The Gemini

Off for sometime

2006-09-27T21:54:00.000-05:00

I have not been in the blogging scene for sometime now. Other important things in my personal life have taken the front seat. Dont know if I would get back with the same vigor that I earlier had for blogging. Till then, please do check my favorite bloggers on the left hand pane.

Life in Googleplex

2006-02-24T08:50:00.000-06:00

Time had an online photoessay about life in Googleplex, Google's headquarters. Here is the link to it. And here is how their Gourmet meal looks. BTW, Google employees get gourmet meals completely free.

Coming Home

2006-02-17T23:01:00.000-06:00

Going to Madras next weekend. Would be glad to meet fellow madras bloggers. Send me an email, if you would like to meet.

My Favorites from VH1's Top 40 of 2005

2005-12-27T23:15:00.000-06:00

In no specific order, here are my favorites:

Black Eyed Peas - "Lumps" <--- Pretty cool song
Foo Fighter - "Best of You"
Dave Matthews Band - "American Baby"
Gwen - "Rich Girl" <--- Gwen and Eve are a success formula, remember their "Let me Blow ya Mind"?
Will Smith - "Switch" <--- Infectious
Green Day - "Wake me up" <--- Good Rock Song
Madonna - "Hung Up" <--- Magical
Kanye West - "Gold Digger" <--- Extremely Infectious
Shakira - "La Tortura (With Alejandro Sanz)" <--- Cool song
Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl" <--- An alright song
Green Day - "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" <--- Another good Rock Song
Weezer - "Beverly Hills" <--- Good one
Black Eyed Peas - "Don't Phunk With My Heart" <--- Another good song from BEP

Following are other songs that I liked (not on the VH1 list)
Akon - "Belly Dancer (Bananza)" <--- Infectious
Snoop Dog - "Drop it like it's hot" <--- Doggie Dog is just too good
Daddy Yankee - "Gasolina" <--- One word, Reggatone
James Blunt - "You're Beautiful" <--- Good song
Daddy Yankee - "Rompe" <--- Another of Daddy yankee's good song

Time permitting, will jot down my other favorites for 2005 in Hindi and Tamil.

Music Review - Rang De Basanti

2005-12-13T23:07:00.000-06:00

Rang De Basanti: Rahman is slowly getting back to his grove, after his abysmal music in "The Rising". That was a total letdown, this one seems much better - but just like the other songs of Rahman, one will start to have a liking only after multiple listenings. But in this movie there are some instant catch-ons, for instance, "Paatshala", a peppy song sung by Aslam and Naresh Iyer. The other version of this song (Paatshala - Be a Rebel) features Blaaze along with the other two. Blaaze is considered the Indian version of the famed, Shaggy. He actually is featured in a lot of college/hip-hop kind of songs in the recent Rahman movies (plus other MDs as well).

"Rang De Basanti" is another interesting song which has a peppy-westernized-punju feel to it. It's sung by Daler Mahendi and the South-Indian singer Chitra (I had been to one of Daler's concerts in Madras and the host of that show was Javed Jaffrey. That's when I knew first-hand about the talents of Javed Jaffrey...he was able to keep the crowd in complete control with his jokes and anecdotes. In that he mentioned that Daler Mahendi should be called Dollar Mahendi - that was when Daler was at his peak).

For some reason, there's a lot of craze for middle-eastern music in the recent times, and this movie does have a track to cover that area as well. "Khalbali" sung by Aslam, Nacim and the Guruji Rahman himself. The best thing that I like about Rahman's music is his extreme talent in using the right voices for a song. Like other MDs (read as Anu Malik) he doesnt sing a song unless it suits his voice absolutely well. He adds a superb touch to this song with his excellent voice. He has also sung "Roobaro" along with Naresh Iyer. Another good trend that Rahman pioneered is getting in fresh voices to the Indian music industry. I see a lot of fresh and strong voices in this movie, just like his other ones. Another musical marvel that Rahman introduced to the Indian music industry is Madhushree, the most recent nightingale. Btw, Rahman was the one who gave her this name, her name was Sujata Bhattacharya before. I started noticing her after her amazing performance in Tehzeeb. I am actually surprised about the fact that she's mostly remained in Rahman's camp and not many MDs are using her vocal talents. There are two female singers whom I absolutely love, regardless of how bad the song is - one is Madhushree and the other is Harini (Tamil singer). Another song which features Lata Mangeshkar and the Guruji Rahman is "Luka chuppi". A couple of years ago, I was totally annoyed at hearing Lata Maneshkar's voice (and the South-Indian singer Chitra's as well), as she was featured in almost all the songs at that time. But after hearing her in Rahman's music my view has changed a bit. He somehow brings a new side of a singer with most of his songs. Now I dont mind listening to Lata (or Chitra), especially if it's a Rahman's movie.

On the whole, this is a good album with a mix of trendy and melodious songs and will certainly make a good listening in your car or your stereo system.

Music Reviews

2005-12-13T20:56:00.000-06:00

Among the recent ones that I listened to, some of the good ones include Bluffmaster (Hindi), Barsaat (Hindi), Chinna (Tamil), Noori (Paki-Rock), and of course, Rang De Basanti (Hindi). Here are my favorites:

Bluffmaster: Starring Abhishek and Priyanka with Ritesh and Nana Patekar as well. The music by Vishal-Shekar is really good. My favorite (I would have listened to it atleast 50 or so times so far and I listen to it almost everyday) is "Sabse Bada Rupaiya", a remixed song. The video looks cool too. It's got a cool beat to it, which gives it a 60s-70s disco feel. The next favorite is "Right Here Right Now", sung by Abhishek and Sunidhi. This is an amazing song with contrasting tones from the singers that complement themselves each other very well. The hip hop remix version has a little more coolness than the original version and is even better. The other good song is the "Boro Boro" song which has persian lyrics. It seems this song hit the Swedish No.1 spot.

Barsaat: Another good song that I missed in my previous reviews is "Nakhre" sung by Alisha Chinoy and Ishq. The Music is very good, has a good beat and this is bound to be a favorite in discos.

Chinna: Tholaidoora Nilave is a foot-tapping song that is beautifully directed by Music Dir. Imman. Another of my favorite.

Noori: Listened to this pakistani rock band for the first time and instantly liked their song "Bol" in their album "Suno Ke Main Hun Jawan". This song starts off with a familiar Creed-like music, but as soon as you start listening to it, you will be immersed in the music. The one thing that I really like about the Pakistani Pop or Rock bands is their strong vocal skills. Most of the bands that I have heard (Junoon, Fuzon, Jal, etc.) have a good leading vocalist and their music overall is good as well. Noori's latest album "Peeli Patti Aur Raja Jane" is also good. The song "Mere Log" from that album is a slow song with excellent music. I have not listened to it completely yet, but I keep seeing songs from that album in my Cable. I get AZN channel on my cable and there is a Paki-music program on weekends (hosted by a very obnoxious female host, Aman) which keeps me up-to-date with the latest in Paki-music.

Rang De Basanti: Since this is already a fairly large-sized post, I am posting this review seperately. Look above this post and you will see it.

Sarbox Sucks!

2005-12-07T19:16:00.000-06:00

Looking for Interns/Co-ops in Chicago

2005-11-27T20:13:00.000-06:00

If you or anyone you know (in Chicago) is looking for an Internship/Co-op position do send me a message with their contact details. My group is looking for Master's/Bachelor's students who can program well in C/C++. Also they should know the basics of Operating Systems and have a good working knowledge in Unix (preferably students of Computer Science/Engg or Electrical Engg.) This requirement is immediate, so if you know of someone, please send me their details. Thanks!

Rokr...Apple...Sabotage???

2005-11-21T23:24:00.000-06:00

While I was checking out my former colleague's blog, I found out about a news link to the story behind the ROKR phone. Did Apple sabotage it? <Read More>.

This wired article is more insightful than the previous link.

Movies + Technology

2005-11-20T23:53:00.000-06:00

My Wife's Murder (Hindi): Stars Anil Kapoor, Nandana Sen (from the Hindi movie Black), Boman Irani and the Pop singer (former) Suchitra Krishnamurthy. Reasonably thrilling and a decent movie, although it loses focus in between. Boman Irani has acted well in this movie. An alright watch.

Crash (English): Stars Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon among several others. I really liked the concept of the movie. The movie revolves around a crash and how that intertwines with the lives of the people involved in it. It addresses a lot of racism that happens in the day-to-day lives of the people involved in the crash. The movie's been directed very well, it reminds me of the spanish movie Amores Perres, which also has a similar concept. The hindi picture Yuva (Ayudha Ezhuthu in Tamil) was rumored to have been lifted from this spanish film.

Majaa (Tamil): Stars Vikram, Asin, Pasupathy, Mannivannan and Vadivel. An alright watch, the movie doesnt have a solid story nor good music - both are just average and to a certain extent predictable and so-so. Begins ok, but then drags a lot.

Back to my favorite stuff, Technology:

Xbox 360 is getting released this Tuesday in the US. It's got a solid spec. and a good amount of expectation from a lot of gamers, let's see how it fares. Hopefully the jumpstart that it's got ahead of PS3 gives it an edge. And I was so glad to find out the other day that Halo 3 is going to be released sometime next year (most likely along with PS3's release to compete with it).

DVR:
Got a DVR along with my TV and I truly feel that this is one of the best inventions in Electronics in the past decade. This unshackles you from the TV schedule and lets you record programs, at your will, that you might not usually watch because of the timings. Plus you dont have to watch the ads, you can forward them at the press of a button. And you dont have to wake up early on a weekend to watch your favorite shows. I think this will become a household item pretty soon.

Wireless Keyboard & Mouse:
I am typing this post from my wireless keyboard and using my Tv as a monitor. How's that for technological advancement?!

Garam Masala

2005-11-13T14:26:00.000-06:00

I went to the theater yesterday night after a while (actually seeing a desi movie after a while). Saw Garam Masala, an outstanding comedy picture. It stars Akshay, John Abraham, Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav, among others, and directed by Priyadarshan. Akshay and Paresh's acting is excellent and of course, nothing can beat Paresh's timing and dialogue delivery. I was laughing throughout the movie (so was most of the people in the theater), it's an out-and-out comedy, so dont look for a story in it. After seeing this I feel like watching Hera Pheri again to find out if this one is better than that (it's that good). John Abraham can do better. I felt that Akshay had the movie completely to himself and with Paresh's support it was a wholesome entertainer. The music is by Pritam and the songs are all peppy and disco type. I missed this movie in my previous post, but this one should be on the top. All of the songs are good with excellent picturisation.

Hot new Hindi music releases!

