Coming up - Welcome to SajjanPur

Fantastic Movie.. will blog soon with my reviews. Just one comment though.. Watch it once.

Hari Puthar ... or Oh whatever

I am seriously not sure why on earth did people have to file a case against this movie claiming the title closely resembles Harry Potter... Damn it, know what if the director had invited, JK rowling to the preview show of this movie, I am very sure that she wouldn't have even dared to file a case against this one..

It is bad, simply bad. I know that i am not a kid anymore and it just doesn't make sense to comment on a so called kid's movie. But come on, Home alone wasn't that bad inspite of being a Kids movie. Given that this movie is a Comedy of Terrors, I think my total attempt to smile lasted for only 5 mins. Please Note, My attempt only, i just couldn't laugh. Some kids in near by seats were looking at their parents so accusingly, that the parents compensated for the movie by buying them pop corns and ice creams twice during the movie, both before and after the interval.

The Only consolation were the kids themselves. Nothing more to add. Period.

Hari Puthar - Not sure what a kid will think .. But my review is

**

Legends :
* - Only to be seen in wall posters.
** - Try it out at ur own risk.
*** - Worth watching once.
**** - Good, really good.
***** - Amazing.

Long time No see...

And i am back once more after a long long break. Itz just that there were too many things going on at my work and in the world in general that blogging never entered my mind. But still, like Sachin says, i dont have any plans of getting retired in the near future.

Come to think of it, the near future is getting gloomier. The US financial market crisis is getting from bad to worse day by day and being part of the firm that is in the epicenter of this tremor is always gonna be difficult. It is just like a movie, a child is born, a young boy plays, couple get married, and in the last 5 mins or so during climax, couple get old or couple die. Complete in 3 hours. The fate of lehman bros and Merryl lynch were pretty much the same. 158 years of legacy was just buried in a weekend. This is claimed to be the worst crisis after the 1920's economic depression in Wall Street.

Come to think of it, those were days when Wall Street meant "Walled Street" and Fed meant nothing. Honestly, be it dot com bubble or bust, it did not count. But the last few years have been so much enlightening in terms of the financial markets and how things work. Inspite of being a ardent fan of "some of "Ayn Rand's philosophies, only recently did i truly understand to appreciate it. But then, given that we are in India, it is a long shot.

Come to think of it, Indian markets dont seem to function independently as claimed by some wise investors. As i had posted in one of my earlier posts, India is not going to be shielded from this crisis. Being globalized means to share the fame and the pain equally. The extent of damage caused by financial markets might not be very high, but then there are lot other issues in India that makes up the cumulative damage sum high. The journey has just begun and it is a long road ahead.

Come to think of it, the grand prix in Singapore was just awesome and sheer grandeur not because of the race but because of the roads. As rediff rightly put, both Alonso and Singapore were winners in race against time.

Finally as our good old Indian cricket team, who always makes us expect the unexpected, the author will like to ensure that he is not part of this team and does not value this principle very highly.

Bottomline ... more posts coming along....

Dasavatharam - Impressions

I managed to watch this movie finally. And when i came out i was left confused.
I am not even sure yet whether i like the movie or i hate it. This is one of the most difficult films to write review for. So, i am going to take a neutral stand here and review it. I have avoided spoilers as much as possible..

I, Me and Myself for you henceforth.

I: So we finally watched it, how was it ?

Me: Sucked, Big time, didn't expect this from Kamal. There was no plot at all to remember or follow upon. Basing the movie on chaos theory was a big mistake, the influence spread to everyone and it was nothing but chaos.

Myself: Dude, Hold on there. Can you show me one movie in Tamil cinema that you can compare to this one in terms of grandeur or concept. Come on, change is not easy to digest, but is good. We have to come out of the mindset of seeing a Tamil film where there is a Hero,heroine , Villain a plot involving the three and the movie ends with "All's well ends well" Note.

Me: So what, are you saying we should start seeing movies only for graphics and not story ?? Well, if so i would rather watch a proper animation film than one like this.

I: I think we are just "beating around the bush" here. Please be more specific.

