So why is the title of this post ‘Yet another good note’? Its because of moments like these …

And this

And this

I guess seeing these images and videos makes re-assures me that there are people in this world with incredible will power and courage and also some genuinely good people trying their best to save them. Its a long way ahead, but I hope Haiti will rise above the rubble and emerge stronger in every way.

Picture credit and thumbnail attribution to the ‘The Big Picture‘ blog’s post titled ‘Faces from Haiti‘ from Boston.com

The Escapist

The Escapist is a story of five convicts who plot to escape jail. Pretty standard prison break movie, huh? Well not quite. The plot revolves around an old convicts desire to break prison to meet his dying daughter for the last time, and he recruits some other prison mates to help him escape together. There are twists and turn throughout the movie, and the ending is unbelievable. The film is fast paced, and will always keep you at the edge of your seat.

Taken

Taken is a simple story. I retired CIA operative, with a cold relationship with his daughter, suddenly finds himself with a situation in which his daughter is kidnapped in another continent. She’s taken and sold in the slave trade, but Liam Neeson has other plans, and begins some serious ass kicking, the likes of which are rarely seen on film. But what else could you expect? After all he trained Batman!

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a documentary detailing the issue of anabolic steroid use which is prevelant in America. Roger Ebert said of this movie “This movie is remarkable in that it seems to be interested only in facts”. Its not only informative of the facts regarding anabolic steroids, but more importantly and interestingly, is a glimpse in to psychology of the ‘Win at all costs’ attitude in america, and grey areas of winning a competitionl and losing yourself.

Let the Right One In

Actually, the proper name of this film is “Låt den rätte komma in”. Its a swedish movie about a boy and his relationship with a vampire. The boy is constantly bullied, and the only good thing going in his life is a young girl in the neighbourhood, whom he later finds out is a vampire. I did not find it particularly scary, and I don’t think the directors intention is to make a horror film. It is more in the drama category rather than the horror genre, and is filled with great performances by both the boy and the girl.

Man on Wire

Man on Wire is a documentary, but made in way that it feels more like a hiest movie. Its about the extraordinary tale of a tightrope walker from france, who dreams of walking between the twin towers in New York. However, this is illegal, so they have to sneak into the towers in the night. Ultimately they become successfull in the ‘artistic crime of the century’, but at the cost of broken relationships and deportation from the USA. A fascinating tale of a man risking death in the excerise of his passion.

Spread the hope and cheer!

Thumbnail credit: Thomas Hawk

It also brings up the question: How much relevance do we give to each country in terms of news quantity? Just because China as a billion people doesn’t mean that an interesting news event in Mozambique shouldn’t be published instead. How do journalists gauge which news story is relevant and which isn’t?In the video we learn that the world (other than USA and Iraq) is covered literally only 1% of the time. Instead the media over there spends time covering Anna Nicole Smith’s death and Britney Spears. One of the factors that I overlooked was because it was simply cheaper to do it rather than spending on foreign bureaus.

Slimy paparazzi are easier and cheaper to find than honest and courageous journalists. Sadly, this is beginning to even happen in India. I would say that 90% of the news on Indian television is basically horse shit. These news channels are even hosting stand up comedy and quiz shows. Why? Because it is much cheaper to make a guy do stand up and film him for half an hour than do some serious investigative journalism.

There was a time when reporting could bring down presidents. Now they can’t even write their own stories.

Thumnail Attribution: Karlfrankowski

Everyone but actual developers. At least all the good developers that I’ve talked to who have even the smallest idea of what the world wide web is, think that a web without Yahoo at this stage would be a bad idea. And I agree.

People say that Yahoo has not innovated and Google has. Thats just the effects of Kool-aid. Anyone who has actual knowledge of the scientific community doing work on information retrieval, text/web mining and Human-Computer Interaction, knows that this community is actually pretty open (this video being one of the examples of scientists sharing their findings with others), and scientists regularly like to share their work amongst each other. And contrary to popular belief, Microsoft research as well as Yahoo Research are doing some pretty amazing things. See this, this, this and more if you don’t believe me.

This doesn’t mean that Google is not the best search engine out there currently, because it is. But the margin of their lead is not as big as it is made out to be by the press. Most people are just plain used to Google search, and have a Halo effect regarding it. This makes it extremely difficult to make an argument that any search engine is better than Google. It will be interesting how companies like Powerset will offset this Halo effect. Whatever their stragies will be, I know that it will involve a whole lot of PR and marketing. Simply being technically superior will not give you market share.

