Ideas Worth Spreading

A dear friend of mine recommended this site to me, and since I respect her opinion and count her in the non-stupid's of this world (RA Heinlein humour from Moon is a Harsh Mistress), I decided to check it out. The site is:

http://www.ted.com

It's a totally weird name and makes no sense to me, but the site is awesome! Their tagline is "Ideas Worth Spreading" and the basic idea they have is, to have one new video every weekday. These videos are talks by really remarkable people in front of a huge audience. Each talk is about 20 minutes. The topics and content as well as the quality of the people is amazing! If you are like me, and you are, because you read my blog, then you should check it out. I am sure you'd like it and thank me later.

For my part, "Thank you, Kate!".

The Saga of Medicine

Medicine - what a wonderful thing! You absolutely hate the taste. You loathe the after-taste. It's so expensive. And yet, you keep some in the house, always, and can't wait to take it, (willingly in most cases), when you fall sick.

Why?

Because of the after-effect. No matter how much you cringe away from that foul-tasting thing, you know in your mind that you won't feel better until you take it.

Some situations in life need an emotional medicine. You may not like to face them, sometimes you don't like what it says about you, sometimes you don't want to believe that this has happened, but somewhere, in the back of you mind, in that little logical nook, you know you have to accept this situation like a bitter pill or you won't get better.

It takes courage, it takes fortitude, it takes self-realization, most of all it takes an acceptance of defeat. You cannot just face the Sun and deny the existence of shadows, you have to accept them both.

Why am I talking about all this nonsense that you already know? Because I am down with flu right now and it so happens that I am taking both pharmaceutical and emotional medicine right now. Because I know well, that without taking this medicine, I would not be able to put this thing behind me and move forward.

Once the medicine does its work and you can move on, what then? Back to work! Oh yuck! Let's not talk about that today, I am already nauseous.

The Story of Desmond Doyle

I have just finished this movie called "Evelyn". It's the story of an Irish man whose wife leaves him and his three children the day after Christmas. Because he's an out-of-job house-painter, with no prospects, the Irish court rules that his children be taken from him and put in orphanages. Needless to say, it's based on real events.

Usually, I don't go for movies with such themes, but this had Pierce Brosnan in the main lead and I'd watch almost anything with Brosnan in it (almost, I couldn't finish Mamma Mia).

The movie is great. It's not too long, and moves along quite rapidly. Brosnan has done a great job of acting as usual, but other characters are quite rich and the actors have done them justice.

If you like deep, emotional, human-drama type movies, I'd recommend it.

Btw, Evelyn is his daughter, the oldest child, and she deserves to have the movie named after her.

Marriages are made in heaven?

Warning: If you have a reason to believe in the sanctity of the institution of marriage, do not read this post. If you still read this post after this warning and take offence, you cannot sue me!

So, with that said let’s get into it. But first a couple of sentences to explain why I said that. In the past, other than jokes and videos, I have always tried to post things that boggle my mind or that I think would make you think. And while doing this I have always tried to be nice and considerate. Now I have run out of all those topics. Now, I am going to start pissing people off by saying what I want to say and to hell with the world. Yes, I said “hell”.

“Marriages are made in heaven!”, you must have heard that about a million times already. But in reality, the only people who believe in that fall in two categories – one, whose livelihood depends on marriages, a ready example is the religious contractors – the priests of all religions. In the other category falls the poor sap who doesn’t want to say “…because the condom broke!” so he chants, “Marriages are made in heaven.”

What happens to this heavenly marriage when he’s working extra hours at the office, just so he doesn’t have to go home and she’s stocking up on vodka to keep herself sane? No, if marriages were made in heaven, the happiest people would be married couples. But we all know the reality.

I say, God doesn’t want people to get married. And I have evidence to prove that. People are born single. And they die alone. If God wanted people to be married he’d arrange things so that it would be clear who’s going to marry whom. People would be born with numbers or birth marks or something. He’s omnipotent, he can do it! But he doesn’t. If he wanted people to stay married he’d pick up both husband and wife at the same time and not leave their bereaved partner behind.

