Saturday, November 29, 2008

The really black "Black Friday"

The bargain hunting ritual of Black Friday needs to stop. It has increasingly become a pain to society. What happened yesterday had it coming for long. Shopping is celebrated in US and bargain hunting is seen as a sport. The scene outside shops resemble refugee camps of famished people waiting for first meal in years.

Worst part was when people refused to cooperate and kept "shopping". So much for civilized society and developed countries.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Aamir (The Movie)

This is a great movie. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the opinions in the movie but it surely has enough good to make it to one of my top lists. I'm a bit liberal in awarding 10/10 to movies, as perhaps you can see from imdb voting lists, if I have enjoyed a movie end-to-end I give it a 10.

I would recommend everyone to watch it at least once. I wish more movies like this were being made in Bollywood.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Nightmare...

I just woke up by a nightmare. It was bad, i mean real bad. I haven't seen many nightmares that are that bad. I woke up badly shaking and sweaty even in A/C. In fact, I'm still shaking. The last thing, perhaps the only thing that I could recall, is seeing a road flooded in water full of snakes, predominantly king cobras and I see myself falling into that... It was bad and I'm unable to stop shaking.

Earlier in day yesterday, I and a friend of mine, met with an accident while parking the car. Nobody got injured. The apartment complex was without power for several hours as he had accidently hit transformer supplying power to complex. It needed to be replaced. Everything, except his car and probably his driving history, returned to normal in couple of hours.

It had been a bad day... and a bad night...

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Had Ghalib been a developer...

While chatting with a friend of mine, we came with following:

hazaaron alogorithms aise ki har algo pe code crash ho.
bahut nikale mere code se bug par phir bhi kam nikale.

aadab!

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Reusing the music...

I just realized that "Yaara Yaara" from "Hum Tum" and "Chanda Chamke" from "Fanaa" has same music. Jatin Lalit reused the same music in 2 years... I don't know if that would count as plagiarism?

Though, I have numerous instances where a piece of music from earlier bollywood songs have used as main theme music in later movies. In fact, most of movies from Yash camp have reference to music from earlier movies but this much more common. This is first time that I have discovered an instance where music is same.

BTW, here is the original for recent hit "Pehli Nazar" from Race. Those who want to sing along this number "Sarang Hae Yo" from "Kim Hyung Sup", here are the lyrics... (I can't translate)

Ee jeu meh suh nal sa rang heh doh dweh ni ah joo jo geu meh ni poom eh suh na...l nam gyuh doo go duh na gan da myun neh mam ah peun guh ja ral ja na... *sa rang heh yo da shi shi ja geh yo him deul geh man het dun geu deh ji man I LOVE MY FRIEND nuh ah ni myun ahn dweh oo ri sa rang eun jung heh jyuh buh rin oon myung in gul* nul him deul geh han noon mool ga ji doh ee jen neh ga jun boo ga peul geh yo neh ga gi beun gun nuh eh geu oo seu mi ji geum nal dal ma it da neun guh *REPEAT* ji geum chuh rum man...sa rang heh yo da shi shi ja geh yo him deul geh man het dun geu deh ji man I LOVE MY FRIEND nuh ah ni myun ahn dweh mo deun guh rit go heng bo ga geh man heh jool geh sa rang heh yo da shi shi ja geh yo him deul geh man het dun geu deh ji man I LOVE MY FRIEND nuh ah ni myun ahn dweh oo ri sa rang eun jung heh jyuh buh rin oon myung ee ya...

Thursday, June 05, 2008

From The Horse's Mouth

Here you have, from the horse's mouth, enough clues to tell you what happened behind the curtains. It is very obvious, at least to me, that it is a case of deliberate distribution of nuclear weapons by a sovereign state. I also think that USA knew it all along about "America's Best Ally on War on Terror". Only when things went out of hand, US forced them to admit it and they made him an scapegoat. Scientist generally act in best interests of their nation. It is only the politicians who screw it up.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Forrest Gump

Just finished watching Forrest Gump on TBSHD. Tom Hanks' acting is just superb. He doesn't speak much (except narrative) but the emotions are so clearly reflected... It is just awesome... I have seen this movie multiple times... and every time to the end... It is one of my all time best...

Friday, May 09, 2008

Do you believe this?