Me: Ok, see, i just dont buy the fact that if Kamal is an Atheist he goes and makes a film that always projects his ideas and philosophies. There were tonnes of scenes that could have been avoided in this movie. Come on, why unnecessarily have dialogues that are against a particular sect or caste. At any case, making a movie based on Chaos theory is great. Agreed. But you should also know how to project it well. I mean, half the audience wouldn't even know what Chaos theory is even after the movie. Just by tying some unrelated strings together , you can make a small novel or may be give it a shot at TV serial, not a movie. There were just too many stories and characters running around...

I: Can you hold on for a sec, i understand you have lots of negative points, but lets give myself a chance.

Myself: Thanks, I dont want to make a pandora's box of crap just as my bro did now. Instead let me focus on point by point and will finish it all.

i) Attention to Detail: Simply Amazing. I always admired people like Kamal for this and he proved once more. Just take the scene where the vulture comes and sits on top of the pole when nambi is being tortured. That says how much work he shud have done to understand wats the significance of Vulture to Vishnu. Even now, people do believe that seeing a Vulture, the one with white neck, is equivalent to seeing God. The Tsunami scene, where the birds fly before the water comes in and no one but the Japanese guy saying the name Tsunami. Also, if you noticed closely, Vishnu was present throughout the movie either as a idol or as a picture. Even when Kamal and Asin go in the lorry the glass had a photo of Krishna in it.

ii) Timing Commedy: Balram Naidu was perfect here. Even Govind also at times. Agreed that this time it was not on par with Crazy Mohan's MMKR but it was not bad either.

iii) Concept: Great, Just Great. I think this is a milestone in Tamil cinema, Kamal is setting a new trend by making a Movie which is honestly out of everyone's comprehension and expectation. Matrix was one such film in hollywood. Not everyone understood at once, some even studied the stories in the www to understand the concept and then watched it. But the movie stands out even to this day. This is one such film. Butterfly effect and Chaos theory are concepts which we might have heard in Sujatha's novels but no one would have dreamt of giving them a shot at movies. Wikipedia hits are sure bound to increase. It is truly amazing how Kamal managed to put together a Plot that talks about everything, literally. The bottom line is Chaos theory and butterfly effect but he touches upon the religious beliefs and supersitions, politics, bio war, sand mafia and terrorism, atheism, Tsunami, u name it. For each plot and philisophy he "lives" as the character.

iv) Make up: This shud have been my first point. In any case, there is nothing more to say. He is truly a Ulaga Nayagan (Universal Hero). Although, in terms of makeup, i wud have to say, I go with the make up for George W Bush's character as the best. Simply because, it is the only character in the movie that has a frame of reference. Govind, Nambi, Povvarahan, Kalifulla, Avatar, Balram Naidu, Krishnaveni paatti, Fletcher, Japanese guy( god, i keep forgetting his name) have faces that are given by Kamal and that we never know of. So doing makeup for these characters, isn't a big deal. However everyone knows Bush. And i truly appreciate the team to having come up with such a makeup thts almost Bush like albeit not xactly.

v) First ten minutes. I dont think such scenes have ever been made and can ever be made again.

Last but not the least, don't watch movies like this only for entertainment. There is something more and we have to transcend the average thinking limits to see that.
Thats all i have to say.

I: Good one, Me wats ur thought ? Dumbfounded and dont' wanna talk ?

Me: Let me answer point by point to his point by point arguments.

1) Attention to Detail : I agree. But the question is, wats the point ? Itz like you doing ICE business in Antartica. First get the story right.

2) Commedy : Itz not some scenes that were laughable, the whole movie was.

3) Concept : As i said earlier, there is a difference between thinking big and making it big. You need to do both. "It is truly amazing how Kamal managed to put together a Plot that talks about everything, literally" :: Thats the whole problem. Why on earth does he have to take so many plots ? Characters, agreed, he needs to set a new record, but plots, come on there is a limit. Who asked him to talk about everything and convey nothing. No honestly, he started the movie by portraying 12th century Saivities-Vaishnavites tussle. And then he moves on to Bio war, blah blah and at the end he says that everything is interconnected based on chaos theory. Heck, is he kidding ? Even an amateur can then take ANY totally unrelated circumstances, think sometime to find a common platform and then take a movie basing it on Chaos theory.

