Smile while you can. Soon Life will make you laugh.

National Geographic Channel - Ultimate Factories: Video Preview

2008-02-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

National Geographic Channel - Ultimate Factories: Video Preview

dear deo

2007-09-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Happy B'day.

Spider-Pig

2007-08-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

I had "spider-pig" as my status message on my IM for more than a week. It sure had to have quite an impact on me for me to do that. The term was from the The Simpsons Movie. It was a good funny movie and especially the one about the spider pig makes u wonder what it takes to come up with such original humour.

I was amazed when I came to know (thanks to Amee) that the famed Hans Zimmer has made a track, "Spider-Pig". Thanks Zimmer !

to my mom

2007-08-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Lovely addition to my desk

2007-05-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

- courtesy P

Turning Twenty Five

2007-05-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

It was one of the most memorable birthdays i've had till now (other than the ones when i was 6-10 yrs when Bala used to come over with a big gift and when we played volley ball with a rubber ball in our portico & the one at Windsor park in blore, my 18th at copper chimney, the one in James court with family) . I never expected to have so many surprise in one day (some of which unfortunately are not appropriate for blogging yet). My friends here made it wonderful. Pandas, Chipmunk2, Dinkis, Lallus, Bahety & Adam - it was a quality surprise guys. Then at midnight, roomie's surprise again! Black Forest cake ... yummmm - thanks!

Rao's home was beautiful... almost as lovely as her sambar. Felt at home after months. Had lots of fun. Then the evening was the best part. The roses in the red glass vase were just too good to describe . The Dutch apple cheesecake was awesome. I ate cheesecakes for the next 2 days !

Evening was a pleasant walk with the mini zoo... pandas and dinkis (this was when dinkis got christened) 3 scoops of baskin robbins - perfect ending to a lovely day. Throughout the day there were phone calls from so many lovely friends... more than usual may be because of the time difference may be - they remembered during the later part of the day and it was still morning for me :P
Throughout the day, calls were from P, J, P, V, Dee, Shams, Thennal, (sryyyy raks... i din cal to get ur blessing :( ), Nari, Sunshine, NMK, visuMickey, mohan, prakash, preethy, shreya, bajee, thiyagesh, subash, Greg and many more.... Ppl who missed were Dh, Ab, Ny

Mails from a lot of ppl...

Thanks P... just wait ;-)

You can stop the suicides of broke movie producers

2007-03-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hong Kong – On Feb 20, 2007, in a ruling that underscores the Indian government’s increasing commitment to combating intellectual property theft, a Mumbai court jailed a movie pirate for seven months and fined him Rs. 55,000 (approximately USD1,250). On Oct 27, 2005, acting on information provided by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) following an investigation, Mumbai police officers arrested Sameer Ahmed Qureshi, a wholesale distributor of pirated movies, seizing several thousand DVDs infringing the latest and Indian movies, including pirated copies of titles such as Transporter 2, Fantastic 4, Rush Hour, Troy and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

“The Motion Picture Association is encouraged by this ruling, which demonstrates the importance Indian courts are placing on the protection of intellectual property rights,” said Mike Ellis, Senior Vice President and Regional Director, Asia-Pacific for the Motion Picture Association.

Ellis continued, ”The tremendous damage caused to the movie industry in India by pirates of course significantly impacts our member companies’ business, but it is local producers and distributors who are hit hardest, and it is workers on locally produced films who are at greatest risk of losing income and jobs. The protection of intellectual property rights fosters innovation and is vital to economic growth and job creation around the world.”

“The sentence handed down by the Ballard Pier Court marked only the sixth movie piracy conviction in India” said Chander M. Lall, India Legal Counsel for the MPA. “While we are encouraged by the increased recognition the courts are giving to intellectual property theft, there are at the moment more than 2,000 additional movie piracy cases working their way through the judicial system. It is our hope that more resources will be allocated to intellectual property crimes, which so badly damage India’s economy and society.

Piracy in India
Piracy in India affects the Indian film industry more than American producers and distributors. It is estimated that only 20 percent of pirated goods infringe the copyrights of foreign film titles. The remaining 80 percent of pirated product infringes the copyrights of domestic films. According to Government estimates, the entertainment industry loses up to 1,700 crores annually on account of piracy. Since the beginning of 2004, the MPA has conducted close to 1,000 raids and seizure operations in India in cooperation with law enforcement authorities. Additionally, civil raids have been conducted through court-appointed Local Commissioners in civil suits initiated by MPA member companies.