I can't believe the words coming from US diplomats, Rice and Bush. This article analyzes it in detail and I agree with most of what is written there. It is strange that growing corn prices are attributed to India, though, as I understand India consumes much less corn and our primary diet consists of rice and wheat. Corn is being increasingly used for biofuels and the money there is more than money on grain itself. Given that the size of arable land in world is limited and probably decreasing every year, spending valuable grain to produce energy is probably waste of an important resource. You can't grow grain in ocean... for now, that is. Until such innovations are possible, grain should be used more intelligently. India is a net exporter of grain so making these statements proves nothing. US needs to stop the dictatorship attitude that it has.

Edit: The data shows different reality... US consumption is about 1 ton per capita with an increase of 11% last year while Indian consumption is 0.15 ton per capita with an increase of 2% last year. And, US is still crying foul!!!... Looks like some people never get it... with oil threatening to touch $200, corn will probably follow similar trend...

Saturday, May 03, 2008

The New India: Part 2...

Here is another example about the new India... It is pity that mere 27 story building is being termed as skyscraper... still a long way to go...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Another Gruesome Story

This is horrible. Very filmi style. In an orthodox society such as India, this will create further apprehensions about adoption. I bet attention hungry morons at media channels will play adoption as a card to create stories like paraya khoon aakhir paraya hota hai...

We as a nation still have a long way to go to realize the value of a human life. The fact that we are billions+ is not helping either.

The New India

Well, here is an eye-opening article. For the people outside India, at current forex rate, 1 crore Indian Rupees is roughly equivalent to USD $250,783 (see at today's rate here). That's a lot of money, in any country. People are no longer hesitant to talk in millions of dollars.

With rupee appreciating the way it has been, it is hurting the indian economy. Though, these people may be justified in asking for huge sums of money, the gap is widening fast. Quoting above article, 

Noted economist Y K Alagh puts it in perspective when he says, “It’s the hype that counts. This is definitely a post liberalisation phenomena. But the stark difference between the haves and have nots is worrisome. Thousands of people are getting crores and crores of people are only getting thousands. That’s the irony.”

This is definitely a big warning. It is irony that huge population of India (~ 25% or 287 million people or roughly equal to population of USA) still lives on less than a dollar a day.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

What?

I am feeling the need to write something, anything... Nothing on mind right now... Actually a lot on mind but since most of that is confidential, nothing is left to share as of now... weather has been crazy here in Bismarck. Yup, that is where I am in case I forget to mention about it, at latitude 46.78 and Longitude -100.75 in a small city. I have learned that Maza in this state is the smallest city in USA! Now I suddenly feel that I'm a BIG city :)

Monday, March 31, 2008

The Trick Shot...

What an elaborate setup and trick shot... Well, not really a trick shot in this but domino setup is well designed...

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Airtel Broadband

Aise hi, did some connection testing of internet connection at my home. Here are the results. All tests I ran from various sites gave the results between 200 - 270 kbps. Pick your favourite. Looks good enough for me. My typical use is surfing, emails, and occasional downloads. Emails are the biggest as I connect to office servers. And of course, all those auto updates that keep downloading every alternate day.

Have been using Airtel for last 1.5 years and I haven't faced much problems with their service. It is a bit expensive for the speed they provide but reliability is better. In last 7 years of using non-dialup connections, this is so far the most reliable. And dial-ups earlier to that were not reliable and pretty expensive. I hope it remains as good.

Will upgrade to higher speed only if they give in same price. Can't pay anymore than what I'm paying them now, which is Rs 999 + taxes (US$25 + taxes) per month. Yes, downloads are unlimited.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Seeing Is Believing - The Sydney Test

I hadn't been following cricket since India performances are not something worth spending my time on. Lately, this controversy after Sydney test caused me to check back on how a significant part of my country's economy is doing. After watching this video on youtube, I was shocked... ok, not so much. The most comments on this video are in bad taste but nothing can take away what happened on the field.

I personally feel that a lot of decisions do go against India and fellow countries in Indian sub-continent - Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Australia has been playing good cricket but they are not great on human scale. Honestly, I don't expect them to be. There is lot at stake - lots of money. In cut-throat competition, nobody wants to be at losing end. If we expect Australian players to walk, we are dreaming.

It is more disturbing to see the level of umpiring falling to such a low. The technology is here. We can have a complete match without the human umpires. Why do we still need them. It does not take away much time away from cricket that people seem to think. Why can't balls be fitted with sensors that will tell if it is bounced? Technology is cheap and available - we have kids' toys that glow when bounced off the ground.

If that sounds impossible, just have more umpires on ground (virtually), separate for no-ball, stumping, LBW etc.

Cricket is a big money game. It is high time, this money be spent on betterment of technology and better umpires rather than just being paid to players.