Into the great wide open

Meet my friend "Pasta"

2011-07-06T20:26:00.011-05:00

So that's my Pasta and she's one of the reason why I love living in this wonderful country. Okay, now stop dropping your jaw on the wonderful country reference. This post is about "Pasta", my pet Ball python so let's stick to it.

My dream of petting a reptile goes back to my childhood days when me and my sister use to catch lizards. I love animals. I love reptiles. I love fishes. I love birds. Given a chance I would pet anything ranging from a Dinosaur to a squirrel. I love them all except for may be the worms. So when I was looking for options on pets, I checked Petsmart website to check for my options. Obviously, my first choice would have been dog closely followed by a bird but immediately after logging into the site I came across the reptile section and when I clicked it I knew I had to buy one of those reptiles on the catalogue! Initially, I was little hesitant because the apartment folks were literally trembling when I called them up from my office desk to check whether they will allow snakes as pets inside the apartment. Initially they refused. They said they don't allow it. Then two days later when I went to collect my package I asked them whether they will allow snakes as pets and one of the ladies was kind enough to say " ... while the apartment management doesn't allow snakes, we wouldn't mind people petting snakes in their apartment and there's no way the apartment folks can find out whether anyone in the apartment owns a snake". I told her that I am going to bring one home and she was okay with that. So that's when I decided that Pasta is coming home sooner than later.

Here's me holding Pasta for the first time and the smile says it all!

I bought Pasta on May 26th. Brought it home on May 28th and life's been fantastic ever since. Feeding Pasta was a pain initially but I guess we've figured out her eating habits. We feed frozen fuzzies to her. Frozen fuzzies are nothing but small white mice half the size of your index finger or the size of the thumb. Yes, it's little sad to feed another little creature as feed but can't help.

Here's a video of me feed a frozen fuzzie to Pasta

When I first saw it from close quarters, my jaws almost dropped. It was little scary to watch her force that mice through her body. The second time was even more ferocious. Since she came to my home, she has eaten only twice. So that's twice in 40 days. She's due to eat anytime now.

A week back she started getting into skin shedding mode. Right now she looks damn tired and very shy too. It's been over a week since I handled her.

Handling Pasta is one of the best feelings I've ever had in my entire life. I love it when she wraps her body around my hand (constricting) and then hangs in and out and sometimes crawls over the hand. Well, it's difficult to explain certain things in words and the feeling of Pasta wrapping around your hand is one of those feelings. It's just beautiful. Also, Pasta is one of my lucky symbols.

Should you be buying a snake as a pet? May be you should but don't buy it if you are going to let her stay in the terrarium all the time. If you love snakes, then you should definitely give it a try. If you think it's some kind of fancy creature that will look great behind a glass jar, forget about getting one.

The tale of two championships

2011-04-30T10:30:00.004-05:00

There are times in your life when you feel you should just stop following sports. The time you invest, the emotion and passion that you invest probably isn't worth it? Or is it? I've asked these questions to myself lot many times. Being a big fan of Indian cricket for the past 20 years has been painful, joyful, fulfilling and every other feeling that a human being can go through. The days when Sachin used to be single guy who took us across the line to the day when Dhoni won the world cup, it's been one heck of a ride. Yet, the pain of losing a championship is unbearable. It completely negates everything the team you follow has done in the past. Same goes with a big win. It makes you forget the bad memories of your past.

Well, today it's the turn of going through one such dreadful feeling - the dreadful feeling of loss that can only be healed by time. Well, technically it started yesterday itself. I am talking about Spurs losing a great opportunity to blow past Memphis in Round 1 of the playoffs. Instead we lost to them 4-2. It's going to take a long time to accept the truth. What makes this defeat even worse is that the team's performance was far better, not saying that it was fantastic, but it was far far better than rest of the games in the series. We had the opportunity to kill them. We took a lead late in the game and yet we blew it away in the last 3 minutes.

The team paid the price for one man's fault. I love Duncan as much as any other resident of San Antonio but he has to be held accountable for yesterday's defeat and the series defeat too. Dude is going to get his legacy killed if he keeps playing at this pathetic level. He missed easy tip ins, easy layups and at least two open jumpers. There was one possession yesterday when he passed the ball to perimeter shooter from a feet away from basket. That's just lame. It reminded me of Sachin Tendulkar between 2005 thru 2008. He was just helpless fighting against his own conviction. But can he make a come back like Sachin? I don't think so. But I thought the same about Sachin too. In my opinion, Timmy should retire. The chances of a big man making a comeback from such a horrible season is way too much optimism. If he retires now, it will at least pave the way for team's rebuilding process one year early assuming he sticks to 2012 time table that he promised long long ago. Manu and Parker can get one extra shot at the championship.

One of the things that I don't like about San Antonio is that the people here are too nice and too soft on Spurs. It's also one of the nicest things about San Antonio. They treat sport as a sport. But is it the right thing to do? If you are not vocal about your team's poor performance, does the team fill the pinch? Particularly when they have a core of 3 that has multiple rings among them. I don't think so. If not the fans, at least the local sportswriters should step up but from what I've seen there's no such thing as sports writers in this town. If you found one, let me know. Timmy has been playing horrible basketball for the last three years and it can only get worse if he continues playing.

We can rebuild the team around Splitter, Manu and Parker. RJ can be given one more shot, but if he doesn't play well in the first half, time to trade him off. Bonner is a strict no. He's a liability. McDyess was amazing and played with big heart through out the season but it's time for him to go. Neal and Novak should be given more minutes. Quinn should be given away. Green can stay. May be 2012 is an year to tank just to get better draft picks. Time to get some young bigs. Splitter will improve. I know Spurs know what they are doing but it's time to think tough. There are at least 4 young teams rising in the West and without any tough decisions, we'll be in shambles for another at least 3 years.

I've also been planning to write about my wonderful experience of seeing India lift the world cup. Oh, man.. even thinking about it brings so much happiness. The feeling is so surreal. Just like losses, a big win like India's world cup win takes some time for it to sink in. I don't think anyone in this world other than an Indian cricket fan can relate to what we feel. We went into the cup knowing this will be the last world cup for Sachin Tendulkar. We all had big dreams about how he might be finally able to lift the cup in his home town! These were big dreams and to see it come true after few initial hiccups was one of the greatest moments in my life. It would have been fantastic if Sachin had put another of my doubt to rest - the doubt of whether he can play a match winning knock in a high pressure game. He obviously didn't. May be it's just the sheer luck factor. I hope he puts this doubt to rest in the next one year.

Dhoni, in my opinion, is easily the best captain after the legendary Ganguly. If Ganguly taught us how to be tough, Dhoni sustained it. Sometimes sustaining things are difficult and Dhoni has done one heck of a job on that front. Not only that, he took the team to completely different level. To see him hit some of the fabulous shots on his way to the match winning unbeated 90 odd runs is a sight that will remain in my memory forever. Rest of the squad peaked at the right time. Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj and Zaheer, take a bow!

So going back to the question that started this posted? Is following a sport worth it? Totally. Should I invest so much into the sport? May be not but I am what I am. These are things that I absolutely have no control. I think time will heal the pain caused by losses but the happiness of your team winning a major championship is something that we all cherish for rest of our lives. So I guess it's totally worth it.

Lady Gaga - Monster Ball concert

2011-03-16T20:32:00.004-05:00

Boy, what a show!

I've been to U2 and Coldplay show and I must admit the energy levels at Lady Gaga show comes close to matching those shows and deservedly so! For a girl to bring that kind of raw energy to a show is unbelievable. For a girl to put on such a passionate show is mind blowing. One of the greatest things about Lady Gaga show is that it's not girly at all, thanks to the monster theme. Even her at times ridiculous dance moves doesn't irritate or annoy you.

So the show started at least an hour late which really pissed me off. It's not even a Friday or a weekend show. It was Tuesday so it was extremely annoying when the show didn't start until 9:45 pm, around 1 hr after opening act Scissor Sisters were done with their show. Hell, U2 took about 20 minutes to completely redesign their massive stage under claw after their opening act. Anyway, Scissor Sisters were okay. Nothing to comment except the lead guy singer's pant was torn in an inappropriate position. But guess what? In the end, it didn't even matter because he removed everything except his underwear and it was not a boxer. Crazy shit and I don't like things like that.

Anyway, it was about 10:00 PM when the lights started going down again. The decibel levels hit the roof! It was incredible. The intro was nothing but spectacular. Stage screen still on...only a standstill Lady Gaga silhouette was visible and then she started singing 'Dance in the dark' to open the show. There was no stopping from that point onwards. I am a big fan of Lady Gaga but was always little skeptic about her live singing capability. But boy, this girl can sing live. And if you think she lip syncs, then you should listen probably listen to her speech about lip sync. In her famous disco stick speech where she does lot of rock star style talking that's so strangely resembles Bono style of concert talking, she vows never to lip sync and even goes on to scream that the so called little monsters should not be paying their money to see some bitch [sic] lip sync! My respect for Lady Gaga just went multiple notches higher.

Lot of singers, particularly girls, lip sync and they don't even regret doing it. In my opinion, anyone can produce hit singles or sometimes even albums in studio but live concerts are completely different ball game. A true artist should know how to perform live, particularly if you are a musician. Rock bands are incredibly famous for a reason.. that reason being their ability to put on spectacular live shows. Also, the front man of a band has got an incredibly important job during live shows. As far as I know no one comes close to being the ultimate showman than Bono. particularly during early days of U2. And guess what? Lady Gaga comes scarily close to matching Bono! Now that's something! May be she'll revolutionize Pop music like she's promised to.

The show was studded with her hit singles laced with some of her lesser known songs and speeches. Just dance, Alejandro, Poker face, Paparazzi & Telephone, you name it and she had it! Outrageous costumes, foul mouthing all night, ridiculous sets (a car on the stage, NY subway, a huge fame monster etc). I absolutely loved her speeches. Particularly the one with the disco stick. In one of her interactions with the audience in the GA area, someone showed a beautifully drawn Gaga painting and Gaga looked at it and said "Now, that's one talented bitch!". Then she walks into the extended stage surrounded by a crazy GA fans on the floor...picks up a barbie thrown on the stage and bites the head off of the barbie and spits it out. wow! Soon I realized that it can only be scripted and I did confirm it from Youtube that it happens in all the shows. Genius! It's funny and little daring too and blends beautifully with the theme of the concert.

My favorite part was her lovely piano version of 'Born this way'. It showed an amazing side of her and also what I consider is her future. I am pretty sure Lady Gaga is here to stay for a long time. I would love to see her in another show in this Monster ball tour but what I am more interested in is what she'll be in another 5 years. Imagine a Lady Gaga show with hits from more albums to pick. Imagine mellower version of Lady Gaga singing more tunes with her piano. I think that's where her true talent is. Slow ballads. Hopefully her costumes too will become little less outrageous. Yes, yes, I know those outrageous costumes are one of the main components of her show now but I think it will not play that big a role in 5 years time. Folks are going to get tired of that sooner than latter.

Here's how you kill bedbugs

2011-01-29T13:24:00.006-06:00

Bed bug infestation is rampant in my apartment and there's no way we are going to get rid of it. In the past 6 months or so, I've found multiple ways to kill bed bugs. Multiple "exciting" and "gratifying" ways of killing bed bugs. So here we go!

Light'em up: This was easy and simple. Bought few Bic lighters from grocery store and whenever I find them, I simply burnt them alive. It was extremely satisfying but on a long run, it was not satisfying at all. I mean quick death to these blood suckers? No frickin' way! That is when I devised my second method - Flush'em out.

Heat'em up: Another way to burn them alive but this one was little better. Better because it takes a little more time for the bed bugs to die and they have enough time to realize that death is coming. Use paper napkins or paper towels to wrap these bastards alive. Put it in either Microwave oven or put it in a open electric grill and turn it on. It works on cockroaches too. They say cockroaches survived nuclear blast. That may be true but I can assure you that bed bugs and cockroaches CANNOT survive microwave or intense heat from a live electric grill.

Flush'em out: This was cheap trick. Being a hydrophobic myself, I know drowning in water is the scariest feeling ever. But what about drowning in water and at the same time going through a vertigo moment? That's when I figured out may be flushing out these bastards in the toilet might be the best method for killing it.

Glaze'em: It's winter and we all have Vaseline or some kind of facial cream. I can't vouch for other creams but Vaseline works beautifully here. Whenever you see a bed bug, take a pinch of Vaseline in your finger and swipe on the bug. It's so easy. This is the easiest way to make them immobile. Look closely and you'll see that the bug is desperate to move. All their legs are in motion trying to get the hell out of that place. But No. They are not going anywhere. Wipe your finger carefully using a paper towel or tissue paper and keep it next to your laptop. This, in my opinion, is the best method to kill a bed bug. Extremely slow to make them realize that they made a mistake by entering your den.

I wish there was an easy way to control best bug infestations but until someone finds an effective way this is how I am going to deal with them. I am sure my methods are going to evolve with every passing day so I will try to keep this post updated.

PS. PETA don't blame me for all this suffering. This is just retaliation.

Twin Peaks

2011-01-09T00:34:00.004-06:00

Okay, here's a question to all. Name the TV show that was co-created by two guys which starts with a fantastic opening season, involves mystery, some of the best (also beautiful) characters created on TV, looks cinematic, has a protagonist blessed with supernatural powers that guides him through out the story, involves alternate worlds and ends with a bummer leaving lot of plot holes and mysteries unresolved.Lost? No. Twin Peaks.

"Twin Peaks" was the "Lost" of 1990s. No. "Lost" was the "Twin Peaks" of last decade. Except it had fewer seasons. To say writers of "Lost",Darlton (fan nickname for Damon Lindolf and Carlton Cuse), were inspired by David Lynch and Mark Frost's "Twin Peaks" is a massive understatement. Even since I started watching "Lost", I was on a look out for the next similar series that I should be watching after "Lost". The hunger and desperation grew with every passing episode and hit the peak when the finale ended with a bummer. One of the greatest things about 'Lost' was the element of mystery. You know what was better than the element of mystery? All those hours and hours of time that we spent discussing the shows mysteries and making guesses about the answers which were never there. But it was still lot of fun. Unforgettable days. That's exactly how I found about "Twin Peaks". In one of the "Lost" forums that I frequented last year, there were always references to "Twin Peaks"every now and then. There were always folks who kept saying "Lost" should not follow "Twin Peaks" in leaving the ending open to viewers' interpretation. Personally speaking, I hate it too.. it's the cheapest way to admit that you were making up the story all along. Another thing that I hate about TV shows is cancellation of the show abruptly. How lame is that.

Anyway, coming back to "Twin Peaks", the show isn't perfect but this series was way ahead of its time. The story starts with murder of Laura Palmer, a young girl who's well known all over the small town of "Twin Peaks". What follows in the next 16 episodes is FBI agent Dale Cooper along with local Sheriff Harry Truman investigating the case and nailing the killer. The resolution to the case may not be convincing but the road to the resolution is simply superb, although I must also add that it can get creepy, really creepy at times. The story doesn't end with 16 episodes. There are 13 episodes that follow 16th episode where Laura Palmer's murderer is revealed. So it's not all about her murder. There's lot more to the story. If you watch the extras, you'll realize there were plans to run this show for years and years, how Laura Palmer's death was actually just a sub-plot to attract audience to the story that was primarily created to explore the deeper mysteries of Twin Peaks.

The character Dale Cooper is easily one of the best characters created on television.Intelligent, witty, flamboyant and everything that you could ask for a protagonist of any TV show. Other characters on this show range from good, okay and beautiful to outright ugly and annoying. The girls on the show are beautiful. I was totally blown away by the character, Audrey Horne, who I think is one of the awesome female characters on the TV. I particularly loved how her character changes from "one of the girls on the show" to "THE girl of the show". I was disappointed with the fact that they didn't give the character a proper closure.

Back to the story, it's dark, it's mysterious, it's nightmarish and sometimes just out of the world.The dream sequences reminded me of Max Payne Prologue levels. It will haunt you for days to come. It leaves a strange eerie feeling. The side plots (sub plots) aren't that interesting but it makes sense to follow it anyway because it's the only way to understand how these characters are all interconnected (sometimes loosely, sometimes very closely). Also, the characters are never what they appear to be on the first glance. At times, it can get annoying but I can see how this would have been amazing during those days. There will be no shortage of twists in the story. Almost every episode will end with a twist that will either bring a new direction to the story or completely change one of the characters.

All that said, "Twin Peaks" is a must watch if you love "Lost" or if you are a crime mystery drama fan. It's similar and different at the same time. But I can tell you this, "Twin Peaks" is definitely one of the reasons why "Lost" writers probably thought it would be perfectly okay to end "Lost" the way it ended. But at least "Twin Peaks" was forced by the network into doing what they did and hey, they had a somewhat okay closure for the Laura Palmer's murder and even the way the show ended was somewhat acceptable. Lot of sub-plots were left hanging but the main plot was resolved."Lost" had all the time to come up with a proper closure. On a positive note,"Twin Peaks" probably also led the way for all the future mystery dramas. It showed network executives that there's a huge audience for such shows, influenced and dared the future writers to cross the line.

Best of 2010

2010-12-31T00:03:00.007-06:00

Best trip: Not many trips this year. Summer trip to NYC and trip to India/Dubai in November and there's no doubt which one is the best. Best moment of trip (apart from meeting my family) goes to the Burj Khalifa visit! Out of the world experience for sure!

Honorable mentions to Orissa trip where I got to attend one of my close friend's marriage and trip to Konark!

Best gadget: This one is easy. On June 15 at around 2:30 AM we (my room mate and I) pre-ordered iPhone 4. It came with annoying problems but for a person who doesn't make that many calls iPhone 4 is easily one of the greatest gadgets of all time. Apple next gen iPhone is going to be their biggest challenge. They are not going to compete against those incredible 4.3" Android phones or Windows Phone 7, they are going to compete against their very own iPhone 4. Windows Phone 7 looks awesome but I think it will take at least 2 years for Microsoft to catch up with iPhone.

Honorable mentions: My LG HDTV, PS3 Slim and Kinect.

Best music album: Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is simply a masterpiece. The fact that someone who's so publicly despised and who does some of the most idiotic things can come out and put such an incredible music album is mind blowing! Album is simply an epic. Even if you don't like rappers, even if you don't like profanity and vulgarity, give this album a shot. You won't regret. I was not a big fan of Kanye West or rap music. I came across this album in Rolling Stone magazine and decided to give it a shot. Bought the whole album on Amazon and I haven't looked back! Favorite tracks: Dark Fantasy, Power, So Appalled.

Best song: "The Scientist" by Coldplay. This is a song from an old Coldplay album but I never discovered this until 2010. The fact that I listened to this song over 1000 times in a span of 15 days gives you a rough idea how much I love this song. "Yellow" used to be my favorite Coldplay track but not anymore.