Piracy in Asia
A comprehensive study aimed at producing a more accurate picture of the impact that piracy has on the film industry including, for the first time, losses due to internet piracy, recently calculated that the MPA studios lost US$6.1 billion to worldwide piracy in 2005. About US$2.4 billion was lost to bootlegging*, US$1.4 billion to illegal copying* and US$2.3 billion to Internet piracy. Of the US$6.1 billion in lost revenue to the studios, approximate US$1.2 billion came from piracy across the Asia-Pacific region, while piracy in the U.S. accounted for US$1.3 billion. In 2006, the MPA’s operations in the Asia-Pacific region investigated more than 30,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting nearly 12,400 raids. These activities resulted in the seizure of more than 35 million illegal optical discs, 50 factory optical disc production lines and 4,482 optical disc burners, as well as the initiation of more than 11,000 legal actions.

* Bootlegging: Obtaining movies by either purchasing an illegally copied HS/DVD/VCD or acquiring hard copies of bootleg movies.
* Illegal copying: Making illegal copies for self or receiving illegal copies from friends of a legitimate VHS/DVD/VCD
* Internet piracy: Obtaining movies by either downloading them from the Internet without paying or acquiring hard copies of illegally downloaded movies from friends or family.

About the MPA: The Motion Picture Association (MPA) represents the interests of major motion picture companies in the global marketplace. On behalf of its member companies, the MPA conducts investigations around the world, assists with the criminal and civil litigation generated by such cases, and conducts education outreach programs to teach movie fans around the world about the harmful effects of piracy. The MPA directs its worldwide anti-piracy operations from its headquarters based in California and has regional offices located in Brussels (Europe, Middle East and Africa), São Paulo(Latin America), Montreal(Canada) and Singapore(Asia-Pacific). The MPA’s anti-piracy activities have helped to transform entire markets from pirate to legitimate, benefiting video distributors, retailers, and foreign and local filmmakers alike. The MPA member companies include: Buena Vista International, Inc.; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Sony Pictures Releasing International Corporation; Twentieth Century Fox International Corporation; Universal International Films, Inc.; and Warner Bros. Pictures International, a division of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc.
- source www.MPAA.org

Information Shorting

2006-12-17T11:13:00.000-08:00

Now that I've managed to make you wonder about the title, let get to the point.
Reading - off a paper Vs off an electronic media.
When we used to read off books, newspapers, magazines (am talking about the version that is printed on tree pulp), one tries to absorb as much as possible then and there. He becomes wiser at that point in time and stacks it off to his collection that probably would never look it up again.

But that's different now. When you scramble through the web everyday, you encounter so much information no doubt. But does that information gets added to our knowledge at all. We tend to Ctrl+D (bookmark) it. We add it to del.icio.us. We add it to favourites. How much of it do we actually go back and consume? It is getting easier by the day to bookmark things and to retrieve later, but we almost tend to do the former part of it too often than the later part. The information gets shorted directly to the repository without going through our minds.

"There is no spoon, Firefox"

2006-12-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite adoptions from 'The Matrix'

Morpheus: Microsoft is our enemy, Firefox, but when
you're on the internet, you look around. What do you
see? Business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The
very people we are trying to save. But until we do,
these people are still IE users. You have to
understand, most of these people are not ready to
switch to a browser that doesn't come included on
their desktop when they bring their computers home
from Best Buy and pop in the "2000 Free Hours!" AOL
CD. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly
dependent on Microsoft that they will fight to protect
it. Were you listening to me Firefox, or were you
looking at the woman surfing the hot lesbo porn?

Firefox: I was...

Morpheus: Look again. Woman has turned into Bill
Gates, introducing new "standard" to break non-IE
browsers.

Morpheus: Freeze it!

Firefox: What is it?

Morpheus: IE-only standards. That means that anyone we
haven't converted over is potential audience for
crappy sites who only QA against IE. On the internet,
you see this everywhere. We have survived by being
standards-based, by working to be compatible. But
these false "standards" are the gatekeepers.

Firefox: Whoa.

Morpheus: I won't lie to you, Firefox. Every single
company or product that has stood their ground,
everyone who was fought Microsoft has been crushed or
aquired. But where they have failed, you will succeed.

Firefox: Why?

Morpheus: I saw Microsoft crush Netscape's market
share. Men have come up with fantastic innovations
only to find them incompatible or MS copies already
included in the next version of Windows. Yet their
programs are still based on factory-style programming
and decisions made by pointy-hairs. Because of that,
they will never be as secure or as functional as you
can be.

