Sanity Insanity and Moi

A friend of mine once said, when you are watching the movie ‘Partner’, leave your logic at home and the movie is entertaining. So it follows that, at times when my friends invite me to watch a Hindi movie, i just pack-off my logic to a holiday at the Bahamas. It applies to all mindless comedies that have come out in the name of entertainment. Some makes it through, but some just fail.

Of late Akshay has had a string of comedy movies under his belt and most of them were with the gorgeous Katrina Kaif. Singh is Kinng is no different, but there is something fresh about the comedy and it really makes sense.

Lets just say that the movie does justice to itself. Its a very simple story of Happy Singh (Akshay Kumar), who would just do anything to help you out.Happy is there to help you if you need it or not. But there is a problem, he has got a negative ‘Midas touche’. He leaves a trail of destruction when he sets out to help someone. Its his golden heart that wins him other’s hearts. Rangeela (Om Puri) and the rest of the villagers like Happy, but Happy’s helping hand is now everyone’s headache.

Then there is Lucky Singh(Sonu Sood) a.k.a King, who is a Don in Australia. King has had many close calls on his life. One fine day when King’s dad fall sick, Rangeela makes a plan to get rid of Happy by sending him to Australia to get King, but finds himself having to join Happy. With some sudden turn of events Happy and Rangeela find themselves in Egypt, where he meets Sonia (Katrina Kaif).

What follows is some nicely scripted comedy and the events that make Happy to be the new King! Nothing more to add to the spoilers, so guys enjoy Happy’s journey to Australia. It will sure tickle you to the bones.

Things to watch out for (or rather not to watch) :

Uff!!!! Katrina, she is gorgeous, she is damn sexy, but she is there just to fit in the role of a heroine. Neha Dupia still gets a fair amount of scenes and dialogues. Katrina’s dialogue is still half-Hindi and half-British and never runs more than half-a-page, even if every line was put together. Even after so many movies, her expressions remind me of the Hollywood actor Steven Segal. With Steven Segal you cant make out what his expression is - he kills, shoots, kisses, cries - all with the same constipated look. With Katrina, oh god, its always the Vogue-cover-model look. Damn it even when she is crying, its the same!

The fun part of the movie is, most of the actors who has been the regular villains and the serious characters, playing a comical role. Ranvir Shorey still pays the unfortunate lover. The song with Snoop Dogg would have been better if the Hindi rap part was done by, say Hard Kaur or Bombay Rockers or somebody else.

Highlights of the Movie :

• Katrina’s gorgeous looks (again and again and again)
• The opening scene of Akshay
• Neha Dupia - all sizzling
• The Hindi version of ‘corn-flakes’ - LOL
• The scene where all of them get to discuss on Happy and Sonia - ROTFLOL
  
• Javed Jaffery

Pritam has come up with some real good songs that have been packed really well, just like the icing on top of the cake. The title track has already made a mark.

ENOUGH! - i wont misguide you any more or get you misguided by the high minded critics in town who fail to appreciate simple things in life and movies, who look for reasons under the earth and beyond the sky to say bad things about any and every movie ever made unless they are paid well enough to say otherwise OR unless they are member of the ‘Bollywood’s Mutual Admiration Society’ or ‘Star Power Sucker’s Club’, and before you fall victim of the vicious process of letting someone else decide what film you should and shouldn’t watch…let me tell you, - Watch the movie without fail! Full Paisa Vasool!

Singh is Kinng!!!

(Cross-posted here)

This one is a general intro to blogging. Its the same one that i did at Wipro but with modifications.

I have the Calvin and Hobbes theme for this one.

This is the Blogging for Business slides. Its Dilbert themed

Ya ya ya, The UPA government won the trust vote. Now everybody is happy, lets say the UPA and its allies are at least happy that the nuclear deal will happen without any glitch.

So whats keeping the Left in the news, well they have dutifully expelled Somnath Chattergee, as of now!!!

And the BJP, the poor saffron brigade had MPs that switched sided, took money etc etc and are finding themselves in their pool of shit.

As for the wanna-be PM or rather the future PM, Rahul Gandhi, his speech at the parliament was meant to be patriotic. Its amazing when somebody out of the blue has a burst of patriotism. The wanna-be PM Lalooji (i will only call him lalooji as he is the only devil around with an angel’s halo - look at the railways), he sure did crack some dialogues and made his point on the Lok Sabha floor. At least he had the balls to say that he wants to be the PM, may be not now but later (great!!!). I would rather see the nation run by him than by Mayawathi.

