R-I-P-P-E-D

UnGROOMED proGRAMMERS

2007-12-12T00:08:00.001-08:00

(The guy in the left was responsible for my arrear in the first sem --- by developing C. I hate preogramming. Looks like a frigging psycho, doesn't he?)

Hi ... just like the previous post im again posting a link which i thoroughly enjoyed browsing through... It lists a whole lot of programming greats, or gods, maybe... ranging from the guy who invented C++ to the ubuntu founder, and believe it or not, most of them look like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.... in short, they may perfectly fit the profile of a money-making godman in India.

The links are here : Part1 .. and Part2. Does being so clever mean you don't have time to shave even?? Or being unshaved make you extremely brainy?? Ahem... We all hope the latter was true .. don't we?? :) :)

Calvin and Hobbes v/s Fight Club

2007-12-11T23:38:00.000-08:00

For all those of you who, like me have seen the Brad Pitt starring Fight Club, and who are big fans of the 'greatest newspaper comic strip of the modern era' Calvin and Hobbes: Can you imagine a grown-up Calvin?? Ed Norton(his movie character's name is not known) and Calvin are argued as being the same people here.

Please post your comments on this blog after going through it; i thought it was an awesome write-up, could be classified from being downright stupid to very clever. But mainly i would attribute it to being a very good tribute to two awesome things - Calvin & Hobbes, and Fight Club.

For all you Calvin and Hobbes fans ... these are some sites u can check out ::
1. Calvin and Hobbes: Magic on paper

2. Subscribe for daily c&h strip

3. Calvin and Hobbes collection

4. Entire collection of strips datewise(can be viewed one by one only)

5. One more entire collection - great site

You can find hundreds of other fan-sites like these ... just some patient searching would do!! I will sirely compile some of my favourite strips shortly and post them :))

Marhaba ... o ... Marhaba

2007-12-06T06:22:00.001-08:00

The theatrical trailer came out long ago, i think two or three weeks back ... but today for the first time i got to see it in proper quality(esp the sound); and just one word to describe it ... AWESOME. I'm a kind of Ashutosh Gowarikar fan; everyone liked Lagaan, obviously, but a lot of people did not like Swades. Well, it was critically acclaimed, as the Jodha Akbar trailer points out, but common people mostly did not get to appreciate its beauty, mainly because they expected another lagaan. That is one main characteristic of the Indian(mainly Tamil) audience; they go to the cinemas always with their minds expecting one more dose of the director's/hero's previous offering. This feature of theirs has been the cause for many a movie undeservedly flopping at the BO.
The single most impressive feature of Swades is its Soundtrack(both the songs and background) by the god. The songs are all of tremendous potential, but the ones always mentioned are either Yeh Tara Woh Tara or Yun Hi Chala, made popular by the music channels. My favourite song in the album, of course is Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera, which never fails to give me goosebumps when Rahman goes Chahe to kis disha me jaye vahi des........ Rahman, of course rocks in the BGM department, with totally awesome meaning and elegance to otherwise unimportant or unnoticed scenes(like the chorus that goes aaaayyyoooo re when SRK enters the village; or the modifies version of Dekho Na when Geeta's marriage is cancelled). The concept of the movie is pretty simple and some sets that supposedly depict NASA may be ridiculed, but in all... SRK puts in a good performance, far away from his sentiments-family theme song-crying in the climax routine; new heroine manages to look beautiul(she's thin, but hey...she lives in a drought-struck village); it does manage to stir up some patriotism in you, and wonder why people go to the US and never return(though you are also planning to do the same). We may find a lot of negatives with careful scrutiny aimed at finding negatives, but my point is just this: The movie did not get the recognition and profits it deserved, nor did the music.

Focussing on Jodha-Akbar, it is said to be a period film about the mughal emperor Akbar focussing primarily on his romance with a Rajput princess, Jodha. I do not like Aishwarya Rai or Hrithik, but am eagerly waiting right now for the audio release, which has been frustratingly postponed a lot of times, with the present release date fixed at Dec 18. The song playing in the background of the trailer i.e. the one previewed by ARR in his Delhi concert - Azeem-O-Shah-Shehenshah (roughly estimated by me to mean O mighty unthwartable Emperor!) is just AWESOME from whatever i have heard till now; the drum beats and the trumpet, the chorus of marhaba and the part that goes theem thom thananana are keeping me on my toes, waiting to grab the CD when it releases; i have very very very very very high expectations on this album, like three times what i usually feel when an ARR album is about to release.

Until then, i might as well go ...Marhabba....o ... Marhabba ....

New Seven Wonders and the Taj Mahal

2007-07-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks, there have been campaigns all over India that have focussed mainly on pushing people to vote in favour of selecting the Taj Mahal as one of the 'New Seven Wonders'. Ok, for poeple who do not know what the old seven wonders are; but infact i'm myself confused as to what the Seven wonders of the world really refer to...There are

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Modern Wonders of the world
Underwater wonders
Natural wonders
Tourist travel wonders

I'm not going to list out each of the 'Wonder lists' .. u can check them out here.
Well, anyways, i guess the New seven wonders refers to the tourist wonder list; and the only candidate most of the people in India would know about, and some people would've actually seen, is, of course, our very own supposed 'monument of love', that which Shahjahan built in the memory of, and as a tomb for, his dead wife Mumtaz. Supposing i ask some average guy in Tamil Nadu what Shahjahan and Mumtaz were, they would probably tell me about the Vijay movie and the glam actress. Anyways. Mumtaz Begum was not the only wife of Shahjahan either. There was no shortage of wives amongst the 17th century emperors, i guess.