2005-11-12T19:14:00.000-06:00

Home Delivery: The title song (Home Delivery) sung by Boman Irani and company which has a cool video to go with it is pretty cool. The Happy Diwali song (although not too fresh), is alright to listen to. Same with the Remix version of this song.

Neal N Nikki: Was eagerly awaiting this release, after I read that this was being directed (MD) by Salim-Sulaiman(these guys did Kaal and several Indi-Pop songs including Viva, Asmaan, Style Bhai). But after listening to it a few times, didnt like all of the songs. Just a couple of them: Halle Re is good, and so is Neal N Nikki - Naughty Mix - although the lyrics in this song is complete crap.

Shaadi No.1: Ayashi Ayashi is a cool song. Really liked the beats in that song.

Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena: Most of the songs are good disco numbers. The latest trend in bollywood seems to be remix as part of soundtracks(it's become more popular with Pritam's songs).

Dil Jo Bhi Kahey: SEL's latest, includes some good songs, including the title song and C'est La vie(has some fresh music). Others in the album are good as well.

Aashiq Banaya Aapne: Himesh's come a long way. His recent ones are more peppy and has better beats. His earlier ones used to be the same old stuff that others used to make. He's now making a very noticeable distinction.

Chocolate: Pritam's done some excellent compositions in this album. Khalish is a good listen with it's rock music base. Halka Halka Sa and the remix version is also good. And a good rendition of the all-famous Zahreeli Raatein. Mummy is a good song as well, although the lyrics doesnt make it all that good. Bheegi bheegi is a likeable song too.

Happy Deepavali

2005-10-31T20:10:00.000-06:00

Wish you all a Happy Deepavali! Might go for a fire-cracker-bursting session early tommorrow morning. I went to a Halloween party, the first one so far, and it was pretty cool.

And here's the short story for the Tag:
I went to my car dealer for an oil change and asked him to check the air-leak in the front right tyre and after checking he tells me that I have to change the tyre and since this tyre is back-ordered and because my spare tyre is of a diff. brand than the currently used ones, he tells me I should buy three new tyres and replace my other 3 working tyres and use the spare for this one!!!

Home Sweet Home

2005-10-02T23:43:00.000-05:00

I have been quite remiss on my blogging for quite sometime. Two specific reasons for that, one was the frequent trips to the UK, the second was my efforts to stop making my Apartment Leasing office richer every year. I had stayed in my last apartment for about 5 years, and it was time to say goodbye to that. Finally it dawned upon me that I should buy my own place, which is what I did. And searching for a home isnt easy at all. I thought being single might make that decision easier, but didnt quite get that feeling while doing the search.

Moving from the apartment wasnt easy, either. Had to clear out 5 years of accumulated trash - many left by past roommates. Talking about that, ours was a nice apartment (and a lucky one too) we let all our job seeking friends to reep the benefits of the big city. But surprisingly, none of them got a job here, although they found a lot of contacts here that perhaps helped them get their jobs.

Anyway, I think I should return back to posting more often than what I did these past two months. To start it off here is a review about the tamil film, Thotti Jaya. It stars Simbu and Gopika. Both have acted well, Simbu is getting better with every movie. Manmadhan was, in my view, outstanding acting by him. Some good twists in the story make it a watchable film. Wouldnt say it's sooper good, but a decent film. Music by Harris J. is good - especially on my Ipod! :-)

Do you Pod? I Pod! :-)

I succumbed!

2005-09-20T23:46:00.000-05:00

I finally succumbed to the immense pressure and had to submit the 1-click button after thinking much about it. Yes, I ordered the 20GB Apple Ipod from Amazon.com. Amazon had a good deal on it and my Dell DJ Mp3 player's harddisk had crashed, making it a complete piece of dirt. I have had software issues with Dell DJ, but didnt expect it to completely stop working. This gave me enough courage to open out the mp3 player and see what it had. A Li-Ion battery and a Hitachi hard disk are the prominent ones (it could very well be an IDE cable issue or a software issue).

I am trying to get my pictures from the UK organized, should put it up by this weekend.

Back

2005-09-15T20:05:00.000-05:00

Back from the UK and again barely trying to catch up with things. Will post the pictures soon, but meanwhile here is some good news from Google. Google is out with a Search engine for Blogs. I was waiting for something like this for sometime now, and here it is. Seems alright. Check it out at Blog Search.

Movies, music and Blogger's meet in the UK

2005-08-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

Posting after a while...Lots of things going on personally, not much time to blog. Although I have been skimping on this new found hobby, I have tried to atleast hold-on to my other passions (although not abreast of them, as I usually am) namely music, movies and such. Got a membership to Hollywood Videos, and have been trying out their MVP special ($9.99 per month, 3 movies out at a time and unlimited rentals for the month). This deal is good for 3 months, and it's given me ample oppurtunity to catch up with all the English movies that I have missed in the past year or so. Saw "Blade Trinity" - an amazing movie. I have always wanted to see this, and it turned out to be good. Now I want to see the other two Blade movies. Also saw "White Noise" - an alright movie, then the Manchurian Candidate (liked the concept in the movie), I-Robot (cool movie), Star Wars 4, 5 and 6 and countless others.

Have been remiss with the hindi and tamil movies. Just managed to watch Sarkar, starring the Bachchans and KK Menon. A very well made movie, even though it's based on the Godfather, it's an excellent watch. The protagonist, Amitabh Bachchan, portrays Bal Thackeray and there are ample similarities between the other key characters and various real-life political personalities. Some of the dialogues, especially the ones by the character Selva Mani, are quite funny and some of them by Abhishek's character, Shankar, is also good! Background score by Amar Mohile and others is well done. Although I didnt enjoy the songs by themselves, they seemed good in the movie. If you dont compare it with the Godfather, I think you will enjoy it well.

About music, Mangal Pandey was a big disappoinment to me. Didnt see a Rahman touch in it. Although Rahman's latest tamil movie, Aah Ah, is very good. My favorites (in decreasing order of interest) : Anbe Aaruyire (ARR has really sung this well, suits his voice perfectly), Maramkothiye (Liked it after listening to it a couple of times), Mayilirage (Madhushree, my favorite singer is amazing in this), Varugirai (Hariharan and Chitra are both good in this), Thigu Thigu (Madhushree again is good). Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's latest "Dil Jo Bhi Kahe" on first listening seemed good. Havent completely listened to it yet.

A second trip to the UK is in the offing and this time, have made plans to meet with Jag, Anand (Mdeii) and Chakra. Any one else in the UK, if interested to join us, let one of us know.

Back in Chicago!

2005-07-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

Back in one piece. Thanks to all the enquiries. I am safe and sound (a little hard of hearing actually, after the weekend filled with music in the bars and discos of Swindon, UK).

Things I did in the UK:
Went to London on the weekend before the blasts.
Drove a lot in the rented Benz.
Met Chakra, and had lunch prepared by him.
Went to Stonehenge.
Went to Bath (Roman Baths).
Went to Bristol.
Went to a lot of Discos and Bars in Swindon.

Will write a detailed post later this week with lots of pictures. I was pleasantly surprised at several things I saw in the UK.

In the UK

2005-07-04T04:24:00.000-05:00

In the UK...off for another week and a half!

Tags!

2005-06-25T23:35:00.000-05:00

I have been tagged thrice and since I will be gone for a couple of weeks, thought I would take care of it atleast now.

<Read More>.

Music Tag(Tagged by Neelima)
Total volume of music files on my computer:
In GBs.

The last CD I bought:
The Legend of Bhagat Singh

Songs playing right now:
No Entry(Hindi), Virudh(Hindi), Chinna (Tamil).

Five songs which i listen to a lot or which means a lot to me:
Countless. But here are my recent favorites:
Don't be Shy by Rouge (Pop Album)
Thavam Ondru by Balram, Nithyashree in ABCD (Tamil)
Kannathil Muthamittal by Chinmayi in Kannathil Muthamittal (Tamil)
Nahin Saamne by Hariharan, Sukhwinder Singh in Taal (Hindi)
Piya Bole by Sonu Nigam, Shreya Shoshal in Parineets (Hindi)

Five People to whom I'm passing the baton:
Anyone who is reading it and interested in getting tagged.

General + Movie Tag (Tagged by Chinmayi and Toerag)

Three Names I Go By:
Anand
aviswan1 (my office id - There were two Anand's in my team and we needed a way to differentiate each other)

Three Screen Names:
anandvis

Three Physical Things You Like About Yourself:
Come on, Let's not get physical! :-)

Three Physical Things You Don’t Like About Yourself:
Same thing here!

Three Things That Scare Me:
Loneliness

Three Things I Want To Do Badly Right Now:
Play Table Tennis
Play Volleyball
Sleep

Three Places I Want To Go On A Vacation:
India (The northern most part of India that I have been to is Bangalore. I really want to travel to all the places in North India)
Singapore, China, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and all those exotic places.
The Gulf.

Three Kiddy Names I Like:
Have lots of time before I start thinking about those things.

Three Things To Do Before I Die:
Settle down in India.
Live well.
Travel well.

Total Number Of Films I Own On Dvd/Video:
Many, dont have a count. Could be in 100s.

The last film I bought:
If Xbox games count, Doom3 was my last.
My last DVD was the Rambo Series (a few months back).

Three Of Your Everyday Essentials:
Air
Music
Internet

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
Shorts and Tshirt
Glasses

Three People Who Have To Take This Quiz:
Anyone who is reading this and is interested in being tagged.

Book Tag (Tagged by Cerebral Shangrila)

Total Books I own:
50 to 100.

Last Few Books I bought :
The Wings of Fire by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (My first Audio Book and it was excellent)

Last Book(s) I was Gifted:
Da Vinci Code

Last Book I Read:
WCDMA for UMTS :-)

Currently Reading:
Angels and Demons

Five Books that mean a lot to me:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (My All-time favorite)
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Jackal by Frederick Forsythe

Tag five people and have them do this on their Blogs:
Anyone who is reading it and interested in getting tagged.

Formula 1 2005 US Grand Prix Pictures

2005-06-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

<Read and See More of it...>

I finally got some time to upload these pictures. As most of you would have known, it was one of the worst days in Formula 1 history. Although it was very frustrating, I was happy that I could see Narain drive. I, and several others, thought that he could have easily raced ahead of his teammate Tiago Monteiro, he was holding onto his 4th position more than trying to make a podium finish. Initially he had a 9 second lag with his teammate, but this gradually increased to a wide gap.

About the race experience, to put it positively, I can say that I have seen one of the rare races in the whole world (come on, I paid 105 bucks for the ticket!). And see Narain, the First Formula 1 driver for India finish 4th and get his first formula 1 points. This is a (lifetime) dream come true for him.

