I,Me,Myself

The Dark Knight rises Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 17:08:00 +0000

Not many times you would get a chance to watch a movie like this on first day and get paid for it. Well that is one of the plus points, when you’re an attending important customer sales events. I couldn’t help ponder over the important milestones , the Dark Knight series has coincided with my own life, whether it is Batman begins (2004) , when I got out of school , The Dark Knight(2008) when I got out of undergraduate college and now the Dark knight Rises(2012) when I am into graduate school.Coming to the movie, it takes off exactly 8 years after Harvey Dent’s death in the previous movie. Bruce Wayne is a shadow of himself, reclusive in his mansion happy to be left alone. Until he is awaken from his slumber when a jewel thief, Selina kyle breaks into his mansion played by Anne Hathaway.

Despite the Introduction of so many new characters such as the Cat woman ( C- word is never used in the film , its all subtle ) , a new villain, Marion , a billionaire philanthropist who comes to aid of Bruce Wayne in the event of his business collapse and young police officer in the form Joseph Gordon-levitt, who steps up to the task ( even more morphed version of comic book character,Guess who?), when Commissioner Gordon goes down, Nolan makes sure each character plays an vital part in the story. In fact, if it was for anybody whose screen presence has diminished in the movie , it is Batman, with lots of sequences going through without him being seen at all. But it is sure delight, when he does show up whether it is Bat-pod or the new aerial Hover craft style vehicle , simply referred to as the Bat. As one of character’s in the movie utters , “You’re in a for a show, today Son”. If anybody matches the panache of Batman using his toys, it is Selina Kyle with her skin tight leather suit and a figure to die for ( envy of many a women) riding the Bat-pod.

There is lot of similarity in the way the Bane , who is portrayed as mercenary is introduced compared to the Joker in the previous movie. Only it is even more spectacular with the giant cargo planes in the opening sequence. It was said Warner Brother’s was initially considering The Riddler for the third installment with Leanardo Di Carpio being cast for the role, however Nolan chose Bane to portray a more menacing tyrannical evil look to film compared to psychotic Joker’s style ( since Riddle would have been more similar). For the most part Bane played by Tom Hardy lives up to the expectation. In fact in most hand to hand combat sequences he has the better of Batman. If it weren’t for his Darth Vaderish voice, he would have bit more easy to comprehend what he spoke in the movie.

Like most of the Nolan’s previous films ( Inception , Prestige ) , he does indeed gives a glimpse of the film’s ending during the start of the movie, and there are tell tale signs of who is going to be turncoat in the first half , if you’re meticulous enough to figure out to the details of clues of Batman begins. But its safe to bet most people would not be able to figure out the ending , with the film keeping on the edge of the seats for the most part. The story has lots of similarities to the comic version of Batman , the Knight fall. Its shame some of the best pyrotechnics sequence where revealed in the trailer itself. In the end, Nolan ties up all the three movies together in a fitting crescendo. The Dark knight series sets the bar as far as the comic strip to reel life super hero movies goes.

Rating: 4/5 , a must watch for this summer.

Know your College Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:49:00 +0000

Like wildfire, it has been a season of memes in various US colleges this month. With every college trying to outdo each other in creating memes poking fun at various idiosyncrasies, that students everywhere have to put up with. Texas A&M meme has been a rage among aggies, raking up more than 9000 likes in Facebook at a short amount of time. Here’s look ten of the most frequently used college memes and stories behind them.

1. College Freshman

This photo belongs to freshman Griffin Kiritsy from University of New Hampshire. He personally acknowledged that it was his photo in his blog. The story behind photo started with a naïve phone interview. A few weeks later, the interviewer wanted to take a few snaps of the kid for publishing his story,to which he gladly obliged. Little, did he know that his photo will go on to become viral meme for freshman in every university!

2. Success Kid

This is an image of child with his fist up and with “knows it all” look on his face. The image was first posted in Flickr account by Laury Griner and baby’s name is Sammy.

Success kid is now 4 years old.

3. Creepy Wonka

This image is of Gene Wilder in the 1971 musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The text on this meme is usually characterized by rhetorical, sarcastic or condescending question aimed at belittling someone.

Scene that made the Creepy Wonka

4. Boromirmod

This is familiar to anyone who has watched Lord of the Rings movie series, where Boromir warns about the perils of going to Mordor. This meme is used to signify difficulty in any task that one might carry out.

