Movies

Lately, I saw Aarya-2, a telugu film starring Allu Arjun and Kajal Agarwal. The movie was bad and yet again, I had struggle discussing the movie with some of my film buff friends, who think that this is good and much entertaining.

The term ‘ Entertainment’ has taken a different shape in the telugu film industry altogether these days. If any conversation or situation brings the slightest possible smile on the face, it is being called entertainment. The broader the smile, the bigger is the entertainment. A protagonist who can marry a girl to hand over her to his friend to keep up the friendship is quite something. And yet, it is entertainment to the people. It is us, the viewers whose values have degraded. We are amused by the character of such heroes.

There were days, when people used to make films like Shankarabharanam. Also films like ‘ Miss Pamela’ starring Silk Smitha hit the screens, but everyone knows which one is made of what material and especially for whom! Pathetically, the standards went too low, that the audience is unable to see the difference of the material anymore! Yet, we believe that quality of the art is increasing just like the quality of infrastructure.

Film making is just like any other art. In fact greater than all the arts, as it is a cumulative product of all the arts. But, how good are today’s films to the society? Had a character like Shah Rukh's in Darr not there, the youth probably won't be so possessive about it's so called lovers. The incident at Virginia Tech University was inspired by a Korean film called Oldboy. I personally know a 26 year old man who started smoking after watching Mahesh babu enjoying a puff in the movie Okkadu. And still movie analysts praise these products as art. If someone questions the impact on the society, they are eventually called orthodox and low in taste.

Personally, I am not against the themes of the above mentioned films. But there has to be some kind of differentiation that has to be pumped into the character. For example, the Joker from The Dark Knight is culmination of evil and it was portrayed so. The dialogue refers to this fact throughout the film. This leaves a bad taste towards the character in one's mind and it is less likely that we accept the deeds and less likely to follow them in real life. But, how good are films with Shah Rukh Khan playing a baddie when he is a hero personified to crores of people around the globe?

We give so much importance to various factors like taste, ambiance, hospitality etc., when we visit a restaurant. If any of the above factors fail to impress, we vow to ourselves not to return to the restaurant ever again. If such importance is given exercising our choice for food for the body, what should be the importance that has to be given to the food for thought? One has to understand the impact of a film on the society before praising it and giving it a thumbs up. This will change the overview of the creators of so called art and helps increasing the quality of a dying art.

Sangham Saranam Gachami

Thunderbird

These days I am using all open source software.. I switched to Mozilla thunderbird and it is surely a better Email client. Compared to Outlook, it is a small software (In respect to size of the software) and handles all the functionality offered by Outlook. Only catch is you need to have some Add-ons installed to the base software.

When coupled with IMAP, thunderbird is just great.. But, it has its drawbacks as well and can be addressed with slight tweaks to the settings. I will list down some tweaks and settings to the basic installation that makes thunderbird a competition to MS Outlook.

Calender support

Thunderbird doesn't have a calender by default. So, it can not handle Appointments and schedules by default. To overcome this, we have to install an add-on called Lightning. This is also developed by Mozilla corporation and it integrates into thunderbird very well.

Minimize to tray

Most of the people use outlook in a minimized status to save space on their taskbar. Thunderbird can achieve this by installing an add-on called Minimize to tray.

Cursor position in Reply messages

Thunderbird adds the previous mail content as a quote and the cursor is positioned at the bottom when replying any mail. This is bit uneasy as we have to always press "Ctrl + Home" to go to the start of the mail before writing anything. To tweak this, follow the steps mentioned below:
1. In Thunderbird: Go to "Edit > Account Settings" *
2. Select "Composition & Addressing" for the account in question
3. Make sure the "Automatically quote the original message when replying" checkbox is checked.
4. In the drop-down box below that, select the option "start my reply above the quote"

* On Windows, the option can be found in: Tools -> Account Settings.

Culture Unplugged Video

I just finished watching this short film. This is amazing stuff. Please watch it..

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

American Economy

Ever wondered why America's economy fell off the cliff??

READ ON....

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (Made in Japan) for 6 am.

While his coffeepot (Made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (Made in Hong Kong).

He put on a dress shirt (Made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (Made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (Made in Korea).