Ok, so what comes to ur mind first when thinking of the Taj Mahal? Many would say they feel love, but that is just bull-shit. I, for one, think of another Taj Mahal, the stupid movie with the pig-like hero and lizard-like heroine, and the father-pig for director, but absolutely mind-blowing and evergreen music by the GOD of music ARR.

Incidentally, A.R.Rahman played a part in getting the Taj into the new seven wonders list. He created a song for motivating Indians to understand that 'Teri aur meri Mohabbat Ek hai', or 'Un kadhalum endhan kadhalum ondrallava', and hence vote for the Taj. I personally feel that the theme shouldn't have been the universal nature of love across many barriers, but rather the spirit that the Taj Mahal belongs to us Indians, and we should not let down something that our country is so closely associated with on the world stage. I voted for this reason, and also cos it was a cause promoted by ARR. EMI and Virgin music have brought out an album titled 'One Love', containing versions of the Ek mohabbat song in six languages.

I'm personally very glad that the Taj has made it to the final list, but am sure terribly discombobulated by the fact that Bipasha Basu has represented India in this supposedly grand function unveiling the new list, for reasons i'm quite sure most of you know and will agree whole-heartedly with.

The New Seven Wonders are : Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Pyramids Of Giza, Petra in Jordan, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, Machu Pichchu in Peru, Chichen Itza in Mexico, and The Colloseum in Rome. Check out more details over here and here.

Si-Va-Ji ... Summa Adirudhule!!!!

2007-07-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

My semester holidays are drawing to a close, i'm leaving Chennai in two days, and am feeling a mixture of emotions. The whole of almost 60 days were spent in an exceedingly jobless way; and i can say with confidence that there were mainly one person who kept me occupied in the holidays: The B.O.S.S (Box Office SuperStar) Rajini. Sivaji released on June 15th, and i have watched it six times as of now; the last time being 6th July. A lot of people think i'm crazy for this, and i would like to clarify it right now... when i don't have a problem spending cash on the ticket each time, and enjoy the movie no matter how many times i see it...what the **** is others' problem? Only a true Rajini fan would understand the thrill of seeing Thalaivar on the big screen; waiting for those punch-scenes, the style-scenes; impatiently sitting through the parts Thalaivar does not appear. Heck, a Rajini movie comes once in two or three years, I don't even know where i will be (I would've probably finished college) when the next festival hits the screens. That is one of the reasons i was quite bent upon seeing this movie somehow on the first day. And see it I did. Once on 14th June at 10.30 PM in Rohini theatre, next on 15th June at 6.15PM in Santham, next on 18th June at 10.45AM in Santham, then on 23rd June at 11AM in Albert, next on 29th June at 11.30AM in Abirami, and lastly in Santham again on 6th July at 2.45PM. I never felt bored even for a moment in these 23-odd hours i have spent in the theatre.
Post 15th June, if it was watching Sivaji that kept me occupied and excited and going, before that it was the Soundtrack, the trailer that came out on June 15th and quite plainly, the imminent air of expectations and excitement that surrounds a Rajini movie release. Apart from Rajini, A.R.Rahman was the man who single handedly made me spend all those morning hours at home without any boredom; he so casually left me spell-bound and swaying with the magic he creates. If you ask me to single out an A.R.Rahman favourite, i would probably give you a list of 500 songs at the minimum. Jhoom Jhoom thananana Jhoom thananana went my speakers most of the time, my current favourite is the Ek Mohabbat song. Along with this and my other all-time favourites, time-pass became exceedingly easy.

Sivaji has broken records all over the world, has already grossed far in excess of 100 crore rupees; this is reason enough for me to celebrate ... By watching Sivaji again!!! Adios, my friends, I now am faced with the difficult task of trying to book a Sivaji ticket...believe me, it is still very difficult to do so, though its been past three weeks since the movie released.

Roads and people

2007-05-29T04:02:00.001-07:00

People in Chennai, well, most of them, think that the public roads, right from the ECR or Mount Road to the smallest kurukku sandhu are their family property. Hence, these honourable citizens take them for granted, not unlike the way they would treat their living room or porch. They do everything except maybe sleeping in the middle of the road. As a regular rider on Chennai roads, i have come to experience a whole lot of such people; and instead of just using the choicest of expletives at that time, i decided to blog on it. Just yesterday, there was this old man along with his wife on a Max 100R, stalling himself in the middle of the road, undecided on whether he was going straight or right; well, for about ten seconds. I was around 100 metres away, was not going very fast, believe me, and he just stayed there without making a move. There was a pit as wide as a really huge manhole, and deep enough to swallow half my front tire on the remaining bit of the road, which meant i couldn't go that way either. Someone who didn't notice the old man or the pit would've surely crashed. This brings into prominence not only the lack of road sense of the users, but the conditions some roads are in.

There's this main arterial road where they recently removed the median for reasons perhaps not known to them also; they have not properly levelled the area of the road where the median stood once, the result being a slight elevation, and a whole lot of small stones and sand there. This could catch a motorist unawares, leading to a skid, and a major accident if it's his unlucky day.

