When you don't know here or there
They say you'll reach there

Some bitter and some sweet
Memories always remain
Hope we'll meet
When the world is small again

The circle that started
Is coming to an end
The light at the end of the tunnel
the time shall bend

And I'm more than eager
To know the things difficult
For mere mortals to figure
Unless He says, go figure!

Till then there is a black hole
Its dark about its deeds
Till then the mind and the soul
Are gone with the winds

The Milky Muse

2007-12-01T01:57:00.000-07:00

As I had said earlier there are tons of things to write on..but now they have become like pending court cases which are never looked at again. Things should be written when they are fresh. Recreating those experiences in the mind to get the right words out is a difficult difficult thing. After some blogger's block, which I do get very often, thanks to my usually uneventful life...I thought I should write something about the diwali gift I got for myself (yes I'm that bad :P)...a nice, sleek, slim....hmmm...let me put this in better words:

The milky muse...xx99^ bucks
Bumper discount thanks to my friend*, 25%
Ecstasy, joy, pleasure that some dreams in life come true...absolutely priceless!

There are some things in life money can buy, for everything else...no no master, visa, american express won't help. Try consulting the Oracle or H G Wells if you are not technologically challenged...I should be writing in more wakeful hours, or I end up getting disoriented like this...

More on my experiences with the machine soon..unless that too turns into a pending case. nx, it was a pleasure running you, thanks for being there, all the time. You are still the best laptop around, other than the muse offcourse :). The young apprentice will be instructed to take good care of you.

^prices not to be revealed :P
*Karthik, thanks maga! I owe you one, big time.

Kyun apne ap se...

2007-11-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

Was just surfing around, when I came across this trailer of Sudhir Mishra's next "Khoya Khoya Chand". I liked the title song that was used in the trailer, so hunted down the entire song. This song grows on you the more you listen to it. I never had a ear for the "qawwali" genre, but this one blows off. Two other songs "O Re Paakhi" and "Thirak Thirak" are good too. Shantanu Moitra gives some intense music here after Parineeta.

Aj shab jo chand ne hai roothne ki than li
Gardisho mein hai sitare baat humne maan li
Andheri shayh zindagi ko sujhi thi nahi gali
Ki ek aaj haath tham moye haath ki kami khali

Kyun khoye khoye chand ki firak mein talash mein udas hai dil
Kyun apne ap se khafa khafa zara zara sa naraz hai dil
Yeh manzilee bhi khud hi tai karein,
Yeh faslein bhi khud hi tai karein,
Kyun to raston pe phir sehem sehem sambhal sambhal le chalta hai yeh dil

The lyrics are amazing, though I don't understand all this Urdu, hopefully Quadir will help :)

Disclaimer: No puns, similes and metaphors intended.

Talking about times, again

2007-11-07T18:29:00.000-07:00

My wrist watch from the last nine years stopped working. Its just a small gadget, but has been special for me. It was gifted to me by my Dad when I completed 10th. I have literally grown with it. It has been my friend in the changing times. Through the new found freedom in junior college, the blitzkrieg of engineering and then through the ups and downs of professional life and recently through the weirdness called grad life. This little thing meant so much, I didn't change its time after coming here in the US. It kept reading home time. After working day and night, and trying to keep my disorganized self in place, it is done for good.

I hope to get it back to life, after going home. These little things in life, sometimes we attach so much value to them. But they stand for something that can't be explained in words.

Enough sentigiri :P

Upper and Lower bounded by g(n)

2007-10-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

There are tons of things I have to write on. But they can wait. Here is another attempt at being fuzzy, but as Douglas Adams' says, don't panic!

Upper and Lower bounded by g(n)

Lady destiny, the talks we had
Some good some bad
But now I want to say sorry
For all the caused worry.

I didn't see the path
You had laid.
Your noble intentions,
I hadn't read.

I'm grateful to you
for there is nothing like your gift
I'm in awe
of this element, fifth

Here and there,
time and again,
Upper and Lower
bounded by g(n)

Time, and again.

2007-10-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

Summer was fun. Its been a month and a half since my school has resumed, and I have been juggling time. Its not that I'm short of it, I believe theres enough to do all possible things I can think of doing. But my context-switching is slow, time-division multiplexing isn't exactly my forte. Between two tasks there is considerable amount of time wasted in thinking about doing it, getting in the mood for it, and actually starting it. I would call it seek latency (there are always side-effects of technical education, but it feels good when you can relate things in this absurd manner, much to the dislike of many people!) or probably inertia, if you like. But I'm dealing with it, and things are looking...not that bad.

And off-course there is plain tp. I'm a royal tp-er. It takes more leisure time for me to "feel" a break from work, than would be required by most. That further reduces the productive time that I have. And then there are tons of other interests, or distractions if you look from the opposite perspective. Like writing this blog for example, I have a midterm coming up, an assignment due tomorrow is yet to be done, and here I'm, writing this stupid blog. So basically I'm a good time killer.

Putting fuel into the fire is the new found "socializing element". My roomies had been in town whole of summer, and the effects are showing. We have more people coming to our place in a day, than did in a month earlier. Every weekend is a over night party-party. Not that I'm complaining, socializing is the best thing you can do...sometimes, particularly when it is for the make-benefit of your roomies ;)

Amidst all the chaos, I'm feeling more positive than ever. Summer has taught me some things, it was fun.

The Pursuit of Snappyness

2007-08-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu Feisty had me tamed. My distro hopping was down for few months now. Its a great distro, which gives you that rare to find smooth-ride. But I have a big grudge against Ubuntu due to one single thing. Its all i386 code and doesn't feel snappy enough, particularly when my latpop runs on lower frequency of 800Mhz. At 1600Mhz it feels ok, but still not snappy. So I was looking for a able i686 replacement. And PCLinuxOS fits the bill, its a ultra-polished distro. But it has this problem, since the last 4-5 versions that it never completes a shutdown on my laptop. So it was out of question.

Then I read about Fedora 8 test release. I had given up on Fedora for desktop use long back when it was in versions 2 & 3. Something or the other used to be broken all the time. But this time they have changed their minds. Since last version they have started coming up with live-cds, it took them quite some time to realise that stuff in 4 cds can be packed in a single live-cd. And now they also release "desktop" versions which are i686 optimized. Exactly what I was looking far.

So I burnt the stable Fedora 7 desktop live-cd, and took it for a test drive. Liked what I saw, so decided to install it. But I was still skeptical whether it would be good for desktop use. Installation was quick, all hardware running fine, including cpu frequency scaling. I googled how to put multimedia things in place. In a matter of 5 minutes all packages were downloaded and installed by yum ( if there is any contender to apt-get and Debian/Ubuntu's repository size its only yum and Fedora/Redhat). I fired up the browser, flash played fine, so did stage6 divx videos. No copying around plugins or fixing broken symlinks. 5 minutes, and Fedora was running fully loaded! That took more time even on Feisty. I have yet to setup wifi, but with Gnome's Network Manager around its has as easy as it could get. There are some finishing touches that are seen in Ubuntu which are not present, but considering that Fedora has newly ventured into desktop arena, that can be waived.

As for the snappyness, its all there. Nautilus file manager never felt so light nor did the window manager Metacity. Fedora has gained back the lost confidence, and I'm glad. Its nostalgic to see those bluecurve colors once again, which were my very first sights of what Linux looked like way back with Redhat 7. I hope Fedora will soon cater desktop needs better than Ubuntu. But even right now its as good a shining new desktop it can be.

On a side note, with Dell, Acer & Lenovo now shipping Linux installed machines, Linux penetration will definitely soar. And let not those idiots fool you who think you run Linux on desktop just because you want to be different. Tell them to get a better excuse for being out-of-touch with the state-of-art.

While in Rome..

2007-08-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

I engage into this "look at this country" conversations with people often. Its not intentional, just happens. One thing that I have been observing...some people I know have changed, they have crossed over to the other side. Once they use to pick out the fallouts now they don't stop praising the pluses...

So here are few of the "kodak comments" if I may call them. Offcourse these are generalizations on the other side of the coin, and intended to be funny.

"It is like a nursery, and all its citizens are children. They like to play with toys."

"What happens when you give a bike to a kid, he rides it everywhere, even from one room to another. They are like that, they like to drive their cars around".

"Do you see that, its all shiny new everywhere. Be it cars, houses or even people. Thats what makes me sick."

"Everybody dresses in these funny clothes, they want to be part of the mob. You know why? I told you, they are children, they are afraid of being outcast"

"Immigrants that come here try to be like them, they don't want to look out-of-place. They suffer from an unconscious identity theft."

"I feel afraid when intelligent people come here. They dumb down with time."

"There is no such thing as a free market here. Its a choice, that never was."

"What do you mean by a American restaurant?"

"Even the well earning people live a hand-to-mouth existence."

"They have this unreasonable arrogance, even though they may be less educated and civilized than you, just because they think they are special for being born here."

I like this one:
"Peshwai karbhar aahe re sagla..."

I have just one thing to say "Why do as the Romans do? Screw the Romans.". But then I realize, why am I in Rome?

I am living on caffeine

2007-07-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

Ladies & Gentlemen...my blog has been blessed today with an exclusive guest post from a dear friend Vinayak (ise pyaar se log Samba kehte hain :) ) He wanted to contribute to the blogosphere without having to create one more of those single post wonders. I suggested what place would be better than this. So here it is, from the Belgaumite turned Punekar turned Tucsonite & these days a proud Bostonite.

I am living on caffeine

I am sure the title would have had a sparkling smile on someone’s face, at least I hope so. J

As for most people my day starts with a coffee. Being in Boston has introduced me to a wide variety of this drink. I drink it more often than water (at least when I am at work!) I start my day at the kitchenette of my office rather than my desk. Most of the times it is me who brews the first coffee in the morning. (I wouldn’t be surprised if a few folks on my floor might be even disgusted with taste of the coffee.) Well, I think using a machine where you pour a packet of powder and turn on a switch things can’t get really messed up. Using a brewer was a bit tricky for me the first time. The eternal relationship between man and machine made it simple in the first go though. It is usually a medium French roast from Starbucks that I prefer to start my day with. I preferred it for the first time since it did not say de-caffeinated which would have been a bad choice if it were. I am not sure how much this caffeinated coffee helps me control my sleep but it certainly does help me start my day with some activeness! I prefer my coffee with some crème, milk and sugar. I rarely prefer it black unless I want to get some taste of true coffee. A flavored creamer was what I had been missing the most until now. I just got some hazelnut and French vanilla (two of my most favorites). A taste of these creamers gives my coffee a subtle taste.