4) Makeup: Yes, the fact that he has done a makeup can be seen very well.

5) This is one thing I agree. :) . Simply great,and it is because of this scene alone I still have some respect for Kamal.

Last but not the least: If you dont make a movie for entertainment then better make it a documentary. You can't HAVE THE CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. You can't make a totally commercial movie and then call it conceptual and philosophical.

I: Ok, Whew, that sure was long and interesting. Based on the comments, I have to agree that my confusion level has still gone up and i dont have an option but to give two ratings to pacify me and myself. The common theme i found though was, the story in this movie. Well, it was hard to find in the movie, but that saved my day. So here it goes,

For people who say Story is the centerpiece: **

For people who say Story is just another ingredient: ****

Legends :
* - Only to be seen in wall posters.
** - Try it out at ur own risk.
*** - Worth watching once.
**** - Good, really good.
***** - Amazing.

I am still there...

I know... I am back to the old ways of taking an uneventful break from blogosphere. Yet, this time it is different. Going thru some real hectic schedules and deadlines at work. But will bounce bak.

Sooon....

Oh, in the meanwhile, happened to see Indiana jones. Don't even feel like blogging about it.

The movie started great, went on great, but the ending sucked.. big time, And that really spoils everything. Worth seeing once, but deftnly not in PVR on a weekend.


Rating : ***

Legends :
* - Only to be seen in wall posters.
** - Try it out at ur own risk.
*** - Worth watching once.
**** - Good, really good.
***** - Amazing.

The Iron Man (P) Review

Name :
The Iron Man

Language :
English

Whats the story about :
Hero wants to do good. Villain doesn't want to. So they fight.

So whats new :
"IRON" man.

So whats old :
Everything else.

Whats good :
Special effects and the hero's acting

Whats bad :
Take the old superman movie. Cut the old villain out, Bring in Terrorism and a new villain. Cut the "Super" , blue attire out and bring in "IRON". Throw in a heroine for side dish. U get Iron man.

No Honestly, what do I think :
Well it is definitely a movie worth watching once. The acting is good and the concept albeit old, is really good. The special effects require special mention. The robots and the gizmoz are just amazing. The hero is an arms dealer.. well arms designer u can call. He gets kidnapped and is taken to Afgan. Here he sees that the very missile he had designed for the Army are being used by terrorists to kill. The terrorists give him one day to build a new missile. Instead he builds the IRON man. To be more specific, builds the components necessary to become the Iron man. He fights, kills, flies and escapes. Once he escapes and back home, he refines the Iron man structure and becomes super powerful. He destroys all his missiles in the terrorists camp by flying to their place and flying back home. However little does he know that his own partner is the one who smuggles the arms. His partner finally gets hold of the secret energy source with which the Hero built the Iron man. So there u go, u have another "I don't know what metal" Man. Then they clash, hero wins, villain dies and movie ends.

Rating : ***

Legends :
* - Only to be seen in wall posters.
** - Try it out at ur own risk.
*** - Worth watching once.
**** - Good, really good.
***** - Amazing.

Random Thoughts - freak '()' nomics - I

Disclaimer : purely imaginary. No guarantee for accuracy of predictions.

Think is there any connection between the Software Boom in India and the Indian rail industry becoming one of the most profitable organizations ? There is. Example - goto IRCTC and try booking a chennai-mail ticket from Bangalore to Chennai one month ahead for a weekend. Consider urself lucky if you get a reserved berth. I can bet, most of this crowd is the young softies who hail from chennai and work at blr types. The more software industry grows, the more employed youth become, the more they travel outside their home place for jobs implies the more they Travel.

Conclusion - "Software boom directly proportional to Indian railways boom."

In any case, I am the sort of person who travels to/fro blr/chennai almost every week. Some people call it Nostalgic, i call it the smell of good food.
On the day of return I usually take the famous electric train to come to Central station from my home. Last week on a similar train journey, i got a chance to sit near the window and watch outside (It is very hard indeed to get a seat).

I was seeing the change. My association with the Train journey goes way long back to 1994. Starting from my school days to college and now work, the train journey has become a inseparable part of my life. I donno whether Nayanthara really enjoyed the rain when she looked out of the small car window (REF : Yaaradi nee mohini), but stand in the foot board of a running train on a windy(rainy) day, i can swear that it will be the most memorable journey ever. Ofcourse, you want the incident to be memorable and not to become a memory, so be cautious when you stand in the foot board.