So you thought that everything is going to settle and die down after the trust vote? That we will have our so called ‘nuclear-deal’, of which half of the debating politicos have no idea what its about, going through and life will go on as normal. I cant believe that somebody as dumb witted as the Muslim League (or one of their clones) comes up the brightest allegation - Nuclear Deal is anti-Muslim!!!.

Well Nuclear-deal is done or rather will be. Now what will i do for my entertainment. At home the trust vote sparked so much of interest that after we lost our borrowed tuner-card back to whom it belonged to, my room mates went on a buying spree. They bought a new internal tuner-card and DAMN!! the thing never worked. They had to cuddle themselves in front of the streaming video that they could salvage out of the Wimax connection. Next day i reach home to find an external tuner-card. Great!!!Perfect!!!

When all my hope was lost - Ram Sethu pops up. Ok! i’m sorry, i thought we done with that controversy a long time ago. Naaahhh, the government needs something to remain in news. The latest news says that Ram nuked the Sethu after he was done with Lanka. So what? Preserve it!!! Preserve something that is speculated to be God’s creation and let the freight ships make a Lanka journey. Let the price of goods carried by the ships to the Bengal coast be more, let the people suffer.

But hey wait a sec!!! why is it that we have controversy and allegation and political drama filling up the air-waves. Guys, just rewind a new weeks back. What was it that hit the news then? INFLATION!!! and we were damn sure that the Government couldn’t do much about it, than sit and watch. The price of a barrel of crude oil just went beyond Mars and there was no stopping the inflation arrow. But what happened???

Aren’t we still in that same phase. Aren’t we still facing the Inflation terror???

Ohh wait!!! the govt has diverted all public attention to Nuclear-deal.. Ohh that’s done.. its Ram Sethu now!!!!

Enjoy the Price Hike!!!!

“An unstoppable force hitting an immovable object !!! ”

Yes its a Batman movie and Christian Bale delivers another laudable performance. But still, the ‘hero’ of the movie is Heath Ledger, playing The Joker. Its one of those performances that will make you give a standing ovation at the end of the movie.

If Iron Man was entertaining, then this movie is way beyond that. This is no ordinary superhero movie. Its not for kids and way beyond the league of an average movie goer, expecting an action flick Hollywood movie. If Batman Begins captured the emotional turmoil of a superhero cursed to live a normal life and caught within the mask, The Dark Knight takes you on a stroll through the dark allies of a ruthless and demonic villain. Heath Ledger delivers a character that is going to be the scale with which future villains will be measured. The perfect villain. Striking fear, each time The Joker makes an appearance on screen.

There is noting much that i can comment on the movie. Just go enjoy the movie…

It deserves a 10/10

Bruce Almighty, the movie starts of with Bruce, a TV Reporter, asking an old woman, who owns a Patisserie -

“So tell us mama, why make Buffalo’s biggest cookie?”

“Well, man from the health department say he find rat pellet in store. I say no is big chocolate chip. So we close store down, clean up, and make big cookie for to bring back customers”

I see no difference in that and this -

Come June 17th and there is going to be this multitude of people from around the world, who are just going to download Mozilla Firefox v 3.0. Why? Just because they are attempting to set a world record on the maximum downloads of a single software in 24hrs. What a creative reason to set a record?

So what is so great about this download spree that the guys at Mozilla are hyping about? Does the people who download it get a free mug every day for the rest of their life? Or is it something like the spam mail, ‘If you dont download Fx in the next 24 hours, your system will be infected by a deadly strain of I love Fx virus!!!‘.Its all for the sake of a record and damn publicity!!!

I use Fx and its not that i wont be using 3.0. Its a great browser and i’m sure just like the way it has changed my browsing experience, it has done for millions. The plugin support is amazing. To download it on that particular day is a personal choice. I agree. But just because you like a piece of software doesnt mean that you need to join a drive just to download it.

The way i see it, is as a smart marketing strategy. If they are really as good at the cookie that they sold, then why do they need such a drive. If a product is good, people who use it becomes the biggest marketers for it. They spread the word and the number of people who are using it expands. Why does Fx3.0 need such a drive? Fx2.0 was brought in with a big bang. But it suffered as it began to eat up memory. A normal session of Fx2.0 with 3-4 tabs open is enough to consume 10s of MB of RAM.