There is a huge TV hanging in the office kitchenette which is always tuned to the CNBC channel. Being in a finance company you will be bound to see a lot of business news channels. I can see coffee mugs on the desk of the anchors for the Squawk Box. The squawking is so loud at times I wonder how much of coffee or rather caffeine are they on. There are many more people who are hustling around the place to get their mug of first coffee for the day. As a colleague of mine said the other day; everyone loves their first morning coffee. As I listen to what the media has to say about the markets I observe people getting different types of coffees for themselves. Some like if black, some with crème, some with sugar, and everyone has their own unique way in which they like or rather love their coffee.

I was introduced to Dunkin Donuts for the first time at the JFK airport. Frankly, I did not like the taste of the first coffee I had here. But I was truly delighted by the tastes of their donuts. Glazed, Boston kreme, French curl are a few of my favorites. I try to avoid eating too many of them but I still end up getting them while on my way to the office. As I wait in the line for my turn to get my hands on to these sweet treats. I see people walking in and out, grabbing their favorite coffees, something that gets them started for the day. It is also a good time when I see a few pretty faces waiting to get their fresh coffee. A glance and a smile is the most I have been able manage until now. Asking out, not until now (Wouldn’t it be the silliest thing to do; asking a girl out for a coffee in a coffee store! Or maybe I should try it ;-) )

Coming back to me living on caffeine; I don’t remember the last time I had to get up so early and be active (I have always believed in utilizing the morning lectures as my extended sleep hours.) and coupled with my crazy sleeping schedule these days, It becomes exceedingly difficult for me to keep myself active at work. I don’t deny the fact of dozing off while I am at my desk but it happens rarely thanks to the French roast.

Being in the US I have tried a lot many types of coffees until now. So far so good, I have always enjoyed sipping on cup-a-coffee. I also prepare a few different varieties (or versions) of lattes myself. My friends at Tucson might want to opinionate about it. J

Nevertheless, the coffee I prefer the most (n these days I crave the most) is the traditional filter from India. It is a perfect blend of coffee- chicory decoction with milk and sugar. Served HOT. Gosh, the very thought of it makes me feel nostalgic.

- Vinayak Sambargi

A day in the life of an Aquarian

2007-07-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

That old joke about clock-in, take a break, greet coworkers, go to lunch, read the mail, take a break, phone friends and family, cancel a meeting and clock-out is a perfect description of the typical Aquarian work day.

- excerpt from Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper

Need I say anything more :P . Stumbled across this book in the library. Interesting take on astrology.

Teach yourself fun in 21 days!

2007-07-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last 3 weeks have been quite eventful. Colleagues from my last job, boss and a friend were here for an onsite visit. My boss is a connossier of food and drinks. Thanks to him, in the last 21 days we tried our hands at Italian, Mexican, Thai, Peruvian, Turkish & off course Indian cuisines! Only thing we probably missed was Greek.

Of all the dishes, I distinctly remember just one of them. A Turkish dessert called baklava. It gives me those lights and fireworks (if you have seen Ratatouille you'll probably understand what I mean). And then I got to know the history of it, from my boss, who is a mobile wikipedia, wikipedia may be wrong sometimes, not him. So here it goes. Baklava is the one of oldest desserts known to mankind. It was invented by some guys called Assryians, after which it was spread far and wide in the middle east to Europe, from Greece to Armenia to Turkey and the Arab world. Now you may ask why the Turkish took so much to it. Baklava uses pista(chio)s and honey, both of which are considered to cause arousal. I can understand why the Turkish love it so much, though that wasn't exactly what I was thinking, when I said it gives fireworks :P .The image here is definitely not doing justice.

Peruvian food was good too. I had a dish called Chaufa de Pollo, which is similar to a chicken fried rice. But the thing about this restaurant was that they used fruits and vegetables which looked straight out of Jurassic age. Corn seeds were 4-5 times the normal size, and rice looked more like wheat. They were probably using authentic South American vegetables. But I was happy with the fact, that there is one more culture that believes in good spicy food, other than Mexican, Thai & Indian.

Other than the food, we visited quite a few places. In fact I think I know places around in New Jersey and New York a lot more than Arizona, where I have been living for last one year! We drove to the last point of long island, a place called Montauk. Montauk, and many places near it, like the Hamptons( there are as many as North/South/East/Mid/Bridge/Beach Hamptons in Long Island!) are very old immigrant settlements. All of them had a distinct European feel, with windmills & vineyards. Montauk itself was impressive, with lush greenery (which is so common in NY countryside, I'm amazed) and blue beaches.

We were supposed to go to another beach called Rye beach, but we ended up going to a nearby place called Playland. This place is actually called Playland because it has a "fair" there since early nineteen hundreds. Off course now the "fair" is equipped new age rides, though some of them were still pretty old, one of the rides even having a wooden framework. But I stay away from such things, I don't like to play with gravity, and I'm glad that somebody (read Samba) agrees.

And yes, we did visit the popular places like the Statue and few places in Manhattan. The majestic view of Manhattan is plain astonishing. See it to believe it.

All in all, it was great fun.

Kaagaz ke Phool

2007-06-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

Currently into super-movie-watching-mode. I'm literally gulping them. With time to spare and nothing better to do (well, actually there is, but leisure is just too engrossing than solving some worldly problems isn't it? :P ), I watch movies all the time. I wanted to write about many movies, but after some blogger's block, here is a post on the one most worthy.

I had seen Pyaasa few months back. Kaagaz ke Phool can be said as a loose sequel to it, in terms of content. Pyaasa ends with the the protagonist, a poet going into oblivion though his works are famous. Kaagaz ke Phool starts with the protagonist, a film-maker who is widely known and respected. The movie begins with the twilight period of the film-maker and it goes into a flash back. Some of the shots in the beginning sequence are too good. Like this one, where he is looking at the mascot of the studio, that he once gave shape, but now stubbornly stares at him.

There is a great use of light and shadows, in this beginning sequence and also throughout the film, as is in any Guru Dutt film. This man was undoubtedly a master of shadows.

The picturization of songs is extra-magnificient. Superb use of camera techniques and lighting, particularly in the song Waqt ne kiya...This song is an exercise in film making, with performances by Waheeda Rehman and Guru Dutt, the lyrics, the music, the light-shadows, the camera techniques including some novel styles like morphing. The combined effect is spell-binding. Waheeda Rehman is so good in this movie, I would not wink an eye to say that this is best performance by an actress I have ever seen, fetas off to her!

Guru Dutt, as in Pyaasa, plays the dejected, miserable man. But in Pyaasa, there is a happily ever after, in this there isn't. Its melancholic and almost autobiographical. In the film the protagonist, a film-maker, mentions that he would not direct any more films if the one he is making flops, and that happens. And that happened in real life too, Kaagaz ke Phool was the last film Guru Dutt directed, at least officially.

The film's music, by S. D. Burman is not as extra-ordinary as Pyaasa, this can be attributed to the fact that Pyaasa was a poet's story. Lyrics by Kaifi Azmi are deep, the two songs Dekhi zamane ki yaari, and Waqt ne kiya.. are part of history.

IMDB
Lyrics
Guru Dutt

Life in a...Metro, the music

2007-06-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

Melody. Punch.

After a long time, a complete rocking album. Life in a...Metro, is the movie album I'm talking about. Each and every soundtrack in the album stands out. Its a breather in the current phase where there is an absolute dearth of some soulful music. Pritam is creating magic, starting with Gangster, Bas ek pal & Woh Lamhe. The difference this time is that the movie is actually almost as good as the music. Earlier ones didn't deserve some of the superb tracks they got.

In Dino, the starter, is a continual chart topper. Though I didn't like its revisited version, which sounds like a terrible remix. Then there is Alvida, in the dreamy voice of KK; this song two versions, each in different mood. KK's is like a nostalgia while the one by James (the singer that looks like some rock star, and who appears in almost all videos in the film) has a angry hard-rock tone and lot of guitar interleaved. O Meri Jaan, has one of finest "woo-hoo" pieces. Baate Kuch Ankahi Si..is a melodious track. It has as many as three versions. One crooned by Adnan Sami, in his typical heavy swinging voice, one of his best. The revisited version is fast paced with beats thrown in, sounds more poppy. The third one, called unplugged, is slow and soulful, with just mouth organ and guitar, this is probably the best track in the album.

Rishtey, too has two versions. One by angry man James, and the other by DJs Naved & Nikhil Chinappa (the channel v vj, his name turns up in number of good albums!) which is a total remix style, but sounds good. And finally there is Kar Salaam, which is shown at the end of the movie, where the different stories reach their culmination, some end in happily ever after, some don't. The song is like a commentary on life, and has that introspective feel.

kho jaana, pa jaana, na paana, hai jindagi jaan le
bik jaana, loot jaana, bass jaana hai jindagi maan le
ho ho ho karle yakin, jo kal gaya woh phir se aata nahin
ho ho ho gujra huva jo waqt hai woh dastak lagaata nahin
jo aaj hai bass wahi hai tera - 2
ha kya teri hasti hai, mitti ki basti hai
pal mein hi ho jaati hai yeh fanaa
kar salaam - 4

This album is a collector's item.

For many many days

2007-05-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

Its been ages since I wrote something that made sense. This is not a try at that.

For many many days,
its been like this
the unassuaged slumber,
the zeal amiss

just carrying on
with a forlorn hope;
but the days are gone
when there was kaleidoscope
for many many days...

the virtual life
reliance and skype;
the strife
for simple things in life,
and I thought it was just in the movies
for many many days...

there were reasons,
now known unknown
but, a few more seasons
and a few more reasons
the lid shall be blown;
the thoughts, they keep swinging
I keep saying, "What were you thinking?!"
for damn many many days...

Piled Higher and Deeper

2007-04-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

Jorge Cham the creator of PhDcomics was visiting our university and luckily I was free today. It was a really nice talk, he is a great speaker with a very good sense of humour and timing, much like his comics. And to believe it, this guy is a Standford graduate and now a faculty at Caltech! His topic was "The Power of Procrastination", and I actually follow it quite well :P In his words, there is a difference between procrastination and laziness. When you are lazy you don't want to do things. When you are procrastinating you want to do the things, just that you don't want to do them now :)

I have a ton of things to do yet...before leaving for the summer internship...get a credit card, get a phone, new i-20, ra work and the remaining of the projects and exams. It just never ends.