Firefox: What are you trying to tell me, that I can
block pop-ups?

Morpheus: I'm trying to tell you that when you're
ready, you won't have to.

S2 IS is making some statement here

2006-11-08T19:15:00.000-08:00

On my mark, getting set....

2006-06-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

For all the time I have been whiling away at home, I could have done a 100 posts and yet here I am, just the first one in my two month vacation.

Getting ready to fly past the Pacific ocean. Lots of shopping, preparations, checklists, etc. etc.

I had the chance of watching some movies during this time.

One is Kingdom of Heaven - I loved the movie. Partly because the subject of the movie, Jerusalem, interests me a lot and mostly because the movie was of good standard. It kindled quite an interest in me to know the actual facts behind Jerusalem and the reasons for the seemingly never ending conflict in Israel. 'Cebilla' in the movie was charming too... :-)

I also got to watch Catch me if you can (Di Caprio & Tom Hanks) and Cinderella Man (Russel Crowe). I enjoyed both.

Finally got my name spelled correctly on the Driver's License. Now I have to apply for the Internation Driving Permit.

I had my passport status changed from ECR to Emigration Check Not Required.

I had my dentist consultations and treatments done (tomo is the last one in my series of appointments)

Stick man on my desk

2006-04-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

God Mode On

Its 5 P.M

Try n Climb

hmmm... pull.. almost there!

On a park bench

Chillaxx....

Thirunallar

2006-04-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday, I had been to a temple town Thirunallar 15 kms away from karaikal. The day started at 5 and the drive started at 6 am. I had to fill the tank as it was already below empty. I pulled into the HP bunk near Kamaraj statue. Just when the guy started filling the tank, we noticed fuel SPRAYING out from a puncture in the hose! Any source of fire around would have been a disaster (talk about quality checks!). A similar thing happened to my brother in Frankfurt. The difference - it was aviation fuel and it was a plane; not a car !!!

The sun and the temperature rose steadily. The fan speed of the A/C inevitably had to be pushed to the next level and the next and to the last. The drive was good but the landscape wasn't very exciting. But it was a long time I had been through that route; cuddalore - chidambaram(breakfast) - karaikal - thirnallar.

The breakfast was at Saradharam at Chidambaram. I vaguely rememebered the place. I thought I must have been there on one or more occasion with my family folks on some trip or another. Then I also remembered going there(with vinu and jai ) to meet praveen and murrari when they were in college at Annamalai.

We reached at about 10 am. It was scorching hot. The temple was to the planet Saturn. (or Saneeswara Baghvan, if you please) - waited in queue for abt 2 hours. All the way in the queue, the walls had illustrated stories of Nala and Damayanthi. I couldnt avoid observing the the extreme amatuer nature of the paintings(What did I expect, Picasso??). Finally we got to the prime.

Then on the way out, we had a sprinkle from the temple's pond. My mom reminded me that this is where I had fallen into when I was about 10 years old. I remembered the incident well(I had slipped on the step of the pond, thanks to the moss , and my dad caught me just in time by the collar and pulled me out). I remembered it all very well, one of my first encounter with untamed form of nature. That's when I first realized how easy it was for anything to happen. One minute it is something and the next minute it could be anything. I am thankful that I realized this very early in my life.

On the way back, we lunched at Karaikal. Got some halwa from the place (which was famous there). It was a heavy lunch aaand I had to try very hard not to sleep over the wheel. I had got some new songs to keep me busy, apart from the bad roads and the traffic of course. We reached home before sunset.

Pleasant trip!

3 day weekend

2006-03-11T18:07:00.000-08:00

What a pleasant change it makes to have just 24 extra hrs added to my weekend.
Guys, taking fridays off shud be made statutory!!! :D
Okay okay ... i'll get down back to earth.
Got a chance today to visit the new "Chennai City Centre" (on the way to the beach via Cathedral road/ Radhakrishnan Salai.. about 0.7 kms before you reach Marina, right hand side of the road)
Its big, its neat and currently houses Lifestyle and Landmark. Its yet to be "completed" but the showrooms are open. Lifestyle is really bigger than the Alwarpet branch. I dint have time to take a peek into landmark. The sad part is that its got no good place to eat (yet).

Noyes?

2006-03-10T10:09:00.001-08:00

Vacilltions, dilly dallyings, dilemmas...