5. Forever alone

Forever alone guy is rage comic character, that is used to express being single and loneliness. The very first forever alone rage comic was published as April fool’s joke is shown below.

From there it spread through 4chan, memebase rapidly becoming popular.

6. Y U No guy

Y U No guy expresses frustrations of daily life vented out by various people. Y U No guy origin’s lies in Japanese anime series. Like all most memes, the popularity of this meme is owed to memebase and Tumblr.

7. First World Problems

The first known use of “first world problems” came from the lyrics of a Matthew Good Band song entitled “Omissions of the Omen”, which was included as a bonus track on their album Last of the Ghetto Astronauts from 1995. The lyric in question is as follows:

“Wait for me if I don’t show up

Take from me this hypocrite’s cup

And somewhere around the world

Someone would love to have my first world problems

Kill the moon and turn out the sun

Lock your door and load your gun

Free at last now the time has come to choose”

8. Futurama

This is an image of character called Fry in Futurama series, expressing deep sense of thought at a problem. The look originated in the "The lesser of two evils " episode in season 2 of the animated sitcom. Standard template is in the form of “Not sure if XYZ”, with “or just ABC” as the bottom line, and is used to represent an internal monologue. Here is look at meme poking fun at drug scandal at the Texas Christian University

9. Engineering Professor

This meme originated quite recently in April 2011. It specifically pokes everything that engineering students have to go through in their daily college life with topics like assignments, grades being most common.

10. Bubble girl

This is an image of chubby girl with a Bubble running in park to catch something. This meme is used to portray a sense of urgency to meet some deadline, catch something or shock.

Destiny’s Child

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Well , If your expecting to read about pop music then you could stop here. There are always defining moments in your life, which makes you wonder What's the purpose of it ? School life is where you don't know much , also you couldn't care less. College life is where you start to know something, but you’re not sure about what things to care about. Then there is the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and young enough not to care . I think its the 2-3 year time period in your job after college, where you earn enough to make a living on your own , but also could support your parents , you are a force to be reckoned with, as in your opinions matter. Looking back at those three years after college , I thought I will use this post to look at three interesting stories that helped learn along the course.

One thing that I realized early on is that, its ok to fail , its ok to make mistakes. Its possible to succeed without failing at times, the question is could you excel at new things without failing? When I first moved into development , one of my first code change had caused a build break ( or in more plain terms a compilation error ) bringing the Release engineering and Quality engineering (QE) work grinding to a halt. What made matters worse , that the change that went in wasn’t requested by QE or Product management; It’s just that I decided to take a few initiatives that would make life of every one easier in debugging problems , by making changes in diagnostics code. For the next few days , I knew how it felt to be famous for all the wrong reasons. A colleague did say to me People who have done build breaks went onto achieve big things like becoming Development Managers ( I didn't miss the irony ) to cheer me up. I did eventually fix the issue ( which turned out to be source code version control issue rather than anything in code ) . Moving along one month into release cycle, everybody could see the benefits of the change in helping RCA issues at QE and Customer environments later on. I couldn’t help feeling more vindicated for pushing in the change. This resulted in more freedom to make changes/features coming along my way. Moral of the story , Don’t wait for things to happen , make them happen .The actual failure really is not taking the risk to move to the next level due to the fear of failing and tolerating mediocrity.

I have gone through many resumes , most of the time objective part in it is usual hyperbole involving words like challenging environment, innovative, team player and success. Honestly , I used to wonder what I would put as objective , something that I could realistically associate myself with ? It struck me , “Being Happy at whatever your doing”. This not only means you are better then what you were in the past, but also you have done your bit to improve the lives of people that are around you. It was one fine Monday morning , being late riser I am I was still snuggling in my bed , that my friend woke me up to lock the door ,since he was scheduled to take IIM CAT exam. One hour later , a call from my friend my informing me that he had forgotten his ID card, while I was still brushing my teeth . There was hardly an hour left before the exam to start , after which he would not be allowed to take the exam. What followed was a bit of maddening travel involving two bus changes to location which I haven’t even visited before during the morning traffic rush in Bangalore. Add to it midway , my friend’s phone battery went dead ; it made the chance of locating the centre and him to hand over the ID card seem miniscule. Call it human will in wanting to do something , when all the forces of the world will aid you . I eventually reached the place , Only to realize, there were three college buildings with the same name all a kilometer apart . With just 10 mins remaining , there is no way I could visit all the buildings even if I was Usian Bolt . You can call it as luck or lame logic at that point in time , I decided to go to the building that was to my right, hoping it would turn out be the right decision. In the end , it was ; Though there was no phone with my friend, he was in balcony and saw me when I was talking to Gatekeeper and got to gate just as I was about to leave thinking I was too late. Six months later, when results came in my friend did make it to IIM, Bangalore .Yes, I was happy , it may not have involved coding , testing or anything that might have needed the application of computer science degree . But I had a profound satisfaction of changing a life of another person for the better. I guess that happiness could be as simple as helping your neighborhood boy with his math problems and see him get an ‘A’ in his test the next day or as complex as being able to solve a critical customer problem at your job that is appreciated by your colleagues, managers. Bottom line, Are you happy at whatever your doing ?