Movie reviews

2007-04-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Saw some really good movies recently in the spring break, wanted to write about them since some time.

Started with the stunning 300. Its a new level of film making, as some critic said. A visual masterpiece. This movie establishes Frank Miller's work as a school of film making, starting with the equally astounding Sin City. Following that, I watched The Illusionist. A decently devised script which reveals itself in the end, and keeps the watcher guessing. But the magic tricks shown in the movie are simply unbelievable. The movie has a authentic victorian look, which works great for the story.

The next in line was The Prestige. A movie with a very Christopher Nolan touch to it. He is the same guy who made Memento and Batman Begins. He has this new way of editing movies, that which makes 3-4 timelines out of the movie to run in an interleaved fashion. And the effect is phenomenal, watch Memento to believe it which has this concept stretched to its extremes. ( It appears like a re-entrant, recursive asynchronous, multi-threaded application..if you know what I mean!) The Prestige has a great story, a very human one with a sci-fi topping. The sci-fi part, where the story brings in scientist Nicholas Tesla(the one who invented AC electricity) blends historical events, giving it a realistic appearance. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale give great performances as rival magicians. In a Nolan movie you have to meticulously listen to the dialogue, and this movie is no exception. There are hints and traces in the dialogue throughout the film. A must "must watch".

Then came Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, a 80s or 70s film. The story is that of the conversations in a board of jury who are appointed to decide whether the accused is guilty or not. Initially just one person believes that the accused is innocent, and how he convinces the rest is the matter of the film. The concept is nice, but hasn't been handled in the way it should have been. Many characters are very loud, and most of the time they make senseless conversations. But still a good, hatke oldie. Its said to be a remake of some 12 Angry Men.

More in the queue are Aeon Flux, Dark City, Equilibrium, Before Sunrise & Before Sunset. It is only a matter of when.

What a Feist!

2007-03-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

The distro hopper, hops again. I have been using Zenwalk for quite some time now, almost 5 months...wow, thats a record of sorts, I don't really stick with a distro that long. But Zenwalk has had me. It still does. But just out of curiosity (which eventually killed the cat!) I decided to try Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn alpha release 4 (called Herd 4). This is its story.

I was never that impressed with Ubuntu, it always goofed up something or the other on my laptop, in spite of boasting very good hardware support. But Feisty provides state-of-the-art out-of-the-box hardware support. And in spite of not liking Gnome I'm using it since 2 weeks now.

Firstly its not that slow as it felt in previous releases, compared to other distros. It could be because I'm using the 64-bit release which could be bit more optimized compared to the standard x86 one, which is i486 (though the release claims i386). Feisty has great ACPI support. The laptop fans turn on and off at the right time, on my HP laptop's buggy ACPI bios support. The frequency scaling is perfect. Full marks here.

Other hardware like ATI graphics card, touchpad with scrolling, ethernet, usb everything works. USB plug-in and plug-out gives nice balloon messages on the desktop, and a single click on a device name mounts it. CDs, DVDs autoplay. Installing wifi drivers using ndiswrapper might be bit tricky for novices, but thats the only hitch. Again you get all Windows drivers to be used with ndiswrapper on Ubuntu's extraordinary package repository. So even that should be fairly easy for newbies.

Multimedia keyboard support is surprisingly better than in Windows XP! Theres also layouts of Indian languages installed by default...though I'm looking for phonetic layout which is much easier to use.

The wow is now
Play a .avi file that needs some xvid video codec. The media player initially says it doesn't find the right codec. Ubuntu then spawns a search in its repository by itself, finds the right codecs with all dependencies, downloads and installs them on a single click. The media player now plays your file, flawlessly.

NetworkManager applet in gnome now gives a list of wifi networks in range, and you can connect with one click, with WPA/WEP support. Its as good as it can get.

Other work around that is needed for 64-bit are running Flash, which is still doesn't have a 64-bit version! There is wonderful thing called nspluginwrapper that wraps 32-bit plugins and runs them under 64-bit Firefox. Ultra neat.

Suspend and hibernate worked initially, though I did something due to which it no longer works...still have to find out. But it should work on most machines, as it worked nicely even in past releases.

Overall, this release nails all things right in place. Finally Linux is ready for the laptops, its been for desktops since ages, but laptops need lot of good hardware support to work efficiently, and its in very good shape now. With open source community offering free development of drivers to hardware firms, on providing the specifications, the reverse engineering effort behind that should reduce, and we'll see much more hardware that supports Linux from its very first release.

Guru Dutt's Pyaasa

2007-01-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

I don't like to watch movies alone. I was coercing my roomies for the last 6 months to watch Pyaasa, which was lying on my drive since I left home. But finally I decided to watch it alone, "forgive them, for they don't know what they do..."

Pyaasa is a masterpiece, a benchmark in cinema. No wonder its in the Time's greatest 100 films of all time. Regarded as Guru Dutt's probably finest work alongwith equally laudable efforts by the lyricsist Sahir Ludhiyanvi and the music maestro S. D. Burman. The story is of poet's journey as he discovers the ways of the society. And the lyricsist makes sure that every verse is attributable to a celebrated poet.

The cinematography is very very novel for those times. The angles used are very unconventional. And there is heavy use of those shots where the camera goes from a distance to close-up. It eventually became famous as "the Guru Dutt shot".
The use of light and shadows is impactful. Guru Dutt tries to convey a lot just from the lighting of the scenes. The scene where he comes up from a river bank after knowing about the loss of his mother and the climax where he stands in the theatre door, portray deep thoughts. There is also a scene in the elevator where the camera goes to Mala Sinha's reflection on the metal interiors which then blends to a flash back, very innovative.

Guru Dutt weaves the story, verses and songs together and every song (except the Sar jo tera chakraye...) has a narrative. There are lot of silent moments in the film, and eyes are the only expression. Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rahman as actors are tremendous, and they make the film's technical expertise more than worth the effort. Though Guru Dutt's signature raised eyebrows are used a bit too much.

Music is the life of the film and S. D. Burman delivers few of his greatest pieces. The meaningful Aaj Sajan Mohe..;
the introspective Jinhe naaj hain Hind par...;
the saddest ever Jaane woh kaise log the jinke..;
the melodious Hum aapke ki aakhon main..;
the light hearted Sar jo tera chakraye and
the climactic and impinging Yeh duniyaa agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hain...
Its a true musical.

IMDB
Lyrics
Guru Dutt

Grand Canyon & Vegas

2006-12-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

I was pretty udaas. There wasn't anything to do in the vacations. And out of nowhere, a trip was planned to Grand Canyon & Las Vegas, at the 11th hour.

Road trips are facinating, you get to see a lot, and even more when you are in a foreign country. We, Sanket Samba and me, started off early morning from Tucson, had chai at Sanket's friends' place in Phoenix, which is around two hours from here. Its a big city, supposedly 4th or 5th largest in the US. Multi-storey flyovers, never ending malls, its a sight, particularly in the night.

It was already chilly in Phoenix, and as we went on our way ahead towards, Flagstaff, thats another big city in Arizona, it was already snowing! My very first experience with snow. Surprisingly it wasn't as much cold as I thought, though it was snowing. Grand Canyon is about an hour from there. And that entire journey from Flagstaff to the Canyon felt like a ride in Serbia or something. Thats probably 'cause Russia is the thing that pops to my mind when I think about snow ! Light flakes tossing in air, foggy coniferous trees and dark clouds. Every thing I saw was now a 'kodak moment', and we did take quite a few snaps.

Grand Canyon though wasn't what we expected. The snow and the fog made the grandeur disappear. All we could see looking down the valley was dense fog. It was like haath ko aaya par mooh na laga :P We satisfied ourselves with the fridge magnets :s

After that we proceeded towards Las Vegas, it was some 4 hours drive. And we got to go through the historically popular Route 66. Its one of the oldest highways in US, theres a nice digital depiction of it in the recent movie Cars.

Entering Vegas from the Arizona side is an extraordinary experience. You can see the vast expanse of Las Vegas all glowing with a million lights, so much so that it creates a glow in the atmosphere, its something better seen than described. You also get to see the Hoover Dam at the outskirts, which I somehow found not that interesting. The funny thing you notice there is a clock on one side of the dam that says Arizona time & on the other side there is the Nevada time, and you gain/lose time just by crossing the line. This way we gained one hour while entering Vegas, and arrived just in time.

Once in Las Vegas we hurried to catch the free shows of various casinos. We caught the "Fountains of Bellagio" right in time. Its a fountain dance in the lake around the Bellagio casino, it was shown in Oceans' 11 in the scene where everybody meets after the robbery. After that it was already late and we missed the show at Treasure Island, another big casino. The casinos in Las Vegas are all located in an area called "The Strip" and its as grand as it can get. Places like MGM Grand, New York, Paris, Bellagio, Venetia are enormous and a dish to watch, all decorated with their own "themes".

Wandering around we had entered Venetia(Venice) casino, and what we saw inside was astounding. They had created a Venice like theme there, with the canals, boats, small bridges and daylight! A skylike ceiling diffusing light as if it was a day, just too good.
Though with just 2 hours to roam around, we didn't play anything nor did we try any other adventures, if you know what I mean ;)

We stayed at my roomie's brother's place, he works in Vegas!! Next day we took the road back to Tucson, going through Flagstaff again, which was experiencing snow-meltdown. A great trip, but such that it has left us to visit those places again. Vegas again, 'cause we rushed through it and GC again 'cause of the snow.

And now something about "Exit 42":
On the highway I saw a lot of signs saying exit number this and that. And it clicked to me that a pic of "Exit 42" sign would make a rare & novel snap. But I had already missed Exit 42 on the route, and people said that the next sign would occur ahead of Tucson. But my luck was good, we stumbled across "Exit 42" in Phoenix! It doesn't end here, in a moving car, in the night, I just couldn't get a neat snap of the sign, and again I was left high and dry. Theres always next.

Upgraded: continued

2006-12-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

The new header is ready. This time its been more of lethargy on my side. But anyway the outcome isn't all that bad and so I decided to go ahead with it.

This time no GIMP, everything is Photoshop created. Whatsoever I do I end up with blues and greens, donno, probably other colours just don't get to my taste. I wanted the typical scribbled type of font for the heading, but something that looked nice too. So here it is, the title with 2 fonts from dafont.com, the first letter and last in Scriptin font for the cursive-curvy look and rest all is Journal font. Fortunately these two fonts look good with each other.