Coming to the people. I have encountered umpteen people speaking on cellphones while crossing the road, especially women(of all ages). They do not realise that it is extremely hazardous not only for their own self, but also to every motorist passing by. The motorist may cause injury to himself while trying to avoid these poeple. Forget those on cellphones. What about those jaywalkers who cross the road after the signal turns green, those men enriched by TASMAC, people holding out a stop signal for the purpose of their crossing the road or those who absolutely do not have the slightest judgment of the speed an approaching vehicle is coming at.

There can be no hope of any of the above changing even the slightest bit, they are part of our very own lovable Singara Chennai.

Kalaignar TV??

2007-05-21T21:53:00.001-07:00

The just-begun war between the Marans and the DMK has now assumed a new form. All these days it was taken for granted that Sun TV was a part of the various types of access the DMK had to the common man's living room; be it attacking Jayalalitha's government(when it was in power), or broadcasting images of KK being arrested in his lungi and being dragged all the way for one whole day non-stop, or daily updates(?) on the various good things (from the ludicrous TV distribution to the Rs 2 per Kg rice) being done by the DMK government. Jaya is owned by the AIADMK, but unfortunately, Sun TV was only assumed to provide never-ending support to the DMK. Now, with the removal of Dayanidhi Maran from the cabinet and growing animosity between the once 'grandson-grandfather' pair, the DMK seems to have realised that it no longer has Sun TV to promote its ideas in a totally cockeyed manner. What happens next?? KK is in power, man ... he can do anything he likes ... He immediately calls Rajendran, CEO of Raj TV and says ... Dude, i need to start a channel owned purely by the party ... something on which my pictures or videos will be aired 24/7 till i die (and perhaps for 100 years after that, mourning his loss) ... heard you had two transponders left unused on your satellite, how about lending me one?? Either Rajendran agrees, or
1. His office gets bashed up by 'faithfuls' just like the Dinakaran office for allegedly 'disrespectful' behavior killing 2 or 3 more people
2. KK uses his power to somehow block Raj TV from Tamil Nadu.
Maybe he was forced into it, or he was truly a DMK follower, or was just plain-dumb, its now official; Kalaignar TV will come into existence on August 15th. What a disgrace to the very importance of the independence day! On that day will debut a totally biased TV channel that will be even more lavish in its praise of the government than Sun TV ever was, surely influencing the mind of scores of people, I mean the uninformed and illiterate ones.
We are supposed to be living in a democracy offering freedom of just about everything to its citizens, a democracy in which such channels come into being, where a newspaper is vandalised in broad daylight in the presence of scores of smiling policemen and a mayor(seen posing with a burning copy of the newspaper); not to forget the explicit communalist ideas and thoughts woven into the CD given by a prominent party as part of its 'campaign', showing the open slaughter of cows and having potential enough for a riot as vast in magnitude as the Gujarat pogrom of 2002.

UPDATE ::

Kalaignar TV has bought the satellite rights of the yet-to-be released Superstar movie Sivaji. This makes me feel real bad... well, AVM is just doing good business, but i'm sure this is the first time a movie's rights has been sold to a channel that is yet to be formed.

Rendezvous with boredom

2007-01-06T01:21:00.000-08:00

How boring is boring?? Or, rather...how boring can boring be?? Guess both questions are the same thing differently phrased. Then why have i typed both of them in this seemingly unwanted and unyielding exrecise to my fingers running across the electronic device used to input such useless blogs into the computer, the keyboard? The answer to this question can be summarised thus: The boring mind is completely aimless and does everything it sees as something to waste, or while away time with. I'm bored, so i'm blogging about boring, and maybe this blog is also boring. Boring, boring, boring. You browse the net for a while, after which it becomes boring. You listen to music, or watch TV for while, maybe more than just awhile, after which it too inevitably becomes boring. I'm bound to get bored after typing a few paragraphs about how boring boring is. Is there a difference between you being bored of something and something boring you?
I'm now bored of thinking something up to write in this post. So i shall stop boring you with nothing other than boring. Bye.

The internet in India

2007-01-05T12:04:00.001-08:00

That the internet is so rapidly growing is evident from the innumerable headlines that cyber-crimes, copyright infringement, Web 2.0, social networking websites and the like are making in both print editions and the online versions of newspapers, or should i say ... e-papers?? Well, that term itself is debateable because paper is strictly something solid you can write on, not a html or php or whatever file you can read from and not scribble on or use to wrap something up in an emergency(other uses include being something you can spill your morning coffee on). India, we should accept is a bit...er no far behind the west and some other parts of the globe in adapting to this internet-revolutionised world, that which can be inferred from the following things we, as Indians, would most grudgingly accept : : As of now the present upper limit of broadband speeds in homes is 512kbps, a mere fraction of the speeds offered in other countries(remember the way your jaws dropped open when your friend in the US told you about his connection speed and his monthly download limit??); Individual blogs are not yet being sued for lifting articled from online magazines(though that might be because not many people really care to read blogs, let alone take them seriously, or perhaps because of a deep distrust in the Indian judiciary, or the fact that most of our constitution is fifty years behind time and needs a whole lot of amendments in line woth the presently, and very magnanimously changing world); For the rare few who own an ipod, paying 99 cents for downloading a single song onto their player is so funny they ridicule the people of other countries who do so as being ignorant of those 'free download' sites; Our law-makers - the er.. 'respectable' members of the parliament and the ministers are totally internet-illiterate; We do not want to pay for anything that we download from the internet, the same way we are totally and blissfully ignorant of internet-shopping ........ To list a few. I'm not going to say anything about how all this can be changed ... I don't know, or rather, I'm not bothered .. By the way its time for me to check on my torrent client downloading the latest movies free illegally ... so bye.