My question is – if marriages are made in heaven, then divorces, extra-marital affairs and unhappy marriages, where are these made? In some place between heaven and hell?

If marriages were made in heaven, divorce lawyers would starve.

USA Vs. France

No this is not a political battle - this a clip from Cheers. I am currently watching the 11th and last season and I am surprised and impressed that they have kept the same high-quality going in the story and the humour has become better as the show progressed.

This is one of the most hilarious episode, so much so that I watched it twice within 24 hours. Henri, the French loverboy/con artist, has been trying to egg Sam into accepting a bet - whoever gets the most numbers from beautiful women by midnight wins. Sam is above this kind of thing, but...well, watch what happens.

Barnie's home!

Now, that's my kind of entrance!

Too Relaxed - From Newsradio

I am into last season of this one, second viewing and good as gold. Here's a scene where everybody thinks that the news director Dave (splendid guy), is too stressed. So Joe, makes a sound machine for him. And then they think he's too relaxed. Station owner Mr. Jimmy James goes in to fix that, here's the result.

Free Software For Writers or Authors

As you know I have been trying to write a book and as you might not know I have a few other writing projects in the oven. More than once I have felt the need to have a software tool that could help me organize the huge amount of text that goes in a book. For example, my current book, the one mentioned on it's own blog has several places where I have put in brackets and written "How many times do I say this?", it's easy to forget something like that when you have 200 pages of text that you travel through back and forth, back and forth. Hence, the need for a tool to assist.

With a google search I found a tool called the Storyboard. It seems nice and best of all it's free and open source. So, I am going to try that. If you have a need for this go to - http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/index.php/features-basic.

Oh, remember my ranting post about MS-Word being a piece of crap because it crashed and I lost data? Well, Storybook saves each input as it goes along, so no losing data even if it crashes. Neat huh?

Hindi Movie - Woh 7 Din

I like this movie, an old classic, though I don't like the climax but well, no director usually goes again the public sentiment, any other climax would cause the movie to flop at the boxoffice.

So, here are 2 clips from it, one a comedy scene that I absolutely love.

The other, a powerful, emotional scene that refers back to the comedy scene.

Nida Faazli - The Common Man's Shaayar

Well, I am only going to re-quote. While looking at some Hindi blogs I across this blog called shreesuvach, I am posting the direct link to the post.

http://shreeshuvach.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post_12.html

After giving due credit, here are the lines that compelled me to post:

" निकल आते हैं आंसू हंसते-हंसते,
ये किस गम की कसक है हर खुशी में
गुजर जाती है यूं ही उम्र सारी;
किसी को ढूँढते है हम किसी में.
बहुत मुश्किल है बंजारा मिजाजी;
सलीका चाहिए आवारगी में."

और इन पंक्तियों को पढ़कर अगर मुँह से "वाह" ना निकले तो अपनी नब्ज़ ज़रूर एक बार चैक करवा लें.

" फासला नज़रों का धोखा भी हो सकता है,
चाँद जब चमकें तो जरा हाथ बढाकर देखो.."

For my English-reading readers, the poet says,

"The distance may very well be an illusion of the eyes,

When the Moon is shining, just try to reach out.."

No, I won't dissect it for you. :)

एक पोस्ट मातृभाषा में

एक ज़माना था कि मुझे लगता था कि हिन्दी में कंप्यूटर्स पर काम करना यानी जैसे हम लोग वापिस जाने कि कोशिश कर रहे हैं और वक़्त कि रफ़्तार को रोकने की कोशिश कर रहे हैं, लेकिन वक़्त के साथ साथ मेरे विचार भी बदलने लगे और मैने महसूस किया कि इतने बड़े देश की इतनी पॉपुलर भाषा को अगर कंप्यूटर्स सपोर्ट नहीं करेंगे तो बात अधूरी रह जाएगी.

खुशी की बात ये है कि मेरी तरह और लोगों ने इस बात को समझने में इतनी देर नहीं की और इस दिशा में बहुत सी तरक़्क़ी इस बीच में हो चुकी है.