Most people who go to US consulate at Chennai for interview prefer to stay at one of the near by Air conditioned hotels to beat the Chennai heat , unless you have a relative there. I ended up at staying at a place a good 40 kms away from the Consulate. You know its more of an village rather than Metropolitan Chennai , when a guy shows at the only local place with computer wanting to learn computers and instructor tells you about course content which is using Windows XP and MS Office . As things turned out, the day before the interview , all hell broke loose with drainage/septic tank problems at the house. I had start my travel at 6 00 am to make up for the distance, which means I had to wake up at least 4 30 am so that I could travel to farm house ( 1 km way ) to make use of the restroom facilities . Following sleepless night with intermittent power cuts , I woke up early packed up my interview clothes for the journey to farmhouse. The road was more of sparsely populated bushes compared to either side than an actual road. Then I met my first hindrance , a bunch of village dogs guarding near by farm running loose . City dogs really don't bother chasing, biting or barking at people since they are used to seeing different people all the time, but village dogs are altogether another species they will attack you , chase away unknown people . On a normal day , may be I would have taken a different route , this being big day I had no choice . Attack is the best form of defense , I charged them with a stick ( more of branch near by ) before they tried to attack me . Yes it worked , they ran way. When you walk , you look everywhere around except for the ground your walking on presuming its flat. However , I didn't a see small canal dug for water irrigation on the way which made me stumble and fall . Nothing much I got up and dusted my hands . Only when I looked around to pick my fallen mobile phone , I noticed a sinusoidal movement in the ground next to me. Bloody hell , it was a King cobra moving along minding its own business. By the time I got over the shock of seeing it , the snake vanished into nearby plantation. Moving along another 5 mins , finally I was at the farmhouse. It was open top bathroom , anyway I wasn’t expecting a Jacuzzi here. The only thing that worried was a bee hive in near by tree where a bunch of bees being busy. Last thing I wanted was bee sting as a souvenir. In the end , I minded my own business and the bees were busy with the business of collecting honey. As I came out , I could hear the sound of jet flying by; I knew I would be flying in that in another 40 days. But here I was in this farmhouse.I ought to swear at myself for coming here , not the A/c hotel . But I didn't , I felt the flashback of vague childhood memories of traveling to farm walking by my Dad when I was little in a village . I haven't visited my mom’s village in almost 10 years. May be , it was God’s way of telling no matter where you go in life, Don’t forget the place where you came from and your roots. Compared to the ordeal of this , the actual interview was a breeze , all I could think was

“ எவலோவோ பண்ணிடோம், இத பண்ண மட்டமோ !! " ( I 've done so many things, after all Wouldn't I be able to do this !!)

X men : First Class review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:46:00 +0000

X men has always been one of my favorite movie series from comic books/Cartoons next to Spider Man. The final climax where Wolverine stabs Jean after professing his love for her in the X men : The last stand, is one of the most memorable romantic scenes , though its a tragedy. In this prequel, the movie takes us back to old days to reveal the lives of Professor X and Magneto before they were adorned with the titles . The movie starts the with same scene as the X men first movie in a second old war camp , where the young Erik’s (aka Magneto) Mom is being dragged way , resulting in him revealing his ability to control metal. What follows is intriguing scene that sets the tone for the rest of movie between Shaw who wants to use the young boy’s ability through any means and Erik.

