Movie Review - Short Circuit

Recently watched, or re-watched, these 2 classic movies "Short Circuit" part 1 and 2. I was planning to post some clip from it, but both the movies are so hilarious and full of jokes and funny situations that it was hard to pick. So, I actually posted 5 clips, just random selection.

Here we go. The robot "no. 5" escapes the authorities and gets back to the girl who is her only friend till that time.

She lets him stay there and next morning he makes her breakfast. Hilarious.

The third one is slightly later in the morning when the girl's bf comes over to capture No. 5 with a rifle.

Thought of the day - 27th June 2008

“The finest gift you can give anyone is
encouragement. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the
genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance
beyond the wildest dreams”

Thought of the day - 23rd June 2008

"Courage to start and willingness to
keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success."

I love Firefox!

I love Firefox!

The first reason of course is that it's not shoved at me by Microsucks, and then there are many others. One strong reason is add-on's, they are developed by normal people and they are so useful. In this shot you can see how many of them I have installed and active but this is kind of trying out phase, usually I have 2 or 3 that I consider quite essential like a download statusbar, fast video download - to download youtube videos, and google toolbar, of course.

This post is from one add-on called Scribe Fire I have used it before, but now it's new and improved and can handle images easier.

That's my reason to love firefox. What's yours?

Book Review - Matt Helm - The Threateners

Just finished reading this great Matt Helm book "The Threateners". Instead of doing a review I added my comments to its Wikipedia page.

Take a look if you feel curious about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threateners

Thought of the day - 20th June 2008

"Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power, a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment."

Thought of the day - 18th June 2008

“Our future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.”

IF...

Ah, the joys of having like-minded friends! Melody did a post on this very inspiring poem of Rudyard Kipling called "IF...". You can read the full poem on Mel's post

I am just going to talk about my favorite words from it:

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

Look at the way he uses each word for maximum effect. The "unforgiving minute", how true! Every minute that passes never comes back! It's very unforgiving in its nature, doesn't matter what you do with it, or you do nothing, it's gone. In the next line he uses "sixty seconds" instead of "minute", if you are determined, every minute you have sixty chances to accomplish something.

I don't know who he's talking to but he is not promising anything less than "Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it", talk about big dreams! I love the way he thinks!

"And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!", Again, the words are quite moving, he talks about being "a Man" as if it's something to be proud of, and it is! Man is God's partner in the creation!

'nuff said!

Thought of the day - 17th June 2008

"Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."


I have used it before in another form, but this is one of my very favorite thoughts.

Ask and ye shall receive!

I recently watched this movie called Evan Almighty which is the sequel to Bruce Almighty.
I had already read the review on another blog (the one in my favorite blog list - Electronic Cerebrectomy) and it was very accurate.

My own review in short:

For one thing, the title is not accurate, in Bruce Almighty Jim Carey becomes God, well deputy God so the title fits, in this sequel, Evan gets an assignment from God with no special powers, so he's not really almighty.

The movie is quite predictable. Once you find out that God wants Evan to build an ark, there are no further twists or surprises. However, the speed of the movie keeps you from getting bored. The climax is also kind of predictable.

The cast is ok, Jim Carey has more silly faces for weird situations than this guy (I hate Jim's silly faces but I have to admit he's one of the most expressive actors in the business and has a fabulous screen presence, kind of like Hollywood's Govinda :) ), this guy is just ok. Lauren Graham as his wife has been more effective and showed him up kinda. I don't think anybody would debate it but Morgan Freeman as God is the best. He has that coolth, that charisma to pull off a superlative role like God Almighty. His sense of humour aided by the special effects is fantastic.

The video clip below is from the movie when Lauren Graham leaves her husband because he's being such an ass and is enroute to her mother's house, I think. This is the best scene from the movie, in my humble opinion. Believe in God or not, (I don't) but the lesson in the scene is very useful and equally applicable irrespective of your beliefs.

Just to give you an additional context tip: in the beginning of the movie, Lauren Graham had prayed for her family to be closer.





[P.S. Can't help but mention an example of Seek and ye shall find...my free video editor Avidemux which is a simple and effective video editing tool was not able to handle this movie for some reason, it played the movie without sound. So, I looked for another one and the new one, called Virtual Dub, another free tool, is even more powerful and useful. It makes smaller movies. So, you'll keep seeing my video posts, from FSX and otherwise. :) ]

Virtual Good Work

You know my time-wasting, just-for-kicks pastime Second Life, right? Well, unlike me some people do a lot of good work there. One of them is my friend Jaxi. She does profile pictures for people and devotes almost all her time to it. Today she won a contest with a picture of hers so I thought I should share that with my readers.

Here is the link to that, just a take a look at that picture, isn't that amazing,?

http://blog.koinup.com/2008/06/sl-portrait-contest-announcement.html

Thought of the day - 16th June 2008

“Dreaming is wonderful, goal setting is crucial, but action is supreme. To make something great happen you must get busy and make it happen. Take that action step today that will put you on your path to achievement."