For the image content theres the sign board saying, "Exit 42". It has a bit of something behind it, which I'll say in my next post. Why the number 42, why not 41 or 43 or 434534523? For the uninitiated read here. After putting the sign board I was a bit confused, but after wandering around the images on my computer, I found the perfect fit to fill the rest of the space. So to the right of the sign board you see the celestial looking way...which goes to wherever you want it to be, cause the answer to all things is 42.

These are the transitions, 1 2 3 4 ,till date with 1 being the most recent.

Upgraded to Blogger Beta

2006-12-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

Had some free time, after a lot many days. I had wanted to move to Blogger beta from the classic blogger for days particularly for the tagging feature. So that I could categorize the posts, earlier I had tried this using a blog-search feature, where you can specify search strings to the blog-search url. Offcourse for that you needed to have those "tag" words in your blog.

The new & improved Blogger has cool new features, and I am impressed. The ease of which you can customize your blog is amazing. These guys really know what people want.

So now you can see the Labels, on the left. I took all the pains of tagging my 132 odd posts! There are new features to add custom html/javascript through the Blogger interface. One can also add random images/text and place it anywhere on the page, just by moving it on the Blogger interface. Some really cool AJAX i guess. And i could add Zenwalk button and the page hit counter through that...absolutely no css sheet editing by hand. This really is Web 2.0, super cool.

I say this again. Hail Blogger!

I have lost the previous artwork though, had worked on it quite a lot. Anyways it was time to change the look again...

[To be continued...when the new header is ready]

Don-ning a new look

2006-11-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

Finally ! I saw a movie at a theatre after being more than 3 months in the US. I had to miss "Lage Raho..." screened at the university theatre due to exams. This time I didn't want to miss, any hindi movie that would release at the theatre. This is how I got to go to "Don - The Chase Begins again" in spite of having read and heard bad reviews. I went with little expectations.

The movie began with a Bond like entry of Don. The titles are the best I have seen till date in Indian cinema. In fact I would rate the title sequence in the top few I have seen, others in the list being those of Catch me if you can, Spiderman and Matrix.

The all green, line-frame graphics of roads, tunnels, bridges...and the final part where the Kuala Lumpur towers in green frames blend to actual video, neat! You have got to see them, to appreciate the effort.

The casting of the movie is a very well thought of endeavour, with the exception of Kareena as Helen, she feels like a fish out of water. SRK, though I haven't really liked majority of his work, carries the burden of all-complex character pretty well. I don't know, from where Farhan Akhtar dug up Pawan Malhotra from, he was missing from big screen since ages. He does a very fine, calculated Narang. Other characters also fall in place with their characters.

The cinematography is world class, most sequences are grey and green filtered, like those in Matrix movies. The stunts are impressive, but putting them over the edge would have helped the movie a lot. The car chase where Don is supposed to die, is great, and you see the director's action shoes. He does those multi-angle shots, like those in The Hulk, and breath-taking car stunts like those you might have seen in Vin Diesel's TripleX.

Music-wise Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio make a mark. They put their own techno flavour in the old songs. The orchestrated theme music is grand, again for the first time I have heard such orchestration for theme music in Indian cinema. The title song, Main hoon Don has its own grandeur; the style, the velvet, the groove.

Its a tremendous effort and that shows. The movie is already a top grosser over Lage Raho, and some hollywood studio is remaking it. Farhan Akhtar does a hat trick.

This Diwali & Eid

2006-10-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

This was the first time I spent Diwali without being with my family. I really missed being with them, with my friends. As TNT said, it is when you miss your family that you understand how important they are in your life.

I missed that early morning aura of Diwali...the light, the sound, the smell, the feeling, its just inexplicable.

My roommate Sagar's mom had sent faral, so I didn't miss on that. And we tried to create some mood by putting up lights as kandil. Eid was grand, Quadir (my other roommate) made royal feast with sheer kurma, gulab jamun and vada pav. He is just too good a cook, be it veg or non-veg. And blessed are we, his roommates :)

With my midterm course work wrapping up just before Diwali, I could enjoy the short vacation. Saw movies (yes, back at it!) back-to-back. Sahara, Cars and Memento. Sahara is good for a lazy afternoon. Cars is nice, but it didn't appeal as much as recent PIXAR movies. Maybe the laptop screen stole some of the magic.... should have seen that on big screen.

Memento, its a masterpiece. Me and Sagar spent like an hour after watching it, discussing what actually happened in the movie and what the real story was. Finally we still had some loose threads, so we looked it up on the net...and got a really detailed explanation. But that critic too couldn't decipher the entire movie. We almost figured most of the things. One hell of a movie. A must must watch. This movie has raised my interest to watch Batman Begins, made by the same director.

Virtual Reality

2006-10-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

Its been 2 years...for the blinking cursor, and around 130 posts.

So it seems the "time to post" stat is pretty good. This is a MIS course fallout that I have taken this semester. It keeps talking about "time to market" and stuff :P

In another course we had a paper on Virtual Machines. The concepts mentioned in there are so very relevant even now. In fact many of the suggestions/ideas in that still remain to be implemented. This is probably because the VM related research grew with IBM taking plunge into it years ago...they had systems to handle DOS, OS/(whatever) virtual machines, they even had a firmware to assist in virtualization ! And then somehow the research dwindled.

And its back with a bang...after a long time. As our prof says, in CS things keep moving in circles. Right now its VMs and multi-cores. The virtual machine monitor that was planned, which ran on the hardware and presented an illusion of multiple copies is nowhere to be seen, even after these many years. All we have is a host OS hack, VMWare, Xen, VPC, Qemu anything right now does not run on raw hardware. If somebody manages to do that, I think the best possible performance can be expected out of a VM.

With this all VM thing around, I tried using VMWare Player, its a gem of a VMM. It looks like a Acrobat Reader for the VM appliances, but beware it isn't. Playing with the .vmx file can give you anything you want, right from creation of new appliances. In fact there are online .vmx generators that "manufacture" the hardware you want ! And offcourse since it is meant to be Acrobat Reader type thing its absolutely free!

Last farmaish

2006-10-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

Ajnabi shehar hain.....ajnabiii..sham hain

Sonu Nigam's ultra melodious song...i am all over it. Other songs from the same album, Jaan-E-Mann are good too. I liked Ek din fursat main from Zindagi rockss too. Its become impossible to track whats "happening" back home. Why home, its impossible to track things here too. The workload is just too much. Just came out of a project submission followed by 2 midterms all in a span of 2 days. Just surviving, or may be not.

Jaan jaati hain to jaaye
Chota sa to risk hain...

I can't stop ranting about things happening with me, but I am going to blow it all off, as my project partner, who shares some of the hard luck, says in his distinctly Tamil accent "whu chares?" :)

Hope that things will come back on track...lady destiny where are you.

Tuti futi shayari main...
Likh diya hain diary main
Aakhri khwaish ho tum..
Last farmaish ho tum...

Gulzaar, he is as evergreen.

Frantic..

2006-09-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

Things are moving at a frantic pace...homework after homework, the bombardment is ON. Projects are surfacing, and mid-terms are near. My head is getting heavier by the day. As if to test my time management skills, my campus job will begin next week!

Digressing, i had written a mail to eSakal.com to start RSS feeds, the response was positive, so thats good news for all you Sakal lovers.

Hello Mr.Parag,

Greetings to you!

Thank you for your eMail and for your keen interest in eSakal.com

We are happy to inform you that eSakal.com is working on starting RSS feeds. In future also, eSakal will introduce new utilities and facilities for its knowledgeable audience.

Regards,

Webmaster,
eSakal.com

TP time slot exhausted;
Context switching to homework process;

:)

Maxthon, the power browser

2006-09-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

Its been quite some time since i wrote a technical post.

Browsing takes up a sizeable share of the time I spend on my computer. And when I spend so much time on a browser, its my expectation that the application does what it is supposed to do, do it well, and do some more too. There are very few browsers that fit this category...IE and Firefox don't fall here. Firefox doesn't cause its a great browser for me when I put some 10 plugins that I need. And I dont like putting plugins, it costs time....

So the one that fits the bill is Opera. It has everything, by default that I need from a browser, like auto form-fill, RSS feed reader, interface customization. But it falls short of rendering all sites correctly, such as orkut.com, or sites with unicode text, like the regional newspaper site esakal.com. So I tried playing with a different category of browsers...those based on IE. These applications build a lot of functionality expected from a modern browser and use the IE engine for rendering. Most sites are designed to work on IE. So you get perfect rendering, plus loads of featuers no there in IE.

I tried using Avant browser for some time. Its good, its fast, very customizable. But I found it a little buggy (tabs switching use to cease when a tab is loading a heavy site) and cluttered. But till now it was my rank 2 browser, 1 being the indespensable Opera. 2-3 days back I tried Maxthon. And it has been my browser of choice ever since.

Its a IE based browser, supports tabs, RSS feeds etc. Since it uses IE engine the rendering of all sites is flawless. It feels light, the interface can be customized to an insane extent. Like Ctrl+F11 toggles the menu bar! It has these great shortcuts, that you can almost surf without the mouse, and you save a lot of time. It comes with a weather sidebar thats really nice, and you get the Roboform form-filler bundled. The super-drag-drop feature is its USP.The other coolest thing is that it can change the rendering engine itself, it use the Mozilla foundation's Gecko too! You have to use it to believe what it can do.

Maxthon, with unwanted toolbars gone, even the menubar.

Maxthon is a power browser in the true sense, and I can see myself using it for some time, though the latest Opera comes with neon-light features like widgets(mac like) and .torrent handler!

Update:
It seems Maxthon people are working very very hard. I found ver 2.0 (preview version) and its kickass...a snapshot should say all:

The Ganpati season

2006-09-03T02:51:00.000-07:00

Its Ganpati time, i would have been having a blast celebrating the festival(not the right word, but couldn't think of anything else) back in Pune. But in here too we are having some fun time. Indian students here arranged a aarti-session lasting 7 days. Everyday at somebody's place(offcourse those who are enthusiastic about it)...and it was our turn this friday.

We had planned that around 20 people would come, looking at the turn-out on the earlier day, but were taken by surprise when some 38-40 turned out ! It became a bit testing for us to manage the catering. For the occasion a friend who lives nearby & me had prepared the special pujecha shira, and my roomie made rose-syrup-shake. Both the items turned out real well made( i know that i am a good cook :) & as Ameya puts it, "CS che loka husharach astat !") and got quite some appreciation from the guests...The aarti-sessions turned out real good social gatherings, you get to know someone new everyday.