James McAvoy who plays the young Charles Xavier does it with panache and humor. Whether his geeky scientific pick up lines on the coeds or the training camp scenes for young mutants , he brings chuckle to your face. Especially the scene where he tries to recruit Wolverine for the Mutant team. Fast forward from Second Old war , you have Shaw and his evil mutants trying to make the Cold war into an actual war at the height of Cuban Missile crisis. This plan is discovered by Moira, an CIA agent who enlists Charles’s help . Charles , along with Raven try to capture Shaw , though futile in his attempt but in the process ends up saving the life of Erik , who is out to avenge his Mother’s death. With a common enemy in the form of Shaw working with Soviets ,Charles and his new found friend Erik join the covert CIA camp to discover and train young Mutants to fight against Shaw's evil plans .

Mean while , Shaw after convincing American General to deploy Nuclear Missiles in Turkey , forces the Russian General to order an deployment of Russian Missiles in Cuba. What follows through next in the movie is good example of mixing real life events with fiction with clips of Nikita Khruschev and Kennedy’s speech thrown in to show the American Naval Blockade on Cuba daring the Russians to break it. However , the Russian Ship trying to break the Blockade is rogue one controlled by Shaw. The final sequences of the movie is well done whether its the young Magneto lifting an entire submarine out of the ocean or stopping the barrage of incoming Missiles But what adds thrill to riveting climax will they or wont they question of Missile being launched resulting in third World war. The movie morphs from the now over used theme of Americans vs the Soviets into darker Humans vs Mutants battle in the second half. Whether its showing Erik falling from grace into the now evil Magneto or the battle of minds between Charles and Magneto or the rather brutal sequences between Shaw and Erik at the start and the end, the film rarely lets down the tempo . All in all , a worthy successor to the X Men series in season of summer sequels where others(Pirates of Caribbean and Hangover) have been a let down. With X men : First Class , the director Matthew Vaughn has indeed delivered a First Class movie.

Rating: 3.5/5

Thoughts on Management and Computing

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:16:00 +0000

Recently , I have been dealing with multitude of both the above topics. I realized midway through , how management concepts could be applied to Computing and how computing concepts could be applied to management.

Management Network

Lets start of with how management concepts could be applied to Computing. One of the strategies, when you debut a product is to customize the product according to demographics and region in which your launching the product. Consider the Food market , whenever somebody launches a new food item in America, the emphasis is to be big . Whether its the Cola’s , Beer , Burgers or the Cars (Hummers) Americans like it big , its one market where Size does matter. Now consider the Asian market , the individual purchasing power is not as big as has in the west . So you need to make the your products smaller and affordable to tap into the market. An excellent example of this is , the shampoo sachet. In the west you could sell a Bottle, but in Asia the number of units of 2 Rs sachets will outsell the bottles , people will not buy an Bottle of shampoo on a regular basis . Going by the same example you have mini cola’s for 10 Rs for drinks , the world cheapest car nano . The nano may not be your a typical car in the west , yet it reflects a scaled down version of a car made affordable for the rising middle class. The important lesson in business not to view a large population with low purchasing power as an liability , but rather as an market to whom you could sell your products scaling down on features and size to make it affordable. Now where does concept come in Computing . In fact its one of the tenets of the Cloud computing i.e, Rapid Elasticity. The ability to rapidly scale in and scale out the resources according to the demands of the end user. This could be server resources which are increased rapidly during live streaming of an cricket match for website and scaled back down after the match is over. It makes no sense to buy all that server capacity since the sports event is going to be temporary affair , rather renting out the server makes sense. So the Elasticity that offers flexibility to user based on his needs is no different from the Business strategy that varies your product scale and features based on demographics and purchasing power of the market your selling to.

Computing Network

Now lets look at the reverse of taking a computing concept and applying to management. Most products in software are organized into modules and developers work on their respective modules . Rarely does an developer take care of more than one module. You cant expect an User Interface(UI) engineer to solve bugs in the Backend or Database provider. The task we were facing was to create an start up kind of an environment , where everybody works on everything ( at least most of the things ) . Mind you the product here is not something being developed from scratch . With couple of million lines of code spreading across four languages already in existence , It was mammoth ; there were isolated pockets of knowledge for each of the modules UI, Server , Cache and Back end. The challenge before the product management team was how do we merge them gracefully without wasting too much developer cycles so as to spread the knowledge.

