Yeah, the best torrent client will get the much needed Mac love.

There was a talk that µTorrent will be ported to OS X ’soon’ and this was sweet news as most of the OS X users are using either Azurues or Transmission. Vuze is a bloat (so use v.2.5.0.4) and Transmission doesn’t excite me (doesn’t offer as much feature & control as Azureus does and I don’t like the UI).

The Mac version was made public earlier than the developers wanted. An internal alpha version was leaked to torrent trackers. This is a cocoa app and looks like any other Mac app, not the Windows client ported to Mac. So this assures that the developers are serious about the Mac version.

The official release should be out any time now. Signup at µTorrent website to be notified as soon as it’s released.

My torrent client story. Initially I was using BitTornado (still a nice client, many private tracker recommend it). Then switched to µTorrent lured by the features and control. Switched to Azurues with the advent of my Mac (occasionally using µTorrent with Crossover). It seems I’ll be back with my favourite client soon.

I took the client for a spin to see if it was a half asses effort. And with new episodes of Heroes, Prison Break, How I Met your Mother and The Big Bang Theory scorching the trackers, what better way to test it?

Check out my review at Smoking Apples. The bottom line is it’s buggy and missing basic some features. Not at all a bad for a ‘first’ release and should only get better. It wouldn’t recommend it, as yet, though it’s as functional as an internal alpha release should be.

Can’t wait for the stable release to hit and reinstating µTorrent as my default torrent client.

There’s nothing like watching live action and getting your adrenaline going.

But those who don’t have access to TV or missed the action can watch Olympics Online.

By now you should’ve realized that YouTube sucks. The quality is poor, highlights only videos and the site is not well designed (I don’t want a random video to load automatically and takes time to find the videos you want to watch).

Now for the good news. You can download 720p HDTV rips from Usenet [Here] and torrent trackers.

Trackers like BTJunkie and Mininova track 156 and 71 videos resp. as I write this. The opening ceremony is the most popular video last week. The HDTV rip of that torrent [Beijing Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony 720p HDTV x264-ORENJi] has over 63,000 peers at BTJunkie and 50,000 peers at Mininova! Check out this Fireworks video :Beijing Olympics’08 Torch&Fireworks BBC-HD 720p x264. Awesome show.

Even in Private Trackers the Beijing Olympics have increased activity. TD has around 25 videos (90% of them are Swimming).

I like the commentary also. You get to know a lot. The The Hindi commentary of DD is hilarious (esp. Badminton) . Some samples:-

Chodna nahi Wang ko.”

Bharat ke liye acha kabar. Ek ank mila.

“Phelps should ask money from TV Channels and FINA”

Thats what Spitz (7 Golds in single Olympics and 9 overall) remarks and rightly so. I love swimming and can watch hours together. But many watch Swimming only for Phelps.

The 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay (Men) was awesome. I’ve watched that video for over 10 times and still don’t bored. Phelps rules. Phelps is phenomenal. It gets nothing short of Gold medal with World Record timings whenever he dives.

DD doesn’t show the action from the water cube in mornings. It’s in mornings where the finals take place and the afternoon session for heats & semis. What is DD doing when there are 4 finals? They can at least show the action deferred live.

The advantage of downloading is that you get HD quality videos, watch what you want and no Ads. Fire your Torrent client and get your daily [HD] Olympics fix.

I normally don’t like to post ‘random post’ kind of BS but what the fuck, I don’t care, we won a Gold!

Abhinav Bindra Wins Gold!

Finally!

This is one of the best sporting moment for India. I rate it only after the World Cup ‘83 Victory. We’ve never won a Individual Olympic gold before.

The guy was amazing. All his shots was more than 10 and his last shot struck bull’s eye. He won quite convincingly in the end. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Sometime back the DD presenter give the news that Bindra had qualified (3rd). So I was thinking they were showing the qualifying.

I saw the event live on DD, both the action and the metal ceremony. Abhinav was so calm and hardly showed any emotions. I was crying and so happy as if I had won the gold metal. A very proud moment and will in our memory for a long time to come.