In the Flickr photostream here, you will see pictures from the Prosche Race (this takes place before the Formula 1 Race), the Parade of the Race drivers, and several of the racing moments. This time there were a lot of Indian flags. Usually Indians support Ferrari, but this time I saw someone carrying two flags in the same flagpole (Ferrari's and India's), thats was really cool! Some of the cooller ones are attached above. For the rest go here.

Formula One US GP is here!

2005-06-18T22:49:00.000-05:00

Music Reviews - Recent Hindi Songs

2005-06-14T22:48:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I reviewed Music in my blog, so here are my views on some of them (I didnt write about all of them - If you like anything that is absent here, please do comment about it/them):

Dus:
Dus Bahane by Shaan(aka Shaantanu Ghosh) and Kay Kay(aka Krishna Kumar Menon). Cool Music! The extended version is also good.
Deedar De by Sunidhi is very average. Talking about Sunidhi, here is an interview with her. I consider the Tamil singer, Malathi, to have similar vocal characteristics as Sunidhi. Both of them are good in high-pitched and peppy numbers, whereas Malathi is kind of getting stereo-typed with item numbers and is not getting many good songs. She's got the potential, but needs a good break, I think.
Unse Poochein - Very average song, even the amazing Duet stars Udit and Alka, couldnt add lustre to it. Vishal-Sekhar could have done better, there have been thousands of such songs and am sick and tired of such songs. Skip IT!
Jaaniye Ve - Just ok, sung by Hariharan and Mahalakshmi Iyer. Mahalakshmi is a quite talented singer, although she is among the under-rated ones too. I see her once in a while in SEL's compositions and otherwise not much. Just bad luck, is it?

Mashooka Mashooka (English Version) - Cool song! Sung by Wajid, Nisha, Joy.
I thought the other songs in this soundtrack were just normal.

D:
Some of the songs are good, some of them are quite different (esp. the ones by Prasanna Sekhar - Is he the Prasanna who plays the Guitar and who graduated from IIT, Madras?)
D. Tox [Main Bindaas Ho Jaaoon] - Pretty funny song. Worth a listen. It's just got dialogues and some music in the background.
D. Rox - Reminds me of the Matrix Spybreak soundtrack. That song had been choreographed really well - walking up the walls and stuff like that, and that really stands out even today. If they do something like that to this song, it will be really cool. I like this song because it's got a good and decent foot-tapping background track with Indian instruments here and there and there is an element of thrill added into the soundtrack. Good work by Prasanna.
Other songs are just average.

Paheli:
Was a bit let down with the music by M.M.Kreem (aka Keeravani). Didnt like any of the songs!

Parineeta:
Amazing soundtrack. Good music by Shantanu Moitra(Read an interview with him here).
Piya Bole - Amazing soundtrack and beautifully sung by Sonu and Shreya. When I first heard this song, this is what I noticed: Saif starts off the song and then I was expecting Shaan to take over, but was a bit surprised to hear Sonu's voice. Off late Saif's songs have been done by Shaan. But later realized that Sonu can also sing for Saif and it seemed a bit seemless, although not as perfect as Shaan would've been!
Kasto Mazza - Beautiful Song, sung by Sonu and Shreya again. Didnt like the beginning of the song, but the song as such is very good.
Kaisi Paheli Zindagi - Excellent song, sung by Sunidhi. I like the free flow of the song. Excellent composition by Shantanu Moitra. I would like to listen to such songs in a beach setting.
Raat Hamari Toh - Good Melody by Chitra and Swanand. Chitra's voice seems to get better with her age. I used to hate her for sometime (maybe because I was hearing a lot of her), but in this song and some of the previous ones she seems very likeable.
Hui Main Parineeta - Seems like a very difficult song to sing. Proves the mettle of both Sonu and Shreya.
Overall, an excellent album. Correction to what I had written earlier, Shantanu has already MDed two films (Leela and Hazaron Khwaishen Aisi).

Jaane Hoga Kya:
Dil Dhak Dhak Karne Laga (Remix) and Dil Dhak Dhak Karne Laga (Remix) - Seems interesting! Good peppy dance songs.

Nazar:
Ali Ali - Good song by Shubha Mudgal. It's been a while since I heard her voice. A good Khawali type of song.
Nazar Nazar (Remix) - Good Dance number sung by Kay Kay. But for some reason I keep thinking that this is a song (and the Nazar Nazar song) that I have heard somewhere - Have they reused the lyrics or the music?

Will stop at this for today (will continue with recent Tamil songs in the next post).

S. Gurumurthy's speech about the Arrest of Kanchi Shankaracharyar

2005-06-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

Went to S.Gurumurthy's speech in Schaumburg (a suburb in Illinois) alongwith a friend. The speech was titled "The arrest of the Kanchi Sankaracharyar". Although his speech was good, he didnt give any details about the arrest at all (the title of the speech was a gross misnomer - maybe it was just to attract the crowd). He just said two statements about the arrest and then said he cannot comment further on it. During his speech, he made some slightly inflammatory comments about the US (his influence with the RSS group was very apparent here), which made me think that I wasnt going to get out of that place without some lathi-charges! His oratorical skiils are good, he backed up most of his thoughts with statistics and he had a good knowledge about world economics. For someone else's personal account on how the speech was, look at Surya's blog (he has something from the Kanchiforum.org).

Completely Off topic, I have been hearing this very infectious remix kind of song (at 3/4 Bass and Full Treble with 50% Volume in my car - this 50% volume is very loud even by my standards) by Rouge, called "Don't be Shy" and I like it a lot. This song has already made it in a couple of albums, either as the original or as a remix.

Table Tennis

2005-06-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeknights I have been pretty busy with Table Tennis. The madness for this game started at work a few months back, and we now play it very religiously. If it's 5'0 clock (thats the unwritten decency limit, any earlier than that and we might start seeing people complain, and eventually get the tables moved from the spot) then mobiles start ringing (with only a 3 second talk between the folks - Best of 5!), messages pop-up in instant messengers (which contain no more than 2 characters - TT). If these dont get the players up from their cubes, then it will be followed by challenges and taunts. We need to feed ourselves with this drug on a daily-basis, else the days feel quite empty! We bet on almost all things like the Xbox 360s or PS3s, each others' cars, next year's bonus and what not! But, sadly (sometimes fortunately) at the end of the game nothing really changes hands. It's all just empty words!

This week, I have started playing TT at my friend's apartment complex, which is right next to mine. This is, usually, in addition to playing at work. The workout in this game (though not apparent) is really good, if you play a lot of shots (or smashes). During my last visit to Madras, I got an assortment of good bats (Butterfly, Kung-Fu and Stiga) which has increased my interest for this sport.

Off topic, I am waiting for Parineeta to get released this weekend. The songs were really good - Music's by Shantanu Moitra (Raaga tells me that he is a newbie). Waiting for the next Rahman's music - Would it be Mangal Pandey or The Rising?

Next Post: About S.Gurumurthy's Speech.

Weekend plans

2005-06-04T11:19:00.000-05:00

My weekend is pretty packed: Have a lot of movies and novels that I want to finish up from my backlog : Movies - Main Aisa Hi Hoon (hindi), 6'2", Arindhum Ariyamalaum, Karka Kasadara, Jithan (All tamil) and listen to a lot of new music thats been released (hindi) in the past few days - Dus, D, Fareb, Sehar, Mashooka, Double Cross and Men Not Allowed. Novels - Angels and Demons.

And have a Benz driving event to attend today afternoon in the Chicago Race Course. Plus the usual Volleyball and Table Tennis. We have the annual Volleyball league at the temple going on. I already missed practise today morning at 6am - just couldnt get up that early after watching Naina.

And apart from these, have to connect my new hard disk (got a damn good deal that I couldnt resist - 160 GB for $30!). Plus I have to pull out all the data from my ex-roomie's hard disk.

Might go to Sound Bar tonight.

What are yours?

Telugu Movie Review - Anand - Manchi Coffee Lanti Cinema

2005-05-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

I was at a friend's place the other day and we were watching parts of this Telugu movie, "Anand". Being impressed with those bits and pieces, me and another friend (this guy has already seen this movie two times) rented out the DVD from the desi store right next to my apt. and watched this outstanding movie. The story is quite simple and the songs are simply superb. Kamaline Mukherjee (I am thinking she is a Bengali), looks awesome in this movie, her acting is alright but her looks and the character that she portrays in the movie completely match with each other. I felt that she was a very good fit for her role in the movie, inspite of her so-so acting (Idlebrain.com tells me that her voice was dubbed by Sunitha - seemed almost seemless). The DVD had subtitles which helped a lot (I learnt a lot of buzz words in Telugu, which I can now use with my golt colleagues). Direction by Sekhar Kammula is top-class. This is more of a director's movie.

Music by K.M. Radhakrishnan is very infectious (Raaga.com search finds only this movie, so I am thinking he is a new guy). I have been listening to the songs for over a week now. "Yamunatheeram" by Hariharan, Chitra and "Nuvvena Naa Nuvvena" by Shreya Ghoshal, K.M. Radhakrishnan are ultra-infectious. So is, "Vachhe Vachhe" by Shreya Ghoshal. Lucky Ali aka Maqsood (s/o of Comedian Mehmood) has sung the "Charumathi, I Love You" song, a decent one.

This is my first full-length Telugu movie and I am really looking forward to more of this kind. Any recommendations? Also, I am surprised why there is no remake of this in Tamil, although I hear from my friend that they are going to remake this in Hindi.

If you are open to watching a sub-titled movie filled with freshness, then I would certainly recommend this movie! ...<Read More>.

PS: "Manchi Coffee Lanti Cinema" means "Like a Nice Coffee".

Bunti Aur Bubli

2005-05-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

Saw it tonight. Went to AMC Theaters and saw it in a really huge theater. This was, by far, the biggest theater I have been to in the US. Went a bit early because I heard it was house-full on Friday. The theater was more or less empty at 5.45 for the 6.15pm show, but when the movie started it was almost packed.

The movie is an enjoyable comedy. Dont go there for a story, there's none. It's a very hilarious comedy movie. Abhishek and Rani have acted very well (or was it more of a director's movie, either ways - I enjoyed the movie). It's a complete timepass movie. One of the song (Kajra Re) features Aishwarya Rai and the Bachchans, this one is beautifully sung by Alisha Chinoy, Shankar and Javed Ali. This is the first movie where I felt for myself that Aishwarya looks really beautiful (earlier, it was more of a hearsay).

Music by SEL is good. When I first heard it, I thought it didnt have the Oomph factor that I have begun to expect in SEL's compositions, but as I heard it more and more, I began to like it well. Almost all of the songs are good if you hear it more that once (and then judge it).