Thinking about it, I get reminded of situations when we have to make decisions in life. Be it a trivial one or otherwise, we ponder over it and finally decide on something. This choosing between "yes" and "no" is what life is largely about.
Though it sounds simple enough, there is a whole lot of strings attached.
Saying "Yes" when
- you want to say 'Yes'
- you want to say 'No'
- you say whatever others say
- you want to say 'How the hell am I supposed to know?'
and the same set of condition applies to saying "No"

Computers - they live on "Yes" and "No" and nothing else. It is a wonder that such simple(??) set of rules is the root of such intelligence. Think about being able to do all that you can today with all sorts of convergence of technologies. Such complexities spring from the simplest of systems - yes and no, '1' and '0'.

Fractals - I dont know much about them except that they are a system with fractional dimensions. They have only a very limited set of rules that can be applied. That will be something like say two components - a base and a generator and they produce a whole world of fascinating results.

Life - Coming back to making decisions, why do we find it more difficult with ourselves than what happens with computers. That's because of two reasons.
1. The rules that we define for each of us is not necessarily the same and (worse)
2. We make an extra decision of whether to play by our own rules or not!!!

Life is beautiful...

Less younger earlier?

2006-02-11T00:50:00.000-08:00

Growing up was always fun, until recently. We always want to grow up when we are in our student life. And finally when we get to go to work, we want to get back to school. In this life that speeds past us, we are lucky to have the time to realize that so much keeps changing. The mind is more crowded, heart less empathetic, eyes less sharper, ears more ignorant, hands less reflexive, legs less supportive and I am not talking about moving into 50s. All this is happening in mid 20s nowadays.
I am getting anxious for not being able to remember a four digit number standing in front of the ATM. (mid 20s ??)

Slow down getting less younger yet want to race past the world - have to sort that out.

Soul

2005-09-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

What's this soul thing here? Well am referring to a friend of mine. I have known X for the past 12 years now. But we have been in frequent contact only about half that span, that too intermittently. We had great time when we were just out of school and since then it was a great feeling whenever I think of X. What syncing wavelengths and what matching wavelengths in acknowledging mismatching wavelengths. I sometimes get complimented for my patience. I can't help but attribute that to X, who has repeatedly tested my patience, thus grooming the same.

Then we got past that line where one needs tolerance. X was like me to me. I wouldn't require to "tolerate" me correct? Its like thaaaaaat! Get it?

Our minds started thinking in such accord. Atleast our minds knew what the other mind would be thinking inspite of having a diferent line of thought for itself. We went together so well that X never thought that there could be anything about me that X could not appreciate. I reckon I did something to break that thought sometime in year 2001 (and I din't have the privilege of knowing what that was till date). But then 'Time' the healer though notably slow in effecting change, did it at atlast. The chords sang together again.

By then this 'distance' fella got jealous of our friendship and wanted to come between us.. that too in a big way(lets say in the order of 1000 s of miles). All it could do was nothing.

Dedicated to ... er..., in the middle of a backward oX

The dark smile

2005-08-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

۞
Last night I reached at midnight exactly. The bus journey was enchanting, I should say (which usually, it hardly is), may be because it was 9.30 p.m. when I boarded and it was after peak hrs then and so wasn't crowded. It was rain lashing on us for most part of the journey and sometimes stopped to let a spell of cool breeze pass by. It made a pleasant interlude to the routine hot days and humid nights. The moment I entered the limits of the town, I was surprised to see the ground so dry, as if it hasn't rained in years and the water dripping from our bus was the only source of water to the place.
Well, I was looking forward to my interclub tennis match this weekend. I stepped out of the bus and the dark sky smiled upon me. Drizzling. I smiled back, so much for playing tennis.
It was about 5 mins walk to my home from where I alighted. Thoroughly enjoyed those 5 mins. On my way, I was surprised to see a temple(including the inner sanctum sanctorum) open in the dead of the night. Then my mom said, it might be 'coz of some ceremony for Lord Kršna's birthday
Then he was born, the story goes.

fatigue

2005-03-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

Can the mind cause fatigue to the body?

I was totally caught by surprise when I realized I was getting tired when I was playing an inter-club tennis match this morning. Getting tired was the last thing I was worried about. Though I was leading, it was only by a single game. I fought very hard to maintain that lead. Though I won in the end, I never expected it to be that close. I did not know how i felt so tired during the match. I was not tired before the match and heck, I was not tired after the match either. It has been quite sometime since I had played matches. May be my mind was a bit unsettled. And I wonder if that is the cause of the physical tiredness too.

Life's Alchemy

2005-02-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

When it is a known fact that "matter can neither be created nor be destroyed", does it not follow that everything that exists is one and the same, just seen at different points of its lifetime(which is eternity)?
What is that one thing?