On a crowded day, which btw is almost everyday, you will be able to see all the vagaries of life in a running train. Blind people selling lottery tickets, singing old songs, a family of 8 sitting in a berth for 4, students completing their homework, tution notes before school, middle aged people carrying lunch boxes and rushing to offices and many more. Nothing much had changed last week, only that most of the young people who usually stand outside the train, literally, are now standing inside listening to IPOD :). Here you go, my second correlation..

"With the IPOD boom, many young people have started buying IPOD and listening to songs, which means they no longer are interested in standing in the foot board and as a result of which the number of people who die because of foot board travel injuries have decreased".

Conclusion - IPOD boom is inversely proportional to No of Train journey deaths.

It is not only small children, but even adults, prefer to sit near the window. No one knows really why, but thats the way it is. Maybe calculate the relative velocity of the passing train or enjoy the fast moving view of buildings and the surroundings. One thing i really noticed was the number of open spaces. The number did not go down that much, but the open spaces were indeed OPEN, rather empty, which is very surprising. Those days, i never saw a ground that was empty. It was always occupied by boys playing cricket. A single ground was usually shared with atleast 3 teams. One team playing with a cricket ball, one team playing with a tennis ball and one team not really playing but practicing. Forget grounds, even the apartment car parking areas were usually mini cricket grounds. But now i was wondering whats stopping the young boys from occupying these grounds.. The person next to me was talking about the latest IPL matches and the genral player bashings. The thought suddenly stuck me, Kids who are usually passionate about playing cricket will never miss watching cricket. Those days the number of matches relayed were low, so lots of playing and some watching. But these days it is the reverse. As a result of which more kids are now glued to TV sets and computers instead of playing cricket which means the play grounds are now empty, which makes life easier for people who want to buy houses and have children as they no longer look for playgrounds,open spaces for their child and because of the demand the real estate prices go up.

Conclusion : IPL Matches are causing the rocketing real estate prices to shoot up even more

--to be continued....

Is there a Recession ??

This is the question that every salaried person today asks, but doesn't wish to know th e answer.

With markets looking down big time, it is clear the bear mood has set in, unclear is it here to stay? I strongly believe that US is in recession. I also believe that the world economy (Including India) is tightly coupled with the US economy. This means the world is experiencing a slow down.

This is not rocket science and doesn't require prodigious financial skills to predict. I don't think there is anything physical as recession, meaning it can't be quantified. We can't say if X > Y then there is recession. It is pure sentiment. If people refrain from taking risks, their investment exposure decreases which means, people sell to take back their money, the more they sell, the price comes down and if it is a market leader brings the sector down.

Thats what recession is, some firms get affected big time because they would have risked so much, their loss is also huge, so huge that they have to sign off. People are not ready to take more risks, not ready to buy new firms, not ready to invest money. This means there aren't enough clients for Ibanks to do business with, which means they don't get the usual money inflow they need to.

I read a few days before that with 8pc GDP growth, India is totally shielded from the tumultous world markets. This seemed to be an absolute paradox. With the age of globalization setting in, we were talking about decoupling of world economies. The truth dawned last week, when the NSE/BSE followed the tracks of NYSE and suffered a blood bath. There is recession and India is not saved from it.

The question is how long ?

Sun steals the show.. and I am back

It isn't a good sign to pop in once a while and check if my blog still exists or blogger.com has decommissioned it citing inactivity. So made up my mind today with some reminder from one of my friends to come and scribble.

Been doing good albeit hectic schedule. 2008 hasn't revolutionized my day to day life yet, so nothings much changed from where i was earlier :).

Came across the latest developer.com awards here :-
Dev.com

Seems Sun products have won in most of the category. Good to see that the Scripting feature for Java has won the best award. Hoping that next year, closures will be in the race as well for this.