Honorable mentions: Spanish Eyes/U2, Use Somebody/Kings of Leon, Dark Fantasy, Power, So Appalled from Kanye West, Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve, Short skirt, long jacket/Cake

Best sporting event: This one is a difficult one. Two years ago, the choice would have been so easy. All I would have done is sat down and looked at the past year's Indian cricket itinerary and picked up the best game that Indian team won. This year it's difficult as I am stuck between two sports - Cricket and Basketball. Add to it, FIFA world cup but removing football is the easiest choice for me. Don't get me wrong, I love football as much as an average Argentine or Brazilian does but given a choice between Cricket, Basketball and Football, I would pick the first two any day. The fact that I love basketball more and more with everyday, my ability to pick up between Cricket and Basketball is becoming tougher and tougher. But I guess this year it has to be Ind-Aus series, particularly Laxman's knock of 73 in Mohali test that took India to victory. In my opinion, this is the best Indian team of all time and for a long time to come and Laxman is the best Indian test batsman of all time, closely followed by Dravid and Tendulkar (yes, Lax #1, Dravid #2 and Tendulkar #3).

Honorable mention to Spurs game against Milwaukee Bucks. To watch Manu nail that buzzer beater to win the game live in the electric atmosphere of AT&T center was something! I wish I can watch more of these Spurs games live.

Here's a wish: How about India winning the WC 2011 and Spurs winning the championship in 2011! It will be fantastic!

Best TV show: Oh "Lost", how easily you could have taken this honor! Not that it matters to you,anyway. You lost the Emmy's for a reason. I absolutely loathe what you did in Season 6. This year I am going with South Park. I have been in and out of South Park in the last few years but 2010 is the year when I really discovered this gem of a show! Thanks South Park for the countless days of laughter. Honorable mention goes to The Big Bang theory.

Best movie: Inception Vs Social Network Vs Toy Story 3 Vs Black Swan? Tough choices particularly choosing between Inception and Social Network but I am going with Inception. That movie simply blew my mind. Close to perfect movie, this will probably end up on my top 5 movie list.. heck, may be even top 3! This movie like my all time favorites American Beauty, Usual Suspects, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump has everything going for it. The story, freshness, acting, music! One of my friend used to say a great movie is one which has the best replay value. In other words, no matter how many times you watch it, it still manages to knock you out. Well, all the above mentioned movies qualify this criteria.

Best website: Reddit. Period. Reddit should thank Digg management for the biggest screw up of 2010 which led me to the switch.. I have been to Reddit on and off during the last 3 years but Digg's screw up meant a complete switch over.

Honorable mention: Facebook

Best video game: Mass Effect 2 is Uncharted 2 of 2010. Frickin' awesome game. Sadly this is the only game that I played this year.

Here are my favorite pictures of 2010: Year 2010 facebook album

So why Mac?

2010-12-14T20:43:00.003-06:00

Two years ago if someone had told me that I would be getting onto Apple bandwagon I would have probably laughed it off as a stupid joke. Well, here I am, typing this on my MacBook. They didn't say 'Hindsight is a bitch' for no reason.

Anyway, going back to my question ... why Mac? To answer the question, I've to rewind back a little to year 2007 when I bought my previous laptop HP Pavilion DV6700. I must admit it was a pretty solid laptop. 3yrs + with all the rough usage! Apart from overheating and occasionally creating some noise during start ups, it felt like it would go on and on without dying until recently (4 days back) when it died out of the blue! The timing of its death is probably one of the worst timed deaths since Thanksgiving just flew by and iPad 2 release is still at least 4 months away. My hunt for new laptop began on Saturday morning December 11,2010 and ended at the Apple store on the same evening. Pretty short hunt! I was looking at various options - HP Envy series, Dell Adamo,Lenovo. HP Envy - my room mate bought it. It looks similar to Macbook Pro with all that unibody design copied from Macbook. Dell Adamo looks really neat but rejected it for the same reason as my other room mate - it doesn't come in 15" model. A really stupid move on Dell's part. Lenovo - My other room mate bought this one on Thanksgiving deal. He got an awesome deal on that one! But like I said, I missed the Thanksgiving deals. Macbook has always been on my radar (at least for the last one year). For the last one year, I've been thinking about learning a technology outside of what I do at work. One of the things that I've started learning is Objective C. Precisely why Mac has been on the radar. It would be really cool if I can get something going on this area. I would really love to develop some iOS app! All I need to do is focus! I am sure if I can get it started (which I have already), I would get something done by mid 2011.

Also, one other reason for going to Mac was to really know what's that 'Apple magic' is all about. I already knew that Apple knows how to make beautiful,expensive gadgets.. thanks to my past three years experience with iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. But I really wanted to know how different is Mac OS when compared to Windows. From what I've seen, there's not much difference. Infact some of the things on Mac outright suck! I don't see any "magical" factor here. But I am definitely liking what I am seeing on the hardware front (particularly the build quality of this Apple gadget) but no way it's worth that $1100 Apple premium (I am assuming I can get similar or better configuration for $1000 if I had opted for Windows based PC). It could be a problem with the transition. May be or may be not. Only time will tell.

Spanish Eyes

2010-10-30T21:08:00.003-05:00

If you are a U2 fan, you already know how popular and legendary Joshua Tree album is. It's,without doubt, the most favorite album album among U2 fans. I love Achtung Baby better but that's not the point of the post. Now imagine what would have happened if "Spanish Eyes" had replaced "Mothers of the disappeared". Sadly, it wasn't the case. Spanish Eyes was sidelined to B-Side. What a shame!

Dumb but it's just $99!

2010-10-23T12:33:00.002-05:00

So we went to buy an iPhone for my new room mate and guess what? He didn't get his iPhone (due to credit history) but I ended up buying Apple TV (the new one for $99). Pretty device but at the same time one of the dumbest devices to come out of Apple. I am sure that $99 is to blame.

Unlike the predecessor, there's no internal storage here. Everything is pulled off of either internet or your computer - there's internet radio, YouTube, Netflix for movies, Flickr, Mobile Me (I don't really care about this $99 service so can't really comment about it). You can add computers (iTunes,actually) and stream anything on your iTunes library to your TV. No USB devices can be connected to the player which is pathetic. I knew this before buying it.

Everything works as designed. I am probably taking this to my home back in India and leaving it there. The device is simple, does limited number of essential things. Looks great on large screens. So why not? Great for home entertainment for moms and dads.

Last night of U2 360

2010-10-18T01:06:00.003-05:00

Oh yeah! Got my tickets from U2 presale for Pittsburgh show on July 26 2011! This will also be the last night of the U2 360 tour. Totally looking forward to this special night!

Here's my previous U2 show experience. This time I am not going to shoot videos or pictures. Going to totally enjoy the show!

Hopefully I am not married by then. I bought only one ticket!

The Scientist by Coldplay

2010-10-18T00:49:00.006-05:00

Every now and then, there comes a song that leaves a profound effect on you. Here's one such song which has been repeating itself on my mp3 player for the past 36 hrs and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon. Coldplay is frickin' awesome. Period.

Update: I was looking at the set list of Coldplay's concert at San Antonio last year. This song was obviously on the list. I regret having no clue about this song when I attended the show.

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjPrdTNxQ0 (Idiots won't allow me to embed)

Here's the lyrics:

My thoughts on Social Network and Mark Zuckerberg

2010-10-03T11:27:00.005-05:00

I was not at all interested in Social Network movie until I heard two things. It was made by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) and later when they released the trailer with Radiohead's Creep as the background song (one of my favorite songs of all time). I was mind blow and my expectations for this movie hit the skies! I am so sad I couldn't watch this movie earlier than yesterday night (pretty wild last 10 days so didn't even realize the movie release on Oct 1). Anyway, David Fincher has pulled off another classic here. In today's world, facebook is a culture and to make a movie that shows how much betrayal was involved in the inception of Facebook is probably a decision only bold directors like David Fincher can make.

The movie switches between the flashbacks and the present day courtroom (I don't know what they call so I am going to call it courtroom) where Mark Zuckerberg is fighting two law suits, one against his best friend Facebook co-founder Eduardo and the other one against the Winklevoss's brothers (guys whose idea Mark stole)! The format works pretty well! The movie is slow and remains at the same pace forever but very interesting! It starts with a superb conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and his girl friend Erica (which ends up with Erica dumping Mark Zuckerberg due to his arrogance) and ends on a subtle note (I don't want to spill everything here).

I have no idea what to make of real Mark Zuckerberg after watching Social Network. I hate when people say he's an accidental billionaire. No one becomes a billionaire "accidentally". Facebook was his Zuckerberg's execution of Winklevoss brothers' idea. Every one and his dog in this world has an idea.. but execution is key. Like the Zuckerberg character (Jesse Eisenberg kicked ass, by the way) said in the movie, no one in the hearing room had the creativity or technical prowess to create a site like website. Could be very well true! But (a big BUT) that was the very reason why he was pulled in by Winklevoss brothers to create their site - Harvard connection! The problem: There was probably no contractual agreement (need to research further)..it was all emails and informal meetings between the brothers and Mark.

I recently saw Mark Zuckerberg on Oprah Winfrey show (thanks reddit for the link) where he was making a $100m donation to Newark city to help improve schooling. Right off the bat, you can say that the guy is cannot be as quirky and arrogant as the character portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in the movie. He comes off as a shy character. Or he's a genius at deceiving people by showing off an extremely different side to the public. Given the fact that he ripped off everyone he knew (only friend, his girl friend and the Winklevoss brothers) there's more chance of the latter being true.

Anyway,It all comes down to how true is the story which as you might have already guess will never be known. If it's even 50% true, this guy is an ultimate asshole. There's no smoke without fire. There's no way a high profile movie director would go with this kind of movie if there was no truth to it.

Will this movie cost Facebook? I don't think so. Facebook is on fire. Unless Google pulls off something magical, Facebook will steamroll Google.. just a matter of time. You know why? Because no one is perfect in this world and everyone knows it. Last but not the least, Facebook is what it is because of the fantastic design of the site not because whether Zuckerberg is a cool guy or a douche.

In a generation where facebook has become a culture, this movie will definitely go down as a classic.

Sachin's test innings: Apr 04 - Dec 07

2010-08-07T02:15:00.004-05:00

Look, first of all of you should understand that I am not a Tendulkar hater. Just like you or any other kid of 1990s, I grew up watching Tendulkar. He was the only true superstar that I believed in. May be even the only superstar I was exposed to during those days. I am always indebted to this man for all the entertainment. I used to be one of those guys who used to switch off the TV when Tendulkar gets out. To me, he's still the greatest batsman of all time (Test and ODI, Don Bradman never had a chance to play ODI, Tendulkar singlehandedly carried India for about 8 years). So now that you have some clue about what I think about Tendulkar, let's rewind few years ago to see why I think Tendulkar, no matter how great he is, lost the plot for about three years. If you are one of those people who keep denying this fact, read ahead. If you don't, then stop wasting your time.

For a second let's forget about how great Tendulkar is. Let's look at his Test scores between April 2004 thru Dec 2007. Let's look at this statistics from a cricketer point of view. This is Tendulkar's worst "patch" and this is what I was talking about. I think this is the time he made a conscious decision to change his batting style. He probably wanted to become a perfectionist (textbook style cricket like Gavaskar?). Also, his back was hurting so may be he wanted to reduce the flamboyancy in batting. There could be many other reasons which I don't know. But whatever it was, it killed the "IT" factor in Tendulkar. He was never the same again. There were few miserable innings that he played during this patch...It was so miserable that it would literally hurt my eyes watching those games. Any other cricketer going through this kind of rough patch would have been thrown out of the team. I still remember the 'Mirror, mirror on the wall should I retire?' article that Ian Chappell wrote on cricinfo. There were quite a few critics who brought up Tendulkar's retirement topic. None of them were Indians ..I guess, Indians are too scared and too insecure to let down their heroes or may be they are just too loyal to their super stars. So looking at the scores below, do you still think he was playing well during this phase?

Out of 55 innings, he didn't cross 50 in 33 innings. That's about 60%.

He was bowled or leg before in 23 innings out of 55 innings

He scored 4 centuries during this period. 3 against Bangladesh and 1 against SL in Delhi.

Mandatory secondary school English assignment

2010-07-26T01:36:00.006-05:00

And this is exactly why I wish every secondary school kid these days should be made to create an account in online forums (reddit, digg, engadget, slashdot etc) and participate in topics of their interest. It's on the internet so I guess it won't sound forced assignment. Additionally it would be fun, informative and last but not the least their English will improve. Once we have this kind of exercise mandated into school curriculum, you'll stop typing things like "hw r u" or 'whr r u" kind of crap. There are lot of inappropriate content on some of these forums that's why I am saying secondary school. I would be really surprised if someone complained about this factor. My guess is that a kid that belongs to secondary school probably has already come across all kinds of inappropriate content on internet so this isn't going to hurt anything.

Lot of my friends have argued that if it's understandable why not accept it? Well, some times it's not understandable. Trust me, I've seen people talking to me in this kind of broken English where I don't understand a single word. Worst of all, I've seen this kind of stuff creeping into official communications. Not once or twice but frequently.

Lost finale - the ultimate cop out

2010-05-26T02:13:00.002-05:00

There's no other way to describe 'Lost' finale. To put things into perspective, I was prepared for disappointment. Yet, it was too unbelievably disappointing. Frankly speaking, I had given up hope when they showed that Jacob was using the magic mirror to monitor the candidates. It was later confirmed again when they showed glowing light at the end of the stream. All these coming at the home stretch of the series just shows how much the writers have lost their ability to think and imagine. Absolutely pathetic!

This show was not about the characters alone so please stop saying that it was all about characters right from day one. Agreed, Lost would be nothing without Jack-Locke, Locke-Eko, Desmond-Faraday etc etc. But think about it for a minute. If this was just about the characters, why did they even bother buying a salvaged aircraft and transport it all the way to Hawaii and shoot the entire 6 seasons there saying a group of characters crashed on a "mystery" island? Why show the smoke monster on the pilot? Why were all those mysteries added to the story? Why time travel? Why involve Egyptian mythology?

Okay, let's assume this story was only about characters. Now tell me why Locke was given such a pathetic fate? God damn it. They raped Locke character in the same way as Indiana Jones character was raped in the last Indiana Jones sequel. I will never forgive the writers for killing the character 'John Locke'. To be clear, when I say "killing" I don't mean it in the literal sense. I would have been more than happy if Locke was given a perfect death. Weren't we told that he was special? Remember the childhood days of Locke when he drew something similar to smoke monster? Oh yeah, that shit doesn't matter anymore. In the end, he was shown as a loser at the cost of turning Jack "the hero" into a man of faith. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on TV. I think the writers thought "well, you have an Emmy and you've got your due from Lost, now it's Jack's moment to shine and since there's no way Jack would win an Emmy, let's make him the hero at your expense". Somewhere in mid-Season 5, they made a conscious decision to make Lost a story about Jack "the hero" and in my opinion, that's where they started slipping.

Talking about characters, does anyone know why Mr.Dogen was introduced in Season 6? Do you know why Jacob's super guard Illana was blown up unceremoniously... I mean at least give the lady a decent death,assholes. One minute she's there and the next she gets Artz'd? I don't think those writer bastards had any clue on how this was going to end when they crapped up the first few episodes of season 6. All these bastards had to do was to insert Season 1 Season 2 discs of Lost, watch it for few hours to see how much magical this show was and then probably should have had a group therapy session to think through it and then ask themselves "Did we really have to take this show to the shit hole?"

Compare first 50 hrs of lost with the shit that we were given in Season 6. Dogen, Crazy Sayid, Lighthouse, Magic mirror, absolutely unnecessary MiB-Jacob chit chats. Woah! Even a 12 year old can scribble out crap like this. I thought they would somehow manage to pull up their socks for the last few hours of the show but then came up with the glowing light at the end of the stream. Holy shit! It was one of the most disappointing episodes of Lost. Actually it was hyped up pretty well. After all it was about Jacob and MiB. But what did we get? We were told that Jacob,just like the writers, is another asshole who doesn't have a clue on what's going on in the island. All he knows is that he has to protect the island because his crazy surrogate mom asks him to do so.

I was reading a theory where the fan says we were all supposed to become men of faith along with Jack. I would have agreed to this idea if Lost was a 12-13 episode series. But this was a 120hrs+ series which was woven with all kinds of mysteries. And make no mistake, it's not the ending that I am disappointed with. It's about how we were led there that's so disappointing.. The same ending with probably more explanation and a different route would have gone far to soothe this pain. Anyone can write a mysterious plot. It's how you answer the mysteries that matters. The problem with Lost is that the writers were brilliant story tellers (just look at some of the classic episodes from Season 1, Season 2 (the hatch days will always remain my favorite Lost moments), just not good mystery writers. What they did with Lost cannot be explained by other phrase other than a "cop out". They just took the easy way out. It could have been the pressure to deliver that did them in. It could be the time constraint imposed by ABC. It could simply be a case of blanking out at the wrong time ...or may be there's more to the story. I, for one, believe that the writing crew lost someone who was incredibly talented during post-Season 5 break. I just can't see any other way to explain this misery.

<- Yes, that's how ugly Lost has become.

Android 2.2 FroYo rocks!

2010-05-23T00:22:00.007-05:00

Man, what a pleasant surprise! There I was, sitting in the office trying to wrap up few things over the weekend and at around 3:30 pm, I open up Engadget only to spoil my weekend work plans. The latest Android firmware is already available for download. I don't think I need to mention what I did next. I knew it was coming soon but never expected it to be so soon. It was not an official OTA update but who cares, it was from Google servers. I am so glad Google didn't move in to block the firmware download from their software. Waiting for a firmware update is one of the most horrible things ever

So far here are the changes/features that I love!

Exchange calender support - About time! I've been waiting for this ever since I bought my Nexus One. iPhone always had Exchange support so not sure what took Google so long. Anyway, my calender stays in sync with my work calender. Also, I can not only view my work calender but also can accept/decline requests.
WiFi hotspot/tethering - It's simple to set up and works beautifully.
Flash Beta - Not that I needed this very badly but this is an important update for various reasons.

While Flash support was a slap on Apple's face, 3G tethering is a slap on AT&T/Apple's iPhone face. I would really like to see how Apple and AT&T responds to 3G tethering in particular.

There are lot of other changes that improves user experience significantly

Overall performance improvements. I've always had this feeling the Nexus One wasn't performing up to its potential. There was something missing. The OS was overall quirky. But FroYo lifts the overall experience. Suddenly Nexus One looks more Applesque. You know, that smoothness and the snaziness!
Face lift to Email client.
Little Dialer and Browser shortcuts stuck to launcher.
Setting to turn off Accelerometer. Hello, bed time reading!
Nice little improvements on camera app
Now you can select/copy text from Gmail app! Very useful. Should have been there right from day 1.

I can't wait to see what the developers will be able to do with 2.2 SDK. Expecting lot of app updates in the next two weeks. First step for the developers will be to change their app so that it can be moved to the SD card.

Boy, I am turning into a big Google fan these days. IMO, Google should continuously focus on Android. With every Android update, my interest in Apple just keeps fading more and more. Make no mistake, I still love my iPhone.. I will most probably buy the next iPhone but boy, I hate Apple's way of doing things!