Congrats Abhinav [His blog: Abhinav Bindra's Road to Beijing].

One Billion People and One Metal?

It’s a irony that Bindra shot a gold on a day where our “cricket superstars” were creamed by the Lankans. Don’t get me wrong, I love Cricket but it’s time other sports get their share of attention.

We cut out a sorry figure every Olympics (or any other event). The root of all problem is many don’t get the support of parents who don’t want their child to take risk. The society also looks down if we tell your were a sportsperson.

The next issue is of course the infrastructure. I think we don’t have a sound infrastructure in other key areas, leave alone for sports. It would be great if we have a system like the AIS as in Australia. AIS assures the athlete most of the expense of their training, education, housing, etc. That’s why Australia, USA and China produce great sportspersons.

Finally we need the much needed cash injection. 90% of our people are money minded. They’ll even rape a dog for money. So I hope the Government and many companies come forward and offer cash incentives, gift Mercedes and sponsor the gold medalists.

It’s about time that we pull up our socks and get those medals.

Good Sporting Action

This is the greatest sporting event. The greatest ever Olympics ever.

It’s a real treat for sports fans all over the world. Where else can see Federer-Nadal-Djokovic clashes, Phelps chasing 8 gold medals (already 2 done with World Record timings), USA-Australia rivalry in the pool, Chinese Diving poetry, USA’s NBA All-Star basketball creaming other teams, hopefully Yelena Isinbayeva’s yet another World Record pole vault essay, Brazil-Argentina football clashes, the Kenyan and the Ethiopians running to glory in the same stage and at the same time?

Watching the USA basketball team drubbing China, Phelps double gold with World Record timings, Brazil’s famed South American Football symphony, et al gets your adrenaline going. And seeing the Tricolor hosted with the Jana Gana Mana is emotional and just priceless.

Will Phelps win 8 Golds? Will Liu Xiang can carry the hopes of a nation? Who will be the fastest man? Who will be the strongest man? Will India win 2 medals?

Don’t miss the action.

Watch Olympics Live Online

You can watch the Olympics Live online as we watch Cricket Live Online. The IOC has teamed with YouTube [Beijing2008] to offer us Video clips.

The sites that offer live coverage of Beijing Olympics:
** It’s Game Time
** Watch Olympics Online

Some TV Broadcast Network who are telecasting:
** NBC
** BBC
** CBC

Let’s see whether we can get more metals. Hopeless in Swimming, Athletics (Anju is hopeless), Boxing (even Vijender isn’t good enough) and Sailing/Rowing. Will be very surprised if Sharath (TT) gets a medal (Asian Games Gold medalist). Saina seems to be in good touch. Hope Rathore shoots a metal this time also. An outside chance in Tennis. What do you think?

How much ever be the peers, we don’t get maximum speed. The case with the Private Trackers uploading is a different issue. There are none to download what you’re trying to seed. Sometimes you don’t even want to download as the speed might be low anyway or don’t upload as you can afford to maintain ratio.

Often people ask me what to do and how I manage. Martin is fed up and asks what to do:

i just don’t wanna use the public
trackers anymore ’cause it’s very slow

What that is to follow might not be new to ’seasoned torrenters’ but I want to drive home one point for the rest of us.

Be patient.

What should you do?

It’s simple and common sense should prevail. I just download/upload more than one file at a time. If I have time, then I look if the torrent makes use of full BW, otherwise by default I just run more than one file to download/upload for public/private trackers.

Patience Pays

It really does.

When you are into P2P, see the number of occasions that requires you be patient…
- wait for the DVD/HD Rip release
- wait for an invite to your favorite Private Tracker
- wait for the file to be downloaded fully (can be a agonizing wait if it’s a porn )
- wait for peers when stuck at 99.9% (believe me, you would be surprised as how many people suffer from the “99.9% syndrome”)
- keep the torrent running if the download is going slow
- keep uploading the file for months to maintain a decent ratio
- what do you do if you delete the RARs before extracting? Wait for the file to be downloaded again.