L-I-F-E

2006-06-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Life : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body. Ok...that's the dictionary defenition. Let's now ask ourselves .. rather, i've been asking myself for quite sometime now ... What is life?? Why do we live? What's it's purpose? What's the whole point, dammit???
People will immediately launch into all kinds of philosophical explanations the moment you ask this question on their face. Ah, philosophy ... anyone can speak philosophy, be philosophical. It's the easiest thing to do. No offence meant on the supposedly "great" philosophers, but still, i can't restrain myself from asking this questions .. Does philosophy really answer the questions most of us ask ourselves at one point or another in life??
Fine, we may provide ourselves with a momentary explanation as to what the purpose of our life is .. momentary in the sense related to whatever our main responsibility is, at that time ... Maybe a student in the 10th standard may say the purpose of his life is to study well and come up in life, or in more detail, to first pass his 10th boards. Ask a person who is about to get married, and he will say the main motive of his life is to remain committed to keeping his bride happy for life. Ok, i can go on giving such examples. In the same context, we can keep asking questions. Why should a person study? Why marriage? And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until ........... Why was the first human being born? Where did life originate from at all, and why? How was the earth created? What existed before the universe came into existence?
Chuck it. Back to...the purpose of life. I remember a cartoon i saw long back (Dexter's lab) wherein DD supposedly is the father of all things in possession of the page-long Purpose of life "formula" dexter craves for. Humouring. Just came to my mind.

L-I-F-E. Endless discussions will not provide a pathway to it's intricacies, neither will science breakthrough to give us a thorough understandable explanation of it's exact origin.
Science. Explains exactly, in bits and pieces, what happened after the supposed "Big Bang". But before that? A single concentrated point mass that concealed an unimaginable amount of enormous energy by virtue of it's again unimaginable density is supposed to have 'banged' itself to create the entire universe. Unconvincing, but imaginable. But where did all that energy come from? God?? Wow. There's the solution, some would say. Some maniacs would even say that God was the one who created the universe, every particle of it, big-bang or no big-bang. Angels and Demons says that this holds the key to the unification of religion and science.

I'm an agnostic. I believe in reality, not in the supernatural. That does'nt necessarily stop me from pondering over these questions. As some suppossedly 'great' person said, the mind has reached it's full maturity when it asks itself the question "What is the purpose of life?" (I came to know of this only after my own admirable matured brilliant (ahem...) mind came up aith the question, i'm not merely trying to prove that i'm matured, you see .. believe it or not). Again. Philosophy.

Let me end this post with a self-concocted philosophy of mine (you need not necessarily follow your own philosophy) : Always pray for the welfare of your fellow-beings, and welfare will come knocking on your door. As you might have realised, this has been expressed in different forms in different languages. No, I did not copy. That's the problem with philosophies. Whatever you create, it has always been created.

English is queer !!

2006-06-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

I can declare this with a lot of conviction and finality : English is a queer, bizarre language. It is ever-growing, adding new words to the dictionary every year, unlike most other major languages, infact i think with respect to absorbing words from other language and the phenomenal word-count increase, English is unique. There are English words of Tamil, Hindi, Italian, Urdu and Persian origin, leaving the ones of purely British origin. Here are some examples i found to this effect :: some of them will be so simply revealing their origin that you will wonder how you did not spot them before ..

1. mulligatawny - a kind of seasoned soup, has it's origin in the Tamil milagu-tannir, meaning pepper-water.
2. dinghy - a small boat used for emergency escape, origin from the hindi dingi.
3. tom-tom - tall jazz drum, from the Tamil tamtam.
4. buck - Boastful talk, to talk too much and egoistically. From Hindi buk-buk, 'to prattle'.
5. blighty - British army slang for home, after foreign service. From hindi bilayati, foreign.
6. chintz - Printed cotton fabric, usually with particoloured pattern and glazed. From sanskrit citra meaning spotted or variegated.
7. pug - Footprint. From hindi pag, foot. Used to denote the footmarks of an animal like a tiger.
8. jodhpurs - long breeches for riding. From Jodhpur, famous for its horsemen.
9. chop - Stamp. A seal-impression, or brand. From Hindi chhap, stamp. Also denotes class.

A lot more adaptations existy

On R-A-J-N-I

2006-06-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

Warning!! :: This post may be considered by many to be highly biased towards Rajnikanth. Can be seen as one which glorifies him. This should be excused, taking into consideration that i am a very big fan....

A five letter word that inspires millions of fans to go into a frenzy or into a fervour at times. Glorification. Hero-worship. The lone superstar of Indian cinema in the true sense of the word.