5 ways to watch Lost*

2010-05-09T02:17:00.002-05:00

a. On TV: Greatest advantage? It's spoiler free. Worst disadvantage? Ads.
b. On Netflix: Greatest advantage? No Ads. Worst disadvantage? Difficult to skip 'Previously on Lost' and 'Credits'.
c. On abc.com or hulu.com: Greatest advantage: On demand, no software player required (assuming you've flash installed). Worst disadvantage: Ads. Can't skip it.
d. On Blu-ray/DVD: Greatest advantage? Gives a sense of owning a piece of something that you love . Worst disadvantage? Can't skip FBI warnings and rest of the crap that fills 2 minutes of the disc.
e. Pirated HD TV rips: There are no disadvantages here. You can watch it on HD TV, PC, iPhone, Zune etc etc, you can skip credits, you can skip previously on Lost segments, you own it and it's free.

So which one do you think one would prefer? I've used each one of the above mentioned modes to watch Lost. I am specifically pissed off with what the blu-ray discs has to offer. We pay hard earned money and in return we get unnecessary blu-ray trailers, FBI piracy warnings that we cannot skip and technology limitation which forces you to switch 5 discs before completing a season.

*Of course, This is applicable to all TV shows.

IPL jerseys

2010-04-10T14:03:00.006-05:00

One of my friend is a crazy CSK fan. So yesterday he changed his display picture. The current one is his picture from a recent Super Kings game in Chennai Chepauk stadium. He was wearing the official Super kings jersey. The jersey defines everything that's wrong with IPL. Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that jersey culture is getting into India. It's good for the franchises, it's good for the sports, it's good for the economy, it gives the fan something to own and cherish their moments. In short, it's good for everyone involved. But the current jersey design is just ridiculous in the same way IPL is. What IPL has failed to realize is that the sport is greater than money. Yeah, I totally understand that ultimate aim of IPL is to generate money as fast as they can but at least give the paying fans (jerseys cost freaking Rs.1999.. wow!) something good rather than converting them into walking Ads for their products.

I totally understand that IPL is still immature and young. They are bound to make mistakes. Sooner than latter, they have to realize their mistakes and correct them. If they want to learn, they don't have to look any further than NBA, one of the leagues which inspired the asshole Modi to create a franchise model for cricket. I know there are plenty of things wrong with NBA too, but at least they know how to design a jersey for their fans.

Fourth trip to Corpus but that's not the point

2010-03-28T01:47:00.004-05:00

Frankly speaking, Corpus Christi bores me. In fact this post wouldn't have existed if not for Google Latitude and my Nexus One. As you can see in the picture below, I was just looking at my trip on Google Latitude. Now what's shocking is the fact that Latitude shows that I was in Three Gorges at 11:00 AM and somewhere near Kingsville at around 7:20 PM. The problem? I was never there.

Could it be that it was my Alternate time line?
Could it be that someone failed to push the button?

If the above is true, then Google knows about both my time lines! Holy shit!

My complaints against Android

2010-03-16T03:11:00.003-05:00

Well, now that I've used Nexus One for more than two months, let me switch to the whine mode. Don't get me wrong. It's a fabulous handset but just like every other handset, it has problems.. a lot of minor pesky problems. So here we go!

Universal cut copy paste: You would think that after Apple iPhone cut copy paste debacle, Google will get this thing right. But sadly they didn't. Cut, Copy, paste works but not everywhere. For eg. you will not be able to cut copy or paste from an incoming email to something else. It's irritating, annoying and what not.
Screen capture: I've no idea why someone would miss this simplest of simple features. A big miss. May be Google was little scared about the screenshots of their ugly media player flooding the internet? Or that Phone app?
Talking about Media app ... yes, it's down right ugly. If you want to compete against iPhone's gorgeous iPod app, start with something beautiful and chances are that you may catch up with Apple in another 5 years. If you start with an ugly app, you will never get there.
Phone app: Try assigning an nice high resolution picture to your contacts and see how it appears when you call that contact. Ugly, pixelated picture. It looks gorgeous when you scroll through your contacts but that's when the gorgeous part ends.
Touch interface: When touch interface is the only way to interact with your device, it better be super good. Nexus One's touch interface sometimes gets unresponsive and it really gets frustrating when it will not allow you to even perform the most simplest of all function of your mobile - make a call.
Virtual keyboard: Can get really annoying at times. A simple reboot is enough to fix or sometimes even restarting the app fixes the problem but that's not the point of a super phone, isn't it?

Jobs on ebooks/book reading

2010-01-30T14:55:00.007-06:00

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore." - Steve Jobs on Kindle, in the year 2008.

"You're not going to read for 10 hours" - Steve Jobs in the year 2010 after releasing the iPad.

"iBook is a great reader and a great online ebook store. We are very very exited about it. We think ipad is going to make a terrific ebook reader" - Steve Jobs introducing iBooks app for iPad.

Also, he has cut a deal with all leading publications in America to provide content to iPad.

What happened between 2008 and 2010? Did America's reading habit go through a drastic change or did Steve Jobs get a brain transplant instead of liver transplant?

iPad is a joke

2010-01-27T19:30:00.006-06:00

Man, I am at total loss of words to explain how disappointed I am with this thing called iPad. This is Apple doing what it does best - Baiting early adopters a.k.a Apple fanboys with an inferior product. This device had so much potential. Apple has the talent. Apple has the creativity. But what they released today just shows how much they want to loot our money. Make no mistake, they are not getting a cent from me for the tablet.

To create something that doesn't do the following and still call it 'magical' or 'netbook replacement' or 'revolutionary' is just unbelievable. It's called deception and folks at Apple are damn good at that.

doesn't multitask,
doesn't have a camera to support chat (iPod nano has a camera!),
doesn't have a full blown OS,
no standard ports
no memory slots

Oh by the way, did you hear that? You can change the background of the iPad. First step towards customization, I guess.

The Wall Street Journal had this to say before Apple showcased their tablet "Last time there was this much excitment about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it. "

What I would like to say post iPad announcement is that last time there was this much bitterness about a tablet, I was in India suffering from Typhoid and Leptospirosis in the year 2003.

Google, China and the hypocrisy.

2010-01-25T23:53:00.003-06:00

During my recent trip to Calgary, I met with this outspoken Canadian. We met in the hotel. We shared the taxi from the hotel to Calgary airport. The taxi ride lasted for about 20 minutes. The guy touched on so many topics - his Indian neighbour (the taxi driver too was an Indian), weather in Washington (or USA in general) and how much he hated the weather in his hometown Calgary, the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's war spending, Obama's economic policy etc etc but the one that stood out was about his co-worker who used to work for CIA before joining his company.

According to him, his co-worker quit his job in CIA because of the moral dilemma. His work in CIA was to break into others personal email accounts on regular basis. This includes Americans or aliens or illegal immigrants and the guy would never say why and how he does that because it's classified. Now I don't have any reason to believe or not to believe this guy and this is not the first time I am hearing about American agencies breaking into personal email boxes of anyone whom they suspect.

Read this article (US enables Chinese hacking). So my problem with Google is this - why does it protest censorship/hacking in China when equally unethical practices take place in its own homeland with its own permission? Isn't that hypocrisy? Now if the hackers tried to steal their source code, then it's totally a different story. Even in that case, Google has to come out and show us the proof rather than threatening to quit China and stop censoring (I've no idea why they agreed to censoring in the first place?).

Google quitting China? Who really cares? Who's in loss here? China? No way. Google? Hell, yes. In such scenario, I am really surprised that Google did what it did. Kind of mind boggling puzzle. I hope this was not an empty threat and we get to read more about this story in the upcoming days.

Nexus One > iPhone

2010-01-15T22:05:00.007-06:00

Few months ago, I said

Palm, trust me, I'll buy this mobile the day you release an unlocked,GSM version. Of course you have to price it reasonably. Same with you HTC, get me a great looking Android based phone, unlocked and reasonably priced and I will get it.

It was bound to happen. I knew HTC was capable of doing it. I knew Android was capable of doing it. What I didn't know was the fact that Google would get so much involved in the making of this device. Nexus One is an awesome piece of gadget. So you may be thinking what makes Google/HTC made Nexus One so much better than iPhone? Read on

Hardware:
1GHz Snapdragon, WVGA AMOLED and 512 MB RAM. period.

Google services integration:
This is the best thing to happen for Android. When you switch on the handset for the first time, the device requests you to set up your Google account on your handset. All you have to do is key in your Google user id and password. Rest is magic. Your contacts (gmail contacts), calender (google calender), photo gallery (picasa) become available for use on the first sync (sync service is a background service that keeps everything in sync between the server and your device). It takes 1-3 minutes for everything to be available for use. Since I had my iPhone contacts sync'd up to Google with Google mobile sync tool, I didn't have to do any copy. Ah, you've got to love the magic of cloud computing when it works.

Multiple Exchange accounts:
One of my biggest complaint with iPhone was its lack of support for multiple exchange accounts. There's no way you can set up more than one exchange account. I,infact, had three accounts that needed Exchange support - work id for the company I work, client id and then Google/Gmail for push email. This works flawlessly on Nexus One. I would pay anything for staying connected and this feature alone would be worth $571!

Background apps:
I am a guy who always believe in having more control over what I own. Device manufacturers should not decide what I want. I decide whether I need a feature or not. If you think background apps suck battery life, give us the switch to turn off the services.. just like the Notifications ON/OFF switch on settings rather than totally removing the option of third party apps to be used in background. In my opinion, it sucks to see a device capable of running background apps (yes, iPhone can multitask and does it so beautifully) yet be limited by the manufacturer just because someone who created it thought it would not help the users. I am sick of this kind of attitude and Apple is full of clowns with this kind of attitude.

All that said, I do understand that battery life is crucial. And here's the trade off. Always carry a spare battery and the charger. Phones of today are not Nokia 1100 (Who doesn't love this mobile?). To me, phones today are replacements for laptops. Why do I use laptop? Casual browsing, work, chat, music, video. Same is true with smartphones of today. I want to carry one device and it should do all the above.... doesn't really matter if I have to keep connected to the charger twice a day. I've been doing that with my iPhone and I will be doing it with Nexus One. So no difference there.

Replaceable battery:
We all know Apple revolutionized the mobile industry. What is not talked about widely is how it removed some of the basic features along with all the great things it did with iPhone. Replaceable batteries. Nexus One is probably my 7th or 8th mobile handset and the only handset that never came with replaceable battery was iPhone. Why? Only Apple knows the answer.

Google Voice:
When Apple rejected Google Voice app, I knew I am switching boat as soon as someone made a decent looking unlocked Android device. What I have right now in my hand is one of the gorgeous pieces of gadget. More than what I asked for.

To be frank, Google Voice is not a feature I thought I would be using. It's the attitude of Apple that's so wrong.

Sideloading apps:
You can side load apps. In other words, Android market place is not the only source for Apps. This can be a good thing. This can also be a bad thing. Again, this comes to more control to the device owner rather than device manufacturer. So far, it's been a good feature.

Customizations/Widget support:
How long can you look at the same home screen before you snap? In my case, it's 49,852,800 (579 days or 1 yr 7 months approx). My complaint for lack of iPhone's customization started 6 months since the day I bought iPhone. With every passing day, the hatred only grew.... to the point that I made the switch just three months ahead of next gen iPhone announcement. If Apple addresses the backlog of complaints with iPhone 4 (I am pretty confident they won't), then I am willing to get 4th generation iPhone. I will be due for an upgrade on AT&T in another 5 months. If they don't come up with something mind blowing, I will stay with Nexus One.

Better Notifications management:
Android's notification management blows iPhone's out of the park. Seriously, push notifications on iPhone 3.0 OS was an eye wash. Looking back, I remember how excited I was when Apple announced push notification feature on iPhone OS 3.0.. but that excitement was equivalent to a man's excitement on getting food after 10 days of starvation. It was half baked, short termed solution to shut down complaints about push notifications. It's hard to believe Apple came up with such a non-elegant solution.

Camera:
For a 1.3 mp camera, iPhone did an extremely good job. But lack of auto focus (which they introduced in 3GS) and flash was unacceptable. On the other hand, Nexus One's camera is pretty decent. Flash, Autofocus and 5MP.... I am not going to argue on this one.

All that said, I do miss certain things on making this switch

To be frank, I didn't expect a Tweetie equivalent on Android. I can assure you that only tweetie developer can outdo tweetie client. But what surprised me was the lack of choice for twitter clients in Android market place... after combing through the marketplace, I ended up with three choices - Twidroid, Seesmic and Swift. I have Swift and Seesmic installed. Pretty much does the job.
The keyboard: If you are going to shed the physical keyboard, make sure that the virtual keyboard is easy to use. iPhone's keyboard beats Nexus One keyboard hands down. There's no contest here. iPhone's keyboard works incredibly well that you'll never ever feel the need for physical keyboard. On the other hand, Nexus One's keyboard makes you feel the lack of physical keyboard. Kind of difficult to adapt to.
Polish: While I am not denying that Nexus One is dropdead gorgeous, the OS seriously needs an update to fix those little pesky things that can annoy the hell out of you.. for eg. some of the touches doesn't get registered. The menu key at the bottom of the screen most often brings up the virtual keyboard instead of the menu of the app. Very very annoying.
Lack of 3G on AT&T: Nexus One doesn't support AT&T's band for 3G. Sucks but the browser speed on Android is blazing fast. Kinda makes up for the lack of 3G. Of course, if you are on tmobile, you'll have this capability. Also, this handset will work perfectly fine with Indian operators. So no worries on that front.
Copy/Paste & text selection: This has to be discussed because this was a big talking point on iPhone. Selecting a text and Cut,copy,Paste works flawlessly on iPhone. Apple did what it said.. it waited until it found the right solution. Can't say the same about Nexus one. Selecting a text for cut, copy can be annoying as hell sometimes. Half baked, hit or miss solution. For eg. the other day I was trying to copy, paste the UPS tracking number from my mail to the tracker app. I found it so difficult to copy the tracking number alone from the mail that I ended doing the copy paste work on PC.

Rewind 2009

2010-01-01T05:34:00.003-06:00

To me, New Years day is always special. Better than most of the other religious festivals, birthdays and other holidays. Looking back, I think 2009 treated me pretty well. Here are the highlights

Very very special trip -Visiting Dubai in September'09 to attend my niece's first birthday.
Miracle - Visiting the Canadian consulate and getting the Canadian visa on December 11th - Truly a miracle considering the situation I was in.
Dream come true - Watching U2 live - What can I say about this experience! Mindblowing. There were moments when I was in the stadium and it all felt like a dream. For six years I have been dreaming about this day. A great band playing a fantastic set list under a spectacular setting 'The Claw'... what else can you ask for? Well, you can ask for Zoo TV but you cannot travel back in time, can you?
Where are my achievement points? Getting my PS3 and Wii console thus completing my objective of owning all three consoles. Modern Warfare II and Uncharted II were outstanding games! Just when I thought I was no longer interested in gaming.
Home, sweet home! My trip to India. There's nothing like visiting Home. Even though it was an official trip and I had to spend 10-12 hrs at office every day when I was there, I got a chance to visit and stay at home for about a month.
Avatar - If I remember right, the only other movie release that go me so excited was Jurassic Park back in 1993. Avatar was spectacular. One of its kind. The best thing about Avatar is that you may walk into the theatre, watch the movie and walk out of the theatre without knowing for sure what was real and what was CGI. This movie when watched on IMAX 3D will evoke reactions from audience that you'll never see on any other movie! Simply blew me away!
Zune HD: What Avatar did for movies, Zune HD did it for gadgets. Okay may be that's not entirely true but to me, this was one gadget that got me too excited. The only gadget that I ever pre-ordered till date. Basically it was my iPhone moment equivalent of 2009. It's still my choice for best PMP. A great little gadget that didn't disappoint.
Watching Coldplay live: My first concert. A great band - "U2"esque. Just my kind of music. It took me a U2 concert to forget about Coldplay. The concert was so awesome that I even contemplated visiting Houston to watch their next concert.
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 update: Irrespective of whether you are an iPhone user or not, there's no point in explaining this. Because if you owned a pre 3.0 firmware iPhone you know exactly how much this update matter to us, if you bought an iPhone during post 3.0 days or if you don't own an iPhone yet, no amount of explanation will help you understand the importance of this update. This update was huge in terms of features. Never have I been so excited about an software update before. Zune 4.0 update too was big but nothing beats iPhone OS 3.0 update. Sorry if it sounds little lame.

So that's basically it. There were plenty of not-so-good things that happened over the past year but there's no point in crying about it on New Years day. Here's hoping that 2010 would be a better year than 2009.

Happy new year! Have a great one!

Smartphone apps, data consumption and 'AT&T sucks' noise!

2009-12-25T15:52:00.008-06:00

Apple's iPod and iPhone has plenty of things going for it at this moment, particularly the iPhone but Air Video is probably the best thing that happened to iPhone since 3.0 update. Okay, uStream live broadcaster too is awesome, I agree. So uStream Live broadcaster + Air video is the best thing that happened to iPhone since 3.0 update.

uStream basically allows you to live stream video over wifi and 3G.
Air video allows you to stream all your movies/video clips from your PC to your iPhone over wifi and 3G.

Yes, both these apps work over 3G. While uStream broadcaster is a free app, Air video costs $2.99. And guess what? The quality of streamed video is awesome!

Did I hear AT&T whine about iPhone data usage? Personally speaking, I've never had any problems with AT&T. I live in San Antonio. But I do understand why folks living in cities like NYC and SFO are complaining about poor reception. Recently I was in New York. Two things that anyone can easily notice in NYC

The sheer number of iPhone carrying New Yorkers. It's everywhere. I guess same is the case with San Fransisco, LA etc where 'AT&T sucks' noise is just unbelievable. It's not so difficult thing to understand. More the iPhones on the network, more the strain. Same can be said about droid or any other android based phones.
The network really sucks. I was not able to hold on to a call for more than 2 minutes and I am talking about Rockefeller center not some outskirts. If you think about it, it could be very well possible that AT&T reception in the outskirts of NYC is 1000 times better than downtown Manhattan due to the fact that significant amount of time is being spent on sky scrappers or an underground subway.

Greater the pain, greater the end result?

2009-12-16T20:44:00.003-06:00

My trip to India
Everything was all right till 6 AM in the morning. Then I woke up and my flight was scheduled for 7 AM. Tensed for 1hr. Missed the flight.

My trip to Dubai
Everything was all right until 12 PM. My bus to Houston was scheduled for 12:30 PM and my flight to Dubai scheduled for 6:55 PM. My bus was delayed by an hr and 10 minutes. That's when I started losing my patience. Somehow managed to reach airport at 5:55 pm but the check-in was closed. I was asked to rebook my tickets. Good thing, my ticket was a staff ticket and they let me in. Could have missed the flight by a whisker if not for the staff ticket.

My trip to Canada:
Read my previous post. 4 nightmarish days but I was in the airport 2 and 1/2 hrs before flights departure.

Inferences?
Like my friend said, trouble finds me. On the brighter side, the end results are getting better and better. Missing the flight < catching the flight by a whisker < getting to the airport with more than 2hrs to go!