Java has undergone a complete facial remake in terms of features and extensions. With Java 5, the emphasis was not only on just API extension but to include in a lot of language extension, developer friendly typing features as well. Generics is one good example. Though many argue that generics is not quite robust and has some fundamental flaws , from a developer perspective, i think it satisfies what it was meant to. Strict typing was a major difference that put Java in top of many dynamic pgmning languages and by making it compile time, genrics helps handle unneccesary surprises.

At any case, the point I was trying to say was Java SE 6 has also won in the developer.com category. And with Java 7 including some better functional programming practices within it, i will place my bet on it.

Gods must be crazy !!!!

No one likes to lose, especially in a game where all the odds are stacked up against ,you put on a brave fightback, when there is a possibility of a tie up and you are so close that u actually think you wont lose. Yet India lost. Only this time as Anil kumble rightly said "It hurts to lose. But Only one team played in the spirit of the game".

It was a contest with 11 on one side and 13 at the other... The two extras cost us the game and the series.

Height of Social Networking - :)

Given that i have the habit of taking long breaks after every blog, i decided to do something different in 2008 :- Publish a consolation post for no apparent reason with no specific content. Here it goes:

Evil twin of facebook - Enemybook

This quote is cool btw

Enemybook is an anti-social utility that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you

As if this is not enough, click the below link to read the article published recently

Social "Hate" Networking

Closures in Java - What lies beneath ??

I was listening to the "Closures for Java" tech talk by Neil Gafter. The presentation was very impressive and the content was equally good. Yet,one basic question remains unanswered. Do we need closures in java at all ??

I have nothing against closures or it being added to Java. But i like to raise few debatable points:

1) Closures is not something new. According to Wiki:
The concept of closures was developed in the 60’s and was first fully implemented as a language feature in the programming language Scheme

It is an integral part of many functional programming languages. But the recent addition of closures to Java signals the functional + OOP convergence which i think is nice to have , but not necessary. Anything we can do by adding closures can be done without using closures. So there should be some really strong use cases to justify why a developer should choose closure over his routine coding pattern.

2) Java has Anonymous Inner Classes. But how many of the developers end up using this in their day to day job ? Closures, as i understand provides a lot of features which we can't do with the current day Anonymous classes. But the question is why can't we enhance the anonymous inner class itself to provide all the missing functionality ?Why go for a concept which requires its own grammar and semantics ?

3) Java is Turing complete language. I agree, this doesn't justify closures shouldn't be added, however, Java is complete in its own OOP way. Java was not built to be a functional programming language. If closures are required, why cant we just use a JVM compatible FP to provide that feature ?

These were some of the basic questions that came to my mind once i heard about closures. Will post the answers once i find :). In the meanwhile, if there are any closure enlightened souls, please enlighten me as well.

And by the way, Wishing others & myself a very happy new year - 2008 :).

The Problem of Plenty

After a long time, bak to blogosphere. Not much of an update i have to share.
Anyways, decided to give a techie colour to my blog here upon simply coz i dont have anything else to write about.
Here is what i am trying to implement now..
XML we all know is The mode of data Transfer across different systems. But how much of an xml can you transfer. If u look at it, the size of a XML file is usually much higher than the text file that couuld be created with the contents removing the tags.
Hence is there a suitable algorithm to compress Xml. Google revealed that, the usual Huffman, LZW, work well with text files but not with xml.

Let me know if there is a better way of compressing XML.

Back to India - Japanese blues

The trip is over and i am back at india now.. I was looking forward to coming back to india, but the last day was quite nostalgic. Not that, i would have loved to stay there, but given a chance again i would love to go back for a short term again (which can happen anytime ;))

The overall picture i got was - folks out there work hard, party hard. I was at tokyo and at one of the major tourists spots, so maybe the western influence would have added its share, yet defnt'ly better than what we do at india. "Partying" in india is a different issue altogether btw.