Mrs. World 2005

2005-05-27T22:22:00.000-05:00

While I was flipping the channels, I chanced upon a re-telecast of Mrs. World 2005 (It took place sometime in Feb. 2005). I wouldnt have stayed for more than a minute, had I not seen Malaika Arora on the show - she hosted it along with a firang. When Malaika mentioned something about Ambi Valley, Sahara Lake City I thought this must be some exotic location in Fiji or something like that. An immediate google search told me that it was right there in India (Maharashtra, to be precise - close to Lonawalla is what Google tells me). Three Indian women represented their countries - Jeevikka Shah (Of course, Mrs. Jeevikka Shah) rep. India, Angie-Dillon Rai rep. Canada and Poonam Mehndiratta rep. Australia. And among the audience, I noticed Aditi Gowritker and Borris Becker.

Noteworthy snippets:
It seems India is the first Asian country to host the Mrs. World competetion.
Shiamak Davar's Junior Dance Academy (remember the "Mohabbat Kar le Kar le Re" song by Shiamak Davar) did a dance number - nothing outstanding, just ok.
Judges: Vijay Amritraj, Ashutosh Gowariker, Mrs. America 2004 - Heidi Dinan, Fomer Mrs. Sri Lanka - Rosy Senanayake, Sapna Roy (Sahara MD's wife).
Mrs. India and Mrs. Thailand seemed like the only ones married for the longest time - 16 years!
Mrs. Phillipines' been married for 5 years with 6 children (No typo there).
Mrs. India didnt really have a good answer for her question. I think, she will do well at Oratorical competitions, her answers were at best by-hearted well, it seemed like a vomit out of rote memory.

<Read More>.

Movies I watched recently

2005-05-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

English
The Incredibles: Good movie! It's been a while since I saw an animation (last one was Finding Nemo), if you havent watched it yet, it's a good watch.

Star Wars - The Revenge of the Sith: The second Star Wars movie that I have seen. The last one was the Attack of the Clones (Back then we all took some time out from work, including the Mgr. and saw a DLP version of it, although I think the Attack of the Clones is better than the latest, maybe because of the War in it). Now I want to try and understand the complete story of Star Wars by watching the other parts (the adv. of watching it in DVD would be that I can see it in the right sequence).

Hindi
Waqt: Pretty good movie. I really enjoyed the comedy in the first half. Comedy by Amitabh, Rajpal Yadav and Boman Irani (His tagline in this movie is "Kuch bhi nahin hai") is excellent. Good acting by everyone. In between, the movie seems to lose it's pace a bit, but catches up well, right away. The last 20 minutes is quite sentimental. Overall a very good watch. Music is good by Anu Malik. He also makes a cameo appearance in one of the songs. All of the songs are good. Subah Hoge - Melodious, Meeraksam and Let's play Holi - Racy numbers, Toot Gayaa - Sad one by Kailash Kher (he was introduced in Swades' Yuhin Chala - he's got a solid voice).

Tamil
Kana Kandein: Excellent Movie! Dont miss this one. Very good acting by Srikanth, Gopika and Prithviraj (He's a Malayalam actor. He is the villain in this movie). Vivek's comedy is quite good. Prithiviraj's acting is very convincing and without any noticeable flaws. Music is also good, by Vidyasagar. Two songs really stand out: Chinna Ponnu by Sayonara Philips and Chinna Chinna by Sunitha Sarathy and Tippu (Harini's husband). The english piece in the Chinna Chinna song is quite funny (just like the one in Tirupachi).

Girls have beat boys in the CBSE XII results

2005-05-23T11:58:00.000-05:00

Girls' pass percentage: 83.17
Boys' pass percentage: 73.78

Chennai region had the highest 90 per cent pass percentage among the five CBSE regions. Delhi which stood third in the results last year was pushed to the fourth place this year after Chennai, Ajmer and Chandigarh, CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly said.

I have been a hardcore CBSE education fan, and am happy to see Madras beating other cities in the 90 percent pass percentage. <Read More>.

UPDATE: Here is another piece of stats that is an indication of the number of students studying in CBSE schools (in the XII std.):

The Central Board of Secondary Education Chennai Region comprises of 1,216 schools spread across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Pondicherry, Lakshadweep and Daman and Dieu. Of the 33,148 students who had registered for the examination, 32,365 candidates had appeared for the Plus Two public examinations at 530 centres.

<Read More>.

Scams - Low tech (Ore Ore Sagi) and High tech (Evil Twins and Pharming)

2005-05-21T23:25:00.000-05:00

Low Tech:
Heard about the latest scam in Japan? It's called the "Ore Ore Sagi" (ore ore means "It's me! It's me! Scandal" in Japanese). So far the maximum a single person (atleast the reported ones) has lost is $120K in this scandal. It seems there are several organized groups which take special training for conning people using this technique. I read about this a while ago in WSJ, but only now found it on the web...<Read More>.

High Tech:
Heard about the "evil twin" scam? Simply put, this is a different form of "phishing" but this is done using wireless hot-spots. According to eWeek "The Evil Twin is essentially a wireless version of a phishing scam — users think they're connecting to a genuine hot spot but are actually connecting to a malicious server, which can then extract information such as bank details. The attack can be carried out by anyone with the right equipment in the vicinity of a legitimate base station, according to Dr. Phil Nobles, wireless Internet and cybercrime expert at the U.K.'s Cranfield University." ...<Read More>.

And another high tech scam currently becoming notorious is "Pharming". According to CNET, "Rather than spamming you with e-mail requests, pharmers work quietly in the background, "poisoning" your local DNS server by redirecting your Web request somewhere else. As far as your browser's concerned, you're connected to the right site. The danger here is that you no longer have to click an e-mail link to hand over your personal information to identity thieves." ... <Read More>.

I was speechless...totally!

2005-05-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

While reading Toeragz's post about "The Best Compliment", I got reminded of a funny incident during my Master's: I was working as the Electrical Engg tutor during my MS and one of the students used to come to me regularly for help with one of the toughest subjects (Electro Magnetics). It was a total nightmare to me during my BE and I was so glad to pass it in my BE.

She used to come regularly during my work hours for help with that subject and I really dont know how I helped her solve those home work problems. I will somehow make sure I get the answers at the back of the book (using all the theorems that I have ever read about). Everytime she left I was so relieved. It was the same nightmare everytime she came in for help with that subject. Finally the semester was ending and I was the happiest person to know about that (not because my classes were also ending for that semester, but just because I can get rid of her). After the exam, she comes back and tells me she scored an A in that class and had come back to thank me for all the help...I was speechless...totally!

Singer Chinmayi is blogging!

2005-05-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

Chinmayi, the famous tamil singer has started blogging. If you dont recognize/remember the name or the songs that she has sung, check this out (Remember the song "Oru Deivam thandha Poove" from the film "Kannathil Muthamittal" ?) And we both studied in the same school - so now I know a Celebrity Junior!

Her website is at http://www.chinmayionline.com/ and her blog is at http://chinmayisripada.blogspot.com/.

Xbox 360 launched in the US

2005-05-13T00:43:00.000-05:00

Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 (2nd generation Xbox) during a 1/2 hour show on MTV today.

It's got an impressive spec:
Wireless controllers (no more fumbling with the wires).
Detachable 20 GB Hard disk (upgradeable).
Three 3.2 Ghz Processors (compare this with the 733Mhz Processor for Xbox).
512MB Memory.
12x dual-layer DVD drive that reads DVD, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW, WMA and MP3, among other formats.

Need anything else? ... <Read More>...<Read Some More>.

PS: Doom 3 (on Xbox) is keeping me well awake until an hour or two after midnight these past few days.

Kaal movie review and the weekend

2005-05-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

Saw the hindi movie Kaal (Stars Ajay Devgan, John Abraham, Isha Deol, Vivek Oberoi and Lara Dutta - SRK and Malaika make a cameo role in a song). This is a pretty decent movie, and a very thrilling one. The background music during the entire length of the movie keeps it very thrilling. The story is also pretty decent, although I felt the ending could have been a bit better. But liked the role of Kalli (Ajay Devgan), he seems to perfectly fit that role quite easily. I am beginning to feel that he could be the next Amitabh Bachchan, not just because of this movie but his acting has been quite convincing and almost seemless with the atmosphere of the movie, quite often. Music, as I had already reviewed it here is quite different and refreshing (most of them are techno based).

One more weekend is gone :-)

Have you ever had food in a silver bowl? I did on friday at a friend's place. Don't remember if I have ever had it before, but this was quite unique. Had Kesari in a "Velli Kinnum" (Silver bowl).

Finally finished my defensive driving course for the speeding ticket that I got (took it over the internet), and managed to pass it.

And there's been a lot of good music both in Tamil and hindi - most of them are very refreshing and original. Will post seperately on them.

Ads of the previous millenium

2005-05-07T00:31:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Ferrari's post on old ads, here are the things that I remembered from my days in Madras:

A-one cleaning powder...pathirangal pallapallaka, kannadi peengangal minnu minnuka, A-one Cleaning Powder.

Saravana Stores...Eversilver, pithalai, nagai...T.Nagar Usman Road (Kilaigal illai).

Sabena, Sabena...

Boost is the secret of my energy...our energy.

Sila Vishayame...nammidame, sila vishasheme...nammidame...(I think it is the Cadbury's ad)

Chick, chick, chick - Chicklets.

Tagline of Lifebouy was "Lifebuoy evvidamo arogyam avvidamme."

Raski rasna Rasna, rasna.

Thumbs up, taste the thunder (Thufani Thanda).

Cutticura talc...sloosy loosy or something like that.

Kadaikarare, antha voodhuvathi thanga...Edhu Ma? Ellathukkum mela irruke, adhu! Cycle brand agarabathigalai kettu vangungal!

Onida...Neighbors Envy, owners pride.

Solidaire for sports, solidaire for sunday movie, solidaire, solidaire....we want, we want true colors, we want, we want true sound, we know what we want, we want solidaire...solidaire!

Utterly Butterly Delicious...Amul.

Hmph, hero vayule ore natham...Arr Sugantha pakku..Thamboolam sirakka ARR.

Hmmm Ayyasami, ore natham...something like that (for Khaitan fan).

...Rathna stores, siva complex.

Suzuki Shogun, the boss.

Maan Mark kudaigal, maan mark kudaigal.

Britannia, britannia, britannia marie. Ting ting ti-ting.

Mirindaaaaaaaa!

Do you remember anything else?

