Dexter's Lab

Loved this pic which was clicked last year when I was on my trip to the himalayas.
A friend from there met me yesterday and gave it to me.




I wonder how life changes in a year. Was thinking of a Leh-Ladakh trip this year and all goes down the drain with this recession.

Blah!

An awesome movie I must say. Excellent performances from the duo De Caprio and Kate Winslet.
It's a story about a couple who can't cope up with their mundane life and want to do something exciting but can never get out of the trap.

De Caprio is a small employee at a corporate and feels shit about his job. It starts showing elsewhere in his life, him taking out his frustration on wife and screwing around.
As a last hope Kate tries to convince him to move to Paris and start life fresh all over again. Just when everything seems to be working and they plan to wrap up things there's a sudden twist in the story that De Caprio is offered a promotion and a bigger pay and Kate gets pregnant.
Now the eternal confusion between an unkown risk or a known trap ?

Kate being fed up of the sucky life desperately wants to escape from it and the kid looks a threat to her ruining the complete plan.
She tries to get rid of the child so that they can continue with their plan. Now their life gets into a big mess with De Caprio willing to give up their idea of moving to Paris and Kate unwilling to accept the truth.

What happens and how the story ends is all about the movie.

I think if not with whole of the movie a lot of people around can relate to it in parts. People feel stuck with what they are doing but they don't have the courage to live up and try see what lies beyond.
The fear of failure or the lure of the cozy job gets to them and suppresses what they once thought were the things they want to live for.

Eventually they end up unhappy with themselves and those around. The guts to live the life as they want to isn't for the faint hearted and this movie showcases that in beautifully.
Two actors who gave one of their best performances De Caprio and Kate Winslet (I can't belive she looks so old so fast :). De Caprio seldom disappoints me.

A must watch for someone who isn't just looking for the usual slum dum melodrama.

Oh! where was I all these days ??
Hmm... Let me think. Don't know but am quite a bit bored and didn't even have the urge to write something.

Have taken a week's break and visited my native and all over Andhra (Godavari).

Was a great trip I must say. It was almost close to 4 years probably when I last visited my relatives. Dad and mom keep going there but I give it a miss.
This time however I accompanied them and had a great time rejoicing with my grand parents and other relatives.

Saw the majestic and beautiful Godavari, travelled over the Krishna river, feasted my eyes over lush green paddy fields, felt my heart leap over the nice scenic places.
Wish I had taken my camera along.

My New Years was spent on the run and I don't complain. It wouldn't have been any better otherwise.

As people around me know I don't make any resolutions. I generally can't think of any and can't keep up with the thought ones.
So its better that way. Taking things the way they come definitely helps.

2008 was a decent year, had a few ups and downs. Nothing to boast of but some pretty good to experience things.
Trekking to Himalayas was one. Planning for more this year. Lets see how it works out.

Few things I want to continue. Watch more good movies, increase contribution to telugu online and read more books.

Its so irritating that wherever you go or whomever you talk with only have to say about the recession and job cuts.
Yeah its there and you can't ignore it but its too irritating to hear about the same stuff over and over. So and so laid off x number of people.
There are rumors such and such is happening.

Take a break guys !

Today is the release for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, the latest version of Ubuntu 8.10.
Since most of the time I use KDE, I am more of a Kubuntu user.

The biggest radical change this time was the inclusion of KDE 4.1 as the default KDE version.
KDE4 had pretty much mixed responses all over. Its stability being very questionable.
While the looks and the customizability it offers are neat, I for one am not very satisfied with it until now.

It always lets me down and seems to me like a half baked product. Things fail more often than the stable KDE 3.5
Actually I haven't been able to use KDE for a while now on intrepid since it freezes for some unknown reasons as soon as I login.
So now I am a forced gnome convert (which ain't bad. Gnome is a clean environment).

Thinking of a few other things which break one thing thats a stopper for me is evolution.
Even though its a pretty flaky product (when used with exchange) I was relatively happy with it on Hardy.
Work used to get done pretty much with it and I had my calendaring, email and decent search folders.

But with intrepid its totally broken. It no longer works with the https OWA url.
It works with a http though. Your corporation needs to support a plain version of exchange. (Luckily mine does)
Or you would have to go ahead with imap folders and forget your calendaring (which is one of the primary reason I stick with evolution).
So a major deal breaker.

Since I have been using it for a while, from the alphas I could say that the X window system has been pretty stable and infact much better than earlier.
Dual monitor setup pretty much works.

WiFi has been stable. I have been relying more on Network Manager since I need support for PEAP.
Its a pain to get it working otherwise with those custom packages of openssl and stuff.
There's one problem with it running with Network Manager though. If your X windows system goes down your network is down.

So all in all I can't say its a great experience on intrepid. But yeah I am on it :)
I wish KDE 3.5 is still available with intrepid but they just abandoned it.