The above video appears at the beginning of every Rajini movie since Annamalai, and is enough to bring the roof down, with a storm of whistles, claps and confetti at a first-day-first-show at any theatre in the world. Rajini's popularity is not limited to Tamil Nadu alone, he is hugely popular in Japan also, as he is with all the Tamil population on earth. You can expect the same reaction to a Rajini film on the first day in California as you can expect in the Chrompet Vettri theatre. He's been ruling Tamil Cinema for 30 years, ever since his debut in Apoorva Raagangal. The undisputed emperor. Box-office king. His macho image and unbelievable stunts on screen may somehow seem laughable for non-tamilians. But hey, consider the results!! Chandramukhi, his latest movie, is rumoured to have grossed in excess of Rs. 80 crores at the box-office, a record for any Indian film upto date, giving Bollywood extravaganzas such as Lagaan and Kal Ho Na Ho a run for their money. He is the second highest paid actor in Asia after only Jackie Chan, and is rumoured to get Rs. 16 crore as salary for his upcoming movie, Sivaji.

He appeared on The India Today list of the most influential people in India. Is a recipient of the Padmabhushan award, the highest honour that can be conferred on a cine personality by the Indian Government. He's not exactly famous for his acting skills as he is for his mannerisms and styles. He cannot dance as well as his wanna-bes. But who cares? He's still at the top.
The Cigarette style. Has mesmerised millions of tamil cinema-goers across the decades. Lightning quick. A flick of the fingers, and the cigarette is lighted, another flick, and it sits in his mouth, blowing smoke all around. People who want attention and popularity in Tamil Nadu can either align with Rajinikanth, or publicly abash him in some form, by virtue of which they'll either earn the goodwill or incur the wrath of his innumerable fans, who swear loyalty and will do anything for him.
But the one main quality that endears Rajni to everyone is his down-to-earth, simple, character. He is deeply religious and spiritual, and frequently visits the Himalayas. He does not politically exploit his popularity. He does not misuse his fan-power. He engages in various service-oriented gestures either on his own, through his Sri Ragavendra Trust, or his fan clubs. He was in a large way responsible for the victory of the DMK-TMC alliance in the 1996 TN assembly elections by means of a single televised interview asking people to support that combine. He rarely appears in the public. He could earn ten times of what he does now by appearing in ads the way bollywood stars do. Shah Rukh Khan once said : I am only here to make money, I know my commercial value, and will exploit it. But not Rajini. The only time he's appeared on TV in some kind of advertisement is for a polio campaign in 1996. For free.
His 153rd film, Sivaji, is supposedly the biggest movie of his career, directed by Shankar, produced by AVM, and to be released sometime next year. The day the announcement was made, the frenzy begun. Fans, the media and the general public. Speculating. Wondering. As to what the story of the movie's going to be. Who the heroine is. The music director. Cameraman. A simple announcement whipped up a frenzy among the entire Tamil speaking contingent in the world. Stills leaked out from the movie's shooting make headlines. The weeks leading up to the movie's release will be ones of ultimate pandemonium. You have to see it to believe it. Also, the possibility of this movie being one of their Thalaivar's last movies adds on. Everyone cashes in on Rajni's popularity except the man himself.
Many say that the reason behind Rajini's success is his portrayal of roles that appeal directly to the common man. An auto-driver. Milkman. Coolie. Taxi-driver. Some others say it is his charismatic personality in real-life, his simplicity and good-naturedness. Whether its cos of his style on screen or aura off-screen, Rajini commands the attention of the public in Tamil Nadu like no one else in the entertainment field all over India. If Tom Cruise is Hollywood's most bankable star, then Rajini is India's version.
Tamil Nadu has a history of hero-worship, that begun with the days of MGR. After MGR, it was Rajini. Now, as Rajini is 56 and his career is coming to a close, there are a host of other younger-generation actors who are Rajini-wannabes. They imitate the man's style and try to deliver punch-dialogues. But well, a punch-dialogue is meant only for the superstar. Not for any *****-star who imitates him. When Rajni came on to the field, his style of acting, mannerisms, etc were all original. Vijay and Ajith are supposedly the contenders for the title of superstar. Wtf?? There cannot be two superstars. Ever.

On "THE NEWS MEDIA", in general ...

2006-06-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Well, the topic of this post is a bit misleading, actually ... This post is more of a ferocious lashing out on the so-called news media that are supposed to be specifically only for providing us with "quality news". Blowing-up. Disproportionate. Misleading. Out of context. Commercial. I could go on with such a list of phrases and words that directly describe the

news media, that includes those news channels (there are umpteen news channels) and some newspapers as well. Some "news magazines". One good thing about these news channels is that they're innovative enough to think up eye-catching phrases that go along with their name. Sharp news for sharp people. Very funny. But, attractive. That's the whole point, though, ain't it??
The first thing you'd notice about these channels is that they're hideously oriented towards their commercial gains. Again, here i'd wish to emphasise upon what i've already done in my previous post - Money. The whole point of everything is this. Journalist's conscience, or sincerity?? What a joke!! They absolutely do not possess any of these qualities even in the nano-amounts. Their job is to get a great story that would boost up the popularity of their channel. And they would go to any extents to get one, even to the extent of fabricating a story.
Since competition abounds, there is a dire need for each of these channels to bring up supposingly innovative new programmes that turn the viewers away from their competitor. For how long can the pretty newsreader keep on repeating the same headlines that don't change for atleast half-a-day? So .. enter the shows. That gather groups of those people who belong to the important-but-jobless category - uh...primarily to discuss and heatedly argue about things .. er.. that are of no importance. Even if they productively discuss the even unimportant topic and give some practical suggestions, the "experts" they are .. it would be wrong on my part to have a go on them .. but more often than not .. it's not even close to a solution. In a program from 9 to 9.30 PM, they will provide an "overview" of the topic from 9 to 9.05, introduce those selfless 'personalities' who have spared their 'precious' time with the channel, taking time off their 'unforgiving' schedule to appear on the program, from 9.05 to 9.10. Then comes the first break, supposedly a short commercial one, the later part of which is true. But the word short is as far away from the truth as California is from New York. What next? 9:14:30. Welcome back after the break. The first guest speaks some crap. Then the guest on the exlcusive videoconferencing link from some foreign country says some bullshit. Then the anchor says something. Ok, vaguely related to what they're supposed to be talking about, but still .. Then ... the second break. We come back at 9.25. Almost time to wind up and begin the next, similar kind of program. The anchor says something like, We're running out of time, but lets just get a final word of comment from our esteemed guests and thank them for ... blah blah .. Then the show ends. Wow.
I ran into a graphical representation of how people's trust in the "Mass media" has dwindled over the last few decades ..