The Problem with the Yahoo and Microsoft Merger

Firstly, I don’t think that it is going to be a merger at all. It is an aquisition, plain and simple. I don’t know how many Yahoo employees, especially developers, will be comfortable with the idea of having Microsoft as their boss. Yahoo has been of late been staight up amazing when it comes to promoting open standards and educating everyone about best practices in web development. YUI, YDN and their stance on progressive enhancement has been widely respected. Whereas, Microsoft, especially when it comes to be web, has always been about closed and proprietary standards.

Also, it is a given that eventually (even though it will take a few years), Microsoft would like all Yahoo! properties to be in .net (or whatever new stuff they will come up in the future, like silverlight and stuff). In that case, all the awesome developers who are good in PHP, Perl and other open source technologies, will either have to learn Microsoft’s closed technologies, or just be laid off. If I were a Yahoo developer right now, I would be mighty concerned about the current situation.

It seems that right now, the Yahoo! board might be willing to put on a fight and continue the good fight. I really hope the executives at Yahoo listen to their engineers and developers and not to a bunch of greedy Yahoo shareholders who have no real attachment to the company and who just want to cash out.

Thumbnail Attribution: Yodel Anecdotal

Thumbnail Attribution: Trevor D.

I, along with many many others, am really excited for the new batman film thats about to come out….and thats a huge compliment  to the people in charge of its marketing campaign. Thats because the film isn’t supposed to be released for another six months! And already so much hype and excitement!

I’ve always been a Batman fan ever since I was a child. I could relate to him more. Maybe because everyone of us has a dark side we want to let out once a while. Maybe because he is not an alien/mutated/ghost, etc. but just a normal human being with truckloads of money and attitude!

I remember reading all the comics my brother used to buy (he was a huge fan himself) when I was seven or eight years old.  But I was a Batman fan even before that. I remember playing with a batman toy when I was five years old. At that time, the first Batman  movie was about to be released. I even remember going to the theater to see the movie with my family. Of course, at that time, I was five years old and I wouldn’t stop talking/screaming and everyone was staring at us hoping I would shut up!

Part of what makes it great for me to be Batman fan today is the fact that I’m a really big fan of Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun, American Psycho, 3:10 to Yuma), Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige)and Heath Ledger (Monster’s Ball, The Patriot, Brokeback Mountain) as well.

Well, back to the viral marketing campaign…It is probably the best ever done for a movie. The heart of the campaign involves creating various sites connected to the story or Gotham City in general. The image of the joker has progressively been revealed in stages. Even now, not too much of the joker is to bee seen exept for a few photographs. However, Heath does look creepy and a psycho, from whatever we have seen so far.

Besides that they have been active on the major comic book conventions too. Once they had a treasure hunt done as well. They also released a trailer early on with nothing else other than a logo and dialogues. The new trailer featuring actual footage from the film was to be shown exclusively in the Will Smith movie ‘I am Legend’, but as expected, has leaked online. Now they have officially released the trailer. You can search for it on youtube if you  want, or just goto ATasteForTheTheatrical.com to see it.

They also sent a bunch of exclusive film merchandise to one of my favorite artists, John Mayer, who has an extensive online presence. They probably knew he was going to blog about it (who wouldn’t, if you suddenly got in your mail such stuff for free before everyone else!). That is just brilliant marketing. Plus the merchandise is  cool as well, especially the T-shirt. Below are some pics of what he got…

Lately, a LOT of sites have sprung up…the whole list till now is below…

• TheDarkKnightMovie.com (The Official Site)
• IBelieveInHarveyDent.com
• IBelieveInHarveyDentToo.com
• WhySoSerious.com
• Rent-A-Clown.com
• RorysDeathKiss.com
• TheGothamTimes.com
• TheHahaTimes.com
• WeAreTheAnswer.com
• GothamPolice.com
• GothamCityRail.com
• Gothamnationalbank.com
• Rememberinggina.org
• Gpdiad.com
• Gothamusd.net
• Gothamcab.com
• ACMESecuritysystems.com
• GVAFoundation.com
• ATasteForTheTheatrical.com (You can download the latest trailer for the Dark Knight there, you or can just go to this link

Also try going to http://www.whysoserious.com/personalityprofile and http://www.whysoserious.com/mausoleum/

Also check out batman-on-film.com for everything related to batman… Now some more photos…

I’m psyched!