Bombay Rockers

2005-05-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

Heard the music of Bombay Rockers today. Their hit song, "Rock tha Party" is really good. Inspite of the liberal amounts of expletives used in the album, some of their songs are quite good. This is a band with an Indian and a Danish guy (The Desi bugger sings the Punju/Hindi part, while the Danish bugger sings the English part). It seems they already won a Danish award for their hit song. Their debut album "Introducing the Bombay Rockers" is filled with all kinds of songs, rap, R&B, fusion, but nothing that relates to rock music (for the Rockers in their name)...<Read More>.

Hindu Theme Park in Uttaranchal

2005-05-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

If you haven't heard the scoop yet, here it is: Shiv Sagar, the grandson of Ramanand Sagar (Producer/Director of the serial Ramayan) is planning on building a huge 25 acre Hindu Theme Park right next to the Ganges, called the Gangadham. Being a very big mythological fan, I will certainly visit it after it is built. It's planned to be ready in 2007 before the Kumbh Mela in 2010 <Read More>.

How a $2 purchase ended with a $55 bill!

2005-05-02T23:27:00.000-05:00

I went to Best Buy this weekend to buy a $2 cable for my headset (it's got a single output, but to connect it to my computer I need two seperate outputs - one for the mic and the other for the headphone) and didn't really find it there. Might have to go to RadioShack to get it, but in the process ended up buying the Doom 3 Video game for my Xbox (A $2 intention ended with a $55 bill). I have played the original Doom (was a big fan then) and have also played it over the network at my University and have played many such computer games - Quake, Mortal Kombat 3 (Kun Lao was my favorite character, used to like his powers a lot), Age of Empires to name the very best that still remain in my memory. This one, Doom 3, has been quite good so far. Initially it was a bit slow to start off, but once it started off it was all spooky. It scares you really well with the Zombie kind of characters trying to kill you all along. One cool feature of this game is you can save it anytime just like a computer game (you can't do that in many of the other Xbox games, they let you do only after you reach certain checkpoints).

PSP Promotions

2005-05-02T22:59:00.000-05:00

If you have been watching the ads for PSP (PlayStation Portable - The new handheld Video Game by Sony) on TV and online, then most of you would feel the same way I do, which is completely amazed! The ads are too good and the music complements it extremely well, and is very infectious. For the inquisitive minds, the song is called "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand. For a video of the complete song go here, and for the lyrics, go here. And finally for the link of the kick-ass PSP promotion videos (or ads), go here.

There used to be a time, when I used to regularly check out Launch's site (now acquired by Yahoo) for the top videos to keep track of the English songs. I don't do that anymore, maybe I should, to keep up with the stinking number of good songs nowadays.

PS: Don't get me wrong, I DONT like the PlayStation (although PSP is a whole different video game console, it's a handheld)! XBOX rules and XBOX 360 or Xenon or whatever they are going to call the next-gen Xbox, will rock and may have a chance to be No.1, according to Gates!

How to Recover lost Partitions, unreadable hard disks

2005-05-01T05:51:00.000-05:00

UPDATE on my Hard Disk: I finally got the stuff restored. It took me two sleepless nights (literally...I am up till 6am today and it was around the same time yesterday too). Used several softwares (including Knoppix), but none really worked (Knoppix was just able to give me the garbled directory structure, nothing else), except this free GNU based utility called TestDisk (This recovers lost partitions), apparently my Master Boot Record got corrupted, (even after I used the XP's Recover mode to fix it) and that fixed the issue.

They also have another utility called PhotoRec that can recover lost/deleted images from digital camera memory or even Hard Disks. This software was a real life-saver, it really saved my 200GB of hard work! Now, I can finally sleep!

Thank you Dr. Google! (you have saved me again)

Evites and Knoppix

2005-04-30T00:50:00.000-05:00

While I try to retrieve data from my 200 GB hard disk, which has all of a sudden freaked out (XP is now complaining that the hard disk is in FAT format even though it is FAT32 based) using the sooper-dooper Linux software Knoppix, which can load up the complete OS from a CD, I thought I would post on something cool that I found out in an Evite invitation. Evite is a site which many (or almost all the people that I know of) use for sending out electronic invitations for parties and social occasions. The evite invitation had a hyperlink to add it to your Outlook Calender (It had the location and date and time field filled out automatically). I had not noticed this feature before and now that I have, I think this is a very cool feature. I use my Outlook Calender to keep track of almost everything like appointments, meetings, birthdays, to-dos and such. This when synced with my Treo 600 (A Palm based PDA cum phone) helps me both at work and in my personal life to keep everything organized. I am totally amazed at this neat little feature in evite!

It's 1 am in the morning and I am still trying to get back the stuff from my hard disk. Hopefully, I get it all intact.

Tiger Direct sues Apple

2005-04-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

Lawsuits keep getting crazier everytime you hear about a new one. If you watch for deals regularly on electronic items, then you would know about the store Tiger Direct, located in Illinois. I have been to this place a couple of times - the place is a simple warehouse filled with electronic items (these guys charge a notoriously high shipping fees of over $10 for anything you buy from them). Now they have filed a lawsuit against Apple over their Tiger OS, citing that their search results are getting affected! ... <Read More>.

How to make your blog surfing "Really Simple" through RSS

2005-04-29T00:40:00.000-05:00

Here is a post that explains how RSS (Really Simple Syndication) can make your blog/web surfing life "really simple". I have tried to make it as non-techie as possible for maximum reader-reach :-)

I would really urge/encourage all of my regulars (the ones that are in my blogroll and labs link) to enable XML feeds in their blogs, it will really help me and many others who visit your blogs to keep up with your posts (which means more comments) :-).

RSS Readers provide an offline way for viewing contents published on webpages. You wont have to keep checking web pages for updates when you subscribe for RSS Feeds, you get to know when there is an update on a particular webpage and a jist of the update is pushed onto your offline viewer. When you have a dozen or more sites/blogs that you frequent on a regular basis, it is a daunting task to keep up with all the updates on them. I use a simple RSS Reader and syndicate all the sites (which provide XML feeds) to check on updates. This way I dont miss out on my favorite blogs and also keep myself up-to-date with news from sites like CNET, Wired, Deals and such. But the sites/blogs should have RSS Feeds enabled (usually you will see a ATOM Feed link, or an XML Link or an RSS Link to indicate this).

If you are interested in enabling XML Feeds for your blog, read on:
To enable XML Feeds in Blogspot.com : In the blogger Settings Tab, the 6th column is called "Site Feed", in that set the Publish Site Feed to "Yes", and select the Descriptions to Full or Short, according to your desire. This will give the Site Feed's address, put that in a conspicuous place on your blog (somewhere next to your profile would be a good place). And then you might have to republish your blog.

For a list of free RSS Readers:
One of the most simplest and the one that I use is RSS Reader.
Another one is SharpReader. Pluck is another one for advanced users.

Most of the RSS Readers let you categorize your blogs/sites, which is a great feature. I have here a screenshot of my RSSReader to give you an idea.

Of course, if you dont want to download a software for this you can use online sites like Bloglines, Feedster.com or Technorati.

NYtimes today had a very nice article explaining what RSS does and how it helps you keep a check on all the new posts on blogs/sites that you visit regularly. I have provided a jist of it, if you would like to read that, please continue.

Continuation...

This article was mainly about the Apple's latest OS Tiger's Safari, which has RSS built-in.

RSS (an acronym for "Rich Site Summary" and later coined "Really Simple Syndication") is a system of, well, Web-site broadcasting. Once you've signed up to receive an RSS feed (broadcast) from, say, NYTimes.com, your RSS-reading software displays the headlines as a sort of live, constantly updated table of contents.

There's so much great information on the Web, from news to Web logs (blogs) on specialized topics. Trouble is, once you accumulate a few favorite Web sites containing interesting things, you either go crazy trying to visit them all every day to see when new stuff has been posted, or you give up, overwhelmed, and miss out on stories you would have cared about. The beauty of the RSS system is that it lets the good stuff come to you, organized in tidy digest form, free of spam and ads.

That's great and all, but there's a loaded phrase in that description: "your RSS-reading software." Fact is, most people don't have such a program, don't know where to get one, and wouldn't know how to use it. At the moment, therefore, RSS reading is a privilege reserved for the technically proficient.

... (RSS Feed) lets you know how many new articles have been published on the Web site you subscribed to you'll see, for example, "NYtimes.com (7)" so you don't waste time visiting pages where there's nothing new.

...In essence, you've now built yourself a self-updating, personal clipping service. With one click, you make Safari display all the articles, from the Web sites you consider relevant, that pertain to a topic that interests you. It's a fantastic way to keep tabs on a sports team, movie star, company or whatever.

Ferrari and TCS

2005-04-26T23:27:00.000-05:00

I read sometime back about TCS providing some consulting solutions to Ferrari. The other day I was browsing Ferrari's site and found a mention of TCS on their site as one of their Partners. This, indeed is a noteworthy mention and is something all the TCSers should feel really proud of.

And in the Imola Formula1 Race, it was Fernando Alonso again - a Hat-trick! Michael Schumacher is getting back into the race now. And Kartik finished 14th. 11 more days to the next race at Catalunya, Spain.

Amazing Adobe Ad!

2005-04-25T00:53:00.000-05:00

Here is a cool ad by Adobe. Move your mouse around the page and watch some of the faces move towards the cursor. A very creative Ad! ...<Read More>.

Movie Reviews - Tango Charlie and Mumbai Express

2005-04-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Saw Tango Charlie and Mumbai Express. Tango Charlie (stars Bobby Deol, Ajay Devgan among others) is an alright movie - it's a story of a BSF soldier and his experiences with the contemporary disturbances in India (viz. the Kargil fight, Gujarat chaos, Bodo Fight, etc.) A pretty decent movie. Music is also pretty decent, one of the song "Akkad Te Bakkad Te", very much resembles the "Chappa Chappa" song from Maachis.

Mumbai Express is a total waste of time. Didnt think Kamal would make such an idiotic movie. No story at all. The movie started off with a bit of comedy that was enjoyable, but slowly the story started to drift apart(so did the comedy), and I completely lost interest in watching it half way through. Just a complete waste of time.

I had an ER (Emergency Room) experience a couple of days back for a very bad neck sprain. More on that(and more posts) once I get well.

Find what you need!

2005-04-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

Here is a cool link that tells you about finding what you need with the best Search Engines. Depending on what you need to find, it's got a variety of Search engines that might give you the best results. For example, if you would like to find out the visual representation of your results, the you can try it on Kartoo.com, or if you are interested in searching for Sounds of animals, say a cow, then you could try Findsounds.com...<Read More>.

Found the link from Emergic.org.

The playing field is being leveled!