Lets some to the newspapers. Again. Heavy commercialisation. That's necessary, but well, the job of a newspaper it to provide news. There are newspapers only in India, perhaps, that are sold at Re.1, contain 76, yes, can you believe that, 76, pages of printed matter, but effectively only 8 pages of news. The rest of them .. Advertisements, useless crap on those celebrities, whose photos in the paper look as though their nose is off-centre (Come on, what else can you expect for one buck?), and around 40 pages of classifieds. They even contain spelling mistakes!!! I have been reading The Hindu ever since i learnt to read, and i'm yet to find spelling mistakes in it. Maybe its a bit of an exaggeration, but of course you would agree that spelling mistakes are very very very rare in The Hindu. But of course, its a quality paper. Chuck it.
The whole point of what i'm trying to say .. is .. well .. nothing. There's absolutely no point in what i'm saying. I know that whatever i go on for pages and pages about over here will not change anything i wish to. If i say stuff like "The point of what i'm saying is .. blah blah .. this should be done for the betterment and development .. blah blah .. ", there would be absolutely no difference between those bespectacled, brainless "experts" who come on TV everyday, and me. And i sure as hell don't want to be one of them. So .. adios. Until i come back with another rip. Don't bank on me to provide conclusions or solutions. You shall be disappointed.

The whole thing about books converted into movies

2006-06-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well. I'm back. Thought i'd just post my thoughts on this topic (I was bored researching about orkut anyway, i'll be back with more on orkut in sometime..).Best-selling books, as you all know are usually pictured as motion-pictures to enlarge the commercial gains raising out of their general popularity. Harry Potter. Lord Of The Rings. More recently, The Da Vinci Code. Many, many, more. Comics also don't escape this money-minting exercise. But, as far as i can say, comics would be better suited

to adapt to a movie than best-selling novels. I would never ever agree if anyone ever says a Harry Potter movie even slightly matched the image formed in their mind while reading the book. Hell, they even change major parts of the storyline while 'adapting' the book. What exactly do they propose to do by it?? Try and act as though their just taking one percent out of the book and the remaining out of their own blotched imagination??? It really irritates the hell out of me when they change the actual happenings of the book. Its either that, or they completely omit important characters from the book. All Harry Potter fans would know that Dobby did not at all appear in the fourth movie, and they made Neville give Harry the Gillyweed instead. Some of you might get the feeling that i'm trying to make too much out of nothing, but still, i shall scream this out loud... Movies made out of books do not give even provide one percent of all the joy we get out of reading the latter. More often than not, things unfold in the movie totally different from the way you expect while reading the book. And the web of images you've formed in your mind while reading the book...those wonderful pictures that you can dream about whenever you want to, are instantly shattered the instant you watch the movie.
And, the plot. Most of the people who go in to see a from-the-book movie already know what's going to happen where, who's the mystery character, who's going to die, and so on. Even people who may have not read the book will surely know these facts. Such movies succeed only because people are curious to know whether the filmed version matches their imaginative version, they are disappointed mostly but still continue to remain curious for the next such movie. I myself, for one, will continue to remain curious how much ever i might crap about them in my thoughts or in my blog.
And sometimes, in movies such as The Da Vinci Code, the movie version is exceedingly boring, and makes you wonder if it was this book that you enjoyed. Maybe the director of the movie is to be blamed for it, whatever, lets not start the blame-game. If the movie's bad, it's bad. i'm a strong believer of the fact that there are only two kinds of movies - good and bad. There are no 'ok' kinda movies, the 'not bad' and 'sort of ok' kinda movies do not exist. It's either that the movie was good, or bad. Ok, coming back to The Code. I watched it at Viggy's place today and as advertised heavily before it's release, the good thing about it was that it gave the viewer an inside look into the famous Louvre museum, the original mona lisa, and the like. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only good thing about it. Utterly boring, the rest of it. Vignesh n I were almost asleep an hour into the movie. I was like 'Thank God, it's over' by the time it neared the end. If it was not for the hype and controversy surrounding the movie, it would have surely bombed at the box-office. Here again, they have changed the whole climax of the bloody novel to an extent that makes me wonder aloud how such things happen. If it's lik A in the book and B in the movie, how is it acceptable. There were no documents at the rosalin place in the novel and thereby not supposed to be in the movie. And fifty Priory members come n meet with langdon and neveu an that 'secret chamber'. All this was not in the book, was it?? Again I tell you I may seem to make too much out of nothing here, but still i will. I'm not writing for The New York Times or The Hindu. This is MY blog, MY personalised space on the web and i think i'm entitled to write whatever crap i want on this page. Whoever wants to read it, can do so and ccomment upon what i write in any way they want to.
Every book-deal, i suppose, also includes a clause which gives the publisher rights to sell the book to a movie-maker, supposing it becomes a best-seller. Any author would gladly agree to it, because it only gives him an additional chance to earn, and that is the sole aim of his writing a book. No one can give crap like he's writing the book to unleash his imagination, or say that he's paying homage to the wonderful world of literature in his humble work. That does NOT sell. Money, money, money. The smell of currency. What would'nt we do for it. Infact, we do everything for it. Guess we're drifting off topic. Dunno if there ever existed the so-called moral values on earth, that are supposedly being eaten away by the 'evils' of corruption and greedy money-making. Coming back to the authors. Their sole aim is to make money. I have always dreamt of being suddenly struck by a brainwave while travelling on a train with an idea for a book that had potential to beat Harry Potter and make me the richest man in the world, but fact is, that will never happen. The next Christopher Paolini?? Naaah...too difficult. Needs a lot of luck, hard to come by.
Maybe there exist people on earth who still write just for the joy of creating something with some meaning, with the expectation that their 'masterpiece' will be appreciated by someone. They may write something nonsensical, something without any true implication or meaning. But it still gives them an oppurtunity to play with words, and experience the bliss of writing. I'm definitrly one of them. And for people like me, B-L-O-G-G-E-R . . . Ah well its a (I won't say God-given gift ... god did not create blogs) gift, thats all. A boon, perhaps.

