lucis

Adblock/firebird

For the past few days I've been using this amazing little firebird extension. Its called Adblock. It is easily one of the best ad blockers that I've seen. No need for clumsy proxy servers and such. And coupled with firebird's popup blocker, my internet experience is once again like it used to be about 3 years back (no ads!). It is specially great for browsing Indian news websites like TOI etc. Also works great with /., and Google Adsense.

The way this works is that each time you see a website ad, you hit a hotkey combination, select the offending image, and add a regular expression that defines its url to your list of filters. Though there is no official template, lots of examples can be found on the forum. I'll also keep an updated copy of my filters here (mainly to sync between the three computers that I use). Its amazing how many ads can be taken care of with a surprisingly small number of filters!

On a related note, I was forced to use Internet Explorer recently after a long time (thanks to websites not sticking to standards). The whole experience is so much worse. Popup ads, no tabs, no middle mouse clicks, animated ads... I never really liked or used IE, but with firebird/mozila improving so much in recent years, IE is now far behind (imho - ofcourse, a majority would think otherwise).

While you are at it, also check out preferential, an extension that adds lots of advanced preferences to mozilla/firebird. Really cool!

iPod, linux and my toothbrush

Have been thinking about getting an iPod. Specially interested the smaller capacity, lower cost ones that have been rumored. I dont really need 10GB, and a cheaper price will help!

While doing a related web search, came across this. These people have successfully managed a working linux installation on the ipod. This is absolutely crazy! I thought the handhelds.org work to get linux to work on a PDA is great and useful, but this is taking it to a new limit! Absolutely amazing!

So, I have to ask... how much longer before I have a linux installation on my toothbrush? And then add bluetooth (pun) to the toothbrush. Now I can have all the statistics I'd ever want about my brushing right on my desktop without the toothbrush having to leave the bathroom! Imagine the possibilities for dental health!

Oh well...

The Boondock Saints

Bang! Amid laughter and confusion the gun goes off. There is blood and tiny bits of what was once a very unlucky cat all over the place. The next thing we hear:

Is it dead?

Excessively violent and brutal at times, hilarious at others. The Boondock Saints is a relatively unknown movie. It has a large cult following though. The first and only (so far) movie by writer/director Troy Duffy is satire or black humor, or a religious story. Its really hard to tell which - and thats the beauty!

It is about two brothers who take it upon themselves to rid the world of all sinners. They are the new-age Saints. There are allusions to divine intervention and religious overtones. But there are things that simply make no sense - even the cops start helping them instead of preventing mass killings. Maybe it is a satire on itself?

The dialogues are amazing. Perhaps in the same class as Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The acting is great. Specially Willem Dafoe in the crime investigation scenes. Direction was good. Non-linear story telling, again kind of like Pulp Fiction. Amazing music. Great action scenes.

Like most cult movies, the think that failed this movie is the same thing that makes it so good. The fact that you never really understand if all this is a joke/satire, or is it a serious story? Most people would be uncomfortable with all the killing in the name of God, and not enough was done to make it stand out as humor (unlike something like Dogma). In my opinion, this is what made the movie special.

A sequel, Boondock II: All Saints Day is planned. Should be interesting!

veritas - truth
aequitas - equality or justice

- We're a little like 7-11, we're not always doing business, but we're always open.
- Are you telling me it was one guy with six guns and he was a senior citizen?
- Symmmmmmmmmmbolism, I believe the word you want is symmmbolism.

Indian Grand Prix

This really made my day! Formula 1 in Hyderabad, India! After watching just one race live in Indianapollis this year, I can say that watching it in person is far, far better than watching it on TV. There is just no way to capture the sound, intensity and excitement that twenty 900 horsepower F1 car engines at full throttle generate at the start of the race.

But I am not really in favour of the three day exemption to tobacco ads that is being proposed. It is not right to change major policies for any event, no matter how big. But with both France and Canada facing difficulties in hosting the GP for the same reason, I dont see a way around it.