Memory is cheap, i agree. But that doesn’t mean that an application can take up as much memory as it desires. I’m not too good at judging as to what is wrong. But can say that the memory management was poor in Fx2.0. At the time when Fx2.0 was released people with normal browsing habits found that the systems slogged badly, Windows and Linux alike. They opted to move out. Intermittent releases didn’t solve the version either. How annoying is it when you get a new version to download every couple of weeks?

Fx3.0 is hailed to be faster and secure. The Release Candidates a.k.a Beta are better than Fx2.0.

… As several of the linked posts below accurately reported, we’ve decided to add one more beta in order to make further improvements in the areas of polish, performance, memory, and overall quality … [from Mozilla: For the Record]

The question remains, are they still the same old Patisserie reopen by making a big cookie, after the Health Dpt. shut’em down?

I dont know much about B. S. Yeddyurappa. All i know is that he is a BJP state leader, going to lead a state for 4 years. I don’t know much about the Opposition too. I heard news that the Opposition JDS, double crossed him during their coalition tenure that ruled the state before the election.

I’ve been here in Techville for almost of my good age. I commute for almost 3 hours a day just to reach office and back home. I spent my day time in front of a monitor, working for some unknown foreigner. I call it the Modern Colonization. But who cares. The government says that the IT industry is bringing in huge foreign money.

I stay away from my family for most of the year. I earn 10 times compared to what my father earns. Still his savings are 100 times mine. I’m as ignorant about whats happening in this foreign state as i’m about the things happening in my family. Why? All i can do, if i ever manage to get back home after work, is to eat and sleep. Before anyone else wakes up in the morning i’m up and ready to catch the bus to office, which has been timed to avoid the peak traffic on the road. But still manages to be in the midst of traffic everyday.

So Mr. B. S. Yeddyurappa or rather Yeddy or BSY, as you should be hence forth called as reported by the morning-gossip paper, i have a request.

Your state is now on the map, not because its the Garden City (leave alone the gardens, there are no more trees left here), its because of young people like us. We put Techville a.k. Bangalore a.k.a Bengaluru (do u have any new names in store???) on the map. But what did the state give us?

We are mistreated by the Auto Army. Despite the hike in fares they still ask for a fortune. Mugged by locals. The new international Airport is a good 5hrs journey (approx the same time it takes for me to reach Coorg from where i stay). Petrol/Diesel prices are the highest in the country. Traffic is a mess.

I don’t expect you to make a difference to all these. But i expect a fair deal. I spent my youth and energy away from home, staying at a place that i thought i could call home. As a kid i was taught that all of India as a nation is one. I find prejudice against people here. I feel like i’m far from home.

I’m afraid to travel by bus or car as i don’t know when an accident can happen and the mob to burn the vehicle i’m traveling at.The Police sometimes only speak to you in their native language, if they know that you’re from out of town.

This is where i earn my daily bread and this is where i live. So is it too much for me to ask for better way for things. I add to the local diversity that is sometimes herald by the media. Why cant i just say Our State and not just Your State?

All said and all promises given, at the time of next election we shouldn’t be asking Yelli-ddyurappa???

If normal blogging was too much for you and thought that Twitter solved it with Micro-blogging… AND if you thought that 140 characters was too long to type and Twitter was too much to handle. You are in big problem.

Friends might tell you that you are being lazy and you need to see a doc. Hell NO!! we have Adocu for one-word Nano-blogging. Now all you need is a word or rather words with no spaces in them.

Just one word, one word to tell the world what you are up to..

So far only text and numbers allowed. Spaces are a Strict NO!! You can alwaysbe innovative. Joining words without spaces is already happening there. The interface looks simple and you just can keep on going.

Adocu is still in beta and is lacking a good Puclic time line, friends updates, search etc. So when its finished by Jonathan (adocu.com/Jonathan), who is busy getting feedbacks at the blog (http://blog.adocu.com/) and fixing issues that are reported, its really going to rock.

Adocu is not a Twitter clone, rather its Twitter compressed …

Time to coin new terms like - Adocuers (populace in Adocu), Adocus (updates in Adocu), Adocing (the act of updating Adocu).

