Saturday, December 24, 2005

Too much of a good thing?

Yet another day today when I was complained of spending too much time on the PC. I used to be a TV freak some time back. In my childhood used watch even vayalum vazhvum, a farming techniques program over studying. Then I felt there were things to be learnt from TV more than texts which talked of trignometry, akbar and Praire's wheat produce. Honestly I have never had any use for any of these all my life ever since.

Now the new fad(?) is PC. I cant turn away from a device, that has all my photos, all my favorite songs, all my favourite reads. How I love the music without those CD covers, unmarked cassette wrapping paper which simply says "Sony" or "TDK" and I am straining my memory to remember what it contains. I contain atleast 20 such cassettes even now.

The sad part and really the shocking part is, most if not all of the stuff I have in my PC is free. I hope this becomes a PayTV kinda scenario, pay back to the for all the goodness I get. How I would like to pay Re. 1 to Billy when I listen to We didnt start the fire.

Its too good to be free honestly!

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Ganging against Ganguly


Its been a while since I posted (as though the world is worried about it *ahem*). But the injustice meted out to Ganguly has aroused me out of the slumber in to logging in and go blogging!

Its the umpteenth time when the selectors have ignored a man with decent performances in the omnipresent need to "look at the future". It happened to Kumble, Laxman and many others. The lucky albeit undeserving ones like "whats his name that underaged wicketkeeper" had a windfall flouting their oath.

Its not fair to drop a performer whatever the merits of the argument are. We as a country are so deprivated coz we dont value performance and think foreigners are better.

I hope for the country's sake that better sense prevails

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Ghajini - Review



There are movies that remind you of your lost first love...promised so much when it started and later felled by the weight of expectations. Ghajini is a breathtaking start, a fantastic middle and sloppy end.

The story gets off to a dramatic start. Surya, a patient of brain damage who cant remember anything beyond 15 minutes, sets off to murder a few goons in a traditional blood for blood pot-boiler. However, the narrative is so dramatically picturised its a dazzling treat to watch.

The expectations are heightened by the flashback in which a witty, fun-a-minute romance between the multi-millionare, suave business man Surya and a middle-class, intelligent, witty and upright Asin is told swiftly and impressively. Their falling in love is so well picturised that one almost wishes they succeed and raise kids. Not often in the recent past has a director narrated a poor girl meets rich man spin with such earthiness, practicality and sophistication.

Asin fusses with a few dons in rescuing girls from prostitution and her multi-millionare lover also gets brain damaged in the process of trying to rescue her. It is here that the story and the narration starts taking a dip.

There are logical holes, lack of imagination when one glamour girl is replaced by another in Nayantara. Nayantara's characterisation as a medical student smacks of poverty in coception.

As Nayantara vacillates between helping the goons find Surya and Surya to find the goons, it makes one wish the movie had ended after the romance.

Surya though comes up trumps in his elegant gait as a rich man in love. His action scenes are powerful and yet believable. Asin has given a performance that will up there with the perfectly affable girl with a lot of heart. Nayantara's attempt in concealing her ever-burgeoning body in a ever-shrinking customes comes out flat. An eminently forgettable performance. She should stick to singing in saris or atleast wear dresses that dont camouflage her paunch!

The director Murugadoss can be commended for the many things that he did right forgetting the few things he didnt get right. Harris Jayaraj's hit "Sutrum vizhi chudarae" was excellent though it reminded one of "Devadaiyai Kandaen"

All in all, a movie you should watch.

Rating 74/100

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Poetry - Success

Success

Lifes resounding verdict
on hours of tireless labour
seeming so difficult to predict
yet done with divinely order

Tis a loser's essence
to renounce its presence
making hermetical claims of its inaneness
hiding his obvious fondness

If we were never to chase to dreams
not tire at its distance
keep egging on
world will either be a moan or a yawn!

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Rejuvenated India



Now that the series between India and Pakistan is comprehensively sealed its like watching a rerun of a suspense thriller. You are not so worried about the plot as much as the slight nuances of the tale.