On ORKUT, continued...

2006-06-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

Check out these facts i stumbled upon while aimlessly browsing ... They may not be true .. but sure are interesting ..

1. Orkut Buyukkokten gets $12 for every person who registers to the site.
2. He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.
3. He gets $8 when your friend's friend adds you as a friend, $6 if someody adds you as a friend in the resulting chain.

4. He gets $5 when you scrap somebody, $4 when somebody scraps you.
5. He also gets $20 for every photo you upload on orkut.
6. He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush list or hot-list.
7. He gets $2 when you become somebody's fan.
8. He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
9. He even gets $1 every time you logout of orkut....well, I think its going out of hand now...
10. He gets $0.5 everytime you just change your profile-photograph.
11. He also gets $0.5 everytime you read your friend's scrapbook, $0.5 everytime you view your friend's friend list.
12. Many global financial consultants think this person might become the world's richest man by the end of 2009.

Now, as you must have realised, this list is surely crap, not true. But i thought it might make for an interesting read, anyways.

O-R-K-U-T, the second RIP

2006-06-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, ahem...yes, i'm back...bored, and waiting for the germany match thats due in an hour. And since i just checked my orkut scrapbook to see if anyone's 'scrapped' me, i was hit upon by a brainwave. Why not R-I-P, orkut, i thought. Ok, fine. I looked up orkut in wikipedia, the place where any fool can get enlightened on anything he wants to be, and was face-to-face with a decent length, not-too-long article. It begun with ... "The title of this article is supposed to be orkut but is actually Orkut due to Technical Reasons." Whatever. Who cares if its orkut or Orkut. Maybe they do. But, I sure don't. If you've noticed, I've still not written anything useful. Well, thats one of the main reasons people blog, to get the satisfaction of having 'published' something on the WWW, useful or not, interesting or downright bullshit.

Anyways, the wikipedia article, written by god-only-knows-whom, started something like this ... "orkut is an Internet social networking service run by google ...." (notice the small '0'). It then provided the name of the founder, the-guy-who-has-an-unpronouncable-second-name. Its not exactly 'unpronouncable', seeing that you can pronounce it the way you want to, only, it might be wrong. There's always a confusion when there are dots above the letters in a word. So, well, i shall pronounce his name as Orkut Booyookkoookten, in my way. I'm dead sure its wrong. It's a free country, ain't it. And his country is far far away from mine. Guess he's turkish. Who cares.

I'm quite new to orkut, and though i joined a few months back, its only a few days since i've been actively involved in its intricacies. This is what my home page looks like...
This page does turn up most of the times i login, but this fella also peeks in sometimes....
Guess the orkut-fellows don't stock up enough servers to meet the rush. Jammed servers. Bad servers. Infact, its 'Bad, bad, server. No donut for you.' The message that comes when orkut has a bad server. Whats it supposed to be?? Catchy?? Funny?? Or something else?? I hate donuts anyway.

So. A social networking service. Aimed at 'expanding the circumference of your social circle.' But does it, really?? Orkut is not a new concept, actually. Loads of other social networking sites exist, MySpace and Friendster being the noteworthy ones. Then why is orkut the most popular one in India? Cos its Google that its related to. The only reason. Thereby shooting up to the top. Infact, Yahoo was not the first of its kind-of wesite to debut when it did so in some month of 1995. The backronym states 'Yet Another Hierarchial Officious Oracle', and is testimony to the fact that it was not the first. But still, its the leading website now, its annual profits are of the order of 2 billion dollars, beating even Google, which has a higher net turnover, though. I know this is completely unrelated to this post, but still, just occured to me. Since starting in 2004, I think January, it has amassed 20,658,025 members. When it started, it was supposed to be different from the existing players in the fact that it was by invitation only that you could join in orkut. But that has not been a deterrent factor. A major defect in orkut is that people from all over the world are not allowed access to it. If your friend took a job in Iran, he cannot keep in touch with you through orkut, as its banned there, for seemingly 'ethical' and 'religious' reasons. Another thing that irritates you is that almost 69% of orkut users are brazilians, the idiots who start stupid communities and post in a stupid language (I think its portugese) that no one except them can make head or tail of (hope a brazilian who can read english doesn't stumble by this blog).