Got a job at the library, but hoping to get something better than that. Its the long-weekend weekend, and i have got to do a lot of homework. And my creativity is down, i couldn't even think of a better title to this post.

Written in GNU nano: not a bad editor.

Crap

2006-08-31T02:05:00.000-07:00

Its 2:oo AM in the corner of the screen...and i am still not sleepy.

Damn, AARRRGHH, shit, fsck, crap....whatever you call it, i'm feeling that all right now, even though there is this ultra-melodious "are re are" running in the background. I dont see the light at the end of the tunnel, theres no silver lining to the cloud and theres no Santa ! Damn !!

Somehow the thoughts flow more easily when I'm not in the right mood...should have used it to write something more sensible than this crap...see i cant stop using these words. A friend i made here, said some days back "sometimes you may feel why the heck am i here, away from home, from a life that seemed so much on the right path", and god, I didnt know such a time would come so soon...

Life, joke it is not
Coke, it might be
Dont let it fizz out
Kyunki yeh dil maange more...

Now you know what a disoriented mind is capable of :P

Take off..

2006-08-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Classes have begun...the profs are getting into mood with every progressing lecture and so is the homework getting on the rise. Its been like just a single lecture of a course and i have already read 2 research papers ! I am scared.

Still don't have a job. So its just 7.5 hours of "official" workload for me for an entire week. Making dinner & keeping the apartment clean is becoming a daunting task day by day. The good part is that me and my roomies haven't screwed a single dish yet and we do manage to make some delicious food. I am amazed at my cooking skills. I must have made almost all frequented sabjis , and believe me they tasted real good.

Our once unfurnished apartment now has a TV, VCR, DVD-player, a gorgeous corner lamp, a couch, 2 microwaves, 2 phones, a blender, a fan and 6 chairs ! All of this in around $100. Beat that. Offcourse most of things are used, some are thrown-away ones and none is new :P

My roomies are net addicts and my machine happens to run Linux most of the time. So I am forcing them to use it...just some service for the open community you know :D That reminds me that I have yet to name my 8 month old machine, a HP branded 64 bit lappy...can't think of a good name.

Forgot to mention the interesting thing. Its like hot, real hot in here in Tucson. That makes the loitering around in the campus a "sight-seeing" venture, and oh what a sight !

Mount Lemon and Tucson

2006-08-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

With nothing todo other than looking for jobs online and doing some minor chores at the university its getting freaking boring by the day. This weekend was a good relief from the everyday stuff. We arranged a trip to Mount Lemon, its some 30 miles from Tucson.

Its scenic all the way right from the point where the first mountain starts and you enter the ghat. For the first time i saw zig-zag roads and blind u-turns in the US...but i guess there isnt any option when you are making roads in steep mountain ranges. The first few hills that come along the way have a characteristic desert feel to them. As far and below you can see there are just cacti and white-chrome-yellow sandstone type rocks. But since it has rained for atleast past fortnight or so it was pretty grassy all around.

As the elevation started rising to 5000 feet it got all cold and windy. The mountains started looking very very green. The cacti were replaced by conifers and there were waterfalls around ! The transition in surroundings surprises you, as desert now turns into European landscapes. When we reached the farthest top at 8000 feet it must have been 8-12 deg celcius. A phenomenal drop from what the temperature is down here in Tucson.

Mount Lemon probably has the name cause of yellow rocks that are present there in abundance...a lot of sulphur probably. And yes I forgot to add I was enjoying all this in a convertible...

Tucson, though painstakingly hot in the noons is a ultra scenic place. The clouds everyday manage to make a vista with the Catalina mountain range to add more colour. This is the first place that i have ever seen that has a sky such that once can see literally 2-3 levels of clouds...those far down upto those far up. The evening sky these days is red-blue-gray all at the same time....

Due to clear sky there are numerous observatories positioned here. Eye candy is infinite, but but but I dont have a camera...I am in one of the most beautiful towns and I dont have a camera. And I dont have a job...so that explains.

Getting some momentum

2006-08-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

The plane is getting some momentum, still not off the runway though...

After getting literally spoon fed at our seniors' place for nearly 10 days, we have moved to our new apartment. And getting all cosy with the new place, its nice...with a verandah and all.

In the meanwhile things here are shaping up. Me getting a feel of life in Tucson now, after figuring out wheres, hows and whys and why nots here. The people in general are pretty helpful, but have "artificial" smeared all over them. People back home are better, they are what they are...the "have a nice day", "uh-hah", "may i help you" lines are making me sick. They sound good and polite, but harshly unreal. Personally i prefer peoples natural behaviour, though it may sound rude many a times. Ok, i am getting way off-the-track.

More later.

Still at bay

2006-08-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

After searching for almost 2 days in the scorching heat that left me dehydrated we managed to get an apartment, it'll be ready in a few days. The sad part is that it isnt furnished.

Currently the place am staying at is a bit far from the university, a half an hour walk. So whatever work we have to do leaves us for atleast an hour's walk everyday, did i mention the burning Arizona sun. Its just been 3-4 days that i have been walking that much and i already feel i must have lost atleast 2-3 kilos! Cant afford the luxury of a vehicle, need to get a cycle soon.

I feel choked. I cant look for jobs, i cant read books from the library...cause i still cant register for classes. And i cant even look for furnishings as theres still time to get possession of our apartment. There is hardly anything i can do...just have to wait, and then just burst off in a thousand chores.

The only relief is the stay at the seniors. It would be hard to find people more hospitable than them. Thanks a lot guys (Sanket, Ameya and Rishab).

Starting off..

2006-07-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Finally...after completing lot of paperwork, shopping and god-knows-what-not i boarded the flight from Mumbai. Due to some technical problems the flight got delayed and i reached my destination, Tucson, after an astounding 24 hrs more.

First impression of the US if you ask me, well...we were stranded at the LA airport. And inspite of being such a big and busy port i couldn't find a single phone booth where calls to India could be made. Neither did i find a shop open late in the night to buy a calling card, and had to wait till the morning. I would say making a phone call back home is much simpler and easier. I was amazed by the kind of vehicles i saw at the airport and particularly the cleanliness of public transport.

My first experience with american coffee was bad and tea, worse. People here definitely dont know how to make tea. Tucson, the city i am in, is a very quiet and peaceful place. You hardly see a person walking around. Seniors here are doing just everything possible for us, to make us comfortable, hats off to them!

Jet lag has nearly been compensated...Search is on to get a place for living, and still have to explore each and everything out here. Hopefully things will settle down in like a week and half.

tran·sit (trăn'sĭt, -zĭt) n.

2006-06-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

Writing after quite some time...was busy with a hundred things, literally.

Or more probaby i was a victim of the writer's block...better explained here on a friend's blog. Finally after a lot of "lets write" and "naah, not now" i have got down to write this senseless post.

Things are going to change as hell, as my life changes from a "happy going carefree" person enjoying the perks on a decent salary to a "fight, and fight more" for everything student. I can't imagine how i am going to manage without the environment i had at home and at my job. My job is my greatest timepass since i have left college :) I get todo all my stuff at work alongside the real work...and offcourse have a great time with colleagues. The workplace is almost an extended campus...the average employee age must be 25 or less.

Though i feel a lot good at heart that i'll be back to school, learning things. But the very next moment i think of the cost factor and i get butterflies in the stomach sometimes. I know its a calculated investment, but this is the very first time things are really on my shoulders, that gets me nervy.

So lets see whats in store next...

Hat trick

2006-05-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

A hat trick...3 days 3 movies and a great weekend.

Friday was X-Men: The Last Stand, then The DaVinci Code and on sunday Fanaa. And as a friend said it they were in decreasing order of quality. X-Men was far too good than its first 2 prequels. The action and effects both are great and the movie delivers more than what one can expect. Some of the new mutants introduced have some really cool powers and they have been used to create some mind boggling shots. Hugh Jackman performs his Wolverine with ease and is very impactful. Magneto and Professor Xavier played by Patrick Stewart are very charismatic as always. A must watch if you like super-heroes stuff, which jumps out right from Marvel comics' frames.

The DaVinci Code with so much of hype around it for so many reasons was...ok, yeah it was just ok. Though the casting is near perfect, the roles essayed are true to the characters in the book and director Ron Howard gives quite a gripping movie, at the end of the movie i felt wanting for something more. Perhaps being such an anticipated movie, i or rather everybody expected a lot more from the film. The grandeur is missing, and so is the excitement. Or may be its just the traditional "book-is-always-better-than-movie" funda.

Fanaa...this is one more movie in the news for all the unnecessary reasons. The songs are good, pretty good and their picturisation is great. Aamir and Kajol live their roles. But the pace of the film is a bit slow, and its long...3 hours long. In the second half where the story takes turns, Aamir's character seems to go in and out of character. The script is missing some dialogues on Aamir's part. The Kashmir shown is Poland, and its beautiful. A flawed script and slow pace takes the fizz out of what could have been a much better product, backed by one of the most dedicated studios, Yash Raj Films. Kunal Kohli somehow manages to make films that have a lot of potential but never hit the bulls eye, though Hum Tum almost hit it.

Suse 10.1: a dot one for Suse, a giant leap for Linux

2006-05-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

Suse 10.1 has been released after some 14-15 alhpa-beta releases. The look has been changed, though consistent with Suse's typical glossy-glassy look. The boot-splash has improved, so has the UI look-n-feel. Some of the bleeding edge technologies have been incorporated in this release, and they just work!

First is Beagle, the indexing daemon. It has been integrated into browser, mail everywhere so that it can keep track of all information. It has now got a good frontend, including a Google desktop search like applet in the taskbar. This is a direct competitor of searching-indexing tools in OS X and the upcoming Vista.

Second is a new system called Rug to manage system and software updates. Its a higher level service that can have different types of services like online updates below it. It also shows up in the taskbar.

Third is offcourse XGL. All you need is a driver for your graphics card(which should support 3D acceleration) up and running. After that running XGL is a matter of some configuration changes. Novell has even made a XGL control panel nicely placed inside Gnome control panel(and probably KDE too, but i haven't installed KDE). So now i have fading, wobbling, transparent windows and rotating desktops with some rain drops too ! Aero who?