2005-04-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys says to a NY Times reporter that the East is now an equally competetive place for global knowledge work...<Read More>

Am back!

2005-04-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

Spent most of the Tamil New Year's Day (April 14th) fasting for the surgery. Finally after an hour's delay the Surgery was done at 4pm. My family was right next to me, which made this entire process almost painless. There were atleast 6 or 7 nurses who took care of me at various stages (pre-surgery, during surgery, recovery room, post-surgery) and I was totally amazed at the way they handled my information. Everyone seemed to know exactly what needed to be done at that point, what exactly was my position and answered all of our questions at that point very well. At this juncture, I got reminded of an article that I read at Emergic.org, about IT Oppurtunities at Hospitals, it discusses how things could be automated there. A very interesting read ... <Read More>.

Will be back soon!

2005-04-15T22:40:00.000-05:00

Had a minor surgery yesterday, due to which I dont think I will post for a couple of days. Will be back soon. Thanks to all for the New Year wishes. Hope all of you folks have a good and prosperous new year!

BPO Scam

2005-04-12T14:36:00.000-05:00

Employees from the BPO company Mphasis, fradulently withdrew $350,000 from the bank accounts of 4 Citibank customers.

According to a Forrester report,

"The incident will undermine call centre expansion by as much as 30 per cent as security concerns, regulatory pressure, and end customer backlash lengthen sales cycles, impede the ramping up of larger projects, or drive firms to take the captive route".

In essence, the report is indicating that the BPO growth might get hit by upto 30%!...<Read More>.

Tech News - Xbox2, PS3, Notebooks, TVs and iPods

2005-04-11T23:41:00.000-05:00

MTV will host an exclusive show to debut the next XBOX on May 12. The show will be hosted by Frodo (Elijah Wood), the hero of the film Lord of the Rings...<Read More>. Both Xbox 2 and PlayStation 3 are launching on the same day - May 16th, although actual sales are expected around Q1 2006...<Read More>.

Notebooks running on fuel cells: IBM Thinkpad prototypes running on methanol-based fuel cells...<Read More>.

Television tubes through the years. Here is a collection of pictures of TVs over the years, including the 4-inch Television by GE...<Read More>.

iPods as Heart Rate monitors...<Read More>.

Mercedes Benz Driving Event

2005-04-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are interested in test driving a Mercedes Benz SUV, here is a driving event in the US (available in many major cities). I have been to several driving events by Lexus and Volvo. Havent been to a one by Benz. Let's see how good that is. A friend, and I have already signed up for this event. Let's see how good it is...<Read More>

Rahman and Lata

2005-04-11T00:12:00.000-05:00

Rahman's getting this year's Lata Mangeshkar award. This award was started in the year 1984...<Read More>.

PS: I tried to google who were the previous recipients of this award, but didnt find any good results. Anybody knows if there is a list of previous award winners somewhere on the web?

Gmail's Lockdown in Sector 4!

2005-04-06T00:40:00.000-05:00

My Gmail account's locked for a 24 hour period because of some unusually high activity!

Update: It seems like they have locked the access only from a specific IP. It seems to be working fine at my office.

Hindi Music Review - Bose The Forgotten Hero

2005-04-05T23:05:00.000-05:00

Allah Rakha Rahman (aka A.R. Rahman) has done it once again. His music truly represents the modern patrons of Indian patriotism. His Vande Mataram was the start, then came The Legend of Bhagat Singh, after that was Swades and now it is Bose - The Forgotten Hero. With each and every major release he seems to be stepping up with his music. Earlier his music was more South Indian with a western tinge. Then he proved that he can do the same magic in hindi films too (some notable ones include Dil Se, Rangeela, Zubeida, Tehzeeb, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Yuva). And then he went on to include western choirs in the music and later went on to include seperate instrumental themes. With Bose he has done a lot of instrumental themes, as varied as two of them with an Afghan Theme, two titled Emilie's Theme (It seems Emilie was his Austrian Wife), two war themes, a Hitler Theme, a U-Boat Theme, a National Anthem theme out of a total of 13 instrumental songs. The rest of the music in the remaining 7 songs, features excellent singers...<Continued...>

Continuation...
My personal favorite is the "Ekla Chalo", sung by Nachiketa Chakraborty and Sonu Nigam. The beginning of this song features a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, with a deep meaning. This verse has been excellently sung by Nachiketa. Although I wasnt quite impressed with the usage of Sonu Nigam for this piece - no denying that he is a very good singer, but I think a fresher voice would have made this song even better. While Googling about the music, I found that such songs are called Rabindra Sangeet which have a mix of Bengali and Hindi.

"Aazadi" starts off with a choir and then comes the voice of Rahman - he has a great voice too, and he always sings only those songs that fit within his vocal range (this single characteristic is enough to set him apart from Anu Malik - have you heard his Let's play Holi song from Waqt). A classic example is the "Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera" which he sung in Swades, his voice suited the song just perfectly.

"Kadam Kadam" is a good number with drum beats that is very typical in a patriotic film. "Hum Dilli Dilli Jayenge" also follows the same pattern.

"Des Ki Mitti" is a slow song which is alright (Sonu Nigam again). "Zikr" is a slow sufi type of song. "Ghoomparani" is very well sung by Sapna Mukherjee and Satyanarayan Mishra. I liked the way she pronounces the words "Ghoomparani mashi pishi...".

About the minuses in this album: Madhushree, my favorite singer is conspicuously absent in this album. Two songs feature Sonu Nigam, would have preferred someone with a fresher voice.

Overall, this is a must-have Rahman album. Dont miss it.

And by the way, the movie is directed by Shyam Benegal and lyrics is by the God Javed Akthar.

<Research was done using the help of Google.>
References include:
<http://www.bollyvista.com/article/p/31/4496>
<http://store.indiatimes.com/timesmusic/TimesMusicDetails.jsp?albumid=alb14772>
<http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/music/AR._Rehman.html>

Real-life Hero

2005-04-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

I was reading Vidya's Blog when I found this link. Very moving story, Siddharth has a Master's Degree in Economics with Distinction! I recently read elsewhere that, the difference between normal and special people is that in normal people the +ves overshadow the -ves, while in special people thats not the case and people tend to see only the -ves...<Read More>.

Picture Courtesy : Rediff

F1 Racing

2005-04-03T07:25:00.000-05:00

Got the tickets to the Formula 1 Race at Indianapolis, USA on June 19. Got it in the J stand - one of the better stands which gives you an upclose look at the cars (and maybe the drivers too because of its proximity to a couple of turns), originally I wanted to get it in the H stand, but because of the delay in buying the tickets missed out on that. Also subscribed to Speed Channel with my Cable, now I can watch the F1 racing live on TV! Just watched the Bahrain F1 Race and Narain had to pull out of the race because of problems with his car. Micheal Schumacher also retired because of engine problems - Ferrari hasnt been doing good so far, this year. The spaniyard, Fernando Alonso, has won the race back-to-back and also has won a podium finish for the third time in succession.

Picture Courtesy: grandprix.com

Hindi Movie Review - Sheesha

2005-04-02T23:51:00.000-06:00

If you have watched the tamil film Vaali (starring Ajeet and Simran) then you wont need to watch this film. The story is very similar (I didnt realize it until a friend of mine told me about it). The only difference between Vaali and Sheesha is that Neha Dupia is doing the double role. Quite an ordinary film, with ample sleaze provided by Neha Dupia. If you have other important things to do in life you can skip this film, but if you insist that you are as jobless as I am, then please go ahead and watch it ;-)

The music, composed by Sen Brothers, is very good. I liked most of the songs in it. "Yaar Ko Maine" sung by Kunal Ganjawala is outstanding. The same song sung by the latest nightingale, Madhushree, is just amazing. This is the song which one should listen to in a dark room with eyes closed in a peaceful environment (for added effects, you can listen to it with your loved one). "Kar Mundhya" is a peppy song, sung by Sonu Kakkar (she shot to fame with her "Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo" song in Dum). One more peppy song sung by Shehzad (I think he has sung for Rahman quite recently, although cant remember which song - neither can Dr.Google) and Alka Yagnik "Main Ho gaye Atrah Sal ki" is also good, but there have been similar tunes in the recent past. "Mujhe Jeena Sikhadho" sung by Kunal and Shreya Ghoshal is quite average. I call it average because there have been many songs in the recent past with a similar tune. Overall music by Sen Brothers is very good. They are now on my hindi music composer watchlist (it used to consist of Rahman, Shankar-Ehsan-Loy and Salim-Sulaiman).

Verdict: Average film, good music.

Timepass News

2005-04-01T20:54:00.000-06:00

Cerebral Shangrila has posted the Apple Ad with Gandhiji in it. The caption is simple, Think Different.

Gmail is increasing it's storage size. They are going to increase it tp upto 2 GB. Already my account shows a 1.775 GB.

If you havent heard about it yet, here it is, Google Gulp!

Hindi Movie Review - Fun - Can be dangerous sometimes

2005-03-31T00:09:00.000-06:00

Total Bakwaas. I couldnt watch Tauba Tauba (starring Payal Rohatgi) and same is the case with this film too (both have cheap and sleazy storylines, but much different plots). Payal Rohatgi is trying her best to become an actress, but keeps getting only these sort of films. Manisha Koirala's brother, Sidharth makes his debut in this movie. Don't think either Payal or Sidharth will make it big in Bollywood, if they keep getting into such films.

Verdict: Total Time waste.

DVD Jon

2005-03-30T22:25:00.000-06:00

DVD Jon. While surfing the net, I found this link which had a photo of the DVD Jon. This is the guy who cracked the DVD encryption code and also the Apple's Itunes DRM. He is barely 22 years old!

Hindi Movie Review - Blackmail

2005-03-29T23:06:00.000-06:00

This movie stars Ajay Devgan, Suniel Shetty, Priyanka Chopra and Diya Mirza. A very average film; most of the plot is quite predictable. Diya Mirza comes just in a few frames. The little boy, Parth Dave, does a lot of overacting and is a bit irritating too. The movie's got good action sequences. If you didnt know this already, the plot's been lifted from Ransom/Cape Fear. Music is quite decent, composed by Himesh Reshammiya. The song "Imli Imli" sung by Hema Sardesai and Jayesh stands out well. Overall it's a time pass movie.

Verdict: Average action flick...total time pass.

Tamil Movie Reviews - Raam

2005-03-29T00:06:00.000-06:00

An amazing movie and a good thriller. Excellent acting by Jeeva, Saranya and Rahman. I didnt feel that any of the scenes were unnecessary or a drag. All of it were pointing towards the central theme. The suspense in the movie was well maintained.