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (Made in India) he sat down with his calculator (Made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today.

After setting his watch (Made in Taiwan) to the radio (Made in India) he got in his car (Made in Germany) filled it with GAS (From Saudi Arabia) and continued his search for a good paying American job.

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (Made in Malaysia), John decided to relax for a while.

He put on his sandals (Made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (Made in France) and turned on his TV (Made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in America.

AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT....Made in Kenya.

Accident, by chance.

The latest news is that I fell off my bike yet again. This makes it 8th time in life. As usual the wounds are good enough to make me sleep on one side on the bed. Total left side of the body got rashes. But nothing to worry.

But you know what, this accident made me feel light at heart. I am bored of life that is quite routine all the time. Those wounds just reminded me how careless we used to be in our primes. Not that I am enjoying the burning sensation physically, but actually enjoying it from inside. I am sure many of you will feel that I am not making any sense, but stop for a minute to remember all those things we cherish.

• Meeting Vishnu for the first time in life; actually happened because of wounds due to my first accident off a bike. He chanced to brush off my wounds in a queue to submit the application forms for BCA entrance. I hated him at that point of time and was shocked to see him as a classmate when I joined Sardar Patel College. And now, he is a friend of mine for life.
  
  
• Vishnu and I fell under the Elephantia bridge returning from Sangeet off his LML Vespa.
  
  
• The day I rushed to "Satya" Tutions with box of sweets on the occasion of my sister's engagement. Ram driving my kinetic 'straight handled'.(Biggest of my list till date)
  
  
• Ram and me falling off my Suzuki Fiero on the Tank Bund and going with all bloody clothes to see off mommy to Australia.
  
  
• My bandages on both hands after an accident on the day of our 1st family lunch.(They resembled a boxer's inner gloves)

Life is too small and try enjoying it every bit. If you have a positive attitude, every thing in life turns out to be positive.

Google Talk, Labs Edition

I have just checked out Google Talk, Labs edition which is basically in beta stage. This is a cool tool from Google, but with lot many drawbacks. The much awaited invisible mode is available along with smileys, integration to google calenders and orkut.



But the drawbacks are really major things like lack of file transfer feature and a separate window for every individual chat. This makes this tool unusable in an Office environment as an internal communication tool. All the chats appear as tabs in the main window itself rather than a new window. If you have a habit of closing the main window, to save space on your task bar, the icon in the system tray blinks whenever a new chat message arrives. This might not catch your attention always and there is a chance of losing the whole point of communication itself. Unfortunately, I close the main window. So, this Labs Edition is unusable for me.

To download the Google Talk, Labs Edition, visit here.

For detailed differences between the regular Gtalk and Labs edition, visit here.

Life

I had one of the sad weekends in recent times last week. Also, in a way, this is the most remembered in a positive sense even.

One of my closest pal is blessed with a baby girl and I visited Hyderabad to see the baby. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the baby as she was in an ICU. The whole of the weekend was spent at hospital mostly..

Also, I spent some quality time with another pal, with whom my relation was little severed in the past due to some unhealthy circumstances.

On the whole, many revelations occurred this weekend regarding relationships and their weight in life.

And lastly, I thank almighty to give me this life and friends on whom I can depend on..

The chronicles of (A)Satyam.

Ramalingaraju resigned from the post of Chairman of Satyam Computers yesterday i.e., 07/01/09 accepting that a scam of 7000 crores is done.

This incident is first of its kind and resulted in the loss of investor's money and faith in the company. It is very hard to earn both of them back any time in near future.

From a layman's perspective, what I understood is that Ramalingaraju inflated the balance sheets of the company to wrongly portray that the company is in profit making and subsequently resulting in high share values and investments from the public. This is all done to evade the shame of accepting that the 4th largest Indian IT firm is in losses and on the brink of closing down.

Also, Ramalingaraju's sons started another company named Maytas and Satyam tried to acquire that company in 2008. This eventually led the government to probe into the financial dealings of Satyam.

Whatever the fate is for Mr. Raju, Indian IT sector itself faced a humiliation with this incident. The year 2009 also has started with a wrong note. Anticipating much worse scenarios in 2009..