To put it in different way the above problem is no different from what routers face in a large network , when they are plugged in new . The problem of learning the network , finding the shortest path to deliver the data to the destination , in other words how do we train developers in a module in the shortest duration. Each developer has to learn N-1 modules if there are N modules in the project. Lets try optimizing the solution. A developer working in Cache will some know how of Backend and Server work since they are adjacent modules. So learning Backend and Cache will be less costly compared to learning UI . Hence break the Cache module guys into two equal halves and have them work with Backend and Server . There will be knowledge transfer to and fro from Backend <---->Cache<-----> Server. Keep this going for one release , in the next release swap the Cache guys who worked with Server to Backend and Vice versa. Take this to other modules that are at the top and bottom of the stack. This is akin to Router Packet forwarding table transfer in the network to its immediate neighboring routers i.e, the hop count is one. The neighboring routers transfer its knowledge of network to its neighbors. Of course the router makes sure , it doesn't transfer the same message back to its receiver resulting in infinite loop. Finally depending on the number of modules you would have achieved , an optimal state where each developer knows most of the modules with the least amount of their cycles. I guess this what you call reinventing the wheel when it comes to concepts.

Cup of Joy

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:58:00 +0000

Well , its been a long hiatus from the world of blogging . Anyways most of the things that the break was intended for is nearing completion . What better way to start it again other than the cup of joy. All was not well , with frigging Reliance broadband being down for the last ten days ( seriously, Anil Ambani should realize the word Reliance in Reliance Broadband is an oxymoron with its DNS server not responding for every 3 hours) . Add to that I was in SQL training for this whole week , there were serious worries about the likelihood of me watching the India-pak cricket match for which even Gilani and Manmohan seemed to have bunked their office duties. As gracious and liberal as my company is (perhaps was with recent blocking of sites ) , they had setup giant screen in cafeteria , with ten 50'' LCD screens on all directions to broadcast India - Pak match . Its hard for you to, not to see the match in any direction you turn your head in cafeteria.

As it turned out, things started to get better after lunch. It was more like watching the match in cricket ground , with so many people in cafeteria , with their faces painted in tri color carrying Indian flags . The guys who profited the most from this was obviously the Food court restaurants. Anyways these were the highlights of the day..

Seductive Moment: Was debugging T-SQL function , I heard a series roars of from cafeteria that distracted me . Later came to know , it is Virendar Sehwags plundering Umar Gul with five 4’s in a over. Viru’s innings are like extra martial affairs , thrilling while it lasts , but always ends in heart break.

Generous nature Moment: SQL trainer who stopped the training midway and let us watch the match after hearing the roar from the crowd for Sehwag’s dashing four’s.

Flashback Award : Wajab Riaz ‘s back to back wicket taking deliveries . Especially the in swinging Yorker to get rid of Yuvaraj , brought back not so good memories of Shoaib getting Dravid and Tendulkar with similar back to back deliveries at Eden Gardens test match.

Slippery hands Award: This one goes entire Pakistan cricket team . The kept dropping so many catches . If it was a pin drop of silence , Guess who dropped the pin ? , the entire Pakistan team.

So Close Yet So Far..

Pak player whom Indians Cheered : Umar Gul , was like an oasis of runs between Akmal and Riaz.

Handshaking Award: Of course this goes to Gilani , Manmohan Singh who set the precedent for their countrymen in bonhomie .

Traffic Police Award: This one goes to Bhajji for stopping Sajeed Akmal half way through , because Raina dropped the bat at the other end.

Hollywood Moment: When couple of Americans , who came for lunch were wondering why all the folks were at the cafeteria even though it was well past match time and not working. Being good guests we are , we explained Cricket is like Indian baseball . Finally , they opted to paint their faces in Tri-color in getting along with things. Job Done here :P

Redemption Award: Ashish Nehra for managing to leave upto his name #tamil .

Sentimental Moment: Umar Akmal , the boy who started crying when Bhajji removed his bales.

Superstitious Moment: My friend . Every time he got up from chair for a break from match to restroom , a wicket fell . Yes , I seriously thought I should lock him up in the Loo for the Pak innings.

I am not Pointing Award: Again Ashish Nehra , for being honest about his catch for Afridi’s shot , though it was crucial moment in the Game.

Midas Touch Award: Who else Dhoni , he misread the pitch and accepted it ,but yet got way with his choice with winning. Wish , I could get way with misreading Questions in exams and get full marks for answers ;)

Man of the Match: I know this one went to Sachin. But to be fair , it should have been shared between Sachin and Pakistan fielding team :)

Afridi : One day I wish I was half as good as you

We miss giving Hugs Award: Pretty Preity , Bhajji , Yuvi and Nita Ambani :-) I know hugs will start coming with IPL in another two weeks

Decibel Moment: Oh yeah , the last over ; Every dot ball resulted in mad cheer that would have blown the roof of cafeteria.