I hate Dean Martin!

Pipe down! It's not about Dean Martin, it's about my favorite novel series - Matt Helm!

For an introduction you can go here - http://www.matthelmbooks.com/intro.html
but I am going to do it here anyway.

Matthew Helm, code name Eric, is an agent, a secret agent, something of the kind that James Bond is but more hardened, more down to earth quite practical. His task more often than not is to kill people. Yes, you heard me right, he kills people - people like enemy agents, or U.S. agents who have joined hands with the enemy or any conspirators, bad guys...anyone that his boss says to "remove". His is not to ask.

Funny thing is even though Donald Hamilton, the author, emphasizes the point of portraying Matt Helm as a mindless or rather opinion-less killer, in the books he is not just a callous murderer. He is also a philosopher the way we analyzes and theorizes about things without seeming to, he's also a detective as he tries to figure things out during his missions, he is quite human in the way he feels about people and things, yet quite professional in his work. It is not often that he goes against the orders even if they go against his feelings or opinion.

The narration of the books is always in the first person which makes it easier to identify with this superhero. Speed of the story is always such that it keeps you turning pages.

Matt's boss, a man known only as Mac, is shown to be an older gent, quite ruthless in his approach towards his work, and a human calculating machine in Matt's words, but that makes the little rare, human things that he does, stand out more and lend a unique touch to the situation.

The agency Matt works for remains anonymous, throughout the 27 books of the series (no, I haven't read all of them, some of them are hard to find, but I am on my way to do that), but the agency has been named variously as titles of several of the novels e.g. "The Silencers", "The Removers", "Murderer's Row", "The Wrecking Crew" etc.

More than once I have wished while reading a Matt Helm novel, that they had made it into a movie. 4 of the books were made into movies, but not properly. They just borrowed the names, the plots were completely out of line from the originals and just taken a point or two here and there. Actually, there was no plot at all. I saw that after I bought the DVD set and watched them. It was a few years later though, that I learnt that the movies were made as a spoof on James Bond movies. As such they disgrace both James Bond and Matt Helm. The movies are good for nothing more than cheesecake, they are full of beautiful girls but otherwise completely useless.
I hate Irvin Allen for producing these stupid bunch of movies and I hate Dean Martin for mocking my favorite secret agent Matt Helm.

If I had money and knowledge of the field, I would make these books into movies myself, so much I love them. The plots are quite good and the story laid out in enough detail that you won't have to work too hard to produce a screenplay. Well, according to Wikipedia DreamWorks has a project underway to make the Matt Helm books into movies but no release information is available for that. Well, hopefully they'll do it properly this time and hopefully very soon.

Search and ye shall find...me!

Today when I searched for Sunil Goswami on Google (My Firefox Google toolbar is set to search Google.co.uk by default), I found that all 10 results on the first page were mine. I am going to record this momentous victory with this post.

In the screenshots you can't see all the 10 results, so just trust me. :) Or do a Google Search.

I love technology!

What is technology, just a number of digits, electromagnetic pulses, graphics, programming, embedded, mobile...blah, blah and more blah! It's all crap, meaningless drivel until.....yes, until it comes to play a part in your life. Until you can watch a movie 1000 times clearer and watch it again without rewinding it you don't care what a DVD is. Until you can play a game that looks like it's going to come alive right out of the screen, you don't give a hoot what a graphics card is. Until you can talk to your kids studying on the other side of the globe in real time, you don't care a damn how telecommunications is changing the world.

So, to make a long story short, science and technology for its own sake is what people like Einstein can get excited about (and may be a few million geeks) but the ordinary person, the so-called layman (I don't what he lays but that's what he's called) only gets excited about it when he can see the change that it makes in his own life. That application of technology never ceases to amaze me no matter how many times I come across the examples.

One time I was cooking something and I went to grab the handle of the frying pan while it was on the stove and I found that the handle was much less hot than it should be. Made of special metal, no doubt. That made me utter one of those "wow, this is so cool" things.

Recently I came across a similar item. It's called Virtual Reality glasses. Strictly something for the gamers of this world. I can do better than describing them by showing you the video demo of this amazing product. Take a look.

Thought of the day - 13th June 2008

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.

Nice thought

Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves for they will never cease to be amused.

Eat or live

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
- George Bernard Shaw


Mr. Shaw was a wise man. This is my standard answer when anybody starts lecturing on saving money. I'd rather have life full than my bank account.

Landing 3 - Still alive

If you still didn't get bored looking at those landings, here's another one. I think it's a little better but that's just my opinion. :)

Surviving a landing

Well, this is not much better but the plane lands on the runway and nobody dies in the landing so I am okay with. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, as we airmen say. :)

Gearbuster Landing

You want to know what I am up to these days? In my attempt to eat an elephant I have been practicing flying on FSX. Look at this video to see how good I am. This is all my work, I did the landing, I made the video, I uploaded it to YouTube. I am quite fond of watching videos on YouTube but this is the first time I have uploaded one. It sucks but it's mine. :D