Hope others have a better experience with it.

There rarely are good Indian movies, even the bollywood ones. (This is in my opinion)

One movie that is apart from them is the one released recently "Mumbai Meri Jaan"
An excellent movie I must say. Its a story of how life changed for four people after the train blasts happened.

Theres no extravaganza on the part of the actors nor the storyline. Its just tight and gripping.
No preaching, no extra sentimental scenes to pull the audiences but a reality check on the people, society who undergo the trauma.

I cringe whenever people say that Mumbai ki spirit, they spring to life within minutes etc.. blah blah.
Its just that anywhere people would rarely care about those who suffer and in the media its only the moments frenzy that matters.
Since they dont cover the life after the initial day or two of the blast we would never understand how their lives are changed.
People like us who have amnesia about things we dont like tend to forget all about them in a couple of days and go about our work normally since it didnt effect us.

I hate the media bas***** who put up a mike infront of the crying people asking about their feelings.
Soha who plays the journalist, thinks its perfectly alright to do that kind of journalism until the tables turn and she is in the others shoes.
Its all about sensationalism, who puts up news first without any concern to the person next to you.

And there is KK Menon who is a hindu who tends to believe that every muslim is a terrorist. (I have come across people like this if not to that extreme)
Reality is not the same. It dawns on him slowly that they are people very much like everybody else, have their own lives.
Good or bad exists irrespective of religion. Its the people who tend to go one way or the other.

Madhavan, who is an idealist who wants to stay in India irrespective of having offers to live abroad is shocked with the blasts.
Aftermath he is afraid to even board a local train. At one time he contemplates to move abroad and escape only when it dawns upon him that life isn't free of terrorism anywhere. There's 9/11 too.

And finally Irfan Khan is a complex character. He's a Tamilian who works in Mumbai.
Since he's rejected from the posh malls in Mumbai he tries to take revenge on them by making fake bomb scares.
Only when the life of a person falls in danger does he realize how extreme his actions are.

Thus everybody's life is effected but eventually people do move on.

Excellent performances by everybody. A must watch movie...

I am pissed off with the privacy laws in India.

Was having a good nap in the afternoon when I got a call from HSBC.
The summary was that one of my friends have missed paying his installment of personal loan. (He's not in India anymore and didn't leave the bank a number to reach him)
So they call me up asking if I can give his contact number. Surprise !

How do they know that I am a friend of his ? They look up at his earlier transactions, find out that I have transferred him some money earlier.
Since I am a HSBC account holder, no problem.. they can look up my account details, get my mobile number and call me.

wow! I mean wow... so much for my privacy. Anybody without a proper authorization can get my details by looking into my account. (And maybe tomorrow borrow some money without asking me too)
When I question the lady who called me up on my mobile how she got my details she explains it and when I say that it is illegal, she apologizes and ends the call.

I don't know where else and who else my account details reach unknown to me.

I just can't get this song out of my system.

Guess I first heard it in "Love Actually". And yesterday heard it yet again in "Four weddings and a Funeral".
Awesome song it is and the lyrics.

Wet wet wet version



Original

I wonder if some of the news channels do any kind of research before going to the print.
Just because it's online you can't print whatever the f*** you want.

Check this article from ibnlive about iPhone.

"The phone works on only cell phone signals from AT&T in the US. Therefore its usage value in India seems low."

Yes sir. Thats the reason they are partnering with Airtel and Vodafone in India.

Its always been pretty cumbersome to maintain a movie collection.

I always wanted to have a more decent way of maintaining than using excel sheets or google docs.
Recently I found "Griffith" and it works great.

Its an easy way to track your collection and the best feature is that it can fetch the details from movie sites like IMDB automatically.
You just need to enter the title of the movie and you can search for the title from IMDB and once you hit enter it fetches all the info including reviews, year of release, plot, cast, poster etc.

Not only that you can track your loaned DVDs, set reminders.

My movie information now finds a new home.

Now only if theres a way to share this info onto a central server and sync with friends. :-)

On Ubuntu hit "sudo apt-get install griffith" and its yours.
BTW it works with Windows too.

(This might of be interest only for offline usage. Flixster types are ok for online.)

What is it with this reverse tag lines.

First it is Adidas with "Impossible is Nothing"
and now Samsung with "Next is What ?"

Aamir has been a surprisingly good movie I have seen in recent days.

I was sick and bored of the recent movies in Hindi exception being the Pakistani movie "Khuda Ke Liye..."
It was a welcome break from those.

The story is that a muslim NRI returns back to India to find himself in weird circumstances where he is handed over a mobile and given orders.
Soon he realizes he is in the trap of extremists who try to game him and use him.

What happens to him ? Does he escape from them ? Can he save his family members is all about the story.