I get to stay in US, after all

2009-12-15T20:31:00.004-06:00

Not sure if you follow me on twitter. If you were, this status update would have raised a question or two in your mind. To understand my situation on that particular moment, you'll have to read the following story that starts way back in October.

My visa to stay in US expires on 12/15 (today). We started looking at options to extend my stay till my current project ends. One option was extension and the other one was to get a new visa stamped by exiting out to a nearby country (Canada). We chose the latter as it was quick and lesser hassle. At least that's what they said.

So there started my planning. After filling out form after form (man, I hate filling forms), I finally managed to get the US Consulate appointment date in Toronto on Nov 30. Probably the first time I've done things so much in advance - 15 days ahead of my visa expiry. So I sent my documents along with my passport to an visa liaison agency to get my Canadian temporary visitor visa on November 19th expecting them to send my passport back, stamped with the visa,between 23rd to 26th ... just before Thanksgiving which falls on 27th. I also have my air tickets booked for the Toronto trip 28th Nov to 30th Nov. On 24th, I get a call from this liaison agency saying my passport has been returned by Canadian Consulate in NYC. Reason? Damaged passport (the lamination on the last page was lifted off... blame the poor quality Indian passports). A point to be noted here is that during my last trip to India, the immigration official in Chennai pointed the very same damage in my passport and asked me to fix it as soon as possible. I didn't. So part of that blame lies on me too.

We had our Cognizant liaison for US consulate appointment cancel my Toronto appointment. We tried to get a revised date. Guess what date we managed to get? 15th December 2009, right on the day when my Visa expires. Which means I've to get out of US on or before 15th,December. This is when I started realizing how this shit is going to turn out but I really really wanted to take control this time. After my recent trips to India and Dubai that went way out of control, I did not want to let another trip out of my control. So I went to Houston on Nov 30 to get my new Passport from Indian Consulate, Houston on Dec 1. $190 is the charge to get the passport on the same day. Got my passport back on the same day... back to San Antonio the same day. You may think things have started to work out well for me.. Not yet.

I took two more days to redo all my paperwork for the Canadian visa and fedex'd it on Dec 4th expecting a three day turn around time. Even if they missed 9th, they had 10th and 11th to send my passport back. On 9th evening I got a call saying they haven't received my passport. Same response on 10th. So here I am in a situation where I don't have an extension filed, have my airtickets booked to attend my US consulate visa interview on Dec 15th in Canada but stranded at San Antonio without my passport or a confirmation about my Canadian visa on Dec 11th. I'll never forget those moments. With nothing to lose (or you could also say with everything to lose), I took one last decision without consulting anyone. I booked tickets to New York on Sunday. I also booked my tickets to Canada just in case if I get my visa, I would still be ready to attend the interview. I didn't want to trust the liaison agency anymore.I did call the liaison agent to get my ticket number for reference. There was only one option left other than leaving to India - Be in Canadian Consulate in New York on Monday and personally look into my case. I wanted a yes or no on Monday from Canadian consulate. I reached Canadian consulate on 9 AM but I was not allowed inside until 1:30 PM. My flight to Canada departs on 5:40 PM.

Need more drama? Yeah, we have it. I went inside the Consulate with just a number - no receipt, no other documentation, nothing. You would expect a consulate in New York city to expect some kind of documentation as an evidence to let a guy in. Unbelievably, no. I just walked in with a 4 digit alphanumeric code given to me by my visa liaison agency. No questions asked. I was the second person in line to collect my passport. Yes, I am standing in a queue knowing very well that my passport may or may not have the visa stamped. I needed the passport, anyway. With a visa, I would travel to Canada the same day, without a visa I'll have to leave to India the next day. When my turn came in, I asked the person to let me know whether my visa was approved or not. If not, the reason and if yes, my passport. Also, I asked her to return my passport in any case. She started for my passport. She was not able to trace my passport with the ticket number given to me by the liaison agent. There were already 20 folks standing behind me and she was still searching for my paperwork and passport. Finally she did find it. And guess what? My passport had the Canadian visa stamped on it! Frankly speaking, I couldn't believe my eyes. I checked the issue date for the visa - it was Dec 8th. Somewhere something had gone wrong. The passport was just lying there in the Canadian consulate reception ready for pick up since 8th December but the liaison agent didn't pick up or may be he was not communicated at all! I picked up my passport and continued my trip to Canada the same day. Call it a stroke of luck or fate, but here I am sitting in a hotel room in Calgary, Canada typing this post after getting my visa approved. Frankly speaking, I still haven't recovered from the events of the past 5 days.

Looking back, I am happy at the way things ended and how things were all planned for the puzzle to fall into place.

What would have happened if I didn't get my visa? I would have left to India which is not a bad thing but the way I left would have saddened me for a long long time. With all my things left here (a la Troy,Michigan departure), I would have really missed my Xbox, Wii and PS3 and all other gadgets.

What would have happened if I had got the visa but not booked tickets to Calgary? This is an interesting situation to look at. My visa interview was scheduled at 9 AM on 15th December. I reached Calgary, Canada at 11:30 PM, 14th December. Booking the tickets after getting a confirmation from Canadian consulate doesn't look like a workable solution, does it?

Need more drama? Wait for my next trip! To be frank, I am really scared but at the same time, looking forward to it very much!

Gaming update

2009-12-09T02:58:00.007-06:00

When I bought my Xbox 360 few months back, I had two things in mind - casual gaming and Netflix. Then came Grand Theft Auto IV. I bought it immediately thinking I would enjoy the game. I thought I would complete the game in may be 2-3 weeks. Well, I was wrong. After playing the game for around 10 hrs in 5-6 days, I gave up. If I am right, I didn't even complete 10% of the game. That's when I realized that I had lost interest in gaming. The drive was not there at all. I was able to feel it. I was not able to play the game for more than 1hr at a stretch. I bought few more titles including the legendary Halo 3 and the result was the same. Never played any of them more than 4-5 hrs in total. Some of the games were bought on cheap deal hence even today they remain brand new shiny discs in the jewel case, never used, unopened.

Few months rolled by. My Xbox was purely being used as a costly Netflix device. Not that I am complaining, I love the console! Every now and then I used to watch a movie or tv show. We used to play NBA 2k9 (my friend is a NBA fan). Xbox is fun. Multiplayer coop modes are awesome. But that's all it was. Nothing serious like stretching a day or two to complete a single player mode.. or slogging it out online on multiplayer.

Then arrived Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2. I think I have written about my love for Infinity Ward before. I absolutely love them and I may very well pay for every game they create irrespective of whether I get time to play it or not. They created one of the best FPS WWII game - Medal of Honor Allied Assault (of course they were part of EA games then), my all time favorite game! Back to MW2, this game sucked me into it. What was supposed to be an hr of gaming turned into 18hr marathon with 2 hr break for sleep. I beat the game over the weekend. What an incredible game! Not a great story line but the action packed into this short game is unbelievably explosive. It's more like Bourne series. Not a single idle moment. The game is about a terrorist igniting a war between US and Russia in modern times and you (American soldier) trying to stop it. In this game, everything blows... there's even a sequence where International Space Station blows. You'll go after few terror contacts in Brazil. You'll rescue a US general from fort. You'll be fighting against the Russians in Washington DC that looks like a wrecked place! There are missions set in places all over the world including Afghanistan, Brazil, Russia.

What I love about Modern Warfare?

Brazil! Yes, there's a level set in Brazil where you go after a terror contact. The level is mindblowing and includes an incredible action sequence.
Boat and the snowmobile - you get to ride a boat in a super chase sequence (hunter) and early in the game you'll be escaping in a snow mobile (hunted). You've to play it to feel the adrenaline rush. Too good!
Some of the action sequences will blow your mind! Beautifully done. Like when you make the jump during mountain climbing in one of the earlier levels, you slip and the other guy comes to your rescue or in Brazil, you miss the chopper and have to find a way around to alleys, run through the terraces of the residences and then make that desperate jump to get to the chopper. Gaming has come a long long way!
Another important factor for me loving this game is the ultra-realism. There are no super enemies. You know, the kind of enemies that will need million bullets to die.

You cannot talk or write about MW2 without mentioning the controversial airport massacre scene. Yes, it's just too wrong. But if you look at it, it's an important event in the game and possibly one of the few things that could trigger a war between two powers in modern times. There was an article floating around on the internet that compared this level to Mumbai terror attack.

Coming up:

Why I love Wii?
Why I love my PS3?
Why Uncharted 2 is the best game I've ever played?

Google Chrome OS - too little, too late

2009-11-21T06:06:00.009-06:00

Every since Google made public its interests in creating Chrome OS, I've had my doubts on how it will pan out. Yesterday I read about all they want to do with Chrome OS. Well, now I am pretty clear about Chrome OS future or at least what I will be doing with it. Nothing!

I've several thoughts about Google Chrome OS. We all know Google is obsessed with its users' data! If you had read my post about Google Wave, I had requested for Google Wave client for Desktop. Well, it's now clear that we are not going to get any of that. Instead their idea is to replace the desktop with the internet..Chrome, the browser to be precise. Idea behind Chrome is that Google feels 99% of users stay always connected to internet. See, that's the problem with these Americans. They create products thinking the world = US. The problem is across the pond there are countries still operating on dial up internet connections and where broadband = 30kBps. And broadband connections going down for hrs and sometimes days is not a shocking news! Mountain View, we've got a problem, right there!

Next up, Desktop is still relevant and if I am not wrong, it will stay relevant for years to come unless we make rapid advance in internet technologies. Trust me, when that happens, chances of Google being relevant are very low. The very fact that I need another computer to have Google OS loaded is unattractive. I mean, seriously, what's the point, Google? Unless I get a Google OS based netbook for sub-$100 range, I see no point in purchasing a Chrome based netbook over Windows based OS (or even an Ubuntu based netbook) which will do everything that a Chrome based netbook will do and moooore! So that leaves us with Google obsessed geeks and technology challenged folks as the target audience for Chrome OS ... in other words, be prepared for rave reviews and massive influx of returned goods!

Last but not the least, why would I need another internet based device in the age of droids and iPhones. These are very capable internet devices which will only get better with every iteration and update.

Google needs to stop reinventing the wheel in the name of doing something revolutionary. Looking back at their products, I haven't seen anything great coming from Google since Android. Don't get me wrong, I love Google Search, I love Google Mail (gmail) and I will definitely own a Android based mobile because I love Android (Android > iPhone OS). But nothing else interests me. I use some of their products just because the better alternative popped sometime after I started using Google service (blame it on my laziness that I am still writing this post on blogger instead of WordPress). Ignoring their Ad related products which I don't use, every other Google product has a better alternative. Their products are getting so lame. For eg. the first thought on my mind when I used Google Wave for the first time was 'Why?!'.

More on this after using Chrome OS.

Does U2 still matter?

2009-11-03T20:15:00.005-06:00

Live Daily asked this question to folks in music industry. Overall the responses were positive (to a U2 fan).
It's easy for anyone to guess my answer to this question. Being a U2 fan, my response is a big YES! Why?

They care about their fans. Why should they make spend 100 million dollars? I am sure they would have filled stadiums without the claw. So why spend 100 million dollars. If you are an U2 fan you'll know the answer.

Their music is still decent enough for an old U2 fan like me.. brilliant if you compare with the shit that tops the billboard charts these days.

They can still pull record beating crowds to their concert

They innovate - their Youtube initiative, their incredible stage setups, their music are all great examples of their innovation

I became a U2 fan after listening to 'How to Dismantle an atomic bomb' so don't tell me that their post-2000 U2 albums doesn't draw fans. It does. Most of the folks who hate U2 hate U2 just because it's cool to hate famous people. I bet they've never listened to U2. All they have seen is U2 on iPod Ads which automatically makes U2 a sellout. We have haters for everything on this earth.. even Mother Teresa. Also, music is about taste. No artist can make music that caters to every single living being on this earth.

Paintball

2009-10-31T03:02:00.003-05:00

Paintball is fun. Not sure who invented it but it's a blessing for anyone who had played multiplayer video games before.

Two weeks back, our clients arranged for an outing and Paintball it was! We (our team) never got any options to vote on how to spend the day out and I am glad it was that way. I bet none of my team mates would have voted for Paintball. Back to paintball, it was incredibly fun. Watch the video here on how this game is played. Of course we were nowhere close to these pros... linked it just to give you an idea of how much fun and competitive this game is. Just like any other sport, two teams facing off against each other in a field filled with barricades and hide outs. Team members from the opposing team start from extreme ends of the paintball field with all their guns loaded with paintballs (our guns took upto 50-60 paintballs). It's all mayhem from there. Two referees to officiate the game. The team that lasts longer wins the game. A paintball splatter on your body or gun means you are out.

There's also variety to it... like 'Capture the flag'. It's like Quake or any other multiplayer game that we play on computer/console with a minor difference. A flag (in this case a cloth) will be placed in the centre of the field and the team that picks up and brings back the cloth to their base/starting point wins the game. My team lost every game except the first shoot and run game but boy, we loved every moment of it.

Fun apart, the game can also be cruel. For eg. in one of the Capture the flag games we almost won. After losing two rounds of 'capture the flag', in the third round I grabbed the flag and ran like a mad man. When I say mad man, I truly mean it. Instead of taking the flag to the base, I outran the base and crossed it and even went out of bounds..meaning I ran out of the field's boundary. The referee (so biased against my team) pulled me out and returned the flag where it was. Not to mention, the other team won by capturing the flag. And then there's this stupid 20foot rule. We were told not to shoot people when we were within 20foot. Agreed. But what we were never told is that we could not even get close to the opposing team member. I was pulled out once for violating this rule. This was our first paintball outing and yet the referee was not ready to take any excuses.

Paintball can also be dangerous. You are not supposed to remove your protective gear (helmet) until you get out of the paintball field. You are not supposed to fire your gun when you are out of the field. Understandable.. after all the paintballs are filled with paint which,you know, are dangerous for eyes.

Overall, it was an awesome outing. Thoroughly enjoyed it. If allowed, I would have played it all day. I totally recommend this game irrespective of age and gender. More the number of people, more the fun.

Here are some pictures.

Few facts about Google wave

2009-10-17T14:12:00.007-05:00

Here are some facts you would like to know about Google Wave, particularly if you are still on the other side of the Wave fence.

Google's "beta invite only" strategy still works like charm. Everyone seems to want Google Wave.
No one knows what the purpose of Google Wave is, except for may be few souls who think they know what it's all about.
Anything that Google Wave can do, can be performed using plenty of other platforms or tools. If at all Google Wave becomes a success, it will be because of Google,the brand not Wave, the concept.
It's dull.. very very dull out there. After all the begging,pleading and mopping, you'll get an invitation but then what? That's the million dollar question. There'a little initial excitement but then nothing happens. Just nothing.
Google is adamant about browser based technologies just like how Microsoft used to be adamant about desktop based technologies. While I do believe everything in the future (sometime in 2020 or 2030) will be web based, this is definitely not the time. If you don't agree, please try using a data intensive web application using a broadband connection in India. Wave can only suck less with a desktop version.
Google Wave is the answer to the question no one asked. Come on, Google how about improving your Google talk app. How about giving it a conference feature and video options? So I have to go to the sucky iGoogle page to use the conference and video feature using the equally sucky Google Talk gadget? What kind of bullshit is that?
It's slow, darn slow. Yeah, I know it's in beta but at times it's just unusable.
It won't kill twitter. Can't believe some folks were trying to say Wave is a Twitter killer. Also,It won't kill email or for that matter,it won't kill anything in the near future.
Google Wave is no Google Gmail: Gmail was an email service and we know email is an age old technology. Google Wave is a new communications concept/platform. It's going to take some time for people to accept this as their sole communication platform. In other words, soon everyone will have a Google Wave account but they won't be using it on daily basis.
Google seriously needs to re-think about the Wavelet format and management. Right now, you cannot follow a wave if it has more than 4-5 users. You won't know what was updated. You won't know why the Wave is sitting in your inbox without any updates being made to it. It's just ridiculous!

Well, above mentioned points may make you think that I am totally against Google Wave but believe it or not, sooner or later, the chances of me using Google Wave frequently is more than the chance of you using it once a month. :P

Thank you, U2!

2009-10-15T06:30:00.007-05:00

I did it. A dream realized. There can be no words to express what I am going through right now but I will try my best to put it in words.

First of all you've to trust me when I say U2 is still the best live band out there. No one cares if you don't. Agreed, their latest album suck and will never reach the pinnacle which their other older albums have managed to attain but this band knows how to put on a great live show irrespective of the songs they perform. The greatest thing about U2 is innovation, their passion coming in close second. The band has always been ready to explore new things - both 'The Claw' and their latest album 'No line on the horizon' stand testimony to this fact.

Today, Muse opened for U2. I've never listened to Muse before. All those 70,000 Texans seem to love this band but all I wanted was U2 so I was patiently waiting for this band to wrap up so that U2 can kick in! There were even people who came with Muse US tour '09 t-shirts. So after a 30 minute 6-7 song set, they thanked U2 and left the stage. 'Awesome!' you may think but it's not. It took another 30 minutes for the U2 stage crew to rearrange the stage, make sound and lighting adjustments before Larry Mullen Jr. made his walk in with U2's 'Kingdom' track playing in the background to kick off the concert with the drums that then exploded into 'Breathe'. One by one, other band members followed and when finally Bono walked in, the noise created by 70k fellow audience blew away the roof of the stadium, literally. Okay, that was a bit of exaggeration.. it was already announced that the roofs will be lifted off.

The band then played 'Get on your boots' and 'Magnificient' from their recent album. As you all know, I am not a big fan of their latest album but these two songs were okay live. To be frank, some parts of 'Boots' was amazing! Following 'Magnificient' was 'Mysterious ways', first of many 'Achtung Baby' songs. Bono pulled in a girl from the Red Zone (the enclave within the stage has been christened as Red Zone). 'Mysterious ways' blew everyone away! It almost looked as if everyone was tired of the new songs and was waiting for some old classics to set the tone of the evening! Mysterious Way was followed by the crowd pleaser 'Beautiful day' which was followed by a beautiful acoustic version of 'I still haven't found what I am looking for'.

Apart from that the highlight was 'The Unforgettable fire' song from The Unforgettable fire. 'Vertigo', 'Elevation','Until the end of the world', 'Sunday bloody Sunday' ... songs like these is the reason why U2 is #1 live band in the world. Frickin' unbelievable! You just have to be there to experience the adrenaline rush. City of Blinding lights was just as soothing as ever.Couldn't have asked for a better set list! The only missing piece was 'Bad' my most favorite U2 song!

'Where the Streets have no name' - Is there any song in this world which sounds better live than Streets? I don't think so. The very second the band exploded into this song, everyone in the audience was on their feet dancing, jumping and screaming! I still get goosebumps thinking about 'Streets' performance. To a U2 fan, this is heaven.. this is nirvana. I love you, U2!