Wait, wait, wait…patiently.

I believe we need loads of patience in this P2P business. Else pay for uploads, get in private trackers, watch from TV, rent/buy DVDs, beg/borrow/steal from others.

Go, max out your BW.

It was a different type of Superhero movie. Usually our hero saves the world and along the way, we see his pretty workaholic girlfriend and some cool action sequences. The Dark Knight was more of a ‘masterpiece’ than a ‘Batman movie’.

The cinematography was fantastic. Gotham and Honk Kong looked stunningly dark and deep. With Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine and Maggie Gyllenhaal around, rest assured that you’re set to watch a grand performance. It’s Tour de all-the-way-to-Oscars.

Some ohhh-ahhh Moments

You are sucked into the intense drama from the start. I thought the movie was more into the Drama Genre than Action. Nevertheless the action stuffs was edge-of-the-seat material and there was this 3 ohhh-ahhh moments:
1. Batmobile to BatPod and Batman-The Joker chase
2. Batman exit with Chin Han
3. Batman flying with the Bat-like wings. (makes Superman’s thing look like a towel)

The Joker lives on

The Dark Knight is Heath Ledger (The Joker) show all the way. Batman was overshadowed. When “Heath Ledger” came in the opening credits, there was loud cheers. The Joker’s opening scene (pencil trick) was applauded. Whistles and claps all around like a Superstar Rajnikanth movie. Never have I seen people whistling for the villain and want the superhero to lose!

We loved characters Angel Eyes (The Good, the Ugly, the Bad), Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint (The Usual Suspects) but The Joker was sinister, funny and brutal. Heath played the character of lifetime. Even Batman looked frightened.

Again whistles for Heath Ledger in the closing credits and for “In memory of …”. It’s sad that we wouldn’t see such an actor who can blow us away, again.

The joker. We wanted Batman to lose and never have we ‘respected’ a villains so much. Christopher Nolan. Thanks for this amazing movie. The BatPod. Ahhh…see the movie to see how stunning it is. The Dark Knight. Enough said. Reserve your tickets, now.

The bottom line is you get a complete package. Couldn’t ask for more.

9/10

Back from the screening of the movie and had a good time. I wanted to see a movie and was caught between Love Story 2050 and this one [Read about that].

Jaane Tu.. is a fun, bubbly, cute and a feel goodmovie. The movie has more highs than lows and I loved every minute.

The plot is your usual one where the boy and girl don’t realize that they’re in love till the end of the movie. The youth factor, great music, witty & comic dialogues, freshness scores heavily for the movie.

* No Spoilers - Cruise @ 120 km/h *

When Pappu can’t dance, Pappu will give you a good time

More college student gave attendance to this matinee show than their lectures. We had so much fun whistles and giving commentary even if it was at the cost of missing dialogues. You might’ve seen million of such movie but this is full of energy.

The dialogues are witty and humorous. The whole cinema hall was alive with energy. Watch with your friends and have a rocking time.

New Wine in an Old Bottle

…and it’s not the other way around. The wine (treatment) is fresh while the bottle (story) is old. Nothing’s new. Just when you think you’d enough of these romances, a new one manages to interest you. Genelia & Imran being did fairly well. Wait till you see how the songs are shot - the dances & stuffs is done different. Actors did a great job as they didn’t need to act as they were natural. Watch out for the opening credits - it’s amazing.

A Word about the climax - a no brainer and you can guess it. The ending would’ve made a rom-com Hollywood director proud. Never seen anything like this before in Indian Cinema.

Most sequences are predictable. Your ‘cool words’ vocabulary improves with words like meow, boms, jiggy, shitty, potty, etc. It got monotonous (perfect time to do your commentary :twisted:) during the course of the second half. The movie is not perfect but on the whole it’s watchable and a fun movie.

Jiggy jiggy ja ja ta na na… come humming out of the cinemas.