I must say its a commendable performance from the debutant director and the hero "Rajeev Khandelwal", a TV actor.

The only thing that sucks is that its a lift from a hollywood movie Cavite.
However that shouldn't deter you from watching this.

Why are all the FM channels playing only kannada songs ???

Over the past few years the FM channels were one of the good entertainment for people in Bangalore whether working or travelling or at home.
But the past couple of months suddenly all the FM channels seem to have moved to only kannada mode which is so blah!

They dont appeal anymore as the RJs also speak only in Kannada and I noticed that even the cab drivers too don't play them as much as they used to.
Not sure the only local approach is going to work out in a cosmo like Bangalore.

Anybody has an idea if it is a forced move or a voluntary one by the channels ?

Its been a rough ride for the Yahoo and its employees over the past few months.
What with Microsoft making its offers and Yahoo! trying its best to avoid it.

There were quite a few twists and turns in the story with Y! asking for more and getting nothing.
While everybody felt it has been offered a competitive bid, Y! felt otherwise continuing to press on for more and more.

At the end it just fell to the wrath of its biggest competitor Google submissing to it.
I dont know how one would back up the deal when you are pumping money and boosting your competitors business.

Just when I was getting to feel that Y! was doing something disruptive with opening its search with SearchMonkey etc. it so happens that it takes up the so called benifitting the shareholders decision of going into an agreement with Google.
I think just the thought undermines that Y! is conceding its defeat without actually putting up a fight.

The concentration it seems now all the time for Y! is just to stay independent rather than fighting the competition.

I don't know if Microsoft deal would have done good for Y! but atleast put up a fight baby before you go down or if you wish to bounce back....
Just saying that we are worth more doesn't prove anything. Make that happen, get out good products that people like and prove your worth. And don't try to win by partnering with your competitor.

NY Times article Oh Jerry, It’s No Longer Your Baby via TechCrunch.

Watch this. An open movie project Big Buck Bunny.
Read more about the concept here.

Made with Blender, a free open source 3D content creation suite this movie is released as an open movie.

It used to be a distant dream. Not anymore.
Trekking on the Himalayas was an experience on its own. Less to be told, more to be experienced.

On a whim somewhere 2-3 months back me and sriharsha_hs  decided that we would do the Youth hostels Himalayan trek (Sar Pass).
We aren't big trekkers. We hardly did any before but we wanted to do this as a break from our routine.

We went ahead and got the bookings done. We were to do the Sar Pass trek.
Slowly we got our trek reservations, train reservations etc sorted out and soon it was time to go on an exciting journey.
It wasn't easy since we had to get out of office for about 15 days.

Finally with everything sorted out our trek was to begin on May 3rd.
( A lengthy writeup with lots of pics.... )

Gmail has been a wonderful experience until now, not anymore.
It is literally being a pain in the a**

Of late the spam filters in the gmail has gone haywire.
There are so many false positives that I started losing important mails.

And not that its by mistake, its consistent.
I am tired of marking them as "Not Spam" but yet the filter never seems to learn.
I manage a group and weird it marks messages from its own groups as spam.

Apart from that a lot of mails marked directly to me are also being marked as spam.
The feature that once has been the strength of gmail is now no more the same.

I am getting myself used to checking spam folder as well these days.

And worse it doesnt have controls for spam filters. I mean I can't turn off spam filtering or the level of spam checking.
Maybe they are just over confident of their filters.

People including me started to rely so much on gmail that a sudden change from it is impossible.
A one point failure indeed.

Maybe this is the right time indeed to sort my email out.

There goes the Yahoo saga.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/10/yahoo-goes-scorched-earth/

I don't know what to say of the recent developments. They are just so many :)

It takes immense pleasure to complete a project you have taken up either professional or personal.
And the personal projects often give you more pleasure since you own it form the heart.

Yesterday was one of those days I felt that kind of elation on completing a project.
Blogging is one thing now which has crossed language barriers. What I mean is that people not only blog in English but in a lot of other languages.

The way its evolving in India is also pretty exciting.
There are dedicated communities for many languages which support and help the new bloggers.

I blog in telugu on my other blog.
Its been one and a half years journey on that.

It was a great experience and learning all the way I must say.
First thing I experienced is seeing how a community evolves. Being there in the initial few and seeing the blogging community grow into the near thousand is one great experience.

So just to spice it up a bit more I started on a project a while ago. What if I can create a book out of the blogs ?
There are so many great entries with excellent content. People share good information on literature, stories, technology, politics, you name it.
If only you could get the best out of them and create a book. Its just an e-book though.

It was a tough journey wading through the posts, collecting the good and interesting ones, sorting them, formatting the book, coordinating the effort.
But at the end I am one satisfied person.

You can get the copy of the book from here.
If you can read telugu great, go through and let me know your feedback.

A picture of a tiger taken at Bannerghatta National Park.