Encore kicked off with Bono's now famous laser lit jacket and Ultraviolet song. If you follow this blog regularly, I've been one of the biggest supporters of bringing back Ultraviolet into regular setlist. Now it's on the regular setlist of 360 tour. Every U2 song on Achtung Baby is a gem and this one is a sizzler. Bono could have brought back Macphisto too but for now I will take the song the laser lit jacket and flying Bono without any complaint! Ultraviolet segued into mesmerizing 'With or Without you'. No girls on the stage... just Bono... more flying Bono. Finally the song that I love from their recent album - a Stay sound-alike 'Moment of Surrender' to close the night. Personally I think it makes a great closer... just like 42 and Yahweh.What a night! The one for which I've been waiting 7 years. Everything that they did was a spectacular.. the songs, the claw, the lightings, the sound... just mind blowing experience!

Looking back, I think I needed this concert desperately. I was slowly but steadily drifting away from my beloved band partly because of the their last album and partly because of Coldplay. But now after watching this concert, I strongly believe that the band is not going anywhere. There's still a lot of magic left in them. That passion, I don't think there's another band in this world that performs their live show with so much passion. Bono's voice was awesome. I was little concerned when I saw some of the youtube videos from earlier shows of 360 tour but as with other tours his voice has become better and better with every show. Thanks for the great show! Thanks for being so influential in my life. Thanks for every bit of joy,comfort, emotion, passion that your song delivers! Thank you very much for everything, U2!

Some great videos from the concert:
With or without you
Where the streets have no name
Vertigo (will add more later)

Dropbox

2009-10-10T13:59:00.008-05:00

Not sure how many of you use Dropbox but I started using this service from the day I came to know about it .. that is when they released an iPhone app for the web application. I am really surprised how wonderful this free service is. Free service is 2Gb which you can increase upto 5GB without incurring any cost (I'll come to this part later).

Basically Dropbox allows you to seamlessly integrate your computer with the cloud based dropbox service. Once you download and install their client, the application sits on your system tray and monitors your dropbox online. It also creates a new Dropbox folder on your computer. Anything that you put on the dropbox folder gets uploaded to Dropbox cloud servers and stays there. The best part is the sharing feature. Dropbox literally saved my day recently. I left my SD card containing 200MB worth of my friend's vacation pictures at my dad's place. We were looking for ways to get it across. One option was to mail them in batches. The other option was Dropbox. All my sister had to do was to download the desktop client and put the pictures on the Dropbox folder and share the folder with me.

Once I clicked the link on the dropbox email I got from my sister, the folder shared by my brother-in-law became one of my dropbox folders and the desktop client started to sync my dropbox folder on the laptop. All the pictures were available for viewing via Dropbox online interface. Pictures were available for viewing on my iPhone app and it took 3 minutes for the desktop client to sync my Dropbox folder (of course this is due to high speed internet connection). I guess it took around 10-15hrs to upload all the pictures at my dad's place (30KBps connection). Now all I have to do is share the folder with my friend who doesn't even have to create a Dropbox account.

This is what I call seamless integration. Simply awesome. Now here's another feature that makes it super awesome. You can get additional 250MB with every referral... there's a catch though. You cannot get more than 3 GB via referrals which makes it 250GB each for first 12 referrals after which referral bonus doesn't apply. Here's my referral link if you join Dropbox using this link both of us will get 250MB extra cloud space. Enjoy.

Two mobiles, one mind

2009-10-09T04:23:00.003-05:00

Nokia N900

HTC HD2

This is a sick sick world. At the same time, I am loving the fact that these handsets are going to push Apple to come up with a better iPhone. Right now, iPhone looks pretty weak against these two devices. I wish all the success to these two handsets!

Burj Dubai and the Fountains

2009-10-05T03:14:00.001-05:00

Ah, I love Dubai. This video was shot during my recent trip to Dubai. Dubai fountain is now officially the largest fountain system surpassing Bellagio fountains in Vegas.

How wonderful it would be if........

2009-10-03T04:42:00.002-05:00

How wonderful it would be if

DVDs were region free. You buy a DVD in US and it will play on any DVD player anywhere in the world. Current problem: 5 stupid DVD regions

All electronic devices use the same kind of power supply so that once bought it can be used anywhere. Current problem: 110V in US, 240V in the rest of the world.

Mobile handsets used same set of frequencies across the world, that way you don't have to worry about the carrier or the country that you live in when making a decision on which mobile to pick. Current problem: Different bands being used in different countries reducing your mobile device to a worthless device if you move from one country to the other.

Aerial photography

2009-10-01T01:21:00.001-05:00

Always loved Aerial Photography. Here are few snaps that I shot during my recent trip from Dubai to Houston on Emirates.

Click to view the slideshow!

Pink Floyd - Wish you were here

2009-09-19T19:29:00.002-05:00

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

My favorite Pink Floyd song for now.

Quick review: Zune HD + Zune 4.0

2009-09-19T18:33:00.007-05:00

Microsoft has pulled this one in a big way. I've never pre-ordered anything before. The only other gadget that had me so excited before Zune HD was iPhone. The very first thought that strikes you once you unpack the Zune HD package is the sleek design. It's simple, beautiful and industrial. It blows you away. Then, when you switch on the device for the first time, you'll be blown away again by the stunning multi-touch user interface. Without doubt, multitouch display plays a huge role in making this device look and feel so beautiful! Microsoft should be very proud of their design team that worked on Zune HD. (Same applies to Xbox 360 team too).

Apart from the usual Music,Video,Pictures,Radio and Podcasts - the new Zune HD contains Internet and Apps, both of which are sloppy effort. There are not many apps on the marketplace and the ones that are available aren't worth downloading. I think Microsoft should have chosen 'Coming soon' on Apps section instead of releasing a device with half baked apps. Same with the internet browser which is based on IE. Internet browser is okay for casual use. Hate to say it - iPhone's browser is hundred times better. It will take at least 2-3 updates to fix the browser.

Here's engadget's video on the UI

Back to the brighter side of the Zune HD, you'll love the way the media is organized with all those pretty artist pictures and beautiful screen savers. You'll love this feature even more on Zune 4.0 software. It's outright gorgeous and makes you feel more attached to the music and the artists. Kudos to the person who thought up this idea.

I am not a big Radio listener so can't comment on HD Radio. Also, I didn't buy the Zune HD dock which helps you connect the device to HD TVs. Yep, the device is capable of using HD TV for HD videos (just 720p, though). Audio quality in general is awesome. Nothing to complain there. Zune has always been good on audio quality.

So I am back to carrying two devices with me again - carrying iPhone and Zune HD. Just can't resist carrying this device with me. I am not surprised. When Original Zunes came out (a proud owner of Zune 30), I used to have iPod. iPod's interface started looking bland once I started using Zune 30. Now it's the same thing all over again. If I had owned iPod touch instead of an iPhone, I would have simply dumped it. You cannot ignore Zune HD's interface advantage over iPod touch's interface. Okay, the browser and the app factor would have prevented me from doing so.

15 days ago if you had asked me to use Zune as a default media player on my PC, I would have laughed out loud but now, Zune 4.0 is my default media player. I think Microsoft needs to push Zune 4.0 as Windows platform's default media player. They should simply dump Windows Media Player. There's no point in having two software media players for Windows platform. Zune 4.0 is simply the best software media player out there. It's beautiful, it's the best for music discovery and feature rich! The only complaint that I have against Zune 4.0 is the unavailability of official last.fm scrobbler. Thanks to Zuse (unofficial scrobbler for Zune), Zune 4.0 looks complete. I don't think I will be using iTunes anymore.

New Zune software and Windows Mobile 7.0 puts Microsoft at crossroads. I hope Microsoft has the right vision for these platforms. At some point of time, these two have to converge. If I am not wrong, Project Pink will bring these two together or at least provide some kind of convergence between these two platforms.

Zune HD

2009-09-16T19:34:00.004-05:00

Zune HD - Most beautiful gadget I've ever owned. Period.

Zune 4.0 - Most beautiful media player (software) I've ever used.

Big props to Microsoft on pulling this one! Details coming up!

Engadget review
Gizmodo review

Anti-christ

2009-09-14T01:40:00.014-05:00

"What has been seen cannot be unseen."

Ladies and gentleman,

I watched a movie called 'Anti-Christ' by Danish director Lars Von Trier. 30 seconds into the movie I know that this guy is going to make it to my psychopathic directors club. Just for your information, very few directors made it to this club.

For eg. here are some of the directors

Takashi Miike - Visitor Q, Ichi the killer
James Wan - Saw
Eli Roth - Hostel
George Babluani - 13 tzameti

You watch their movies either by accident or because you are a big fan of torture porn flicks. I watched it after reading Robert Ebert's thoughts on the movie's Cannes screening and also after reading all the controversy it cause after Cannes opening... they say any publicity is good publicity. So true!

You'll find Quentin Tarantino movies so much beautiful after watching above movies. Now that's saying a lot. Infact, I had to remove Tarantino from my list of psychopathic directors after watching Anti-Christ. At least Tarantino movies have a neat story, nice ending and are fun to watch. To keep Anti-Christ in the same club as Tarantino movies will be an insult to both these directors.

I would love to know what the mental state of these directors is when they come up these kind of crazy ideas. Only totally messed up mindset can come up with these kind of ideas for a movie. Anti-Christ is's outright ridiculous. Just like any movie, this movie too will have a cult following but don't believe those idiots.It's a trap. Again, I would like to stress on 'Things that have been seen cannot be unseen'. The message of the movie is crazy. The whole movie is creepy. Very creepy at times. Gotta appreciate the director for creating such a creepy atmosphere. Some of the scenes are ridiculously brutal and believe me, it will shake you to the core no matter how insensitive you think you are.

There are only two actors in this movie - He (William Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourgh) who have to deal with the death of their son. Husband tries to help her on her recovery from depression but he doesn't have a clue how evil she is.
From audience's perspective, if you walk into this movie without knowing what it's all about, this movie is all about surviving some crazy guy's insane thoughts for about 1:40 minutes.Well, I did stop watching it after 40 minutes but then switched it on again because top critic Robert Ebert said it's awesome.. just another reason why you should never believe those crazy old critics. Oh and then you have the three beggars in this movie - the fox, the crow and the deer. Either I am missing something mythological/biblical or this three beggars concept is another insane idea that the director came up when he was high.

No wonder this guy's called a provocateur. There will always be an audience for every movie that comes out and there will always be a group of people who will say this movie is what real cinema is all about... blah blah blah blah but to me, movies like these are totally unnecessary. Or simply put, this movie is not for me and if I am not wrong, this movie is definitely not for you.

Why everyone should use Boxee?

2009-09-12T16:18:00.012-05:00

What is Boxee?
It's a cross platform Media center software with social networking mixed to it at right proportion. You can download the software from boxee.tv

Why you should use it?
There are probably billion (and counting) reasons for Boxee users to choose Boxee over other media center software. But here are the primary reasons why I use Boxee

1. Boxee on dual screen is fricking awesome. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try Boxee if you have single monitor or a laptop..it's just that it would be much much better if you have dual monitor set up.

2.Gorgeous interface! There are software that are built with functionality in mind. There are software that are built with beautiful interface in mind. Then there is this rare species of applications that combine functionality with gorgeous interface. Boxee belongs to this species of software. It's outright gorgeous.

3.Best Media organizer you'll ever find: Do you have loads and loads of media stashed on your local drive and external drivers? You definitely need a media player like iTunes or Windows Media player or Winamp to organize it. Believe me, all these software are dog shit when compared to Boxee. Apart from organizing your media, it adds social features and additional web features. You've got to see it to believe it.

4.Web applications: Last.fm, Revision TV, Flickr, Picasa,Facebook,Pandora, The Big Picture and what not. Everything looks and sounds much much better on Boxee.

5.Features: Pulls lyrics for your songs. Pulls subtitles for TV shows, movies that you watch. Incredible TV show organization. Soon Netflix will be integrated into Boxee.

.... and did I say Boxee is free? Current build is analpha build. Considering the fact that it's already usable and feature packed, I wonder what would qualify the software to move into beta and then out of beta to a full release. I can't wait for the day when it gets out of beta. Once you start using Boxee, you'll never ever go back to any of your media players again. Can't wait to try out Boxee on a HDTV back home in India.

Check out my Flickr slideshow for boxee

Quick facts on U2's magnificient Claw

2009-09-11T01:17:00.003-05:00

Designed by Willie Williams (his 10th U2 production)
Architect is Mark Fisher (his 6th U2 production)
Current location: Soldier Field, Chicago (will keep changing as the tour rolls on)
Built by Belgian company Stageco using high-pressure hydraulic systems.
Steel structure is 90 feet tall
Center pylon reaches 150 feet
Designed to support 180 tons
Cylindrical video screen weighs 54 tons opening to 14,000 square feet (as big as 2 doubles tennis courts).
Video screen is made up of 1 million pieces.(500,000 pixels, 320,000 fasteners, 30,000 cables, 150,000 machined pieces).
Takes four days to build
Takes 12 hours to load in screen, stage and universal production equipment
Takes six hours for production to dismantle stage and 48 hours to dismantle and load it out of the stadium.

Source: Chicago Tribune For amazing Claw and U2 360 pictures, check out this Flickr pool.

The Big Bang theory

2009-09-07T20:34:00.010-05:00

My friend suggested me to watch this TV show from CBS and it's now my turn to suggest the same to you all. 'The Big Bang Theory' is brilliant and hilarious! It's about the lives of four nerds (Leonard, Sheldon,Howard and Rajesh) and a neighbour girl (Penny). Even though what you are reading here may sound like Friends or Seinfeld, the series stands on its own or in other words, it doesn't have anything similar to these series except for the fact that it's about group of funny people making up funny stuff.

Even though every character on this show is awesome,(well, there are only 6 primary characters on the show) you've to give it to Howard Holowitz. He's my favorite actor on the show for his incredible costumes and terrific acting. He's the Kramer/Joey of this show. His very presence will make you laugh. Howard holds a Masters in Engg (the only one without a Ph.D) is a kind of guy who'll always try to hit on girls but without any success. Also, he's a jew who lives with his mom (probably a character who can relate to the famous internet insult a nerd living in the mom's basement).

Leonard is a theoretical physicist while Sheldon is experimental physicist. Leonard being a perfectionist is very tough to live with. He's the room mate of Leonard. Leonard is the person who gets into an on/off relationship with Penny and other girls. Also, he's supposed to be the central character to the show. Then there's our Indian guy (guy of Indian origin, of course) of the show which has become a common trait in American shows (Sayeed in Lost, Mohinder Suresh in Heroes). He cannot speak a word in the presence of a girl. His webcam chat with his mom and dad back in India is a recurring theme of the show.

The girl,Penny, does a pretty awesome job as the neighbour of Sheldon and Leonard. You may think what does a girl have to do with a show about four nerds. Believe me, she's not a distraction .

It's not too late to get into the game. Season 3 will premiere on September 21 so if you want to catch up, you've roughly two more weeks to do so.

September calender

2009-09-07T14:11:00.009-05:00

September may not have started on a good note (a flawless implementation gone awfully wrong) but I think I've plenty of things to look forward on what appears to be the best month of 2009... at least on paper. Skip this post if gadgets,ice creams, cricket, movies and TV shows doesn't interest you.

04.09.09
The day I discovered the awesomeness of Klondike Bar

05.09.09,
06.09.09,
07.09.09
Labor day long weekend. Visited Corpus Christi on 6/9 with my friends!

09.09.09
Apple's Rock and Roll event: Worst case scenario - Expect new iPods! Best case scenario: Beatles on iTunes.
The Beatles Rock Band release: Beatles catalogue coming to Rock Band.. all consoles!
Monopoly City Streets: Play Monopoly on Google Maps.

15.09.09
Zune HD release date: My pre-ordered Zune HD should arrive on 15th!

21.09.09
Heroes Season 4 premiere
The Big Bang Theory Season 3 Premiere: Addicted to this show right now!

25.09.09
Surrogates movie release: Robots + Bruce Willis = Pure WIN! I expect it to be Minority Report II.

26.09.09
My niece's first birthday. Coincides with Champions Trophy Group A game -
India v Pakistan at Centurion Sep 26 (14:30 local, 12:30 GMT) .... Most probably I'll be in Dubai!

30.09.09
100,000 Google Wave invites to be sent out - hopefully I'll get one of those invites!

In other news: this morning we announced that we plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th. This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate "sandbox" instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com.

Klondike bar

2009-09-04T22:05:00.009-05:00

7 years ago, I had my first bar of Toblerone. It's still my most favorite chocolate. The very first day I tasted it, I knew it was going to be uber-famous all over the world and I used to recommend this chocolate to so many people that I've totally lost count. Just like I said and predicted to one of my friends few years back, Toblerone became famous in no time. If you are in India, almost all the super markets stock up Toblerone bars.. so go get one if you haven't tasted one! The first Indian store chain that stocked up Toblerone was the In&Out convenient stores that you find in Petrol stations in the city. Two years ago when I was in America, it was available only through Amazon. Now it's available in almost all the supermarkets (Walmart, Costco, HEB etc). I guess Kraft hasn't done a full blown expansion into N America. Anyway, enough about Toblerone, the great.

While I was not able to record my previous prediction in a text format here's my chance to record my next one. Recently I was watching diggnation on Boxee and their sponsors for this particular edition that I was watching was an ice cream snack called Klondike bar. Today when I did a little quick shopping at HEB, I saw this Klondike bar on the frozen food section. Needless to say, I snapped a pack of Klondike bars ($2.69 or 2 for $5... regret not picking up the latter option) and took a bite when I returned back to the car. What can I say! It's awesome!! Trust me, unless the manufacturers of Klondike bars hate $$$ and don't like expansion, this Klondike bar is going to be everywhere! I wouldn't be surprised to see racks and racks of Klondike bars on frozen section of Reliance fresh or Spencers daily or Nilgiris in a year or so.

The Final destination - 3D

2009-09-03T03:02:00.003-05:00

See those last two letters? '3D' ... yeah, it saved this movie. It's the one of the primary reasons why this movie is last weekend's #1 movie with lack of competition coming close second.

Agreed, Final Destination has its fan following but there's no doubt that interest has been waning on this franchise. Just like every other franchise, movies simply can't get better with every passing sequel. The producers knew it would not be possible to make another Final destination sequel without introducing something different to attract the movie goers. So what could they ever possibly do to make the movie different? Keep it less gory = flop. Make it more gory.. too much gore would again risk losing some fans... There's no way they can change the format/story of the movie...that would make no sense! So they chose the latest bling thing - 3D! Hopefully they've already run out of all ideas. This world doesn't need another Final destination.

Talking about the movie itself, it wasn't bad. 3D was not spectacular but it was really cool! Some of the deaths were gory, funny and new. It was a typical Final Destination movie plus the 3D. Watch it but only if it's on a 3D theatre. Please do not waste the bandwidth by downloading it on the internet.

Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-23T13:31:00.011-05:00

There should be no doubt about the following facts

Quentin Tarantino is a crazy machoist.
Quentin Tarantino is a genius. After all, he made Reservoir dogs and Kill Bill (Yes, I prefer these movies to Pulp fiction).