With Sachin "God" Tendulkar not being successful in his ways of old, would he resort to the Sachin "Drag" Tendulkar techniques he employed prior to his injury? If he does so it would be sad for both himself and for the million other couch slouches in this wonderful evening.

Sachin, go in your normal blazing ways...after all its a game for fun and not a quarterly results of a dalal street darling. It's more important as to how you have made the runs more than how many runs you have made. Now, coming to think of it its true for the dalal street darlings as well. Its not important how much money you have made but how you have made it!

So God, we will pray to god for your century today!

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

How to trace an email to find where it was sent from

Some time back, we were grappling with this problem. A worker in our organisation sent an anonymous email trashing the entire department to the shareholders of the company. We were not the most docile set of coworkers but certainly not such big trash to be escalated to that level.

The funny thing was there was a Brutus among us and we didnt know who, this was not doing wonders to out team spirit with each member of the team suspecting a few others and everyone floating a pet-theory.

Yours truly set about a "treasure" hunt trying to take this as a challenge of problem solving and application of the little I knew about the internet. Like they say it is beyong a commited mind to solve any problem especially in the age of yahoo, google et al....

So here goes the solution...Its not complete, but this is the best a person can do without involving cyberpolice and things like that...

So here goes...

I am stating for an yahoo account but guess there should be corresponding options for all mail service providers:

1. Open the mail you want to trace back.
2. Click the "Full Headers" link usually found at the bottom of the message
3. Locate X-originating IP
4. Copy the IP address
5. Go to a reverse IP lookup site like www.ip2location.com
6. Press "Find Location"

Usually locates the city and the service provider correctly.

Nice way to locate anonymous mailers, 'your secret admirer' et al

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Nuggets over the internet!


Stumbleupon toolbar

When I received a mail from a long last friend saying "hey try this, catch you later" and nothing else, I realised two things...

He is in a lot of hurry and didn't have the time to elaborate and also that he had detected something really big that prompted him to mail me unmindful of his lack of time.

Stumbleupon is a remote button for the web aka your television set. It adds a toolbar to your browser (only firefox or Internet Explorer). After selecting your interests it keeps fetching webpages which are in line with areas of your interests. Since the webpages are interactively been voted by other users, more often than not you will be able to un-earth golden needles out of the internet haystack.

There is one disclaimer though, it is very addictive over a period of time. Don't download if they are very finicky about internet usage in your organisation.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Poetry - Love

Love
A search for non-existent perfection
Irritation at the sight of its impossiblity
Being romantic is a notion
thats fulla impracticality!

This teen passion to be sought
and to seek
making the meek speak
of lofty peaks and lusty lies

Thoughts like these swept in a torrent
until the love rodent
crept in to my life
in the form of my wife!

Wheels turned, opinions changed
love is a feeling with a deep meaning
comprehended not by thnking hard
but just by let being loved!

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Wither manufacturing jobs?

I met this guy who was from my own college. It's been quite a while since met someone from my college so the conversation waxed on nostalgia, a bit of pride of been in a great institution and the frustrations of not having learnt enough while we were there.

I was surprised that the person I met had done remarkably well to obtain a gold medal in his stream ( I myself would have settled for a Galvanised Iron medal or something like that for my academic prowess!)

I assumed that he would go on to do masters in the US (as is the college norm for toppers) or do an IIM MBA...surprised he was into a software major! I subtly understood that he didn't have a great programming knowledge or aptitude, infact it was one of the very few areas he had done badly at college ( I mean relatively, he had better scores than me even in programming, though I used to consider myself some programming genius at college).

The point is good engineering talent is being sucked in to IT stream. Most of it is due to media hype of the profession and the typical bad mouthing of shopfloors. Parents who had slogged at the shopfloor always took opportunity to belittle it and it rubbed on the entire society not realising that a topper from a leading institution is going to have a different kind of shopfloor profile.

20 years down the line when we sit in an aircraft or drive over a bridge, I am sure we will break in to a cold sweat realising that all the best engineering minds are no longer running these operations. Over a period of time market dynamics sets right such skews and I really hope it does!