This is really big! It is really great for the economy and overall impression that people have about India. It would probably be the biggest sporting event in India! I really hope this goes through. (Though I doubt I'l ever get to see it live in Hyderabad...)

21 grams

In 1907 Dr. MacDougall conducted experiments to verify that the weight of the human soul is 21 grams (21.3 grams, or three-fourths of an ounce to be exact). This was done by placing terminally ill patients on a death bed, and carefully measuring the change in weight of the body at the exact momentwhen they actually died.

Thankfully, This is not his story.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s gained international fame with his mexican movie Amores perros (Love’s a Bitch). 21 grams is his first english movie. The story revolves around three central characters, and is about death, revenge, love and guilt.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the movie is the way it plays with time. The story is told in a completely non-linear fashion. Each scene is from a different time in the story. This basically takes what older movies like Memento, and Pulp Fiction have done to a new extreme. These non-linear segments are very cleverly ordered in the movie so that they contrast and complement each other extremely well. In fact there have been rumors that this ordering is not completely artistic or random, and there is a mathematical pattern behind it. I cant wait for the DVD to watch the movie again to try and figure out the pattern. Extremely brilliant!

The other thing is the scarcity of background music. The theme music is extremely good, and is used very well. I dont know if adding more music would have made it better or worse. I think the long silent gaps worked for this movie.

The video is slightly grainy/blurred. This adds to the overal effect the director wanted. Nothing new though. Many movies do this.

Acting is absolutely phenomenal. All three lead actors (Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Del Toro) are oscar nomination worthy at least. But we all know how unlikely that is with movies like this. Who cares about the Oscars anyways!

The story itself is quite dark and heavy. But it is not that great on its own. The beauty about the movie is how a simple, straightforward and dark story is told in a very new and different way. This is what I loved the most about this movie. It just goes to prove how a brilliant director and a good cast can transform a decent story to an amazing movie.

The movie is not perfect though. Some scenes stretch for too long. Sure, they add to the overal effect that the movie creates. But I think the movie would have been more powerful had it been about 10-15 minutes shorter. Also, the ending is not the best. In fact, it is somewhat of a let down. This is what prevents this from displacing Requiem for a Dream from my number 1 spot.

Siggraph fantasy game

This year's Siggraph Fantasy Graphics League started today. You basically select upto twelve researchers (with some quatloos you are given). Then they award points based on the number of publications your Graphics Lab gets in Siggraph 2004.
Be sure to read the interesting backstory. Excerpt:

"To be honest, they've seen how cost-cutting impresses Wall Street. A company lays off 5% of its workforce and its stock price rises 12%. Another cuts 20% and its price jumps up 50%. The way the board figures it, by cutting 98% of the workforce, the stock should rise by about 29,328%, which would really help the bottom line."

While you are at it also check this rather amusing interview of last year's winner.

Return of the King

Saw The Return of the King today. There were three special midnight shows. I went for the one at 12:05am. It was absolutely crazy. People had been standing in queues to get in for hours. We reached around 10:30, and were very lucky to get half decent seats. First off, the previews before the movie were absolutely terrible. I dont even remember the names of the movies (well, other than Harry Potter)!

Okay, so how was it? Well, it was amazing. Clearly one of the best movies of the year. It was probably the second time that I really clapped when the movie was over (the first was Kill Bill). But it could have been better. Sadly, yes. It was not perfect. More on that later.

First the good stuff. Acting and direction was best of the three volumes. Peter Jackson did a great job in keeping the story moving at a consistent pace. The book told the story in a very different order, which I dont think would have worked for a movie quite as well. Juggling efficiently between various threads of the story, Jackson manages to make a movie that never loses the audience.

There is lots of CG in the movie - most of which is great. The battle scenes are unbelievable. The Path of Dead, Minas Tirith, Shelob, Minas Morgul, etc. all look exactly like I had imagined them when reading the book.