I'm afraid it's time for me to abruptly take leave now...time's almost 12.30...i'll be back with the rest of the rip tomorrow...until then..

The First Rip

2006-06-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

Have mobile phones taken over our lives??

Dumb question. Of course they have ... if it was computers two decades ago, this is the era of the mobile phone. There was a 'Voice Your Views' column in The Hindu featuring precisely the same topic and thats what gave me the idea for this rip. What started as 15-pound bricks now are sleek, easy-to-use, stylish, trendy, feature-filled, and what not ... this adjective list is never-ending. They were conceived primarily as a device that could be used to make calls when a land-line (fit only for the museums now) was not available, and to exploit the wireless technology. But well, as of now, their 'primary' use is still to make calls, but an array of many other features also exist, each of which would have been awe-inspiring for any layman fifty years ago. Hell, who would have believed even in 1980 that it would be possible to take photos & videos, send instant messages that conveyed your message to any person around the globe in a minute and schedule your appointments, surf the internet, publish blogs online, play games and listen to music and the radio on a small varied-shape object that weighed half a football??? After computers, mobile phones are the technology that has grown double exponentially over the last decade or so. The size, weight and cost of the mobiles have reduced, and the features they can offer are steadily on the rise.

The SMS. Ask any student in the world what he/she would miss most if all mobiles in the world were to suddenly vanish, and pat would come the reply...SMS. Short messaging service. That caters to the general as well as intricate needs of not only students, but other people as well. The best ever invention as far as mobiles are concerned. Most service operators in India today provide 100 messages a day. Not enough. Well, for some atleast. Message forwards. Created in hundreds by the day, related to everything. Mobile jokes. So many things relate closely to the SMS. A new form of English even has surfaced because of the SMS. There's a separate section in The Oxford English Dictionary that provides the expansions of short-forms used in SMSses. Smileys. Which can depict every emotion of your with semi-colons, braces and hyphens alone. Wow. A whole new world. Everything cos of the mobile phone.

Lets forget the SMSs for a bit. The next big thing - GPRS. General Packet Radio Service. A relatively new invention to the SMS. Through which you can surf the internet on your mobile phone. Soon, broadband internet speeds will be achieved on it. There are separate portals that are especially for the mobile users. GPRS is turning out to be a multi-crore business in our country, and revenues are being generated in torrents, through advertisement, and DOWNLOADS. Wallpapers, ringtones, videos, games, news and what not. Everything costs money, and money makes business.

Games. The next big thing. People are addicted to it. See any owner of a primitive nokia phone, and one of the first questions you'll ask about the phone is the Snake game high-score. Games, Games, Games. Games on everything, about everything. Downloaded free from some sites. People exchange bookmarks for free game-sites. Gaming mobiles, like the N-Gage QD, especially designed for those freaks (no offence) who can't stay one day without having tried a new game. Action games, racing games, card games, casino games, battle games. So many different genres. That keep you hooked, for atleast a while. A person who has a decent mobile cannot simply say he has nothing to do and is bored, because supposing he's ready to spend some money, there's SO BLOODY MUCH to do.

Ok, lets forget going berserk about the implications of games, SMSs and GPRS. Coming back to mobiles on the whole, there are so many different models, known by their 'numbers', each of which caters to a different section of people. Rates vary, from 3,000 to 30,000. Black-and-white phones, colour phones, camera phones, radio phones, GPRS phones. So much of variety and choice. Choose carefully before buying. New models come in very often. They become thinner and thinner. Slimphones, they call them. There's a mobile available for almost every budget.

There was a recent news article on how the idea conceived to ward off teenagers from loitering in work-areas was fine-tuned to their benefit. The first thing was a new kind-of alarm like device (the mosquito box) that could be fitted outside workplaces where teenagers created problems. It emitted a sound at a very high frequency that adults above around 20 years of age could not hear because of the so-called 'aging ear' syndrome. As for the teenagers, it filled their head with an annnoying buzz that forced them to leave the place. More recently, the company (Compound Security Systems) has come out with 'mosquitotone', which is sweeping through the entire United States. Teenagers can henceforth be alerted to their SMSs while in class, without the professor hearing a thing!!! See if you can.... hear the tone from here

There's recently been a huge and still-raging controversy about whether students should be allowed to use mobiles in their college. Ban or no ban, students still will continue to use them with the same intensity they do now. They will device new methods to conceal the phones deep inside their clothing. They will invent new ring-tones only teenagers can hear. A student could feel handicapped without a mobile. Such importance!!! Where did all this result from?? Who is to be blamed???

Ah, DEBATE. We can debate later. There's too much to debate about, too many things to argue about, too many controversies, too many different opinions. I shall stop here, however abrupt or absurd it may seem. Hell, i'm bored of typing. Will be back with another rip.