Taare Zameen Par

Merry Christmas everybody!

For this christmas I got to watch a gem of a movie. Taare Zameen Par. The directorial debut of Aamir Khan. No first time hitches. No fancy camera shots. Just a simple and superb work. The star of the movie is the kid who plays the protagonist Ishant Avasthi. Speechless is the word to be used for his performance. Kudos goes to all the actors and the perfect casting made the movie makers. Music is awesome. I haven't enjoyed the work of Shankar Ehsaan Loy this much this much for a very long time.

The story is something everyone can relate to at least some level. Pressure on kids to be assembly made products. Lack of genuine affection (rather lack of display I think). Artwork in the movie is absolutely amazing. I can babble on and on, but I think the movie has had a profound impact on me at a personal level. Not many movies have been able to do that.

I hope Aamir does more movies like this and I am sure he will. Hope this movie gets all the recognition it deserves. :-)

Death

Death...
A sudden aberration to a lovely life?
A sudden relief from a wretched life?
Anyway its gonna be sudden.

Just heard Dream Theater's Pull me Under. A beautiful song about death. The ending is fascinating. It stops while the song is in full play. You have to listen to grasp it!

"Every breath you take is one less to your last..."

Tiinker.com

I have decided to write more. For that I have to move beyond the usual crap I dish out every month! This time a website review. Just for you!

I am a news freak. I read a lot about all the useful and useless stuff. I browse through the rss feeds in Google Reader, visit news sites (usually ibn), get my daily fix of digg etc. Not that I assimilate everything, its rather in the moment thing. I do recollect stuff if really required.

Personalised news is something I like. Google News does provide a bit of that, still I think its not cool enough.

What do I want from such a site?
a) Personalisation (duh!)
b) Ability to save certain stuff for future reference.
c) Great interface.
d) A degree of coolness!

Digg provides the facility to view the stories you dugg. But the navigation is a mess and its a big pain to go through all that. Google Reader lets you star the stuff you want. But still it has got something missing.

Enter Tiinker!

Tiinker is a personalised news service which constantly learns what you want and delivers the same. Its in closed private beta, so there are bound to be issues. From all the 30 minutes I have seen of this thing, it is really great. Meets all the criteria I have listed above.

The interface is really usable and looks clean. Seamless web 2.0 navigation is lovely and very fast. Stories are neatly stacked in a readable manner. You vote up the article you like and vote down the ones you don't. Tiinker learns from your preferences and delivers news accordingly.

There is also a functionality called scrapbook. Each story has a scrapbook icon with which you can mark the items. These are then available in your scrapbook.

There are several categories under which the news items are pooled. I think there can be several more categories or subcategories ala digg. First thing I did was vote down the irrelevant articles. Many of them are american centric and the sports page was completely american. NBA, NFL, NHL stuff with one item about ICL. Hopefully, the filters does kick in and I get to enjoy the stuff I really want.

Now for the wishlist.

A friends network, with several groupings possible. News sharing. Also, sharing of stuff with specific people. But I don't want too much networking. Just share and do your own stuff. May be a widget to get your shared stuff to Orkut, Facebook etc would be cool thing too.

Am I asking for too much? Lets see how things pan out.

Anyway, I enjoyed using Tiinker and I hope its accessible from work. Want an invite? Just drop a line! :-)

I really enjoyed writing about this and I think for the next post we will talk about Wixi.

End of Green Park?

The biggest incentive working in Technopark for me is the environment. The lush green surrounding always calm me whenever I am stressed out. There are so many birds around that I hardly know the name of many. I don't find them even in the rural areas! I don't know whether there are any true villages remaining in Kerala. Anyway, lets come back. There are so many mongooses here. Practically unafraid of us humans. They often come near inquisitively. I like them a lot (Reminds me of Riki Tiki Tawi!). But also I get an irrational fear about snakes when I see them. May be because on days I sit late, I take a short cut to the main road. Through an unlit kacha road with a canal nearby.

I am just drifting on and on I guess. I am deeply disturbed by the latest plans by the Technopark authorities. They are planning to cut a large number of trees to build a new parking space and construct yet another road. Good plans on that parking, its a big issue. But I just can't accept the fact that they are cutting down so many trees! The biggest selling point of Technopark is the ambiance. If thats gone, then this place becomes soulless. I hated the artificiality of certain SEZs I saw in Bangalore and I dread the same will happen here too. Cut them all down and bring in some readymade trees for landscaping!

I wish it would remain the same. I take a walk among these trees on those fucking stressed weekends. Just taking a stroll sometimes or sitting on the stone benches. Having phone conversations sitting there...Chatting up with friends during the lunch breaks. We invariably take an extra half an hour getting to office on those days!

Those days seem to be coming to an end. Trees replaced by concrete beams... Mongooses replaced by cars and bikes...A necessary evil? May be...May be not...

A friend of mine sent a mail to the head of Technopark and he replied that it also pained him and they were felling only 10 trees. I could see that figure as around 50! May be just considers those trees which are higher than 50 feet as trees and coconut trees as some decorative palm! I don't know whether they are planning this expansion with future enhancements in mind. I hope they do, or Technopark could just end up being a barren wasteland with concrete monsters and heartless people.

I took a few snaps of the massacre. The quality is not that great and the same goes for the photographer!




And a small video to boot.

Aah!
The irregular blogger is back! For the umpteenth time!
So how ya doin?

Me been watching Friends (the sitcom) back to back for around 2 months now! Apart from that nothing much happening. Work, home, nightouts once in a while, second show movies, booze parties once a month, other than that just thinking the head through!

Decided to decide upon something I want to do next year. Thinking of studying something. Has to do something! :-D