While Inglourious Basterds reiterates fact #1 like every other Tarantino movie, the movie fails at proving fact #2. In fact it makes him look like a fool. Before I jump into a negative review of 'Inglourious Basterds', let me inform you that I am a huge Tarantino fan. This movie was on my most awaited movies of 2009 since last year. I wanted to see this movie so badly that I had to watch it alone yesterday. I wished it would one up District 9 but I was disappointed to learn that it didn't. In fact it did not even meet my expectations. To cut the story short, it sucked.

The main reason why this movie sucked so bad eventhough it has all the slickness of a Tarantino flick is lack of story. You'll walk out of the theatre without knowing what the central plot of the movie is. Okay, we know it's killing the Third Reich but definitely the movie is not about the Inglourious basterds alone. In fact the goal is achieved by someone else rather than the basterds themselves. There are three stories interwined in the story when there should have been only one. The movie titled 'Inglourious basterds' is not only about 'Inglourious basterds', a group of 7-8 Nazi hating soldiers, whose one and only goal is to kill as many nazi soldiers as possible and collect their scalps (literally) but it's also about

An actress jumping out of nowhere with a plot to put an end to Nazi regime.
Another Jewish girl (whose family was brutally killed) trying to seek a revenge on the Nazis by killing every top ranking Nazi including the Fuhrer!

Another horror in the movie is the way they handled the character named Col. Hans Landa. He's central to the non-central plot of the movie. He's linked to all three sub-plots in the movie. It was little shocking to see him go from one extreme (a Nazi colonel who's a creepy interrogator) to another (a person who wants to side with Allies in putting the war to an end by allowing the Inglourious basterds to proceed with Operation Kino). What a lame thing to do for both Tarantino and Hans Landa.

This movie could have been good if it was cut down to conventional 1:30hr movie. Some of those lengthy dialogues were totally unnecessary, including the movie opener. The only consolation in the movie was Brad Pitt. His act was pretty cool.

All in all, 'Inglourious Basterds' was a big disappointment. I hope District 9 gets back to Box office hit #1 next week even though I very well know that Tarantino fans won't allow that to happen. At least not so soon.

District 9

2009-08-22T02:47:00.005-05:00

In the times of remakes and sequels (Saw VI, sixth sequel in six years, coming this haloween), fresh ideas are very hard to come by. Yet someone, somewhere finds a way to come up with a fresh idea and this year it was the turn of Neil Blomkamp, a rookie director from South Africa. District 9 could easily go down as the best film of this year or even the best sci-film in recent times. It's incredibly good!

Little background about this movie:

Neil Blomkamp becomes famous by making a short film 'Alive in Joburg'
Peter Jackson notices the talent and wants him to make a movie adaptation of Halo video game.
Duo fail to reach an agreement with Halo owners.
Duo decide to make a full length feature film based on 'Alive in Joburg'.
Rest is history.

This is not another alien movie where the aliens appear out of nowhere and threaten to blow up the entire world with a beam of laser light for no fooking reason. No countdowns too,yay! It's entirely a different take on 'aliens making a contact with earth' concept. It puts aliens (or shrimps, that's what they are called in this movie) on the defensive side where they live under human control. I don't wanna spoil the movie for you. Just go watch it. It's a fantastic movie. A sequel is guaranteed because the story hasn't come to a logical conclusion - it will most probably be named District 10.

Favorite scene:
There are so many fantastic scenes but the award goes to the scene where film's lead takes control of the alien weapon for the first time.. some kind of ubercool alien technology weaponry which resembles the guns from the video games!

Favorite dialogue:
Little alien saying 'We are the same' which leaves the lead disgusted. Brilliant!

For a film which took just $30 million to make, it has already reaped the production value in its first weekend. It's going to make a killer profit which is good news for the sequel. Want more stuff from Neil Blomkamp? Watch his incredibly awesome Halo 3 short film s.

SRK, Abdul Kalam and Indian media

2009-08-15T21:50:00.009-05:00

Who is Shah Rukh Khan? A huge bollywood celebrity... probably among the top 10 celebrities in India.

Who is Shah Rukh Khan in Chennai? A celebrity for few.... no one for rest.

Who is Shah Rukh Khan in USA? No one...just another tourist with a surname that clearly identifies him as a muslim.

We all know post 9/11 Americans are scared of brown people, particularly ones with beards, head gears and common muslim surnames. There are cases where people were thrown out of the flight minutes before take off just because they were muslims, sikhs etc. Racial profiling is not something new in America. So making a huge fuss about racial profiling now that SRK has been detained is worthless. Add to this, this is all very random. Just because SRK with surname Khan was detained doesn't mean every passenger with Khan as surname gets detained for questioning. If SRK was to visit US again, chances are high that he won't be questioned like this. You see, the homeland security officials too are human beings and if something ticked them off at home or on the way to office, it's going to be a bad bad day for the passengers arriving at that airport. They are just like your project managers or school teachers or fricking guy sitting behind the counter of a government office... in other words, people with too much of power.

For SRK to think that he's a global celebrity and should get a free pass across all the airports in the world sounds like a bad joke to me. SRK, even the legendary Bob Dylan was picked up by police last month... okay you may say it was not a case of racial profiling, but hey at the end of the day it's all about scared people doing stupid things.

Airport security is an serious issue. People getting screened, detained for an extended hour of questioning by airport security has become a routine these days. There's nothing to get hurt about an hour of questioning by Airport security. I am pretty sure out of thousands and thousands of IT professionals holding high profile positions in different MNCs at least few get caught in these kind of ruckus on daily basis. It doesn't get any kind of exposure on media. For Indian media to make a huge fuss about this particular story just because it involves a bolywood celebrity is another bad joke. I mean, give us a break. SRK getting detained in NEWARK doesn't deserve half the frontpage worth of news stories. Even Abdul Kalam's Continental case wasn't given so much a front page space. Does NDTV.com or IBNlive.com or any other Indian media outlet know how many Indians had to go through the same thing that SRK had to go through yesterday? No, they don't give a shit about it. SRK is a celebrity and celebrity news generates more page views/TRP! Well, again can't blame them. That's their source of money.

It will take years for Americans to forget what happened on 9/11, ages to realize the meaning of the brilliant quote mentioned below.Sooner they realize, the better for rest of the world.They'll do everything to avoid another 9/11 and the process of avoiding another 9/11 is going to lead them to make number of stupid things - some are going to be very costly while the rest are going to be minor like SRK incident.

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. - Benjamin Franklin

Well, It's that time of the year

2009-08-06T03:04:00.001-05:00

"I am not pleased yet with what I have done,Sunil Gavaskar has told me that I have to get to 15,000 runs. He said he would be angry with me and would come and catch me if I didn't. I admire him so much and to score that many would be a terrific achievement, but that is not the only aim."

Duuuuuuude! Give us a break!

The madness doesn't stop here. He went on to say that his biggest ambition was to win World Cup 2011.

My only complaint with his yearly renewal of his promises is that whether he gave any thought about how Indian Test calender looks for the next two or three years? In order for him to score another 2000 odd runs he needs atleast 6-7 consistent series. Unless India plans to play Bangladesh,Zimbabwe and Australia back to back in the next two years, I don't think Tendulkar has got even a remote possibility of scoring 2000 odd runs. Add to this, his injuries which has become more consistent that his run scoring ability as days roll by. If he's just pulling this number out of the air, then why just stop with 15k? Why not 20k? I mean come'on, at least his crazy fans will be happy dreaming how they would be watching their childhood hero score a double century against Pakistan in World Cup 2019 finals.

Seriously speaking, this guy never stops to amaze me. It was his amazing run scoring capability till he hit age 33... now it's the turn of his insanity. That said, he's special. The day he retires is going to be incredibly sad for millions and millions of cricket fans. I sincerely hope that he doesn't retire on a low.

Spurs 09/10 schedule on your iPhone

2009-08-05T06:04:00.010-05:00

NBA fans, here's a quick way to set up your favorite NBA team's schedule on your iPhone
#1. Set up your Google calender to sync with your iPhone. See here for details
#2. Visit Yahoo! San Antonio Spurs schedule page and download the iCal or .ICS file
#3. Import the above file to your Google Calender. To do this, Click Add on Other calenders which is present on the bottom of the left panel

#4.Open Calender app on your iPhone to sync from Google Calender.
Voila! We're done!

Note: This should work with any smart phone that syncs with Google Calender.

Fixing Nokia? Simple

2009-07-28T23:20:00.005-05:00

Just stumbled across Forbes article 'Fixing Nokia'. It doesn't take a guy from Forbes to understand the problems facing Nokia. All you need is to use a high end Nokia mobile for few days...err, just a day would be suffice to understand what's killing Nokia. (read my recent post on Nokia experience). As I see, the following three steps may help them recover from this downslide.

#1. Nokia has to realize that it's not late 90s. We are competing with Apple, HTC and Pre here. Need of the hour - good designers. They should probably buy the HTC design team.

#2. Software - Nokia faces the same problems Windows Mobile software has. Everyone's tired and sick of the S60 UI. Let's face it - it's crap and not usable. Hell, I am bored of iPhone OS, how would I ever give S60 a try? If you have ever used an iPhone or Pre or one of the latest HTC mobiles, chances are that you'll never use Nokia smartphones ever again.Not in this life.Not in your next! It sucks so bad! How about dumping S60 for Android?

#3. Focus on Smartphone market: Like I said, it's not 90s. Everyone wants everything on their device and when you have a device which has everything, please make it usable.. It's totally worthless to have a device that supports 7.2 HSDPA mbps connection when the browser is broke. So sitting on the laurels of selling billions of low end models isn't going help you.

They killed Max Payne?

2009-07-26T02:43:00.003-05:00

No, Max Payne franchise is still very much alive but Max Payne 3 could be the very reason why I am saying Max Payne is dead. Seriously, don't spoil the franchise. I am fine with killing the franchise by not making another Max Payne game rather than take this great character and spoil it like they have done in Max Payne 3.

<-- Who the hell came up with this shit? Why? Why did they do this to Max Payne? And what's up with the location? Why are we in some kind of rural South American locale? Whoever came up with this shit, I am telling you..I'll find you and I will blow your heads off, you sick retard!

So why Tumblr?

2009-07-20T03:40:00.005-05:00

By now, most of you visiting my blog would have already known about my new Tumblr webpage. You may ask why Tumblr when I already tweet and blog. Well, the answer is simple .. if 140 characters is not enough and if what I like to share doesn't deserve a blog post in itself, then I'll post it on Tumblr. Posterous was another option (which I plan to set up sometime soon)

Plus the themes are gorgeous. Google Analytics works and last but not the least, I need something new every now and then.

So, welcome to my tumblr page - CTRL ALT DEL. Have fun. If you have a tumblr page or twitter page or a blog and if you don't spam everyone with crap, do let me know. I'll follow!

My thoughts on Brüno .. not a review per se

2009-07-19T02:29:00.006-05:00

Baron Cohen is a genius. If the purpose of this movie was to make the audience uncomfortable about homosexuals, then props to him, he won. There's no two thoughts about that. May be his point was to prove how hypocritical this modern society is on the subject of homosexuality. But did he really have to include some of those shocking scenes of nudity and sexual acts? I don't think so. But that's just my opinion.

I was particularly shocked when Ron Paul was introduced in the movie. That was the only occasion I felt really uncomfortable and was expecting the worst. Luckily, they were decent enough to not overdo anything on this sequence. I was really surprised at some of the sequences appearing in the movie ... the Ron Paul incident, Army base incident, Cage fighting sequence etc. The first thing that I did after returning from movie was to look up the wiki for Brüno. Shockingly, all these sequences were not staged, in other words, they really tricked the people involved in these sequences to think as if it was for real. Read the Production section on the wiki for Brüno. How does he not get sued for this is beyond me!

Even though it's a laugh riot, I do not recommend this movie to anyone. Do a thorough research before watching it or else you'll be in for a rude shock. Around 4 people left the movie in the first 15 minutes. I hate people of this kind. Do they simply walk into a theater to watch a movie without any prior knowledge of what to expect?

To sum it up, This movie is shocking, outrageous, ridiculous and at the same time hilarious! Even if you are 25+, think twice before watching this movie.

Ukraine's got talent! Oh, yeah!

2009-07-17T03:05:00.000-05:00

Sand Animation by Kseniya Simonova

Google mobile sync

2009-07-15T03:12:00.002-05:00

Gmail and Google Calender users,

If you have a smartphone (iPhone,S60 or Blackberry device), do yourself a favor and use Google Sync service to sync up your mobiles calender and contacts. It works like charm. Took two minutes to set up the sync on my iPhone and best of all it's a two way sync!

Here's the link to the service.

Movie critics

2009-07-13T00:07:00.004-05:00

"To be honest, the plot and the human characters in this film are mere excuses; Revenge of the Fallen is nothing if not an orgy of big, loud explosions and relentless metal-on-metal action." - Rajeev Masand's review on CNN IBN

WOW! I am shocked that a movie named 'Transformers' about two opposing clans of robots fighting against each other is actually a movie with big loud explosions and relentless metal on metal action. Who would have thought it? I mean, seriously, what's wrong with these movie critics? What's the point of this review? To influence the readers not watch this movie? Believe me, the target audience of Transformers is going to watch the movie irrespective of what the critic says.

I am sick and tired of senseless movie reviews. I think this is how movie critics in this industry work. They don't have any integrity or judgement of their own. They wait for few top critics in industry to review the movies before writing their own. Once the top critics' reviews are out, these critics write their worthless reviews and make sure that their reviews doesn't deviate from their bosses'. Most of the reviews,not only movie reviews but even product reviews, seems to have the domino effect or crowd sourcing effect. The final consensus always depends on the reviews of the first set of reviewers... and only top critics who have influence over matters have the guts to write a review before other b grade reviewers do.

Anyway, coming back to Masand's Transformers review, at this point of time, when Transformers has hauled around $700m worldwide, do you really think a negative review about this movie really matters? If a movie is a huge hit among its target audience, what's the point in writing a negative review about it?

Must read: Great articles from my del.icio.us bookmarks

2009-07-11T13:28:00.007-05:00

Everyone can write but very few can write in such a way that it makes you realize that writing is an art. For the last few weeks, I have been finding ways to kill boredom. Finally I think I found one - scour through my saved bookmarks from my del.icio.us library and revisit some of those links. In the process of doing so I found some remarkable pieces of writing which prompted an idea of creating a post with a bunch of my favorite articles. So here we go... some of the best articles bookmarked on my del.icio.us library.

My First BillG Review - Joel on Software: Joel Spolsky is one of the most amazing writers who writes about various subjects in IT. He was a former Microsoft employee and this piece is about his first review session with Bill Gates at Microsoft. Just like rest of the links, I've shared this one with plenty of my friends during my early days of 'FW:FW:FW' life, I mean, my first few days at job. There are plenty of amazing articles in his archive. You can follow him on twitter - @spolsky.
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspective: Daniel Lyons a.k.a Fake Steve Jobs' thoughts on Chrome OS. It's one of the most hilarious articles written by FSJ. Now that's saying a lot because almost every post made by FSJ is intelligent, creative and hilarious. This one just stands out because I share the same view on Chrome OS. I am not a big fan of Google, either. So you know how much I would have loved this post.
The 8 Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters | Cracked.com: Time and again, cracked.com has proved that they are America's number one humor site! This one is a laugh riot. If you are a frequent visitor of digg, reddit, engadget, youtube etc etc, you'll know what they are talking about. Be assured, just when you think they have written their best article, they'll come up with a better one.
best of craigslist : Hey Crackhead : Everyone knows what Craiglist is for but very few know that it's also a great place to find people with extraordinary writing skills. This particular post is my favorite on craiglist best of. It's a super rant and I love it. This one by a Dallas cop is another favorite of mine. It was a close race but I had to choose one. Just jump to any of their 'Best of' series, you'll find some of the best freelance writers on the internet.

Denver - The Latest Word - Shmucks of the Week: The threesome from hell: In my opinion, this is how all news stories should be reported.
Tom Williams: Hired by Apple at 14. His full story. | Derek Sivers: There's nothing humorous about this one. This is just an incredible story of an incredible person who made it big in life. Inspirational stuff!
One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't...: Maddox is my hero. He's a genius.His website is full of win. Unfortunately he stopped updating his website. This particular post on his The best page in the universe website is outright funny and would make many Apple fanboys squeal!
Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' | The Onion: TheOnion.com's articles can fool even the most intelligent people on this earth but this one should be considered among their top articles of all time for one reason - It was written in the year 2001. On that day, many would have laughed out loud on reading this article just like we all do with all their satires. Fast forward to 2009, you'll find the accuracy of this article very shocking and chilling.
An Actual letter to the Canadian Passport office: Not sure whether this one is true or a fake. Either way, it's a win for writing skills.
Customer review of Bic pen: When I first read this post a year ago, I couldn't believe that a guy took his precious time to write such a thorough review of a $2 pen. I always wonder how Amazon manages to get the best of the crop reviewers to buy products from their site. I've bought plenty of products from Amazon and never had the patience to write a single review. NLee The Engineer is another favorite Amazon reviewer of mine. If you are in the market for a battery related product, try checking Amazon to see if he has reviewed the product.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this post.

Best push notification app?

2009-07-08T21:42:00.002-05:00

If you own a laptop/PC
If you own a laptop/PC which you never shut off
If you own an iPhone
If you have $2.99 to spend

....download Growl (Mac , Windows) and Prowl from App Store. It's the best push notification app I've ever come across till date.

Kinds of people I hate at Twitter

2009-07-08T20:56:00.006-05:00

I like Twitter for plenty of reasons. It's the most easiest way to stay in touch with different kinds of people - friends,relatives,celebrities, companies,services etc etc. Also,everything's kept very simple. But once you cross 20 follower mark, just like in real life when you start meeting more people, you'll start encountering some of the most annoying bunch of people. So here's my list of annoying bunch of people that follow me/I used to follow at some point of time.

People who think number of followers matters. No, it doesn't matter. I would also like to club people who follow me so that I would add him/her thereby increasing their follower counts.

People who tweet every move of their sloppy life. Sample tweets : "drinking water","am going to pee" kind of tweets.

People who spam every 20 minutes with some kind of link even if every link that he/she posted is interesting.

People who try to force a trend. Seriously, that's ridiculous. Twitter should ban people who try to create trends.

People who tweet too hard!

Last but not the least, those who use DM to make a business. This should not even be allowed in the first place.

Here's a simple rule that I employ to decide whether to follow a person or not - Keep your tweets diverse. And please DO NOT SPAM.

Movie review: 'Knowing'

2009-07-07T03:04:00.004-05:00

There are movies that are gold right from the word go.
There are movies that are shit right from the word go.
There are movies that are great in bits and pieces.

'Knowing' belongs to none of the above mentioned categories. It seems to have created a kind of its own. It was building up very well - great CGI, some amazing thoughts (the lecture - more on this later) and an okay story until the climax jumps from nowhere to kill the movie. How can a director do this to a movie I don't understand? I've watched plenty of movies where directors lose the plot in the second half but nothing like 'Knowing' where the director takes a decent movie and then slaughters it with a horrible climax. One of the worst movie endings ever. There's no clarity about what the movie tries to convey. Are those guys that took the kids on a spaceship (?) aliens or angels? I read from various sources that the movie is about creationism (confused by angel like wings?) but then there are alien spaceships. Then they talk about the 'Chosen'. You get the point.