Very good story with a simple theme (you will understand it after 3/4 of the movie passes). Comedy by Kanja Karupu is very enjoyable, he's got a bright future. Cameo role by Prathap Pothan (good selection of choosing him as a Psychiatrist). Music by Yuvan Shankar Raja (who recently lost his freedom to Sujaya) is quite decent. The song "Aarariraro" by KJ Yesudas is very good. The background score adds to the thrill of watching the movie - well done by Yuvan.

Good and believable acting by Jeeva. And Saranya and Rahman have also acted well. I have always liked Saranya's acting (I remember her acting in Nayagan very crisply) - she's got a pleasant personality and fits her roles quite well. And Rahman has also done a good role as a Police officer. If you like watching tamil movies, then you can afford to miss all the other recent movies, but not this one.

Verdict: Dont miss it. One of the few good films that are out at this time.

Sears Tower @ Chicago

2005-03-27T23:53:00.000-06:00

The first picture was taken during my trip to Detroit. On the way back, we stopped at this place to see if Crepes would be available, but didnt find it. Also, this weekend I tried the crepes at IHOP (International House of Pancakes), but it was pretty bad when compared with the ones that I had at Seattle. The next pictures are that of Sears Tower (formerly the World's Tallest building) and the last set is that of some "Pigeons on Ice". The small lake had frozen and the Pigeons were walking on thin ice.

Kaal Music Review

2005-03-27T23:31:00.000-06:00

This movie has a huge lineup of stars - Ajay Devgan, Esha Deol, John Abraham, Lara Dutta, Shah Rukh Khan, Vivek Oberoi. The music is by Salim-Sulaiman, these guys did most of the music for the Pop group Aasma (Channel V's product), their hits include the Chandu Ke Chacha song. The music for the songs are quite different, in the sense that most of them are disco based or more on the remix type - although I think they are mostly original songs. At first glance, didnt like it too much, but after listening to it for sometime, I seem to be liking it. I like the Jungle Mix song, the Kaal Dhamaal song and the Nassa Nassa songs the most. The Dharma Mix isnt bad. If you would like to try it, you can download it here.

Tamil Movie Reviews - London & Mayavi

2005-03-27T23:03:00.000-06:00

Saw London (Starring Prashanth and Ankitha) and Mayavi (starring Surya and Jyothika) this weekend. Save yourself some time, dont watch either of these. Even with surfing the web on the side, I couldnt bear these two movies. Both lack a good script, and both have "un-sigh-kable" comedy lines. Vadivelu has a cheap role in London and just falls to disgrace with the bad comedy in this movie. I am not sure what others think about this, but I have noticed that from the first 15 minutes of a movie, you can more or less judge a movie's calibre. I couldnt stand (or sit) the first 15 minutes of these two films - the comedy was horrible, the storyline didnt really take off anywhere and I was surprised why these actors even signed up to do these films.

Also the music in both the movies, don't seem to be impressive.

Verdict: Shift-Delete both London and Mayavi.

Gmail File System

2005-03-25T20:50:00.000-06:00

Did you know that you could use Gmail as an extra Hard drive? Each Gmail account is 1 GB in size, and if you have multiple Gmail accounts then it easily adds up some GBs of storage space. GmailFS is a really cool application which has been written in Python, an interpreted programming language similar to Tcl, Perl or Java. It basically provides a mountable Linux File System using your Gmail account.

For the geeky gentlmen/ladies, here is a link that explains it in much more detail and provides the Linux version of it...<Read More>.

For others, here is a link which tells you how to install this application in simple terms and provides the Windows version of it...<Read More>.

This is a hack and is something new, so it might not work as expected or might fail to work completely. Please use your discretion.

Detroit trip and a Speeding Ticket

2005-03-24T21:55:00.000-06:00

Warning: My first lengthy post.

Here is the long delayed post. I went with my brother and sister-in-law to Detroit last weekend, it's about 5 hours from Chicago. The onward drive wasnt all that good due to a bit of snow and rain. Because of this and due to the bad traffic and thousands of detours on Interstates 96 and 94 (close to Detroit) it took us nearly 7-8 hours to reach Detroit. And as I said earlier, Detroit downtown is one of the dirtiest places that I have seen in the US. It made me think that Madras was a lot better. After we came back to Chicago (the return journey was a lot better without rain or snow, although the detours were still a hassle as the signs werent posted properly), I went over to my brother's place for some tea and my usual grocery shopping (thats where I seem to be getting my groceries from nowadays - whenever I go there I come back with food for the next week or two, these carefully prepared by my sister-in-law. One of the several advantages of being a bachelor).

On my way back to my apartment, I was fiddling with my Dell JukeBox MP3 player to change the playlist - this is where I lost the concentration on the road. I was driving at 65 mph (miles/hour) on a 45 mph zone and didnt even realize it. Usually that road is empty (and it was a Sunday evening too) and people do 60-70mph quite normally, so it wasnt that much of a deal. But I am usually quite cautious on the road and somehow sense the presence of cops quite often, this has saved me from a ticket for the nearly 5 years that I have been driving in the US.

I knew this was bound to happen someday or the other but when it actually happened, I was feeling a bit stupid for my carelessness. The cop's flashing lights went on and I moved to the right lane (the slower lane) and then he directed me from his loudspeaker to take a right turn and pull over, which I did. Then after the formalities were done, I told him that this was the first time I was speeding, he then seemed to understand and said "let me see", and went back to check my driving history. But when we came back, he came back with a ticket in his hand and gave me the directions for paying it. Then I thought it was a total "bulb" situation and took the ticket. From the moment I got the ticket, I have been checking my speed more than 5-10 times every minute and wherever I go, I seem to be spotting the cops' car instantaneously. I am controlling myself very consciously against revving up my engine when the signal goes green. I used to get a kick by moving past the slower cars at the signals - this habit might have to sit back and rest for a while. And a couple of days back I saw a young guy roaring up his Cobra engine when he was frustrated at the guy in front of him who was pretty slow. I was then laughing at myself and at him at the same time: at him because, I got the feeling that it wouldnt be too far off before he gets a ticket, and at me because, I should have done the same exact thing several times and someone else could have been laughing at me all along.

So much for a simple speeding ticket! The ticket is for $75 (plus $30) for the driving class (if you take this class you can avoid this ticket going into your driving hisory). And after getting this ticket, I happened to talk to a friend of mine from California and suddenly my $100 ticket didnt seem like a big thing at all, as he had just got a ticket for jumping the red light and he now has to shell out about $500 for it. All this for jumping the light by 0.2 seconds!!!

Guess what this is?

2005-03-23T23:21:00.000-06:00

I have tried to hide the things in the picture that will reveal what you are looking at. Take a guess and tell me what you think this could be?

Answer to this and the procrastinated post about Detroit and Speeding ticket tommorrow :-)

Update: Answer in the comment section.

Tech News

2005-03-23T08:37:00.000-06:00

Future Video Game Consoles. Here are some leaked/rumoured pictures of the next generation gaming consoles...<Read More>.

Ajax - The next killer app that is revolutionalizing the web. Google has already implemented this in Gmail and GMaps (Google Maps), and this could be used for future thin client applications like Office applications on the web...<Read More>. More details on Ajax.

And yesterday I read an article in Wall Street Journal about Symbian (Most of the Nokia phones use their OS) striking a deal with Microsoft for the synch software with Exchange. They are arch-rivals in this business and already RIM (the maker of Black and Blueberries) is showing slight signs of a battle with it's stock. Not sure how the other top players would react to this (PalmOne, maker of the Palm PDAs and Treo Smartphones, is one of them).

Luxury Laptops

2005-03-23T08:21:00.000-06:00

Given the fact that laptops are becoming mainstream nowadays, a new market for luxury laptops is building up...<Read More>.

Picture Courtesy: News.com

PSP - A better Gameboy?

2005-03-23T08:06:00.000-06:00

Play Station Portable or PSP, is all set to hit the stores in North America tommorrow. If you would like to catch up on the buzz, <here> is some reading that you can do. And Sony has already got the accessories market pumped up for this gaming console...<Read More>.

Detroit trip and a Speeding Ticket

2005-03-23T00:28:00.000-06:00

*I went to Detroit over the weekend.
*Got the first speeding ticket in my driving career.

More on these two tommorrow - I really need to get some sleep now :-)

Outsourcing Terrorism

2005-03-22T23:07:00.000-06:00

It seems militants are targeting Outsourcing firms. Militancy with a noble cause? ...<Read More>.

News in General

2005-03-22T22:38:00.000-06:00

If you havent still heard, Gemini Ganesan is no more. NewInd Press has a photo essay about him here.

It's a bit late now, but still I should honor this guy in my blog : Narain Karthikeyan came 11th in the Malaysian Formula one...<Official Race Result>.

Ask Jeeves, the search engine with the Butler, has been acquired...<Read More>. AskJeeves.com is the fifth-largest web search engine and could pose a good competition to the top three players : Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Wall Street Journal (Print Edition) had an article about the Airbus 380 today: The new Airbus 380 Jetliner which can hold a maximum of 853 passengers (+ 20 crew members) will take almost one hour to be fully boarded and in case of an emergency all of these people have to deboard in 90 seconds, to pass security regulations.

Anil Ambani is now getting death threats. The fight between them is just getting worser.

Game Network IGN.com is now up for sale. It's a pretty neat site for Game reviews. I visit them every once in a while for Xbox game reviews, cheat codes and walkthroughs.

Muthiah Muralidharan's married now

2005-03-22T21:39:00.000-06:00

After seeing more than 10 referrals from Google to my blog for Muthiah Muralidharan's marriage pictures, I think I should return back the favor by posting his marriage pictures (I had an earlier post about his wedding). He is happily married and he must be on his way back to Sri Lanka...<Read More>.

More photos here.

Picture Courtesy: Muralidharan's website (For more pictures look at www.muralidharan.com).

This is the season for marriages!

2005-03-22T08:34:00.000-06:00

Music Director Yuvan Shankar Raja is now married to Sujaya Chandran, daughter of a London based Doctor. It seems, Hariharan and Mandolin Srinivas conducted musical programmes during the marriage/reception. Both Muthiah's and Yuvan's marriage took place on the same day (March 21st). Many celebrities came in to wish the couple, and among them the God was also present.

Picture Courtesy: Indiaglitz and DailyNews.

Amazing!

2005-03-17T23:44:00.000-06:00

(Click on these images)
Found this really amazing site. It's a typographic book/video/music searching site by Amazon.com. Search for any book or video or music on this site, and the results would be typographically displayed, meaning searching for "gemini" in books would build each and every character of gemini with pictures of the search results. And you can click on the letters (of gemini) to zoom into the cover of the books. Very cool programming!...<Read More>.