All good, Suse seems to fail where it comes to snappiness of applications. Everything feels a bit sluggish. Booting time is still considerably long, and so is halt time. Yast2 continues to be THE control panel an OS can have but is still slow in doing things.

Novell is also working on some breakthrough technology that can install drivers without the user needing to compile it on his machine. This is required for kernel drivers as the module's and kernel's compiler version, kernel version and architure has to match. With this new technology all versioning information is conveyed to the remote repository which will then provide the required kernel module. This will very much ease out things for both users and hardware providers, at the cost of some irritation to purists, as this scheme allows and advocates binary only drivers.

Category [ _Linux_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Speeding on the freeway...

2006-05-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

(00:15:48) kshitij1983: nachya settle zhala arey !!!!
(00:15:57) kshitij1983: lagna sodun tyachya aayushyat ata kahi urla nahiy
(00:16:19) parag: seriously
(00:17:40) kshitij1983: Job, H1, 55K salary, GF, Car, cell, digicam, handycam, I-pod............
(00:17:48) parag: hehe
(00:17:52) parag: nice one
(00:18:21) parag: i am going to blog this

Is the chase worth it...?

Xubuntu, XGL and the road ahead

2006-05-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Xubuntu is a Ubuntu distribution with Xfce as the desktop environment. This should say enough on how good Xfce is going. Recently i had posted a review of Xfce 4.4 beta. It has evolved a lot. The newest Xfce can be configured to look like Gnome...and even behave like it. And you won't even know the difference ! Compare the install size of Xfce to 18-20MB to that of Gnome, 200-300MB. And Xubuntu excels in proving how productive and nice-looking a Xfce desktop can be.

Using Xfce has made the Xubuntu to be sized to some 380MB compared to a full cd required for the standard Ubuntu Dapper...all because of the bloated Gnome. Xubuntu has all the things required to make the distro a Ubuntu. And yes you can use utilities like EasyUbuntu and automatix to install all the non GPLed things, like graphics drivers, java, flash, dvd codecs and stuff.

The part where Xubuntu scores over other *Ubuntus is offcourse speed and the low memory foot print of Xfce. May be its the Dapper thats making all the difference, seems a lot has improved since Breezy Badger that i had last tried. For me things like out-of-the-box frequency scaling on my Turion 64 and suspend are charming. Hibernate still fails, probably because of the ATI graphics driver that still needs to be installed. But this is good progress.

All the recent distros that i have tried like Suse 10, FC 5 and now Xubuntu all seem to be making great strides in taking Linux to the next level. And as the rumour is Linux is already prepared for the onslaught (really ??) that Vista might bring, with things like XGL, Beagle and ever increasing number of drivers.

Novell is so bullish of their yet-to-be released Novell Linux Desktop (NLD), that they say this will replace Windows desktops in corporates and they are even planning to ship NLD as OEM software. If theres even some part truth in this that is very good for the Linux Desktop since components of NLD will eventually come to the open community, as did XGL.

For those who don't know what XGL is, check this out.

Update:

I installed XGL after a lot of fight to get ATI proprietary drivers operational... the problem was that Ubuntu Dapper is broken atleast when it comes to kernels and kernel sources. 64-bit kernel didnt work, kernel source had an error in some usb device file and something called DRM was turned on which is not good for ATI drivers. After going through these issues and reboots, and more reboots, finally ATI fglrx got up. Then it was a 5 min tinkering to get XGL and Compiz showing off, that too on Xfce !

XGL can provide a lot of eye-candy, but it can be tamed down to make everyday productive desktop a bit merrier, something like Mac OS X does. XGL will and does beat Vista's graphical fancies. It is important to note that XGL, Vista, Mac all use 3D hardware acceleration to achieve all the effects. Enlightenment doesn't !! Now you know why E is E !

Category [ _Linux_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Fight Club

2006-05-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

Life is always a fight, isn't it ?

You never get anything just like that. There are NO free lunches...not on this planet. I don't know why the Alchemist guy keeps saying "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true"[1] and other crap. It is not true...why would the universe care ? It has better things to do...like running its bloody gigantic self. And if it did try to care, why the hell would it conspire...? To give you a nice bundled sweety surprise you might be thinking ! Forget it. If it did have that much soul, science would not need a proof of the existence of the ultimate being.

All you need is to get things done yourselves, make them work, make them work for you. And thats why some atheist must have said "He helps those that help themselves". Magic is always the fantasy and never the fact...and if does happen its always an illusion. Till the time you realise it was an illusion you have been already had. Welcome to the real world[2].

But hey, its not all that bad, but its not the way we imagine it to be. The spoon is lying on the floor, you have to look for it, search it, kneel down and lift it. And don't think the spoon is made of silver, you won't get that on this floor. For that you will have to climb a hundred steps to the next floor. The number of floors are limited by your ambitions, nothing else. Different people climb for different reasons.

And offcourse theres the source on the terrace, but one never reaches there, its just an illusion that some people have. They grow beards, wear funny clothes and do funny things...and they think this might be the way, but they don't know they are in the illusion all created by themselves.

The one who sees the truth, that theres no truth, its an endless end, lives merrily. Moral of the story, don't worry be happy.

[1] Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist
[2] Morpheus in The Matrix

Category [ _Review_ ]

Its raining movies !

2006-04-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Doing what i am good at again... watching movies.

Saw Ice Age 2, last weekend. One hell of a movie, better than the original. Sid (the rabbit like creature) and Scrat(the one behind that nut or whatever) get lot of screen time and they make it definitely worth it. Sid just rocks this movie...the dialogues he gets are too good. And Manny the mammoth gets a love...voiced by Queen Latifah, shes good. Blue Sky studios goes over the edge to make this technology showcase as real as possible, at the same time maintaining the story and pace. Most animated movies i have seen lately have been too good, other real-world movie makers should learn something from these guys. The reason might be that even few seconds of animation, is too much an effort and cost to waste on a lame storyline.

Thanks to TNT, i got 4 movies on a DVD. Watched 2 of them to make a hot, electricity-less saturday afternoon some good. Now there are advantages of having a laptop :P. One was Steal, on some bank robberies, crappy. The other was The Ring 2. I wouldn't say it is as good as

part 1, but its not bad. The story is rather weak in this sequel, and the thrill factor is very less too. Part 1s thrill factor was way high. I still remember the scene where the girl comes out of the TV! There was even a mail in circulation where there are these japanese

teens watching the movie and at the end somebody actually comes out from below the TV leaving the crowd hysterical!

And tonite i am planning to go for The Pink Panther...lets see how it turns out. This content will be edited later...

Sunday Morning:

ok, so The Pink Panther is nice tp...don't expect much though. Some of the jokes are cliche...but Steve Martin is good at what he does. The cartoons shown during the titles at the beginning were somehow more funny than the movie :P

Category [ _Film_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Xfce 4.4 : Nice

2006-04-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Xfce 4.4 beta1 was out. I decided to try it.

I have found Xfce as a very productive desktop since the first time i tried it. But somehow the sad file manager, xffm kept me away from using it as the default desktop environment. But the new Xfce 4.4 sports the new file manager Thunar. Lot has been said and heard about Thunar, its UI design principles and the way it was designed to be non-intrusive from ground-up.

Thunar looks good, is pretty light weight and the frame structure looks friendly. There is a way to add right-clock options to the menu, so you can add things even like "Enqueue in XMMS" using xmms -e command ! But, there is no samba and ftp support. These features could be added i guess as it supports extensions. But due to this it falls a little short of being as usable as Nautilus or Konqueror, which do tons of other tasks too. But again, Thunar does what a file manager should do, why should it burn cds and mount remote shares ? But convergence is the wave; integration of applications with the environment is near to seamless in DEs like KDE, and Xfce is way to behind in this respect. But one should not expect such things from a light-weight, 18MB sized desktop environment.

As for Xfce, the desktop, there are lot of small improvements ... like better panel controls, panel resizing in pixels, Xfce window manager provides newer borders, ALT+TAB window seems to be improved to show things like user's picture for gaim chat window etc.. Other nice but very different feature from a traditional desktop is that now a desktop icon is created for every window running on that desktop ! So you can resume work in a window by clicking the icon. I dont know if this is according to some UI guidelines but its a feature i would rarely use, mainly cause its not my habit to click desktop icons to restore windows. Mousepad is now the default text editor and its just the right Notepad clone ever.

But as a beta release this is pretty stable, not a crash yet. The thing i found missing was some icons on the Xfce-settings main form.

I have been on Freerock Gnome ( a Slackware deviant of standard Gnome) for past few days and i can say that Xfce is catching up fast to be a full fledged replacement of Gnome and still be a lot lighter. But Gnome will be going the heavy-duty way in future with 3D-acceleration equipped window manager and all.

Category [ _Tech_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Ayushyavar aikle kahi...

2006-04-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

I had been hearing lots of praises about it. Dhaval managed to get the show tickets before hand using his contacts. And yey, we finally made to the theatre presentation of "Ayushyavar Bolu Kahi", a musical show featuring songs and poems by Sandeep Khare and Salil Kulkarni.

I have been listening to their songs since I heard "Man talyaat...malyaat" in our college's Firodia Karandak play 3-4 years ago. I have been hooked ever since. The reason is simple....the lyrics, the tunes, the music...its just inexplicable....Few months back when i had got the 3 of their released albums for my mom, the shopkeeper said "this guy(Sandeep Khare) sells more than Jagjit Singh and the likes ! ".

With lots of expectations me and Dhaval went for the show...and oh boy...! The theatre was jam packed...everywhere i could see people, many of them of our generation, which i was surprised to find. The show started with their trademark "ayushyavar bolu kahi". The show is arranged such that the songs and poems presented go from one mood of life to another. Salil has this soft, classically trained voice and Sandeep's is more charismatic with an identity of its own. And together they create magic....In few of the songs Sandeep interludes the tunes with verses from his poems, it sounds amazing.

With melodious and mightyly meaningful songs, impact is what you feel...and applaud is all you see and do. The best part about the Sandeep's writings is that he goes in depth in many other subjects other than the just standard romanticism. His poems like "Safarchand" on the mediocrity in life, and "Nastik" on being a nastik touch heights of imagination. I found "Nastik" deeply profound. Another poem "Love Letter" is a sarcasm on use of English in everyday Marathi.