ये पोस्ट मैं एक वेबसाइट पर टाइप कर रहा हूँ और ये देख कर हैरान हूँ कि कितना आसान है हिन्दी में टाइप करना इस phonetic editor में. ग़लतियाँ तो हैं ही नहीं और रफ़्तार बहुत अच्छी है. इसका नाम है Quillpad और URL है www.quillpad.in. अगर आपको हिन्दी आती है तो टाइप करके देखिए बहुत मज़ा आएगा! और अगर आपको हिन्दी नहीं आती....तो मैंने कुछ कहा ही नहीं :D

Get Smart - Laser Smart

Another sexy and funny scene from the same movie - Get Smart. I like this movie.

Bruce - Reading News With a Difference

I recently re-watched Bruce Almighty, a very funny film with lots of good, hilarious scenes. I selected this one because this is the silliest, in my opinion.

Get Smart - Dance Scene

This is a very funny movie, but don't think it's very famous. I liked this dance sequence that's both funny and sexy at the same time. Watch to the end.

Fifty Fifty

I have always loved this simple scene from the movie terminal. It's a very small scene, basically just one dialogue but worth watching.

It's a great way of looking at things, especially something to remember when you are thinking how hard it is to do that particular thing and want to give up. Oh, but not if you live in America, remember what she said, "America doesn't work that way." :)

The Switch

Please read this in the order it is written watching the video clips as you come to each one. You'll enjoy it the most that way.

So, the story, ladies and gentlemen, is of a man who wanted to perform the legendary maneuvre called "The Switch". Nobody in the history of the human race had ever performed this switch before but this young man was ambitious. Maybe too ambitious for his own good!

It all started like this. Jerry Seinfeld was dating this woman named Sandy. Now Sandy, while a very personable young lady had but one flaw.

Her words stayed in his mind and he decided to test this theory.

And then, to make matters worse, he met...the roommate!

And so, Jerry is thrown into the middle of an emotional turmoil.

They all but accept defeat.

But where, there is a will there is a way. And so...

Jerry puts the devious plan into action, not sure of his footing but urged on not only by his desire for the roommate but also for the unparallelled achievement of...The Switch! Will he succeed where better men than him failed?

Jerry is in over his head. Can he cope with this new development? This unforeseen complication in his plan! Let's watch.

And here folks, you have the whole story!

HIMYM - Know Your Girlfriend!

Don't you wish there was a class like that about 'your' girlfriend?

G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra - Lights, Colours, Sounds = Garbage

After a long wait and with much anticipation I finally got my hands on the "G.I.Joe:The Rise of Cobra" DVD and watched it as soon as I got it.

In short, it's a mixture of lights, colours and action sounds that lacks meaning. In very short, it's total garbage!

You know I review a movie only when it moves me emotionally, either positively or negatively. This one just pissed me off completely!

So, let's start dissecting it. I will discuss the plot in detail because I wouldn't want you to waste your time on it. Not much of a plot anyway.

The title - absolute crap. It has nothing to do with Cobra of any kind and the attempt to connect it is even more pathetic than the title.

A better title would be "Attack of the Nanomites", because that's what the movie is all about - microscopic, mechanical creatures that can "eat" through anything, called Nanomites and developed by a corporation called MARS for NATO. There are 4 nanomite warheads developed, and are to be delivered to NATO complete with their KILL switches. And of course, the bad guys are after these things.

The hero "Duke" and his friend "Ripcord" are not G I Joe's in the beginning, they come in contact with the Joe's when they are attacked by the bad guys and the Joe team saves these 2 and the warheads, everybody else dies. So, these 2, of course, want to "join up". They are put through the training and god knows how they pass - they act like puppies more than soldiers if you ask me, one as a lovesick puppy and the other as a heartbroken puppy.