Microsoft's AdCenter

2005-03-17T14:27:00.000-06:00

Microsoft has come out with their version of Click Through Ads. It's called AdCenter. It uses demographics also while showing the ads (I dont think Google does this)...<Read More>.

PS: The link that carries the news article about Microsoft's AdCenter is filled with Google Ads. Is that a hidden message to someone?

A:\

2005-03-16T23:00:00.000-06:00

Recently I read two posts (In Soumya's Blog and in Jagan's Blog) about Madras Slangs, which reminded me of a funny incident that a friend of mine narrated to us. He was in a Cyber cafe in Madras and someone in that place said this, "floppya thooki a colothula podu pa" (Translation - Put the floppy disk in the 'A' Drive). This is where Madras slangs and technology come together :-)

Music from Kicha Vayasu 16

2005-03-16T17:21:00.000-06:00

I heard the songs of Kicha Vayasu 16 - this movie stars Simran among others. Music is by Dhina and the songs are quite decent. There are three very good songs that stand out, "Angalai Enakku Pidikkum" sung by Dev Prakash and Sumitra (Havent heard these guys before, but they have sung it really well). The second good one is the "Kelambuthu Kelambuthu" song, sung by Kartik and others. These two songs were right next to each other in my playlist and unless you take notice, it feels as though the second song is a continuation of the first one - the beats kind of blend into each other. These two songs are quite racy and have a good beat to it. Off late I have found that keeping my Bass and Treble of my car stereo system both at Max setting gives it a unique taste. And with such songs it totally ups my spirits. The third songs is the "Sila Neram Sila Pozhuthu" excellently sung by Unnimenon. He is one of my favorite singers, and he has a voice similar to that of Madhu Balakrishnan (or vice versa, depending of how you look at each of them).

These three songs are filling up my 10-15 minute drive to/from work the past few days. For added effects, today morning I tilted-up my sunroof (in my car) and it felt really good...<Listen to it>.

Forthcoming Tamil Movie Releases

2005-03-16T17:19:00.000-06:00

1. Rajni's - Chandramukhi

2. Kamal's - Mumbai express

3. Vikram's - Anniyan

4. Surya's - Ghajini

5. Vijay's - Sachein

6. S.J Surya's - Best Friend

7. Madhavan's - Thambi, Priyasakhi

8. Prashanth - London

9. Ajith's - Godfather

10. Simbhu's - Thotti Jaya

11. Srikanth's - Sadhurangam

12. Bharat's - February-14

13. Dhanush's- Adhu oru kana kaalam

14. Simran - Kicha Vayasu 16

Additions, corrections are welcome. Thanks to a tamil download site for giving me most of the movie names from this list. Let me try to see if I can find a similar list in Hindi too.

Trisha clears the air

2005-03-16T17:13:00.000-06:00

In an interview with Galatta she clears some of the controversies that she's been involved with (knowingly or unknowingly)...<Read More (needs a userid/password)>.

Bad Programming!

2005-03-14T21:27:00.000-06:00

Got this mail from PalmOne today. Can't these guys even test the basic scenario of a User's profile not containing any PDAs? I got more pissed off when I got another email from one of those popular companies (cant remember which one) today which had "Variable Name" as my name.

McDonald's is outsourcing?

2005-03-14T00:29:00.000-06:00

Yeah they are going to outsource their Drive-thru calls. So the next time you hear a desi asking you, "McDonaaalds, How May I helppu you?", ask him for a Hot Chai and Samosa with extra chutney...<Read More>

Found this link from Sriram's blog.

From Madras to Minnesota

2005-03-13T22:27:00.000-06:00

These two pictures were taken when I went to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2003. The first one is a small waterfalls, the other one was taken inside the Mall of America - Largest Indoor Mall in America and the second largest in the world (More Info). It's got an Indoor Theme Park...you could have a subway sandwich and watch people screaming out loud in the roller coaster rides. But apart from a few waterfalls, lakes and this mall, there's not much to see in Minneapolis. I had gone there to meet my Schoolmate (High School) Suri (and Sundar, who had come there for his amru friend's wedding). And this is a post to Welcome Suri back to the world of blogging. He blogs at <From Madras to Minnesota>. It's been more than 11 years since we graduated from high school and we still maintain constant touch with most of our friends.

Ji...Ada Cheee!

2005-03-13T01:43:00.000-06:00

Just saw the tamil movie "Ji", starring Ajit and Trisha. It is just like Tirupachi, a total waste of time. The first half didnt have any story or proper sequence and was going aimlessly, while the second half had some story but was filled with the usual stuff that happens in politics, which has already been shown in 10s of 1000s of movies. The title succintly puts it - Dont waste your time on it.

About Ji's Audio - Vidyasagar has composed some good music in this movie. The song "Ding Dong" by Madhu Balakrishnan and Madhushree is just amazing. The music is excellent in this song and the singers have also rendered it very beautifully - both the singers are very high in my favorite list of singers. The other song that I lied in this movie is "Ethanai Ethanai", the song is good, but the singer, Shankar Sampoke, has tried to over-pronounce the words in some places which gives a bad look, otherwise the song is pretty nice. Talking about Vidyasagar's music, his music in Chandramukhi, on first glance, was quite disappointing.

And Trisha, just like Tirupachi, has a very small role.

Verdict: Ji...Ada Cheee!

Indo-China Bhai Bhai?

2005-03-12T21:19:00.000-06:00

A funny stand-up comedy video. The comedian is narrating about an Indian trying to buy a purse from a Chinese store...<See Video>.

If you surf around a bit in this site, you will see other interesting videos, including the Aishwarya Rai's Interview on 60 Minutes, Aishwarya Rai's Interview on David Letterman, Telecom Italia's ad featuring Gandhiji's speech <Other Videos>.

2005-03-10T23:03:00.000-06:00

Ferry - Taken during my Seattle trip.

An Excellent PhotoBlog

2005-03-10T22:31:00.000-06:00

Here is an excellent photoblog by Nilesh. He has a Taj album and an Agra and Fatehpur Sikri album among others. I have never been to either of these places. I am totally awestruck just looking at these pictures, can't imagine how I would feel loking at it in person. I like photography in general and these are very crisp pictures which depict the grandeur of these monuments. Don't miss the Radhaswami temple photos in the photoblog. The marbles in this monument have some exquisite carvings. I should certainly go see it in person soon...<Nilesh's Photo Blog>.

Shakalaka Shernaz Abhijeet

2005-03-09T00:51:00.000-06:00

If you have watched the movie "Black", then you would know who I am talking about. She played the role of the mother of Ayesha Kapoor in that movie. Her acting was excellent (on par with all the three protagonists) in the movie. She has a pleasing personality that will immediately pull you to her side...<Read More>.

In an unreleated news, Shakalaka Baby-Vasundra Das is getting married to Roberto Narayanan, he is of Italian origin but Indian born...<Read More>.

Abhijeet Sawant has been declared the Indian Idol. He's got an amazing voice. Watch him singing the "Tu Mile Dil Kile" Song from the movie Criminal. The other finalist Amit is also equally good. Watch him sing the "Jo Vaada Kiya" song from some hindi movie. :-)

Page 3

2005-03-09T00:49:00.000-06:00

Just watched the movie "Page 3" directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, starring Konkana Sensharma and Atul Kulkarni. This is a very good movie which narrates the story of the rich and famous (Bollywood's, of course). Madhavi is a journalist who reports in the Page 3 (dedicated to the Bollywood's rich and famous) section of a leading Newspaper. The story is a superb narration from a journalist's point of view. Even though the story covers a myriad of subjects (it was a bit distracting to me at the beginning) but slowly the movie shaped up and started to get interesting with the central theme becoming more apparent. Atul Kulkarni (he is a very powerful actor - I started noticing him after his outstanding performance in "Hey Ram") has a good role, so does Boman Irani (the laughter therapist from "Munnabhai"). It gives a complete dashboard-look at what happens in Bollywood. Would higly recommend this movie...<Read More>.

Verdict: Excellent acting by Konkana, nice theme. See it if you can.

Someone's SSC Exam paper

2005-03-08T00:10:00.000-06:00

I got this in a forward today and found it very very hilarious! These are supposedly from someone's SSC exam - not sure about the authenticity, but is certainly funnny.

Filmfare on digestion

2005-03-06T23:42:00.000-06:00

Titled "Readers dont digest", filmfare has a write-up where readers point out anomalies in the recent hindi movies.

Narain finished 15th in the Australian Grand Prix

2005-03-06T23:36:00.000-06:00

Pic Courtesy: Sify

Narain was the fastest among the Rookies in the Australian Grand Prix. He finished 15th out of the 20 who raced. Michael Schumacher crashed out and couldnt complete the race.

Good Music

2005-03-06T19:53:00.000-06:00

If you like listening to music, then here are some good ones (just desi ones) -

MTVs Band Aasma (Music by Salim-Sulaiman)

Channel Vs Band Viva (Various Music Directors including SEL and Salim-Sulaiman)

Hindi Soundtracks that I like from recent Films:

"Mat Ja" from Shabd. Very good music by Vishal-Shekar.

All the songs from Black Friday. Good music by the band Indian Ocean. Their earlier albums include Kandisa, Indian Ocean, Jhini and Desert Rain. I am listening to their album Kandisa right now.

"Guzar Na Jaye" from Rog. Excellently sung by KK and very good music by MM Kreem and Gaudi.

Waiting to listen to the Indian Idol album.

Tamil Soundtracks that I like from recent films:
Most of the songs from Chellame. I really liked the picturisation of "Kadhalikkum Aasai". The song in the beach and the dance sequence was excellently made. Good music by Harris Jeyaraj and very well sung by KK, Mahathi, Chinmayi and Tippu (Harini's husband).
Chandramukhi is a big disappointment from Vidyasagar. After Rahman, I look up to Harris Jeyaraj and Vidyasagar. Yuvan Shankar Raja, Imman and sometimes Srikanth Deva fall into my second-tier of music directors. I heard a couple of songs of Jithan by Srikanth Deva and they seem to be really good. I hate most of the music by Xerox Deva, due to his jarring use of music and not much of originality, but Srikanth Deva seems to be a better version of him. his music in M.Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi was quite good.

Shakes?

2005-03-06T18:33:00.000-06:00

Just tried out Banana and Date Milk Shake topped with Bailey's Irish Cream. It's got a very unique taste and makes a good early evening drink. According to the webtender Bailey's Irish Cream is probably the best known irish cream in the World. It is made from a mix of cream, eggs, chocolate and Irish whiskey. If you dont drink alcohol, then try it without bailey's it will still be a good early evening drink.