I will try not to be too much biased against Windows. But will like to point out what is wrong.

Hearing the news of the Demo/Preview/Debut of Windows 7 at D6 conference by Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green, my first reaction was, Oh NO not again!!!

I had my concerns. Microsoft has been stealing the show with its sleeky looks and publicity. If there is somebody at the market that can sell a rickety old-bus just by repainting it, its Microsoft.

Though all the other OS-es has evolved with age, windows simply refuses to budge more or less. The system requirements just to run a basic version of their latest OS takes more than twice the power that is required to run the latest Open Source OS. The fact remains that will less overhead the Open Source counterpart gives the looks and the WOW-ness.

How far can they drive along by just adding the new features without correcting the basic problems.

XP came and by the time people got adjusted to the response time, reaction time and usability, Vista was born. Now why the hell do i have to go for double the configuration for a new OS. Then again i will be doing the same things but that is going to add another transition phase in my life. From my own personal experience, the very simple task of setting an IP which took 4-5 clicks in XP, took me 5-10min in Vista just to figure out how to get the Properties window. Though basic functionality of an OS that the user looks for needs to be kept the same across versions, Microsoft fails to comply.

If the new version is going to be more user friendly than its previous one, why do you still need to pack the age old Win-98 looks with XP? They need to realize what the other OS-es in the market are doing different to keep things abreast with feature improvements, usability and performance.

At this point they just need to stop stuffing in features into an OS. It more or less looks like a huge american burger. A bite at one end will have half of the things falling out of the other end. By the time you get used to the new tasty burger in comes a new version double the size.

Thanks a lot Prateek for the tip. I feel sharing through SlideShare is much better

The day before the session, Christine calls me up and asks me, “So how do you intend to start the session?”. Then it hits me that, all this time i was preparing for each of the workshop, but didn’t even think of how to start of the whole discussion/workshop. Oops now i need to plan. gulp!

Ok, i felt i was going to crash and burn during the session - 1. I had no idea how i’m going to start off 2. The slides looked very very boring. The slides were a disaster, i was planning a workshop and they wanted slides if the whole thing was to be approved by the management. As a last minute step, turned to Calvin and Hobbes for help. Boy! they helped. Now my slides looked wacky and who ever saw it smiled. Let it be. So i spent the rest of yesterday’s evening taking screen shots of Twitter, Kwippy, Muziboo, Tempostand, Mutiny.in, All things Pakistan and individual blogs of 2s, Amit Agarwal, Adeeth’s and Mine. I would have loved to show all the blogs that i read, but the company firewall just blocked’em off.

On the D-Day, I was 30 min well before time and met up with Christine. The first of the participants turned up and didn’t even hope to have even 10 people. With all the work and things around, chances are that something like blogging could take a back seat for people. I was mistaken. There was close to 25 participants.

So here we go, as an intro got all the people who were there and had a blog to have their blog-ids written on the board. Only 8!!! Great!!! So more people wanted to get into blogging and as i learned they were confused at some point or the other with many things.

As we started off, i made the fact clear that it will be a discussion/workshop as opposed to a session. Pushed for some user interaction and it just took off from there, jokes, experiences and facts. A fun filled session where the beginners are now serious on starting a blog. To the question, Should Al Qaida blog? YES was the reply, as they all believed no one should be stopped from blogging.

Interestingly, every one converged on the point that, blogs provide a fact / news in its raw format rather than the media, which they though to be fabricated. We moved on to show the newbies how simple it was to set up a blog. Interestingly most of the people who blogged used Blogspot and haven’t even heard of LiveJournal or TypePad.

The discussions drifted from some serious discussions on What to be done on profanity?, What formed the basis of Moderating a Comment?, The Do’s and Dont’s of Blogging..etc to some fun stuffs that i shared with them. Interestingly people didnt know what RSS feeds are. So got someone to explain the whole RSS funda to them.

What is MicroBlogging and why do we do it?, was a tough one to make them understand. Finally i feel that when i showed them Twitter and the indian counterpart Kwippy. They then got the whole idea of micro-blogging.

Finally i had to tell them about Google Analytics and showed my own Analytics graph as an example of the worst thing that you can do - being lazy. The downward graph showed it all.
I was quite overwhelmed by the participation i had and people said it was wonderful. Felt good.

The presentation that i made can be found here - Blogging Workshop (PPT)