The best part of the movie was CGI effects used to create the tragedies (plane crash and the train crash). Then there was the lecture where Nicolas Cage talks about creation of earth - Whether the earth was created with a purpose or was it a mere coincidence (Randomness)? The only other movie in recent times that had some kind of thought provoking dialogue is 'The Invasion' where Nicole Kidman and a Russian guy have an intellectual conversation (you can read it here - search Yorish). Coincidentally, 'The Invasion' happens to be another sci fi which is another crappy movie. 'Knowing' could have been a far better movie but sci fi's are difficult. Even Spielberg had his share of bad luck.

Tip: Downloading an iPhone app

2009-07-07T00:45:00.007-05:00

Air Sharing ($4.99), Midomi ($4.99), 1Password ($3.99), Simplify Media ($4.99) are few of those high quality apps available in App store. These apps are now paid apps but when they were released in App store at the time when app store was during its early days these apps were free apps. Below is the 3 step process to get the most out of the App store without burning a hole in your pocket.

Step 1. Download an iPhone app when it's released.Most of the apps are either free or on sale (less than $1 or $2) at the time of release.

Step 2. Delete the app (Most of the apps are rushed and will get better with one or two updates).

Step 3. By the time, second or third update is released, the app will be a paid app but since you already downloaded it for free, it will continue to be free for you.

Death and his friends

2009-07-06T01:30:00.001-05:00

Those who are dead are not dead
They're just living in my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well

Time is so short and I'm sure
there must be something more

Coldplay - 42

Bored

2009-07-04T01:05:00.002-05:00

Bored of work.
Bored of movies.
Bored of TV.
Bored of music.
Bored of internet.
Bored of gadgets.
Bored of reading.
Bored of sleeping.
Bored of shopping.
Bored of social networks.
Bored of people.
...and it's the long weekend. Gotta quickly recover from this boredom from everything.

Opening night of U2 360 tour

2009-07-02T02:07:00.003-05:00

Easily the best video to appear on youtube. "The Claw" looks freaking awesome!

Google Voice || HTC Hero

2009-06-29T02:51:00.004-05:00

A year ago, I had requested an invite to try Grand Central (a voice service) that was acquired by Google. Two days back I was finally given access to Google Voice (new name for Grand Central). The service is still under closed beta (invite only) service. So go ahead and request your invite. It's beta as in real beta not Gmail beta, I mean there are few issues (like delay in phone verification, delayed calls etc) but the features offered by the service is too good to resist.

Youtube: Google Voice

There are plenty of great features in this service but one great feature which I use is free SMS to all US numbers! In general, SMS costs 20c in US.

Other features that I like are

'Call conferencing' which overrides the # of callers limitation set by your service provider
One US number for life and a nice web interface which means I don't have to worry about changing my number or staying in US.

You can check out other Google Voice features here. A killer feature for iPhone users is $2.99 app GV Mobile (free version is also available) which provides a great integration between Google Voice and iPhone.

Coming to the second part of the story, Android based HTC Hero might just be the Android based phone that I was talking about few days ago.

µTorrent WebUI for mobile

2009-06-27T01:16:00.008-05:00

Since Apple won't allow torrent related apps into App store and most of us do not want to jailbreak our iPhones, I had to find an alternative to remote control my µTorrent client which runs on my laptop at home. Just 30 minutes on the internet, I found an ready ready made solution available on the internet - David Raso's iPhone web interface for µTor rent. There were few other interfaces but I prefer David Raso's.

It's basically a mobile extension of µTorrent WebUI. It's a minimalist yet gorgeous interface. The only problem with µTorrent and its WebUI is that if port forwarding isn't set up for your µTorrent port, you'll not be able to use WebUI. Setting up Port forwarding is also little tricky and technical in nature. Anyway, here is the step by step procedure to get your WebUI set up.

1. Download the latest version of µTorrent

2. Download the modified version of WebUI (zip file) set up from my google pages

3. Place the modified version of WebUI in the µTorrent's application data folder. You can get to this folder by typing in %AppData%\uTorrent in Run. You can either replace the existing webui.zip or back it up before replacing it with the modified content. DO NOT extract the content of the zip file.

4. Set up Port forwarding for your µTorrent incoming port. As mentioned earlier, this might turn out to be the most tricky step. You can always check http://www.portforward.com/ for step by step procedure on how to set up port forwarding for a given port. Netgear (router that I use) has an option to set up port forwarding in router management UI and it was pretty easy to set it up.

5. If you have a dynamic IP, you can use dynamic IP update clients provided by various services like no-ip or dyndns to tie your dynamic ip to a user friendly domain name.

Once you're done with above mentioned steps, fire up your browser and open http://YourIP:UTport/gui/ or domain name set up using dynamic IP update client. Once the WebUI comes up, add an shortcut to this link on your iPhone's home page (via Safari). Enjoy!

Transformers II > Transformers I

2009-06-26T01:16:00.007-05:00

Just watched 'Revenge of the fallen' in the theatre. Amazing flick! Ignore those critics' reviews,
lower your expectation and then watch the movie. You'll be blown away! It was longer (2hrs +)
bigger and louder! Irrespective of what critics say, this movie is going to be a huge box office hit.

I hate all those critics complaining that the movie was full of loud explosives. Seriously, what were they expecting out of a movie which revolves around two factions of alien robots in war? A love story?! A film noir? A great story line? Dialogues? It's a movie about what you can do with CGI. It's all about entertainment value not artistic value. I went to watch mega robots in an explosive action movie and and that's what I got. I have only complaint. I can even stand LaBeouf but not Megan Fox. May be in some other movie but not in Transformers. She's a serious distraction/irritation.

Browser comparison

2009-06-24T03:04:00.003-05:00

Someone at Microsoft has a great sense of humour. Here's a proof. This post and my last post will make you assume that I am an Microsoft hating Apple fan. Truth to be told, I am exactly the opposite.

iPhone apps

2009-06-24T02:03:00.005-05:00

iPhone App store may have more than 50,000 apps but believe me, hardly 1000-2000 apps are useful. In the first few days, I downloaded around 100 apps but most of these apps were deleted in a day or two. They are simply worthless after an hour or two of usage - most of the free games belong to this category. Your iPhone app panel space is too valuable to waste on these apps. While Apple may boast of 50000+ apps, within themselves they must have already realized the trouble this number brings along - Hunting down the best among apps that perform same function is getting more and more difficult as the app count keeps increasing.

After hours and hours of scouring through the App store, I found some little gems and I will share my favorite apps in a few seconds. Another interesting fact - I've started buying apps. Never in my life had I thought that I would be paying for software or music. But things seems to have changed. I think one of the greatest advantages of App store is its price point - you'll get a great looking app for $.99. The costliest app that I bought is beejive for $9.99. Beejive is an awesome app (yes, the version with push notification is available for download and it works great!).

Another interesting fact is the usability of the apps - I've mentioned it before and I will repeat it again here - iPhone is revolutionary device in so many levels. Everything that you do in iPhone is simple and beautiful. I've used 7-8 different mobiles in the past few years so you can trust me when I say that iPhone is revolutionary in terms of usability. Every phone that I had used in the last 4 years had calender feature and yet iPhone is the only phone in which I use calender to plan my work. Another great example of usability is photo uploads to flickr using iPhone. Check out the graph here. Isn't it incredible that iPhone with 2MP camera manages to beat cameraphones with 5 MP cameras? AT&T which supports MMS in various other devices in its network needs time to prepare its network to make this feature available in iPhone because they know that people will be exchanging MMS like crazy when it's available for use.

Long story short - Anything that's made available for iPhone will be used.

Here are my favorite apps: I am sure some of these will be deleted in few months from now but most of them will remain for a long time.

Mega fail - Apple's Push notification service

2009-06-21T22:16:00.004-05:00

Apple's lame excuse for any delay/slippage in releasing a product or a feature has always been 'we wanted it to work perfectly on the day 1 of release'. I call bullshit. Remember how shitty MobileMe was for the first two months? I guess people stopped complaining about it because the only 8 people who signed up for it during the first two months discontinued using the service after the trial period got over.

Then came copy and paste feature for iPhone and iPod touch. Currently the copy paste solution (part of iPhone OS 3.0) works beautifully. But I think you would agree with me when I say that it doesn't take a genius to come up with the current solution. I mean, come on, there are so many wonderful unbelievable features that Apple introduced in iPhone which must have taken ages to conceptualize before implementing .. but 2 years to implement copy paste? A big lie.

Now coming to the best part, I mean the topic of this post, Apple's mega failure called Push notification service. iPhone still doesn't support true multitasking. In other words, only Apple's core services/apps can run in background. Third parties cannot run in background. Hence sometime in mid 2008, Apple announced that push notification service will be available in September 2008. The missed that date by a huge margin and finally said Push notification service will be available with iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17th. As promised they did release iPhone OS 3.0 which supports push notification service but what about the apps? Just learnt that Apple is intentionally delaying approval of Apps that support push notification. How convenient was that?How about coming out clean by providing a proper explanation for non availability of push apps? Apps like Beejive IM (bought this app for $9.99 just to see how push notification works) and NotifyMe were submitted to App store freaking 10 days ago!

Mark my words, sooner than later Apple has to give up their control over App approval process so why not NOW! Last but not the least, I hope when push notification service is truly up and running, it doesn't become another MobileMe like experience for the first few months!

Opera to reinvent Web!

2009-06-15T02:18:00.003-05:00

For Opera to boldly put out something like this is somewhat surprising. They have innovated plenty of things in browser technology so Let's see what they have in store for us. My bet is on some kind of cloud based browser.

Twitocalypse and App store approval process

2009-06-13T18:17:00.007-05:00

Twitpocalypse may just be the event that might make Apple rethink about its app approval process on App store. Right now, Twitteriffic is broke since yesterday evening due to Twitpocalypse. Twitteriffic has submitted v2.02 of their app which fixes this issue but its yet to go through the approval process and hence thousands and thousands of users cannot use this application. While this is not an excuse for Iconfactory for they had all the time to fix this before Twitpocalypse, I am sure this will make Apple to make some changes (create exceptions) in their App approval process. OS 3.0 is already gearing towards approval free environment since it has parent control features built it.

The Twitpocalypse is similar to the Y2K bug. The unique identifier associated to each tweet has now exceeded 2,147,483,647.
For some of your favorite third-party Twitter services not designed to handle such a case, the sequence will suddenly turn into negative numbers. At this point, they are very likely to malfunction or crash.
But Twitter is safe.
The Tweet of the Twitpocalypse occured on 2009-06-12 23:52:04 GMT
- twitpocalypse.com

What an incredible show!

2009-06-11T01:02:00.008-05:00

Coldplay @ San Antonio on June 10, 2009 - What a memorable day! Amazing set list, great front man in Chris Martin (never thought this guy was so awesome, truly a rock star!) and an incredible audience (again, never expected San Antonions to be this wild!).

They opened with 'Life in Technicolor' ended with 'Life in Technicolor' ...great choice! I got to watch all my Coldplay favorites live - 'Yellow', 'Clocks', 'Viva la vida', 'Fix you', 'Lovers in Japan', 'Lost'. Discovered few great Coldplay songs.

Highlights of the concert:

Starting the show with sparklers and then opening with Life is technicolor. Thunderous applause from the crowd.
Huge yellow balloons flying all over the place for Yellow and audience finishing off the song
Fix you and Viva la vida performances.
Huge spherical TVs
The band moving right across the arena and singing few songs in a mini stage set up among the audience
Mobile phone wave at Chris' request. Audience response was amazing.
Chris Martin, Chris Martin and more Chris Martin. The guy knows what a front man means.

Supporting acts - Howling Bells and Snow Patrol too were good. Snow Patrol in specific rocked!

I shot lot of videos. I will upload those videos in youtube and will post links here soon. If you ever get a chance to watch Coldplay live, go watch it. You'll never regret.

Now that Coldplay is done, I will wait for the real legends - U2. October can't come soon enough.

Here's a playlist of 'In my place (HD), Yellow and Fix you. Videos were shot with my Canon 780IS!

Heroes Vs Lost

2009-06-10T02:49:00.003-05:00

So last week I found a cheap deal on Heroes Season 1 HD-DVD. Since I had to fill in something for my Lost addiction, I thought I will start with 'Heroes' which my friends have been asking me to watch for a long time now. Unfortunately, I ended up watching the entire season over the weekend. Filler? Not so much.

In my opinion, Lost is far far better than Heroes. I heard Heroes goes down slide from season 2 onwards. Now that's bad because I found Heroes less interesting and engrossing when compared to Lost. Both are stupid sci fi/fantasy stories but Lost is freaking awesome. To me, Lost is the best TV series in this genre. Band of brothers and Lost will probably share #1 position closely followed by our own Junoon when it comes to my ranking of TV series. Story and character development in Lost is unbelievably good.

Lead actors: Locke (Lost) beats Peter Petrelli (Heroes) hands down..No question about that. But I love them both.

Lead actress: Kate Vs Claire or Nikki? Ms.Austen wins this one. Yeah, I know she has lost the touch these days.

Villain: Ben Vs Sylar ... will go with Ben. I became a big fan of Michael Emmerson's evil ways so you know how this is going to turn out. Lost 3.. Heroes 0.

Story writing: You'll see plenty of common elements between Heroes and Lost. Plus, Lost beats Heroes on the mystery factor too. Since Lost came first, I would like to hand it out to Lost duo Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Location: Hawaii Vs American cities.. How easy was that? Lost 5 - Heroes 0.

This shameless comparison may make you think that I am a big Lost fan, but let me tell you this, Heroes may not be as good as Lost but it's serves its purpose - pure entertainment. It has its moments. It is bad? No. Could it be better? Yes, definitely.

My post on Lost

P.S. I was just kidding about the Junoon part.

WWDC '09: Apple does it again!

2009-06-10T02:20:00.003-05:00

If you are a keen follower of Apple or their mega events (WWDC and MacWorld), you'll be able to find a clear pattern in their approach. Here are some of my observations

Price cuts will be there but not without a product replacement (iPhone 3G S replacing iPhone 3G)
Replacement product will be priced at the same cost as the product that was replaced. This way they keep the niche revenue stream open and still manage to draw new customers by pricing existing product at affordable price.
It's always about the new customers or in other words, screw existing customers. In Apple's world, old customers shouldn't expect any kind of respect. For eg. if you are a new customer you have to pay $200+ for a new 16GB iPhone 3G S + 2 year contract but if you are an existing non eligible customer you have to not only pay $400 but also renew your contract by another two years. That's plain bullshit if you ask me. If they had offered 3G S version for $199 without extension of the contract, I would have easily forked out $199 and got the new version and I am sure 70% of folks who already own 3G would have jumped ship.
Announcement of few basic functionalities that should have been in the first version of the phone (like cut copy paste, video recording, voice dialing) will be greeted with a thunderous applause. Sometimes I wonder whether Apple pays audience to do this. Seriously.
Omission of basic functionalities so that they can be built into the next version. Bluetooth file transfer? File browser? One of the shocking announcement was omission of Voice dialling and video recording in current iPhone 3G. Ridiculous!
There will always be Windows bashing.

WC format - ICC fails yet again

2009-06-07T15:44:00.004-05:00

Will ICC ever get its World cup format right?

I don't see a point in calling a tournament 'World cup' if the league phase doesn't give a participating country to compete against at least 50% of the participants. Remember 2007 West Indies league format? If a country fails to win the first game, only a miracle can save it from elimination. I understand they want to wrap everything in 15-20 days but then why call it a world cup?

Game of my childhood!

2009-06-07T02:09:00.005-05:00

Around 10 years ago, 4 handheld (video games) were thrown out of window of my residence (by mom, of course). Two of them were Tetris (or 'brick' as it was called during my days). Few years later, I could have easily hit the maximum score of the game on my Nokia mobile.

Happy b'day Tetris! I am sure this game is going nowhere and it will continue to be part of childhood of millions and millions more.

Golden period of mobile industry?

2009-06-05T22:53:00.005-05:00

Rarely do we come across products that are revolutionary. iPhone was the best thing that happened to the mobile industry. There should be no doubt that this incredible device kicked off a revolution in this industry. Today another company,Palm, has stepped up to take the competition to the next level. I wish Palm a great success with Pre. The industry needs Pre to succeed, the industry needs competition.

Palm, trust me, I'll buy this mobile the day you release an unlocked,GSM version. Of course you have to price it reasonably. Same with you HTC, get me a great looking Android based phone, unlocked and reasonably priced and I will get it.

An antidote called Technology

2009-06-02T00:40:00.005-05:00

In depressing days like these, there are very few things that can cheer up people like me. Technology is certainly one of them and it sits right on top. For a human being like me things like unboxing a new gadget, a major update to a gadget, announcement of a new product, great deal on a gadget make my day. Now imagine how I would have felt on a day when major announcements were made in two different electronic exhibitions namely E3 and Computex. I am feeling out of the world right now, particularly with the happenings in E3.

Microsoft made following major announcements today at E3

Project Natal - controller less gaming ... like everyone, I am so excited for this technology. If it works as it's supposed to work, then I am sold.

Twitter,facebook and last.fm integration into Xbox
HD streaming at 1080p
Managing Netflix queue on Xbox and with Minority report like interface!
ZuneHD integration.

I am so glad I opted for Xbox 360. I always knew Xbox division was in great hands at Microsoft. It started as a darkhorse in the console industry and today it has become the best console! They made few more announcements - Beatles rock band,on demand game downloads etc .... frankly speaking I don't care about these announcements.I think Microsoft went for a kill today. This E3 belongs to Microsoft. It may be too premature to say this but let's face it, Sony and Nintendo cannot better this, at least not in E3 2009. I wrote something about Xbox few days after I bought it, now with these new enhancements, it has become a total family entertainment package.

Right now, my only concerns are price of the motion sensing accessory and also whether it really works as shown on the demo.

Moving on to Computex: Nvidia announced Ion based products. Not one, not two, not three but 21 freaking ion based products. As expected, plenty of Ion based netbooks. Glad that I waited on my netbook purchase!

As if this is not enough, WWDC is coming up in few days where Apple is going to announce new iPhones and most probably iPhone OS 3.0 update. This is a major update with Apple finally packing plenty of most requested features into iPhone. Can't wait.

Last but not the least, Google Wave announcement by Google. Mark my words, everyone that got hooked up to gmail will be using Google Wave when it's released. It looks like a product with great potential. One of the best things to come out from Google after a long time.

Bonus material: Sony showing hints of dropping proprietary storage media like Memory stick duo and UMD!

The U2 I love

2009-05-30T08:34:00.006-05:00

Discovered this gem in recently bought Rattle and Hum HD DVD. Sunday bloody Sunday has been on and off my top 10 songs but I think this version will keep it on my top 10 list forever.

There are so many powerful renditions of this song but the ones that have stood out are the ones that begins as vocals and guitars only... later Larry and Adam get into the song just in time to lift the song to a whole new level (3:11). I don't have any complaints against the album version which starts off with the drums... it's just that I like this version better. With Bono's passionate rant about the revolution as an additional bonus, this song can't get any better.