I like human heros with their strengths and weakness, but this hero, esp. in this kind of movie, is all weak! That includes a weak mind. The best thing you could say about him is that he's too stupid to be bad. There's one scene where his ex-fiancee is holding the bag of the warheads alongside her bad-man accomplice and this moron (the hero, Duke) has a gun pointed at her while both of them have no guns and out of sword range....and he lets her walk away with the warheads because he can't shoot his ex-girlfriend!! Now, would you want that kind of dedicated soldier guarding your country?

The dialogue is all made up of tired, old cliches. There was not a single dialogue in the whole 1 hour 57 minute movie that impressed me. The attempt at levity would make you groan, the jokes are that bad! Dialog delivery, maybe because of the poor quality dialogues, is very bad.

Usually, the objective of this kind of a movie is to present the superhero (in this case Superteam) in a positive light. This movie does the opposite. After watching them at work, I wouldn't hire them to walk my dog. They can't do a single thing right. They fail all their missions and assignments one by one. One example - The bad guys want to shoot the Nanomite warhead at the Eiffel Tower, the Joe's get to know in advance where they will "weaponise" the warheads but they are so late in arriving that they have to start the chase from the time when the bad guys are getting into their SUV (Truck for Americans) and driving towards the Eiffel Tower. Imagine this scene, their SUV is outside the lab, the girl has yet to get into it, and the Joe team arrives in their fully-equipped, sci-fi weapons loaded kind of van but do they shoot at the SUV and blast the bastards to kingdom come? No! That'd be too easy, that'd make common sense. So what do they do? They chase the bad guys, on foot, in accelerator suits. Nice chase scene made up of lots of *boom* *bam* *crash* sounds which I think is the director's idea of "action".

Well, finally, after a long and at times boring chase sequence the Joe's fail as the bad guy launches the warhead. Then they can't get to the KILL switch until it's too late to save the Tower. Some team!

The most interesting thing in this to me was, WHY were the bad guys DRIVING to the Eiffel Tower? According to the demo shown in the beginning, the nanomites will continue eating through everything until killed by the KILL switch. They had the potential to destroy the world, if unstopped, hence the need for a KILL switch. So, why go to Eiffel Tower when you want to destroy Paris? (That was their objective.) If I were a bad guy, I'd just fire the warhead at the farthest building I could see and start driving in the opposite direction with the KILL switch in my pocket.

Not just this but with other things also it seemed that the villain's plot was just as bad as the director's plot for this movie.

There are several flashbacks in the movie, most of which detract from the speed and don't add anything to the impact. There are way too many fight sequences with a variety of weapons but none of them impress. Most of them are nothing more than a haphazard mixture of lights, colours and sounds. You feel like you are watching a comic book being enacted.

Common sense is lacking in the whole movie which pisses me off the most in any movie. In one scene, General Hawk, the big boss of the Joe's says, "Give me a satellite uplink. I want to see everything that's going on there." An UPLINK is to upload data to a satellite, if you want to download data from the satellite, like images uploaded from another station, then you need something called a DOWNLINK. If you are making a movie and can't spend 30 seconds to get your facts straight...you are pathetic!

It's very clear the director doesn't understand technology and wants viewers who understand even less. The nanomites are shown other than as attack critters, as particles that can control the mind if injected into a person. Apparently, for the director, nanomites equals "magic goblins".

The bad girl/good girl in the movie is Sienna Miller. And even with a hottie like her, they have not been able to generate any sex appeal, except a little when she makes her first appearance. The other heroine, Rachel Nichols, is also gorgeous, but again, the camera work and direction are lacking in taking advantage of her beauty.

The climax is also equally crap. Apparently, the only thing the director was conserned about, was to leave a couple of doors open for a sequel. Well, count me out, mate!

On the whole, a "must miss" movie.

Seeing is fighting

I was watching a movie today, a very old Hindi movie, when movies used to have a unique element called - a story. This movie is called Laila Majnu and is based around a couple of legendary lovers.

I really loved the movie and might do another post about the movie itself, but here I want to talk about one aspect of it. There was a scene where the hero is engaged in a sword fight with the heroine's evil brother and as the fight continues I suddenly realize that I can "see" the fight. No, no, I was not blind before or any miracle like that, just bear with me here. I could see exactly what both the characters were doing, their footwork, the somersaults, the running; I could see what the sword arm was doing, I could see what the swords were doing, I could watch the whole fight and follow it very easily.