6.5/10

Me thinks… Poppy Chops (Priyanka) is super hot. Equally good is Genelia. She might not have those Ponds cream killer looks but she’s bubbly and cute. Hmm. LS seems to have a story which can fuck you or interest you. The lame ass animations makes me thing again. Jaane Tu can be murky waters and I would need a disaster management assistance if I want to recover from the 210 mins of cheesy, run out of the mill, singing under trees, rain drenched actors boring us to death. Both are risky business.

Jaane Tu music is by the master - A R Rahman. The OST is amazing and I’ve heard all the heard more than 20 times in 2 days! Honestly LS songs didn’t seem good or maybe I didn’t listen enough. 1 up for Jaane Tu. Aamir Khan did a good job with the marketing and getting the buzz around the movie (almost as good as SRK did for Om Shanti Om). Team LS also did a fine but not as aggressively as their counterpart. Jaane tu did surely keep me interested. 2 -0 in favour of Jaane Tu.

Heard that preview show audiences liked Jaane Tu and booed LS. Ok, sealing the deal with Jaane Tu.

Jaane Tu review coming up within an hour…

Lost, Prison Break and Heroes are the most popular TV Shows. Watch them at the cost of getting addicted.

Let’s cut the crap now. To make the proceedings interesting here, I write no review about the shows and I’ll list the best seasons to watch out for.

Lost Vs Prison Break Vs Heroes

Here’s the individual season rankings:-

Heroes 1 > PB 1 > Lost 2 > Lost 4 > PB 3 > Lost 1 > Lost 3 > Heroes 2 > PB 2

…and on the whole I would rate:
Lost > Heroes > PB

* PB - Prison Break. The number denotes the season. PB 1 > PB 2 means PB 1 is better than PB 2.

Why these shows rock?

Lost: The character development is so damn well done. The screenplay goes back and forth in the lives of the characters and their life in the island simultaneously.

I’m a sucker for feel good thingies. Many ending sequences is shot in an uplifting mood and background score without the dialogues speak volumes about what they want to convey. Plus those locations are beautiful. Sun kissed sand beaches and lush forests makes lostville exotic.

The best thing about Lost is it almost gets better every season.

Prison Break: Initially my liking to PB was attributed to the Prison Break movies, I liked. It’s a mash up of Shawshank Redemption and Escape from Alcatraz. Lost it’s sheen in the second season yet picked up pace from the third one.

Heroes: The first season totally rocks. I used to see 5-6 epics in a day else I couldn’t sleep. We get thrilled while watching a Superman or a Batman movie - imagine if you get hit by 20 such super heroes? Even though the second season is not as good as the first one it keep your interest going. It wasn’t great but not bad either.

New seasons of Heroes (S3 - Sept ‘08) and Lost (S5 - early ‘09) are already being shot and I can’t wait.

How would you rank the seasons of these 3 shows?

Nevertheless, I didn’t like the movie.

A biological weapon of mass destruction is on loose and Kamal has to destroy it. For this we all 10 characters, CGIs, movie panning across USA, India and Japan.

Basically I can’t understand why a simple plot (if at all there was one) needs animation or 10 characters? Unnecessary fluff spoilt it, maybe without CGI, 10 characters and a tighter screenplay the movie might have been better. Never expected the movie this bad.

The movie was disastorous and I couldn’t sit through the entire movie.

“Takes Indian Cinema to the next level”. My foot.

There’s nothing in the movie to take it forward. Cheap humour (and I didn’t even smile), below average songs, nothing different in stunts, no story and above all bad screenplay.

I can’t understand how people say the animation was top notch. Too childish (or looked Amateur) even to feature in Cartoon Network. When you see CGI (graphics) works, you should feel it’s real. I understand that the budget might not permit to go for top notch animations, but they shouldn’t have attempted in the first place if they can’t afford it.

Seriously I fail to understand what’s technically sound in the movie. It’s just a me-too average tamil movie.

Dasavatharam for the sake of 10 characters?