I wish U2 would go back to their old ways and make one solid album before retiring.

It's trailer time, buddies!

2009-05-30T05:38:00.003-05:00

One of my all time favorite movie franchise, Pixar's first animated movie - Toy Story is back! Movie is all set for June 18th, 2010 release. Watch the trailer. Creative minds that work at Pixar rock! (can't wait to see Up 3D today).

Okay, now let's move on to some serious stuff. Call of Duty is back in Infinity ward's hands and they are taking the franchise back to modern times (it looks like the franchise is going to switch between WWII (Treyarch) and Modern warfare (Infinity Ward) unless Activision steps in and stamps its authority). Anyway here's the super awesome trailer for the upcoming Modern Warfare sequel.

Why Nokia why?

2009-05-27T01:01:00.005-05:00

A week back my friend ordered Nokia 5800 Xpress Music unlocked mobile for around $200. After a long wait, he received his package carrying the phone today. We were pretty excited about this new gadget. Well, who wouldn't be? It's supposed to be Nokia's flagship product on Xpress Music line of mobiles. It only took me 20 minutes with the mobile to blow off all the excitement. Nokia always fails to live up to the expectations. They also fail at their flagship devices in a big way.

Ovi store (app store equivalent for Nokia phones) that went live world wide today? Huge fail. I was not able to get a single app supported by Nokia Xpress music 5800. Of course, it's too early to make a call based on day 1 of your app store but the device as such was sluggish just like every other Nokia high end mobile. The touch interface was not sensitive. The browser looked like crap. Also, how difficult is to provide a touch QWERTY keyboard? It's one mobile I would not use even if it was offered free. Seriously.

Another pattern that I noticed with Nokia is that their low end models are brilliant. My dad bought Xpress Music 5300 and boy, was it good? It was an awesome handset, cheap and feature rich. They even gave a mini speaker set and a 2 gb SD card with it. May be Nokia has given up hopes on capturing the market using their higher end models which if true would be a shame. Not sure what they have in store for us with their N97 (hopefully it shouldn't be anywhere close to the brickphone N90 or even the N95). I don't want to see Nokia being destroyed by new iPhone and the Pre. So Nokia, please don't fail us again. Today the situation has become so worse for Nokia that given a choice to buy three mobiles, I would be going for the new iPhone, Pre and Android based HTC. May be Nokia should focus only on hardware and use Android as their OS for all their mobiles? Not sure.

IPL 2

2009-05-17T18:05:00.003-05:00

Well, most of my friends who have been keenly following IPL right from its inception last year have been saying that this year's IPL is not as interesting as last year's version. Just wanted to let you all know that my position on IPL remains unchanged.

Another 'Lost' related post

2009-05-17T17:04:00.004-05:00

**If you don't watch 'Lost', ignore/skip this post.**

Last week Season 5 of Lost ended with a spectacular 2 hr finale. We have to wait for another 8-9 months before Season 6 starts...just enough time to blow up every fan's mind. Lost has generated so much of buzz on the internet. Lost theories generated by obsessive fans are at an all time high. I used to visit plenty of online forums until I ended up in mylosttv-forum.com. In my opinion this site is the best when it comes to viewer generated Lost theories (youtube is the worst). I love how the viewers have so much of their time invested for this series. Sometimes the level of details and amount of research that goes into their theory is incredible and at the same time ridiculous (it's just a TV series, after all). For eg. in the season finale, the character Ben says that he's a Pisces which leads to a thread dedicated to this line. The thread starts with subject line: Ben is not pisces..he lied. And one of the guys gives an explanation

Lostpedia states that Ben’s birthday is 12/19. It is based on the events of Day 89 that the survivors were on the island. Ben was holding his wooden Annie doll and states to Richard, “You do remember birthdays don’t you? Today just happens to be mine.” We know the O6 got rescued 12/30/2004, and we counted backwards the number of sunup/sundown sequences to calculate how many days prior to rescue Ben made that statement, thereby arriving at Day 89.

Since I now believe the date the O6 left the island was 5/11/2004, then counting back the same number of sunup/sundowns to Day 89 places Ben’s birthday on April 30th. "

I mean it's posts like these that will act as fillers for next 8 months until Lost returns again in 2010. Right from episode 1 (Pilot), the writers have been adding more mysteries than answers to the series.Not sure whether the final season will be enough to answer all the questions that they have been piling up all this time. Frankly speaking I've lost hope on the writers. At the end of season 6, they are going to have a lot of loose ends (or they must be planning for an incredible racy season 6). So most of these loose ends are going to be tied up by the fans of the shows. It's going to be fun reading all these theories for the next 8 months and then watch the writers version.

Last but not the least, at the end of Season 5 I realized that I made a huge mistake by starting to watch Lost when Season 5 was in progress. I should have waited until Season 6 was complete.

Let me in the sound, let me in the sound!!

2009-05-04T21:09:00.003-05:00

When it rains, it pours!

My last update was about me getting tickets to Coldplay concert in San Antonio. Guess what? Now I have tickets to October 14th U2 concert in Houston!!!

One more objective off of my to do list in America!

I've waited for this concert for 6+ years! It comes at a time when I am losing interest in U2 (their latest album sucks!) Okay, it doesn't suck but obviously it's doesn't suit my taste or may be I was expecting too much out of this band! Hopefully this concert will reinvigorate the fanboy in me! Let's see how songs from their latest album pans out live! Going by their live performance in Brit awards, all I can say is the boys haven't lost their magic! This is going to be fun!

So excited about June 10!

2009-04-21T23:54:00.004-05:00

Took me few minutes to believe what I saw at www.coldplay.com tour page. Of all the places in Texas, they chose San Antonio AT&T center for their concert!! Got a ticket. Not a great location but something's better than nothing!

So excited about my first live concert (June 10th, 09). Always thought U2 would be my first live experience but I don't think it matters. I love both these bands!

To the bastard(s) who looted my baggage

2009-03-24T15:23:00.002-05:00

If you took my shaving gel and razors - I hope one of your kid suffers from hormonal imbalance leading to inappropriate hair growth (something like a bear would be awesome... that way you'll run out of my shaving gels and razors in 2-3 weeks!)

If you took my pens: Can't you spend Rs.100 to get a set of pen? Those were not even costly pens, you bloody moron!

If you took my friend's camera: I wish horrible death to everyone that poses to that stolen camera of yours.

If you took my Western digital HD player: I hope you are an computer illiterate who doesn't know what to do with this device. I am sure you are one because you left the manual on the baggage, dumb ass!

If you took my digital photo frame: Why the hell did you leave the empty box in my baggage,damn it?! All I can wish for you is bad memories. Sort of memories that will remain etched in your memory and won't require a digital photo frame.

If you stole my chocolates: I wish all kinds of illness to your son/daughter on the day of birthday or you'll suffer from severe form of diabetes. Sorry, I had to say it because you stole my pack full of Toblerone.

I know there are plenty of stuff that you looted from my baggage which I can't recollect but I think this is enough for tonight. Whenever I remember of any unaccounted item, I will make sure that a curse will be thrown at you. If it was one person who took all of these items, well, good luck with all these curses.

This guy is a hero!

2009-03-15T02:55:00.004-05:00

Ahimsha Wickrematunge, daughter of slain newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, and his sister Rukmani mourn over his body at his residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 11, 2009. Wickrematunga was slain by unidentified gunmen, and had been shot at and assaulted several times earlier. The assailants remain unidentified, but suspicion is widespread that Sri Lankan government forces or supporters were responsible. Wickrematunga, anticipating his possible murder, wrote a defiant editorial for posthumous publication only days earlier.

Here's the editorial

And Then They Came For Me

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic... well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you'd best stop buying this paper.

The Sunday Leader has never sought safety by unquestioningly articulating the majority view. Let's face it, that is the way to sell newspapers. On the contrary, as our opinion pieces over the years amply demonstrate, we often voice ideas that many people find distasteful. For example, we have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and urged government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.

Many people suspect that The Sunday Leader has a political agenda: it does not. If we appear more critical of the government than of the opposition it is only because we believe that - pray excuse cricketing argot - there is no point in bowling to the fielding side. Remember that for the few years of our existence in which the UNP was in office, we proved to be the biggest thorn in its flesh, exposing excess and corruption wherever it occurred. Indeed, the steady stream of embarrassing expos‚s we published may well have served to precipitate the downfall of that government.

Neither should our distaste for the war be interpreted to mean that we support the Tigers. The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be custodians of the dhamma is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to the public because of censorship.

What is more, a military occupation of the country's north and east will require the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens, deprived of all self respect. Do not imagine that you can placate them by showering "development" and "reconstruction" on them in the post-war era. The wounds of war will scar them forever, and you will also have an even more bitter and hateful Diaspora to contend with. A problem amenable to a political solution will thus become a festering wound that will yield strife for all eternity. If I seem angry and frustrated, it is only because most of my countrymen - and all of the government - cannot see this writing so plainly on the wall.

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda and I have been friends for more than a quarter century. Indeed, I suspect that I am one of the few people remaining who routinely addresses him by his first name and uses the familiar Sinhala address oya when talking to him. Although I do not attend the meetings he periodically holds for newspaper editors, hardly a month passes when we do not meet, privately or with a few close friends present, late at night at President's House. There we swap yarns, discuss politics and joke about the good old days. A few remarks to him would therefore be in order here.

Mahinda, when you finally fought your way to the SLFP presidential nomination in 2005, nowhere were you welcomed more warmly than in this column. Indeed, we broke with a decade of tradition by referring to you throughout by your first name. So well known were your commitments to human rights and liberal values that we ushered you in like a breath of fresh air. Then, through an act of folly, you got yourself involved in the Helping Hambantota scandal. It was after a lot of soul-searching that we broke the story, at the same time urging you to return the money. By the time you did so several weeks later, a great blow had been struck to your reputation. It is one you are still trying to live down.

You have told me yourself that you were not greedy for the presidency. You did not have to hanker after it: it fell into your lap. You have told me that your sons are your greatest joy, and that you love spending time with them, leaving your brothers to operate the machinery of state. Now, it is clear to all who will see that that machinery has operated so well that my sons and daughter do not themselves have a father.

In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.

Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you. Indeed, your conduct has been like a small child suddenly let loose in a toyshop. That analogy is perhaps inapt because no child could have caused so much blood to be spilled on this land as you have, or trampled on the rights of its citizens as you do. Although you are now so drunk with power that you cannot see it, you will come to regret your sons having so rich an inheritance of blood. It can only bring tragedy. As for me, it is with a clear conscience that I go to meet my Maker. I wish, when your time finally comes, you could do the same. I wish.

As for me, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I walked tall and bowed to no man. And I have not travelled this journey alone. Fellow journalists in other branches of the media walked with me: most of them are now dead, imprisoned without trial or exiled in far-off lands. Others walk in the shadow of death that your Presidency has cast on the freedoms for which you once fought so hard. You will never be allowed to forget that my death took place under your watch. As anguished as I know you will be, I also know that you will have no choice but to protect my killers: you will see to it that the guilty one is never convicted. You have no choice. I feel sorry for you, and Shiranthi will have a long time to spend on her knees when next she goes for Confession for it is not just her owns sins which she must confess, but those of her extended family that keeps you in office.

As for the readers of The Sunday Leader, what can I say but Thank You for supporting our mission. We have espoused unpopular causes, stood up for those too feeble to stand up for themselves, locked horns with the high and mighty so swollen with power that they have forgotten their roots, exposed corruption and the waste of your hard-earned tax rupees, and made sure that whatever the propaganda of the day, you were allowed to hear a contrary view. For this I - and my family - have now paid the price that I have long known I will one day have to pay. I am - and have always been - ready for that. I have done nothing to prevent this outcome: no security, no precautions. I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death. What am I among so many? It has long been written that my life would be taken, and by whom. All that remains to be written is when.

That The Sunday Leader will continue fighting the good fight, too, is written. For I did not fight this fight alone. Many more of us have to be - and will be - killed before The Leader is laid to rest. I hope my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom but an inspiration for those who survive to step up their efforts. Indeed, I hope that it will help galvanise forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland. I also hope it will open the eyes of your President to the fact that however many are slaughtered in the name of patriotism, the human spirit will endure and flourish. Not all the Rajapakses combined can kill that.

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niem”ller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem”ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem”ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.

Well, what more can I say? This is shocking,disturbing, legendary and inspiring all rolled into one.

One hell of a trip from San Antonio to Chennai!

2009-03-12T14:51:00.002-05:00

Here is a step by step procedure on how you can mess up your international travel miserably:

1.Buy plenty of electronics and end up booking tickets with Mumbai (one of the worst customs officials on the planet) on the itinerary.
2. Ask your friend to come to Airport but never share the itinerary or any other information except for vague reference of the flight timing.
3.Don't start packing your baggage until the previous night 11 PM.
4.Work late the previous night.
5. Sleep at 3.AM
6.Wake up at 6 AM for 7:30 AM flight.
7.Reach airport and search for parking instead of getting out of car on the first available opportunity.
8. Check in at 7:01 AM for the flight when check in at 7:00 AM could have got you into the plane.
9.Check in your baggage at one airport and pick up your flight in another airport.
10.Pack electronics and tubes of tooth paste, liquid refreshners in hand baggage and get stuck at security.
11.Get out of the international airport when you should have taken the bus provided by your airlines to take you to the domestic airport to get the domestic transit.
12. Don't carry a single $ or Rs bill and wander outside the international airport without knowing what to do.

This has got to be my worst planned trip ever. As of today, I still don't have my two checked in baggages with me. It's stuck up at Mumbai customs. The only good thing about this whole trip is that I reached Chennai exactly as scheduled. The best thing to happen during the entire trip is my friend waiting for me at Mumbai airport without giving up his hope! Kudos! I think he saved the day...err...night for me. However there's a huge mess I am sure is going to take few more days for clean up.

Lost

2009-02-16T00:03:00.004-06:00

18 days, 88 episodes, 66hrs of viewing time, 4hrs/per day sleep (including weekends).

Yes, those are the true statistics since I watched the first episode of 'Lost' two and half weeks back. I am not a big fan of TV shows. Also, the very thought of getting addicted to a TV series scares the hell out of me. But then there are certain things in life which just happens.

All my life ,the only other show that I got hooked into was "Friends". Few months ago, I started watching 'Seinfeld' but that didn't last for more than 1 month. Anyway, coming back to 'Lost' - there are plenty of great things about this series - Characters, story, locales, sub plots, the way story is being told (mix of past, present and the future), mysteries. It packs too much into those 45 minutes. I used to watch plenty of serials in my childhood days. One thing I love about 'Lost' is the fact that most of the episodes are brought to a logical conclusion. No 'raise the gun' and roll the credits before 'pulling the trigger' kind of stunts to retain viewership.

This may be because they have a solid story and they know you'll definitely tune in to watch the next episode. You cannot/should not skip a single episode. The only annoying stuff about watching this show is ABC commercials for other ABC shows on their site. The fact that they keep repeating the same commercial again and again literally drives you mad.

Story: Plane crash, survivors in mystery island, monsters, survivors vs. island natives, time travel, shady past of central characters, story telling that involves past,future and the present. I am not going to spoil the fun. Watch the show to know more.

Coming to characterization: I haven't seen any other series which has managed to build such a cast. Amazing cast! There's nothing to hate on 'Lost'. Of course, there will be favorites and mine includes everyone's favorite Locke and Ben. I think both these guys are awesome. They are central to the plot. They are leaders. They are freaking amazing! Another interesting thing about Lost is sometimes you don't like one of the central characters but as the story moves along you start liking them. Reverse too holds true.

Location: Hawaii. Period.

Music: Remember Medal of Honor series? The guy who scored background music for Allied Assault and other installments of Medal of Honor series does the music for 'Lost' .What more can I say?

Last Thursday, I finally managed to watch all the episodes aired live till date. It's been such a fun ride. All that said, there are lot of silly stuff in 'Lost' - if you ignore them without putting plenty of thought into 'how,why,when' kind of questions, you'll love the show. If you are one of those guys who need scientific explanation of everything that's shown on TV then Lost is not for you.Last but not the least, ABC's free HD streaming rocks!

For starters, it's not too late. We still have two and half seasons left. You have three options.

Either take my way (cover all the episodes until you catch up with the show)
You can get started with ABC's starter kit. I wouldn't suggest this option
Wikipedia

Stop exaggerating Slumdog Millionaire

2009-01-29T02:56:00.005-06:00

People who say

Slumdog Millionaire is the best movie to come out in the last few years
Slumdog Millionaire's music is AR Rehman's best
Slumdog Millionaire deserves 10 Oscar nominations
Slumdog Millionaire is the best movie made about India
Why can't Indian directors make movies like Slumdog Millionaire?

are either fools or they don't know anything about Indian cinema. I am tired of being spammed about blog posts and twitter messages on Slumdog.

Pathetic losers, I have said this before and I am repeating it again, "Slumdog Millionaire" is a good movie but not worth all these exaggerations. Forget it...it's not even remotely close.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Slumdog fans - Crowd mentality at its best.

And to the group of lunatics that sued the producers for the movie name - Hello dogs, it's just a movie name... get on with your life. There are bigger problems to crib.

Precogs at TheOnion.com?

2009-01-19T01:32:00.003-06:00

If someone had pointed you to TheOnion.com predictions on Bush's 8 year term in year 2001, you would have probably laughed it off dismissing it as just another Onion's spoof but try reading it today.

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

That's probably the perfect prediction you can ever make.

Palm is back!

2009-01-09T02:42:00.009-06:00

If you were one of those who thought Palm is on death watch, think again. Palm is back and in a big way.

Few hours ago, they introduced Palm Pre during their CES 2009 keynote. Boy, what a wonderful device! Check out Engadget's Palm Pre picture gallery and Ryan Block's gdgt coverage of Palm's keynote.

Palm Pre Video Walkthrough 1 from Gizmodo on Vimeo.
More videos here.

Official site and gallery
Engadget Picture gallery
Ryan Block's commentary

Mark my words: This is going to be a big winner for Palm. I hope they'll give this device a world wide release!

Apple's next product: Better than the iPhone.

2009-01-06T01:13:00.004-06:00

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Update: I've few people asking questions about the availability of this device.... guys, sorry to break it to you, this is a spoof!

This video is pure gold with classic one liners and amazing mockery of Apple products! Here are my favorite parts:
Brian Gilman's 'Apple's philosophy is to create products that are simple to use and nothing's more simple than one giant button'
Brian Gilman's 'It couldn't be simpler' after explaining the complexity of typing an alphabet'
"Everything's just few 100 clicks away."

The guy who speaks at 1:43.. gold baby gold!

And just for your information, if it's from Onion news network, it's a spoof! Oh, by the way,I love you,Onion!

From Israel's #1 newspaper

2009-01-04T23:31:00.003-06:00

Came across these opinion pieces on Israel's #1 newpaper website.

Your opinion is irrelevant

Don't pity the Palestinians

How do we describe the Israelis? Arrogant or determined?