And the second best part is that even a person with average art-appreciation genes can enjoy and understand the thought put behind his poems. A friend of mine recently rightly said..."Aplya veles hi kuni kavi zala asa aplya pudhcya pidhyanna sangu shaku ! "

At the end of the show we met them...i tried to say "Haslo karan dusre kahi shakya nahi..." a line from one of his poems, but i couldn't say it the way it should have been. I still remember the weird smile Sandeep Khare gave me :P

And i did i say the third best part... Sandeep uses these ugly, hoarse sounding words ( which are not that uncommon for Marathi ) in his compositions. Yet he and Salil, manage to make real good tunes out of them.

Unmissable.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

Vista...Waste-a

2006-03-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

I read on an average 2 stories a day..that in one way or the other say Windows Vista is screwed.

The woes of the Vista Graphical User Interface.

Its got the all ballyhooed Aero interface...that boasts of 3D windows, transparencies shadows...animations etc.Do you need that to increase your productivity...NO. In fact all this eye-candy might get annoying in daily work...but offcourse it must be having controls to tune the eye-candy as the user wants.Is this a pro....well, yes. They are trying to out-do Mac OS X...but they forget that Apple uses their hardware to run their software. M$ doesn't, and they are expecting people to shift to better, newer hardware.You can get some idea from the fact that Vista requires 800MB of memory for itself, and when playing games goes upto to a staggering 2GB, other than a 3D graphics accelerator card....

They have written the OS from scratch....

Now this is a big issue...older software goes through several man months of test phases. Lots of bugs turn-up and get fixed...actually improving the system stability. Writing from scratch is a all new way of inducting new bugs...In fact this guy advises not to write software from scratch, but to improve it to suit the needs. I read somewhere that the Vista release was postponed by 6 months to Jan 07.

Vista to be native 64-bit

M$ is planning to cash in the 64-bit wave that is gaining amplitude recently. Vista is going to be the first M$ OS to have native 64-bit code. But all these plans were heavily dependent upon the now infamous "Wintel" bonding. Intel was to come up with a "performing" 64-bit chip for Vista to ship-on. But Intel has gone late...they were more busy doing the "dual core" hype. Their earlier 64-bit architecture used in the doomed Itanium has been abandoned. The companies that invested in Itanium have dragged in a unwordly $10 billion for market boosting of Itanium.

Meanwhile, the AMD site has been leaps ahead...Their 64-bit horses, the dual core Athlons (named FX) and the dual core Turions (used in laptops) have already debuted. And needless to say, they continue to beat the Intel counterparts in performance. It seems more and more like, prodution quality ( really ? ) Vista-64 will see its first cycle of instructions execute on an AMD.

Will M$ beat the competition once again remains to be seen, this time with Open Source desktops getting the cutting edge and Apple continuing to grow, 2007 may very well begin the decline of the M$ raj.

Category: [ _Tech_ ]

Digital Fortress

2006-03-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

Finished back-to-back reading Dan Brown's novels. Deception point, and now Digital Fortress. Digital fortress is an interesting book.

Though I would say it is last in the list if I try to rank 4 of his well-known books. It is based on a so-called "unbreakable encryption algorithm" and what follows when somebody holds to ransom a government agency using that algorithm.

The book is vague in its technical details...though it tries hands at a lot of "geeky" things and even things that would be in research as of now. But as is said incomplete knowledge is dangerous....it works all the time against the 'story" presented, and the story loses its hold on the reader. Particularly, i felt it widely inappropriate to entertain myself with the technical details i knew were incorrect or atleast incorrectly stated. But that may be just because of the fact that i have some background in this context.

The plots and twists are were primitive, if the standards Dan Brown sets for himself in his other works are considered. The reader can guess what is to happen next in some of the sequences and that makes him/her skip few pages of conversations between the characters where the plot evolves.

But if the reader is a lay-man which the majority audience is, i am sure this book can provide far better entertainment than it provides to someone like me. All said, its a good book for some timepass, but it fails to make any serious impressions.

Category: [ _Review_ ]

To do or redo

2006-03-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

I was fed up seeing the looks of my blog....same for the last almost 8 or more months i guess. I even took to designing the entire template again...but just could not keep the patience to complete it. The results were....sad, i just could not change the state of my blog to the new look, which could turn out more pathetic than what it is now. Today, the typical leisurely saturday...i though lets try again. I ended up making just the header or banner. That too is still not fully done...but i got bored again. I have put up the incomplete one, hopefully i'll redo it in a few weeks.

Its just plain fun playing with Photoshop. But it gets frustrating when you can't get to do what you had thought of...and that happens with me a lot. Thats why it took very little time for me to get distracted from doing it. Anyway, the symbol that is there on the right is that of my zodiac sign, Aquarius. The up-down stroked figure symbol stands for water, which is a integral part of the Aquarian-related thingies, though Aquarius is a air sign.

Yesterday i saw "The Fog". B-grade, zip-it.

Last few days have been exciting and testing...i hope there is a better tomorrow to see...lets see. And i need to pull-up my blogging shoes...i am losing audience !!

Update:

I improvised it again...The symbol now is embedded in a bubble. The title has a fog and shine, just for some celestial magic :P

It looks ok for production use now. Every pixel of that is original...no collage this time.These are the transitions till date...

june 05 - mar 06

may 05 - june 05

aug 04 - may 05

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

Expectations...

2006-03-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just read Deception Point by Dan Brown. He proves once and again that he writes is blockbuster material. I have read 3 out of the 4 known books he has published and believe me if i were a director i would have really liked making movies on his stories.

The most important part of his novels is the amazingly high intelligence and technical desciptions provided. I mean this guy can write in depth about the history of christianity, the dynamics of quantum physics, space science and even geology. He makes you feel that his characters are real PhDs not just degree holders that are a part of a story. I have never read novels earlier that are also a source of GK.

He has this tact to relate the fiction and hard fact. Like the NASA-White house thingie in Deception Point, and the European architecture and landmarks in Angels & Daemons. Now the fourth one remains to be read, Digital Fortress. I hope it will be as much entertaining.

I had taken up "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", with a lot of expectations. But i don't know...it doesn't appeal, the story is on the same page even after a some 50 pages.I heard similar views about "The Monk who sold his Ferrari"...supposedly it is the bestseller in Indian markets since some time now.

And believe me Angels & Daemons is better than The Da Vinci Code.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

Vector Linux...think speed

2006-03-03T06:19:00.000-07:00

Yes. I have tried a new distro again. I wouldnt call this exactly new, because i had tried it earlier. It hadnt really impressed me then. The linux distribution i am talking about is Vector Linux. It has different editions, the one i am using is SOHO 5.1 (small office and home use). About an year ago i had tried Vector, i think version 4.2. Then i felt that it was good just for old computers.

Installation

The installer is text based, and has little options, and it doesnt make intelligent decisions like what software to install for what space, like YaST2 of SuSE. But it does what its basic purpose is, and thats that. The installation time is pretty small, for all the installer does is copy huge tarballs to the disk.

Configuration

For a relatively small distro like Vector the system configuration is pretty nice. It has a thing called VASM, that is the central management unit. It is concise, no frills like flashy icons and animations like in Mandriva's control center or even YaST2. It gives control of most of the things that are commonly configured, and you dont need to run any commands or worse, edit any configuration files.

First Boot

Awesome. Graphical lilo, boot splash and all. It detected my sound-card, the ATI graphics card, the laptop's lcd display...everything, without a single hitch. I didnt even have to configure the 3D acceleration support. ATI's open-module is alive and kicking ! Mind it this is the only system where i had never to fight for any hardware detection. Even biggies like Ubuntu and Fedora cant boot without proper boot-time options on my system.

First look

The SOHO edition comes with KDE and Xfce. I installed Fluxbox and IceWM too, just too check things. Vector Linux is a fine tuned distro with customizations all over, in all desktop environments. That gives it a consistent look. The most striking thing you notice is the speed. Applications startup really fast. Be it KDE's qt-based applications or GTK based ones, or even bloats like Firefox and OpenOffice. OpenOffice startup time for when invoked for the second time is hardly 1 sec. That rocks ! Even in non-qt environments like Xfce, the KDE apps startup real fast.

I donno what the Vector guys have done while bundling packages, but packages seem highly optimized and it shows. Great work. May be its the Slackware genes it has that has made Vector that fast.

Multimedia

Now this is one distro that gives you completely multimedia support, out-of-the-box. The mp3 files play, and so do all-known-formats in the universal mplayer. Firefox comes with properly configured plugins which is a very nice touch. 10 out of 10 on this front.

Small things

Vector pays attention to the small things that make a difference. Like, good theming of GTK-1 applications that otherwise look as bad as Motif based applications when used with default themes. GTK1 and GTK2 theme switchers have been provided as well.

Applications

Vector comes with a wide variety of applications for all things one can do. It has some 6-7 different editors, for varied tastes. Though i didnt like the fact that vim is missing in the default install, it comes with just vi. Then there is the Bluefish editor for web page design and editing, gmplayer and xine, OpenOffice and KMyMoney a MS Money like accounting tool. There some 3-4 types of image viewers (including gqview that i like very much, its fast). Theres Sylpheed too, for mail, its a lightweight mail client. And about everything for chatting/downloads/wifi. The only thing i missed badly was AmaroK. Its THE music player, hopefully Vector has a package for it.

The SOHO install came with all the development packages required. I compiled some plugins for Xfce and i didnt need to install a single devel package. I really cant believe Vector comes with so much in just 2GB of install, and a single-cd default installer.

Conclusion

Well theres one more good thing that it comes with the 2.4 kernel too, so you can use your older drivers. This distribution needs some more publicity and i am damn sure it will climb the distrowatch charts to be in the top 5. I rate it the best, cause of its pre-configured settings, out-of-the-box functionality and sheer, raw speed that Linux is boasted for.

Category [ _Linux_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Down down down...meter down

2006-02-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

   friend: movie ?
   me: which ?
   friend: any..
   me: ok...meet you at 9.30

    !

We got the tickets of Taxi No. 9211 ( read nauv-do-gyaraah ). By luck i should say, cause getting a ticket at runtime has become awfully difficult in theatres around Pune. As i have said here earlier, the ratio of good ones to bad is very low, so i had was ready with "lowered expectations" ( anybody sees MadTV ?).

The film started with a narration given by Sanjay Dutt, his voice is surprisingly suitable for such purposes. Theres a scene where the two main characters of the film, Nana Patekar, the taxi driver and John Abraham, the rich spoilt kid meet. It becomes the starting point of 3 stories, the taxi driver's, the rich lafoon and the third story where they both feature in. The film kicks of with speed and panache.