Thumbail Attribution : Jeremy Farmer

1. SendToFtp : A great little too that integrates itself into the right click menu. All you have to do is right click on the file and point to Send To->SendToFTP. Specify the settings and the file is sent to your server. Great time saver and especially useful if you just want to ftp just one or two files at a time.
2. Cpick : This piece of software is my life. I thank God with all my heart and ask him to bless the person who created this piece of software. Just point and click anywhere on the screen and get its color code. So easy!
3. Crimson Editor : A lightweight editor for editing your source code files. Has support for syntax highlighting for a whole lot of languages such as PHP, Perl, HTML, CSS, C/C++, Java, Python, etc. It has a tabbed interface, so you can easily edit multiple files. A very handy tool.
4. XAMPP : XAMPP installs and configures Apache, PHP, MySQL, FileZila, Mercury Mail, PHPMyAdmin automatically for you. Just install XAMPP and you’re ready to get coding. You can even optionally install Perl and Tomcat if you want to. Highly recommended.
5. MusikCube : I know, this isn’t really a web development tool, but everyone I know likes to code with some music playing in the background. And when you’re coding, its really irritating when your music player takes up all the memory and your editor gets slow as a sloth. Well, MusikCube is a lightweight music player that consumes very little memory. Usually its about 3-4MB. I like it better than iTunes simply because iTunes typically takes around 60MB in my computer, and I have version 6. I haven’t even installed iTunes 7 simply because that takes even more memory. Around 200MB, I think. That’s pretty large. With MusikCube, I can do every worthwhile thing that iTunes can do, using a tenth of the RAM. Pretty damn good!

Some honorable mentions: AceFTP free (Pretty neat ftp client, I use it for FTPing a large amount of files at once), NotePad++ (I just prefer Crimson Editor), WAMP (Pretty neat if you don’t want to install all the bells and whistles and just want apache, php, mysql, phpmyadmin and sqlite) and 1 by 1 Player (takes extremely low memory, but I like the interface of MusikCube better).

I hope you find these usefull … Cheers!

Thumbnail Attribution: Striatic

This got me thinking…why is that the current educational system (in any country) place a higher priority on mathematics and science, and a relatively lower emphasis on music, arts and sports?Now (maybe because I’m from the engineering side myself) I feel there is some justification as people generally find it tougher to understand initial concepts related to mathematics and science as compared to the arts. Hence a greater emphasis maybe justified.

However it is extent of the emphasis we place on such subjects, which is alarming. If I place in front of you two men of equal age (lets assume two 30 something males), one specializing in dance and the other one specializing in astrophysics. Which one would you consider more intelligent? Why?

Whichever answer you choose, you could be wrong. It may be that the other person had contributed much more to his field, than the person you chose to be more intelligent. Thus the true gauge of a person’s value to society is his contribution to it. And herein lays my definition of an ‘intelligent person’: A person who uses his talent for the good of society.

If Superman did not use his superpowers for the good of mankind, would you really call him an intelligent being? I wouldn’t. Talent is latent. Intelligence is applied. And the good of society can happen through technology, arts as well as other fields. Thus the arts should be given its due respect.

I don’t know why, but I feel that somehow most of us get the creativity sucked out of us by the time we are in college. It’s like someone saying ‘you can either be creative or analytical, but not both’. I disagree with this mutual exclusion. For our society to truly develop, we have to progress in all fields. Focusing on just one part will lead to lop sided development. Furthermore, I think that exposing engineering students to some arts classes might even give them inspiration for innovation. Just the same kind of progress in the field of arts could be made with arts students exposed to classes in the sciences.

I don’t think original thinkers are an endangered species right now, but they may be in the future. The only way for their conservation is to keep the environment balanced and for us to equally progress in all fields.

Thumbnail Attribution: aymanvanbregt

Well, some of the things he says does make sense, like its too expensive, and we have yet to see how it performs on the usability front. Looking good is alright, but how about performance?

Well, poeple are saying that its going to cost around $549 which is around Rs 24000 in INR. Now, I’ve seen poeple buying phones much more expensive than that, but for the iPhone to be a cultural phenomenon like the iPod, it has to get less expensive. However, as with all mobile phones, this will happen. It will be interesting to see what happens with the iPhone when in the future its price comes down to around $300. I think that will be it’s tipping point. It will also be interesting to see how the market competition is going to react to it. LG already has a new phone out called the ‘prada’ which is quite similar to the iPhone. Amusingly, LG is accusing Apple of copying its design for the iPhone.

They should realize that it really doesnt matter who copied what. The important thing is to cater to a market well in terms of features, pricing and support.

The ones which will do that, will win.

Thumbnail Attribution: Shapeshift