Quite a lot was not included in the movie. Very little of Mordor was shown - which I thought was bad. Very little was shown of Faramir, which was okay. And finally the ending was greatly reduced - no scouring of the Shire. This worked okay in my opinion. Thankfully not much was changed from the book (unlike The Two Towers).

Okay, now stuff I didnt like all that much. My first problem was with CG! Some scenes did not quite live up to the rest of the movie. Though most battle scenes were phenomenal, there were a few that appeared out of place. I clearly remember one scene where a wall of Minas Tirith fell like Lego bricks when hit with a catapult. It looked so artificial. I wonder how it made it to the final cut.

My other issue was with scale. At certain places the book gives an impression of a much bigger scale. The ents for example. In the book it appeared the entire forest was moving towards Isengard. The movie had a few lean trees that were impairing it. Then in the end from what I remember there were many other elves that left with Gandalf etc. The movie had just 3-4 elves, Frodo and Bilbo on the boat. This looked wrong to me. When Minas Tirith is shown for the first time, the camera could have had a more free motion. It seemed too restricted. They had no shots from the top that would show the whole city. They could have done much better to give a feeling of "wow, thats huge!".

One of the reasons behind this is that it is so hard to transform from a book to a movie. A book can give you so much background information about a place or a character. Specially Tolkein spent pages explaining small stuff like the history of a place, the reason it was built, or the complete history of a character. Such things greatly enhance the picture a reader forms in his mind. This is much harder to do in a movie.

The movie makes Sam the hero towards the end. He is shown to be the more intelligent and smarter than Frodo. Again I dont remember having this feeling when I read the book. Maybe it is just that Sean Astin (Sam) is a better actor than Elijah Wood (Frodo).

I am getting really critical here. There were scenes that I felt were not perfect. Any other movie and I would be okay with it. But J R R Tolkein was a perfectionist, and for each of the LOTR movies I expected nothing less than the same perfection. In this regard I think Fellowship of the Ring was the best. ROTK was better in most other respects.

And now the worst thing about the movie... This is the last one. No more Lord of the Rings action next year. Oh well...

Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for? - Gimli

If I cannot carry the Ring, then I will carry you! - Sam

Edit: It turns out that one of the teasers at the begining of the movie was of the movie I, Robot. The preview was like a commercial for a "fully automated domestic assistant", with no indication of the movie name anywhere. This should be an interesting movie.

Solaris clear

Here is the what the Solaris clear command looks like:

#!/usr/bin/sh
#       Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
#         All Rights Reserved
#       THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
#       The copyright notice above does not evidence any
#       actual or intended publication of such source code.
#ident  "@(#)clear.sh   1.8     96/10/14 SMI"   /* SVr4.0 1.3   */
#       Copyright (c) 1987, 1988 Microsoft Corporation
#         All Rights Reserved
#       This Module contains Proprietary Information of Microsoft
#       Corporation and should be treated as Confidential.
# clear the screen with terminfo.
# if an argument is given, print the clear string for that tty type
/usr/bin/tput ${1:+-T$1} clear 2> /dev/null
exit

Is this a joke, or is this really from Xenix (Microsoft’s unix implementation)?

Religion and Science Fiction

A couple of really amazing short stories by Arthur C. Clarke.

The first is titled The Nine Billion Names of God. I read this one a long time back, but immediately remembered it when I recently read another similar story by the same author.

Which brings us to the second short story. This is titled The Star (Thanks to arnab for the link).

Clark brings religion and science together beautifully. Both are extremely well written, and have surprise ending. There isnt much I can say about either that you wont get from simply reading them, so do that!