I actually watched another scene in another old Hindi movie called "Amar Akbar Anthony", in this one the fight was unarmed combat between two of the heroes and and the common factor was the detail I was able to see - I could see who kicked whom, where and how hard and how he pushed the other one and all of that.

Now contrast that with the current movies, both English and Hindi - there are 17 different shots every second, showing 17 different things - hero's feet in extreme close up, villain's hands in extreme close up, a bystander...again, in extreme close-up...and all kinds of techno-fabulous sounds going on all the time. You can't really see what's happening, what are they doing to each other, that you can't follow, you have to play Sherlock Holmes...when you see the hero's face in extreme close-up distorted with pain, you have to infer that the villain must have gotten a good hit in, if you see the villain's lip bleeding in the next shot, you infer that the last *whap* sound you heard must have been the hero's fist connecting with the villain's face, and so on and so forth.

Let me take a very specific example. In the last Bond movie called Quantum of Solace, there's a fight scene in the beginning, Bond vs. a bad guy, hand-to-hand combat going on. Since it's a dynamic situation both the fighters use whatever item they can get their hands on to hurt the other guy. Now with this background...we see a piece of rope hanging in mid-air, we see Bond's face, his eyes, obviously noticing the rope, then we hear some techno-fabulous *whap* *boom* *crunch* type sounds...what do you infer?

I inferred that somehow Bond used that piece of rope strategically to hit the bad guy. But how? What was the ingenious gambit that he devised? I have no freaking clue!!

So while the director is sitting in a Los Angeles penthouse counting dollar bills, I am sitting in the theatre thinking, "You bloody wanker! I didn't pay 12 quid to see a piece of rope!! Show me what the f**k is going on, you idiot!"

My point is that technology has progressed a lot in the movie-making business but it is possible to abuse that technology and be so carried away by the amazing, super-powerful, stunt-designing computers that you forget about the man who pays his hard-earned money to see what tale you have spun for him. And then they ask why people don't watch movies on cinema any more!

Now, here's my plan - any time there's a movie like that on the cinema that I am considering watching, I am going to call the director and ask him:

SG: "Listen, dude, are you the kind of director who goes for technology in a big way?"

Director:"Er..yes."

SG:"Okay, no harm in that I guess. But are you also the kind of bloke who sometimes gets carried away with technology and forgets about the craft of filmmaking?"

Director:"Yes, I guess so."

SG:"Hah! Then I am sorry mate, but you would be interested to know that I am not going to watch your latest movie!"

And with that, I will hang up, leaving him to deal with the sense of doom that he starts experiencing!

Pretty good, eh?

MS-Word is a piece of s**t!

Warning: This is a rant post! I write it to vent my anger rather than for your amusement.

I am working on this book, you know. You would know if you have checked out my other blog - http://operationdesertmountain.blogspot.com. And of course, nobody uses pen and paper for such things these days, at least I don't, so I write in Word and save it. Then I edit it and save it as a new version. So, tonight I was working on version 0.4 and making changes to it.

Word has some peculiar issues. One of them is that after I have been editing for an hour or so, it would say that it could not save the file, ran out of memory or out of space or some such crap. I learned computers in India without the luxury of a battery backup behind the computers I used to use, so I have this excellent habit of pressing Control-S about every 2 seconds. So, now that I know about this stupid behaviour from Word, all I do is, I close the file without saving, open it again and resume working. I never lose more than a minute's worth of work.

But tonight...as I was working on 0.4 when the problem occurred, Word said Problem, I closed the file, it asked me to save, I said no, then it asked me to save a ~*.tmp file, I said no and exited!

And what do I find? My file has disappeared. The v0.4 file that I had saved before and worked on a few times, the whole file was gone! Vanished beyond a trace! Instead of a minute's worth of work I have lost about an hour's worth of editing. And editing is such a chore to redo.

That's it! I am through with Word. I am moving to Open Office!