I managed to squeeze some time during the weekend to go around tokyo. It is, indeed, a city of sky scrappers. The building where my office is located has a total of 52 floors and yet it is the second tallest building in Tokyo. Hope you can imagine the picture. The city scales vertically - BIG TIME.U can see my album in orkut for the building. Also the traditional Vs modern blend was not that prominent here as it was in London. In london you could see glazed buildings on either ends and have a 1000 year old building in between them. There was this mystic effect when you see them, in tokyo however that is missing as there are lot more skyscrappers than the old temples/houses. Speaking of temples, i managed to see the Asakusa Kannon and the Shinto shrine temples. Former being a buddhist latter shinto based. They are the most prominent religions in japan. I will upload the pics in my album soon, but you can google the names and see a lot more actually.
Japanese take pride in being japanese and speaking japanese which becomes a little hard if you are a non japanese. Yes, i had a tuff time in doing some local shopping as everything was written in japanese, but then if you intend to stay at japan it is expected that you have to learn their ways. I could only think of so much now as i dont want to do a write up for NGC or Travel & living :), but will keep updating with any interesting stuffs that comes to my mind on this topic.

Speaking of trivia:
The difference between shintoism and buddhism is, the former doesn't believe in reincarnation while the latter does. Hope you all know what hinduism supports.

Gone with the Wind

At Last Managed to watch this movie.. I have heard abt this first during a quiz in my school days and i used to confuse this with Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. But after the advent of IMDB (well, after i got the liberty to browse) , i had read about this movie many times, courtesty google/wikipedia. Some how i didn't get the push to get the CD and watch it in india and since then itz been a long pending wait.

Even out here, on a fine morning after buying a cofee from starbucks (hw is this ;) ) i was going around the showroom. It housed a hell lot of books, CD/DVD's .. i just picked one DVD as the cover resembled Clark Gable/Vivian leigh pair. Everything but the cover-picture was in japanese. I actually wanted to find out how much the movie DVD costs, but apparently yielded to the temptation when the person mistook me for asking to put the bill :)

The movie was just as i had expected it to be, gripping till the end. Felt good after watching one of the BEST movies of all times. The entire story/trivia is there in the wikipedia, yet still i will recommend to watch this. Vivian leigh(heroine) steals the show with some amazing acting. No doubt she got an Oscar for this.
But i just didn't understand how clark gable(so called male lead) is being remembered for this movie.. Anyways as long as the movie was good just as he says

"Frankly my dear, i dont give a damn"

PS: I think this line is in the top 5 spots for Time's best dialogues of all times.

Around Tokyo in 9 hours

Yes,
Finally managed to book a tour which shows all the major highlight spots in japan. Quite exited about it this time as the last weekend i had spent the entire time inside my room reading HP and watchin japanese channels :(.

Itz hard to digest

But harry potter is no more inspite of being alive :(. Will post some other day on the HP xperience.

The context of the Post below

is this.. I am rite now at tokyo,on a official trip and hence got to see the below-stated incident. I wanted to blog about my xperiences in tokyo, but then there is nothing i am experiencing but for work ;), and my readers will not want to read yet-another-statistical-tale of how much i work. But will try to blog as much as possible. One thing is certain, u better learn japanese before coming here if you plan a long term trip. And if you are a veggie/non drinker, then think twice before stepping your feet in the soils of japan.

Caught Jakie chan live

yes,

rite opposite to the place where i am staying, is TV asahi building.. supposed to be quite famous out here. Mr Chan was on a visit to promote his latest movie Rush Hour 3. I couldn't ustand a single bit of what was going, obviously bcoz everything was in japanese, but the bottomline was this .. I saw jakiechan live :). Man he looks just the same as he is in the movies if we leave out the few lines tht show up in this face inspite of the makeup to scream his age.

Shud keep in mind to watch Rush Hour 3 ;)

igoogle - Amazing initiative

For all the tech and hardcore googlers this might be an old news. But just wanted to share the igoogle experience.

Igoogle is a dashboard provided by google. A one stop junction where you can "Add Stuff" . when u say stuff,t means literally anything. Yes, gmail previews, quote of the day, wall papers, games , hangman, jokes, cartoons, blogs, news.. anything that we spend our time searching for on the web. Drag,drop and arrange as u like in a single page.

U can see the depth of their thought in the wall papers they provide. For example, a wall paper where you have a sun,beach is just a static page. However the position of the sun is made dynamic. So basically if i open the page in the morning, the sun is at the east side of the picture, and is in the west side during evenings.

I think they also allow us to define components , which mean we can create our own stuff instead of adding an existing page.

It may not be a giant leap for the way we browse the net, but it deftnly can shorten the time we actually browse the net. Yet another innovation from google labs.