Another example of this religion-science-fiction literature is Contact by Carl Sagan. Though the movie was great, the book goes much deeper into the philosophy of everything. There is this scene in the book where a believer is proving his faith by standing in front of a giant pendulum. Science says that the pendulum should obey conservation of energy, and attain a certain height before it swings back. The argument here is that if this person stands closer than this distance to the pendulum, would God make it stop before it hits his face? And it so happens that just before the pendulum is about to be swung, the curator comes in and stops the "nonsense". Thus something intervenes!

There are sure to be other such interesting books/stories. I havent really read many others (I can think of another couple, but am too tired to look for references atm - maybe later).

Jungle Book

This brings back old memories...

Buzzy yawns: Hey, Flaps, what we gonna do?
Flaps: I don't know. What you wanna do?
Ziggy: I got it! Let's flap over to the east side of the jungle! They've always got a bit of action, a bit of a swinging scene. All right?
Buzzy: Ah, come off it! Things are right dead all over.
Ziggy: You mean you wish they were!
[they laugh]
Dizzy: Very funny.
Buzzy: Okay, so what we gonna do?
Flaps: I don't know, what you wanna do?
Buzzy: Look, Flaps, first I say, "what we gonna do?" and then you say, "what you wanna do?", they I say, "what we gonna do?", you say "what you wanna do?", "what you gonna do", "what you wanna" - let's do something!
Flaps: Okay. What you wanna do?
Buzzy: Oh, blimey, there you go again. The same once again!
Ziggy: I've got it! This time, I've really got it.
Buzzy: So you got it. So what we gonna do?

more

changelog

Inspired by patchwork progression, I’ve decided to maintian this entry in which I list all my MT tweaks. I’ll probably add a new entry if I make a more complex change, but will try to list all the stuff I do with the blog here.

Some really good MT resources are: scriptygoddess, thegirliematters, and virtualvenus.

Okay, here is a list of various things that I’ve done with MT and the blog:

• 02/29/04: Edited stylesheet to get rid of horizontal scroll in stupid IE.
• 02/28/04: Installed the MT-blacklist plugin to take care of growing comment spam.
• 02/25/04: Changed the style sheet. Got rid of the stupid calendar. Rearranged the sidebar. I think the site looks better now.
• 01/05/04: Added a metatag to prevent refer/index.php from being indexed in search engines.
• 01/04/04: Changed RSS and atom feeds to include complete entry (use MTEntryBody).
• 01/04/04: Added the atom template. Removed references to MTIfNonEmpty since it wasnt working (even after installing the plugin)
• 12/31/03: To get thumbnail images automatically, installed netpbm and IPC::Run; also changed ImageDriver in mt.cfg to netpbm.
• 12/20/03: Installed the BookQueue plugin. I now have a Currently Reading heading on the right!
• 12/20/03: Installed the MTAmazon plugin.
• 12/20/03: Replaced the old referrer with refer. Added relevant code in all templates (the .htaccess trick didnt work on 1and1).
• 12/16/03: Edited style sheet template to add the pre style for code.
• 12/15/03: Added sitemeter.
• 12/14/03: Converted this page to use the textile formatting.
• 12/14/03: Installed MT-Textile plugin. Seems to make editing quite easy!
• 12/14/03: Installed the smartypants plugin.
• 12/08/03: Listed the site on blogwise, and chicagobloggers.
• 12/08/03: Signed up on blogsnob.
• 12/08/03: Got a blogchalking tattoo.
• 12/07/03: Added a list of recent referrals - replaced by refer.
• 12/07/03: Played with the stylesheet - changed colors etc.
• 12/07/03: Modified template to list categories of a post under it. Also added a categories menu.
• 12/07/03: Converted all pages to .php
• 12/07/03: Signed up on geourl.
• 12/03/03: Signed up on blogrolling.
• 12/03/03: Added extremetracking.
• 12/03/03: dirified the archiving options
• 12/03/03: Blog started!

