Restart...

I think it will feel good to be blogging again...

Kadavul Vandhirundhar

Indus Creations presents Kadavul Vandhirundhar...

Seattle Times...

It snowed again in Seattle area on Wednesday. Even though it looks nice outside, its biting cold (18 deg F as I write this). And driving is messy.

Particularly if you are driving ahead of a 4WD SUV whose drivers generally seem to be in agreement that their vehicles never skid. One such almost bumped me from behind on the freeway, then switched lanes to get ahead of me, switched back to my lane and whizzed past in a show of typical SUVish arrogance.

Or maybe, he was really in a hurry for something important. (That makes me feel better)

***

Saw a few movies.

Omkara (Othello) - really liked it but thought some characters were given more attention than others. Result being, some important characters didn't have as much impact as they should have had.

Saif Ali Khan's portrayal of Langda Tyagi was fabulous. Both actor and director get a pat for that. Devgan was okay - but he had very few moments in the movie though he was the lead character (blame the director).

Dolly, Kareena Kapoor, was unidimensional. It would have been nice if she could have been more colour (as in character). But then, I don't know Shakespeare's Desdemona that well. Maybe it is a "true" adaptation.

I liked Maqbool better. I knew the story of Macbeth in more detail than Othello, so was able to appreciate it better. But even so, I think character development was more concrete in Maqbool.

All said and done, I am really fascinated by Vishal Bharadwaj's attempt to recreate Shakespeare through such wonderful adaptations. If I were him, I would be doing this too. Shakespeare aside, all of his products so far have been of great quality (music of Maachis, for example). He seems very unassuming in his interviews, though, unlike some other self-anointed "genius"es in Indian film industry.

***

We bought the following DVDs!

Godfather DVD Collection (About 20 hrs of mafia talk)
Dead Man Walking
Scent of a Woman (One of my all time favourites)
12 Angry Men
Philadelphia
Father of the Bride (Lakshmi's favourite)
Emperor's Club (Lakshmi's choice again)

Long time mission accomplished. Still few more to go, actually.

***

In other news, when Microsoft was busy making the Zune (the brown coloured one, in specific), Apple created the iPhone. Do I need to say more?

***

PS: As I write, I am noticing that I am backspacing and rewriting words with English spellings rather than their American equivalents. Like I wrote color and then changed it to colour. Ditto with favo(u)rites. What does that make me?

Making technical documents interesting...

Technical write-ups can be boring if they talk just technical stuff. But some writers make an attempt to make them interesting.

Like in the Java API reference. Here's an example. In explaining the difference between the append() and insert() methods in the class StringBuffer, this is what I found in the API reference.

The principal operations on a StringBuffer are the append and insert methods. [...] The append method always adds these characters at the end of the buffer; the insert method adds the characters at a specified point.

For example, if z refers to a string buffer object whose current contents are "start", then the method call z.append("le") would cause the string buffer to contain "startle", whereas z.insert(4, "le") would alter the string buffer to contain "starlet".

It wasn't really necessary to pick an example where all three words made sense. But someone went that extra step.

Little things - and it made it just that little interesting.

In other news...

American efficiency in Iraq (from NYTimes)

[The] discovery that the world’s richest, most technologically advanced country could not restore basic services to minimal prewar levels left an impression of American weakness and, worse, of indifference to the well-being of ordinary Iraqis.
...
Yet another example of shoddy contract writing, lax oversight and absent supervision that has consistently characterized Washington’s approach to Iraq reconstruction from the start.

How pathetic! And how tragic!

~~~~~

You thought Google wanted to pervade all our lives even more? Here's a situation where they don't want us to use google. (They are not evil, remember?)

As it turns out, they are okay with us saying "I googled it out" - but only if we had actually used their search engine. Don't say "I googled it out on Yahoo!", please.

By the way, I sometimes use Dogpile because they google from all googling engines!

~~~~~

There's a portfolio game on. Here's my take:

93 Shares of TCS @ Rs. 1080.1 = Rs. 1,00,449.3

"Flat" World Syndrome

I am getting a little bugged that people associated with Infosys are adopting the horrendous "flat world" metaphor introduced by Tom Friedman like crazy.

Take a sample:

Nandan Nilekani
Stephen Pratt
Basab Pradhan [See the "About the Site" description in the side bar]

Infosys even has a "Think Flat" blog!

It seems to have become the next buzz-phrase after GDM. And it means nothing. Or if you want to be nice to Friedman, it really means everything that's the modern world.

And what good is a metaphor if we can twist it to mean anything and everything?

Cliche count

There should be a reason why in the English language, the word cliche has so many synonyms:

banality
platitude
hackneyed
trite
threadbare
shopworn
commonplace
bromide
old-hat
...
...
(and more)

Just so that the use of that word does not become it? (That's probably wrong usage, but as long as you know what I mean, it shouldn't matter?)

Still in love with sacrifices...

Narayana Murthy, on Infosys' 25th Anniversary Celebration, says -

Friends, by celebrating this 25th year of Infosys we are celebrating the success of these architects of economic reforms of India, and the courage, aspiration, enthusiasm, energy and hard work of every one of the Infoscions and ex-Infoscions. We are all celebrating the success of the wives and children of Infoscions whose sacrifices just render our own sacrifice into little, insignificant ones.

(Italics, mine)

I guess the Indian IT industry has a long way to go before it can claim corporate maturity. The Chairman (now ex-) one of India's leading and most modern industrial house thinks the wives and children of employees of his company are making sacrifices so that their husbands (and fathers) can do their day-job?

Sacrifices - for what cause?

Update: One of my friends pointed out another keyword in that quote above. Mr. Murthy says "wives and children", not "spouses and children".

I wonder if Bill Gates can make that statement in his retirement party and hope to get away with it.

Controlling Terror...

After the recent mumbai blasts, there were people who argued that no amount of security enforcement can actually control terror, particularly in large country like India. At that time, I tended to agree with that position.

But surely, security can do better than this!

Dravid, Dravid, Dravid...

It's adjectives all over the place in praise of Rahul Dravid after the phenomenal role he played in India's recent victory at Sabina Park. All good stuff - Dravid is finally getting his due.

Greg Chappell:

We couldn't have had a better example of commitment, application, desperation, determination, patience and technique to cope with the difficult conditions than we saw from our captain. History will show that he is one of the best players for anyone, forget India, anywhere, anytime.

Cricinfo Article:

Once again, Dravid was India's deliverer; it is inconcievable that India would have won without him. Throughout the series he was excellent, and in the final Test, which called for batsmen to stand up and be counted, he was monumental. Has there been an Indian batsman who has achieved more for the team than Dravid?