Why have 10 roles when you can do the same in 3 roles? A completely new sub plot was there to accommodate 2 characters (17th century priest and the Pondicherry Vincent). Totally useless.

Kamal did Michael Madana Kama Rajan in 4 roles but all of them was unique and different. Here it was evident that the 10 character were done by the heck of it.

Take the 10 avatars with a lot of NaCl.

10 Reasons to stay away

1. No story, no screenplay. What’s the point of directors role?
2. Unnecessary characters and sub plots added to fit more characters. Leave Kamal’s 10 roles. Even other actors weren’t necessary - Asin, Mallika, and many others.
3. Ameteurish animation.
4. Below Average songs.
5. Childish to see Asin obsessed with God (idol). Does anyone like that these days?
6. What happens when a Japanese, Afgan and Andhrite attempt to speak Tamil?
7. The make-up people (especially Fletcher, George Bush, Kalif Ullah Khan) don’t look like real characters.
8. A action movie without decent stunts? Stunts were like stunts in movies that are beamed in TV at 11:30 AM.
9. Tries to tell messages (illegal sand quarry, about God, caste system among various other mokka issues). Sorry, I can’t get any except that the movie is a very bad and we should stay away.
10. Disappointing movie from a good actor like Kamal. Skip this flick and maintain your respect for him.

Want more reasons?

Sivaji didn’t have any story but it had a decent screenplay, ‘Rajni-style’, OK acting, good comedy and great songs. That’s why Sivaji was hit. Rajni played to his strengths. That’s why Rajni is a super star. Kamal can act well, then why the hell can’t you make movie like Anbae Sivam or Nayakan? Indian was action movie but it had a good story and crisp screenplay.

I’m catching up with the movie again! After all this torture? Because 14 of our family members, cousins are coming. Going for the fun.

Rating it one star only for the Tsunami/climax sequences (not for animations but the implications).

1/10

Not a lot of movies interested me in the recent times like Dasavatharam.

Kamal Hassan’s Magnum opus, India’s costliest flick (Rs 165 Crore?) is due to release tomorrow.

If you’re a fan of good acting and interesting movies, you shouldn’t miss Dasavatharam. Kamal will sizzle in 10 different roles - never ever done before. Characters like George Bush and a NASA astronaut arouse your interest.

Some action scenes and the makeup looks stunning. Almost 80-90% of the movie involves graphics. It’s not all action but also romance & comedy. It’s a long time now that I’ve seen a Tamil movie in Cinemas so my expectations are high.

Over 150 shows/day but did you get a ticket?

Just in Chennai city alone. With Chennai metro & suburbs, the number will hike to over 200 shows a day! Most of the shows for the first ten days are sold out. In Satyam (14 shows), when the booking was opened on Tuesday, the earliest date available was 19th when I went to reserve. Most of the shows would be booked for the first 20 days or so. Theater websites were jammed and were unusable.

Not only in Chennai, in TN too the shows are booked for the first 3 days. It’s releasing in Hindi & Telugu as well. Sivaji (in Tamil) pipped Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in Mumbai & Delhi. This will also if the movie is good.

Another interesting thing. Movie rights (tamil only) is brought for a record Rs. 5.1 Crore.

Cat and mouse game with Sivaji

Can’t help noticing this…During Sivaji’s 125 day celebration [Movie Review], Kamal was not present. During the Audio release of Dasavatharam, Rajni was absent. Sivaji was Rs 75 crore+ and this one is stated to be a Rs 165 Crore project. Sivaji’s Music (A R Rahman) was amazing but Dasavatharam’s music (Himesh Reshammiya) is average. The was a cold war btw the stars throughout - which is a good thing anyways as we get to indulge in good movies.

Initial reviews of the celebrities (inc. TN’s CM) are good (but I don’t trust those review, helps in expectations). Never mind if the movie is good but I know it would be interesting to see 10 different characters and how they are intervened. Have fun and enjoy in the cinemas and for that purpose only movies are produced.

Can’t wait till Monday, the day I’m going to the cinemas for this.