Scarface

This is a long movie. And thats not all that it has in common with Hindi movies. At times I almost felt like it was an Amitabh Bachan movie. There are quite a few that have a similar storyline. Small guy wants to be big; takes the wrong route; kills his boss (not before his boss tries to kill him first though); becomes extremely rich; gets caught redhanded by the cops; and eventually gets killed in a gang war - not before he takes everyone around him down with him.

Al Pacino is great. I dont think anyone else could have played his role. Sadly (as expected) no Oscar nomination. The movie is too intense for the Oscars! Too much drugs and too many people being killed. Also, the movie has an unconventional ending. Everyone looses everything. They are either all dead, or left in a terrible position that they'd rather be dead!

I would put this movie in the same category as Heat, and as I said, a bunch of Amitabh movies. They are great while you watch them, but they dont make you think all that much once you are done watching them. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. There is nothing new in that. Nonetheless, it isnt easy to make such movies, and Scarface is an excellent example of how to get things right.

I really liked it! The acting was awesome. The music is great. The ending was sad and dark - which is good! The only problem is that I've seen too many movies with a similar story. Maybe if I'd seen this in 1983...

categories, referrals and winamp

Make quite a few customizations to the look and feel of the blog. I now have the categories of a post listed under it. Threre is also a list of categories in the menu.

Also added this really nice script to list the recent referrals to the website. Now I would know who all are linking to my blog, and also how well it does on search engines.

I tried various winamp plugins to have a "Now Playing" section on the sidebar. Here is a list of plugins that I tried: DoSomething, AMIP and WhatsPlaying. Also, some nice blog entries that talk about how this should be done are A Whole Lotta Nothing, and VirtualVenus. However, I couldnt get any of the plugins to work properly with Winamp 5. Most importantly, none was able to send a signal when stop was pressed, or winamp was closed. I guess I'll first finish the linux install on the system, and try to get it working with xmms.

Also changed a couple of things in the stylesheet template, and the master index template. The links on the calendar should now take you to the Daily archive for that day, and not the last post for that day (MT default).

Well, thats it for the time being. Hope I'm able to generate some traffic to this site soon.

A Game of Thrones

I recently finished reading A Game of Thrones. This is the first book of the series titled A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin. The series is supposed to have six(!) books of which three have been released.

While the book reminded me a bit of Tolkein's LOTR, it is so perhaps because LOTR is the only other fantasy novel that I've read. This is very different from LOTR in almost every possible way!

Instead of trying to describe it myself, here is an amazing summary:

"Imagine a feudal kingdom on a massive continent in a world filled with many cultures and half-legendary lands and an ancient history. Imagine a time where dragons once lived but magic is now dwindling, yet the seasons can be long or short, bringing glorious summers or terrible winters that last years at a time. Imagine a massive iron throne from which seven kingdoms are ruled, with false knights and true all gathered about it in hopes of blood or glory or profit, and shadows behind it pushing the pieces that make up the game of thrones." - westeros.org

One thing that makes this series different from the rest in fantasy genre (and the reason why I like it so much) is the dark and heavy story line. There are no happy endings, fun times, amusing magic etc. Characters that you think would be central to the story die all of a sudden. Martin breaks away from the trite fantasy stereotype, and creates a masterpiece as a result.

Another great aspect of the book is that the characters are neither good nor bad. The story is told from the point of view of several characters. In one chapter a character seems "bad", while in the next we understand the story from his POV, and see the reason behind his actions. This is so unlike most other fantasy stuff, particularly Tolkein.

I have started with the second volume in this series, A Clash of Kings, and cant stop thinking about this amazingly detailed world MArtin has created for us to enjoy.

Read it!

first post

MT is awesome!! Just finished setting it up, and am ready for my first post now. Also configured the archiving options, thanks to NSLog and others.
Still playing around with it. Looks like a huge time sink though ;)

Anyways, now that I have the basic thing up and running, I can work on making it look prettier as and when I find the time.

I'll probably soon post a review of 21 grams, and A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. In a word, both were awesome!