What then follows is how the guys end up beating each others fate right within a span of 2 days. The story is different and so is the script. Dialogues given to Nana rock. The makers have cashed in Nana's full potential at playing a Marathi, habitually frustrated cab driver. And he essays the role with all his flavour. John Abraham doesn't fall apart and stands-in for every scene. Sonali Kulkarni is great as the wife of the driver, and compliments Nana's role very well.

The director, Milan Luthria who earlier made movies like Kacche Dhaage and Deewar, that though very differently made were duds, gets it all right in this one. The film's USP is the length of 2 hours. It stays away from using masala songs while in the midst of the story and that works for the film.

The sound tracks, "Bambai Nagariya" and "Meter Down" are good, and they have been used without interefering. Paisa vasool.

Category [ _Film_ ] [ _Review_ ]

A little hay, a little hoe

2006-02-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend i had been to a stud farm. TNT's dad works there and he had invited us to visit the place. Interesting place...a lot of things to learn. Not only the equines related GK but other things too. Some interesting things about horses ( you can skip this )

* Live for 25 years
* Sleep with one leg slightly lifted and eyes open.
* Cost of a 1-2 yr old youngling is a staggering 15L, offcourse for the best breeds.
* They get passports after their gene pool is authenticated :P
* All race horses alive can be traced back to 3 stallions, that were from England. What were these fellows ? Ghengiz Khans of the equine community :P
* The ego of male horses(colts) is such that every one of them is kept in a separate paddock (approx. an acre of land).

Some race horses earn quite a fortune for the betters, i actually saw a record of some American breeded earning some hundred thousand dollars. The farm we visited was called Equus and is owned by some Ruia from Mumbai, the Ruia College was made by his family. This farm had some 40 odd younglings right now and a total of 180 horses. Yes that totals in crores ! And this breeding business is this guy's hobby. A look at his farm house at the stud farm gives you a lesson as to much money you can have and how good a spendthrift you can be. His swimming pool takes ten thousand bucks to get heated once...that should say all.

So next time you feel good that being in the knowledge industry field earns you more, think again. Hay is always greener on the other side.

posted from http://writely.com .nice.

Category [ _Trips_ ]

Opera 8.5

2006-02-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

I have switched to 64-bit computing completely. SuSE 10 x86_64 works like a charm, KDE is faster and the compilations are fast too. Better part is that ATI provides even 64-bit drivers for Linux...and with 180 FPS i am too happy.

The only thing nagging me was Firefox. The one shipped by SuSE 10 is sluggish, both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of SuSE have this issue. And startup time is annoying, particularly because Firefox needs to load the gtk libraries too in the all qt KDE environment. I wanted a browser replacement desperately... i spend loads of time on the browser searching and reading, so a good fast browser is a must. I tried the app-of-all-things Konqueror. Its good as a browser too...but not that fast, and definitely not feature packed when it comes to surfing.

Enter Opera. I installed the SuSE 32-bit version, the wise guys still dont ship 64-bit builds. Interestingly neither does Firefox... the reason behind this is flash and java, who dont have 64-bit versions... that is so pathetic. Opera is qt based, ideal for a KDE environment, loads faster and works lightening fast. And i mean fast. The features provided by default in a 3.6 MB download are superb.

* Browser, with all the things a new browser should have
* Feed Reader
* Mail Client
* Download Manager
* Notes ( a nice thing: i am writing this post in the Notes feature, i think they can extend this to blog poster easily)

The UI is good, and leaves a lot of screen space to be used for rendering webpages. It can be skinned and the skins available are impressive. The only thing i found missing was that the feed reader doesnt support Atom feeds, only RSS. But the latest Opera 9, yet to be released has Atom support too. It also has AJAX based widgets... like floating calc, md5 hash, RSS reader etc. which i think are going to rock the browser world. All browsers henceforth will support this widget thing. Opera people know what a browser does and what it will do in the future... and they are already pulling the shoes. Are you Firefox ?

PS: For those who dont know, Opera is completely free and ad-free.
And if you are missing any of the extensions in Firefox...all of them have equivalents in Opera...

PS2: Blogger.com is a pain for all browsers, including Opera and Konqueror except for Firefox... offcourse, afterall Google is investing in Firefox.

Category [ _Tech_ ] [ _Review_ ]

Tagged for the nth time !

2006-02-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

Sudeep had tagged me once again...the tag is to point out 8 different things i would look for in a perfect lover....ahem..

I dont really like to have my life as a open book. Its closed source. And the more important point is that there is no such thing as perfect love. People are different, and thats the hard fact. And it takes a lot of understanding and effort from each partner to make things nice. Yes and that does happen, and when that happens it is blissfully delightfull. Its difficult to point out 8 odd things i would admire in a girl, or should i say a woman...sounds more macho :P

So the source will continue to remain closed. Those interested please meet me after the class :P

The +1 thing i would like is intelligence...things dont even start without that.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

They all have something to say...

2006-02-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

The review of Rang De Basanti is pending...but so much has been written and read about it that i have lost the fizz to write it. But even then there has to be my opinion out there...isnt it :p

Rakesh Mehra is one of the more sensible directors...his earlier movie, Aks though a total dud on the box office was cutting edge cinema. Mehra had forayed into things hitherto unknown to Indian tastes and that took its toll on the film. But this time around with Rang De Basanti he hits the bulls eye...as advertised. He deals with patriotism with the right sensitivity. Its a wonderfully scripted movie...the screenplay filled with witty one liners and intense situations is very much on the track. The most important thing is the mood change latency, if i can use that term. The latency has to be optimum to make the right effect, not less not more...otherwise audience lose attention..and Mehra keeps that to the right value. The emotions swing from hearty laughter to emotional intensities and to patriotic zeals with the frames...thats extremely admirable.

Its a directors film...and he makes all the characters strong and the performances are make believe. Though i did feel the very British-Hindi accent the character Sue has, is unnecessary... particularly when her voice plays the narrator. The idea of blending the Indian freedom struggle and the current affairs has been beautifully picturised. The entire sound track is impressive, and the way the songs are used in the movie...very mature for a Hindi film. Most importantly it packs a punch...people come out dumbed. Watch it.

Narnia, the other movie i saw in the last week. It fails to make a mark as a story or as a CG karishma. May be the greatness of the LOTRs makes it fall short. There are some good CG effects like the lion, Aslan...but so are a lot many technical glitches. Not expected from the director of the Shrek movies. Hopefully the sequels of Narnia will be better considering its a 7 part series.

Category [ _Film_ ] [ _Review_ ]

What happens in Goa, Stays in Goa...

2006-01-31T03:05:00.000-07:00

Goa...We finally set foot on the land and sea of Goa, after almost a month of planning and discussion.

It was a masti ki paathshaala all the time...time after time. A life for 4 days, king size. We stayed at GTDC's Mapusa residency. In 3 days of the actual stay, we visited a total of 5 beaches. Every beach has a flavor of its own, "they all have something to say", some have something to see :P

Calangute and Baga are neighbouring beaches and are stormed by phirangis, literally. Those areas have plush eateries, catering international cuisine. We also termed a street on the way as The Lane, and had a feasty dinner at a place there too. Talking about dinners and lunches, all of them were royal feasts, even the breakfasts were far from ordinary. Our food demands were exotic, with someone ordering freaking lobsters to someone having American breakfast for dinner, ahem...yes really.

For the first time i tried different liquors, though in "sip mode". The list included beer, rum, vodka and wine. None of them impressed me enough to try them again. Ashwin challenged me to a bottoms-up for half a glass of wine...and i did it, i dont think one can get drunk with even 3-4 glasses of wine. Though nobody ever got talli, we didnt need liquor to be so, with creatures like Pashy and Salil around. The laughter riot was stomach aching. The thing is that we rarely laughed due to the jokes, but often over the jokes, considering their pathecity index. Pashy went to never-seen-before highs on this.

The weirder part was the addictive accents Sally and Mukya always use. These guys are heads over heel for "Friends" and the Australian accent, Ostraalian, say, i should. While Ashwin got speaking with the, Zhe nazi accent. Zhat getz funny, contagiously. Mukya even spoke to some of the accented phirangis in an accent...with "over te bieg bridze" directions. And i cant stop laughing when i saw the giggling school girls, when Mukya asked them the directions to the Morjim beach, known mostly for obvious reasons.

We played a dumb charades in the chilly serenity of the Baga beach, it is arguable whether that was the right thing to do on a night at the beach. But hell, we were having a great time. And we played amateur football and its types till everybody got panting and dehydrated during the sunny afternoons on the Miramar and Morjim beaches.

A visit to Goa can never be complete without the churches of Old Goa. And we saw the Dona-Paula memorial too. We got arguing whether they were the first lesbians of Goa, or whether a previous incarnation of Damma-Pashy, DP...DP sounds rhyming...maybe! If there is pun out here, it is intended, no offence intended though.

We even tried playing at the J W Mariotts casino, it was another fact that almost all of us were OOC (out-of-cash, term courtesy Mukya). The entry fee of 200 bucks was good enough to stop us at the door, but we made our visit worthwhile...with a visit to the 7-star loo :P. At the end of the 3-day mega-maja we saw Rang De Basanti at Inox in Panaji. Panaji is a place with a personality. Everything there is clean and has a strong medieval European influence, lamp posts, wooden windows, brick pavements and the like.

It was a blasting trip, every piece of it. Got some nice pics, hope they turn out actually as nice as they were when we took them. Though Sally, the spoil sport deleted some of the not-so-publicly-viewable pics of his.

All of us are on different paths right now, and they will soon diverge...it was great getting the breeze and some booze till the roads are still the same. Guys, i hope we do something like this again, somebody even said that when we were at the Aguada Fort, widely known as the DCH fort...just like the guys in the movie

Lose Control
One more time!!
Lose.. Lose..
Lose Control
Haha (x3)!!

Category [ _Trips_ ]

BuddhaPad !

2006-01-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

I simply cannot believe this.

A review, of a mouse pad.....one page long.....avaaaaaara.
"...A nice bonus, it works with not only PC systems, but Macs too! ...." am i still alive.

Q-t-C: (new feature introduced on this blog, meaning Quote-to-Context, like there is reference-to-context)

“Of course life is bizarre, the more bizarre it gets, the more interesting it is. The only way to approach it is to make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show.”
-Anonymous

I guess the post has become bizarre enough, time to put the full stop.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]