Bluecross Award: To all people who started Bleeding Blue; Only if Horse shoe crabs needed Blood donation it would have proved useful. Besides considering its Sri Lanka, we are against in the final we should be more specific about the type of Blue.

Bindaas Moment: At 11 O ‘ Clock in the night , seeing a guy a run across the highway near my office carrying the Indian Flag.

Joy knows no bounds..

WTH / WTF Award: Poonam Pandey managed to trend in twitter for stating her intention to go full Monty . Please go to a nude beach , instead making nuisance claims like this.

Hope it was a memorable moment for you as much as it was for me, That's all Folks :)

Endhiran - the Robot Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 18:07:00 +0000

I am not generally the type, to see movies on the first day. However , call it sheer luck , a six hour power cut and battery drained laptop forced me to check out the Movie. By the time I am writing here , there have been almost 100 updates in my Facebook news feed , vouching for the greatness of the movie and I am going to be another addition to that list. For starters, Endhiran is not your typical Rajnikanth film, no opening song , no punch dialogues,no weird mannerisms. After a long time, Rajnikanth plays a role completely as director's actor ( Its often the scenario where Director's changes stories and scenes to suit Rajnikanth). You have to give it Shankar, making Rajnikanth stick to the demanding role without his usual cliche.

Rajnikanth for the first time in his career plays the role of Dr Vaseegran , an Robotics Scientist and his progeny in the form of Chitti , the Robot. Its the later that steals our hearts at the end of film. Vaseegran builds the all capable , Chitti with sole purpose of helping humans. The first half portrays quite elegantly how an Robot let loose in the human World would behave. You could see attention to detail in scenes and dialogues, especially when the Robot utters its first word "Hello World" ( the first program any software engineer does on learning a new language). There numerous instances of humorous interactions , but what captured my attention was how Robot is forced to reconcile the fact positive and negative human emotions that humans express like we lie , when something works out to our benefit. The inability of Chitti to emote and interact with humans results in Chitti being rejected and making him part of manifold of humdrum Robots that perform routine tasks. Eager to prove, his creation is far better than that. Vaseegran porgrams emotions into Chitti , which starts all the trouble.

The question whether any Robot with Artificial intelligence should have emotions is a controversial one. The Director, Shankar explores full range of emotions portraying the Good,bad and ugly side of things with Chitti. In this case , trouble starts when Sana ( played by Ashwariya Rai) , Vaseegran's Girl friend starts getting close to Chitti. And it develops feelings for Sana , soon emerging has a competitor to Vaseegran himself. Like any normal human ,the Robot's love turns to jealousy,anger ; when another man ( in this case the creator ) gets the girl it desires. The rest of the story is pretty much a to and fro tussle between the Creator and the Robot. There have been many Sci-fi attempts before in Bollywood , most have flopped because of lack of originality or becoming poor imitations of Hollywood . Endhiran stands out because way it treats the story and at the same time sticking to its desi roots .

The second half though wistfully longing with unwanted songs, more than makes it up for this with an awesome climax. Probably Rajnikanth (aka SuperStar ) has become so great , there is no greater villain for Rajni to defeat and conquer , unless and otherwise it happens to be Rajni himself. And thats what Shankar does unleashing the bad - ass within the Rajni. Really after seeing the villainous Robot who is quite vivaciously ravenous in his acting , you forget about the Good guy, Chitti. The last 30 mins turn out to be enthralling to Rajni fans; Rajni as an Robot, now has license to what he does best , perform Superman stunts in a sensible way to the story.

As a whole Endhiran - the Robot is highly entertaining not only because of its awesome Fx & animatronics effects by Stan Winston ( this is the best one has seen in Indian cinema ); not only because it is the most expensive movie made in india ( with an budget of 150 crores , thanks to Sun Pictures) ; not only because of Rajni , who is solely responsible for carrying the role of the creator ,the hero and the villain ( he does of all them with ease ) ; not only because superb back ground music by Oscar winning AR Rehaman; but also mainly because of its story which handles question of Robot with Intelligence & emotions in such a wonderfully imaginative way . Full marks to story writers Shankar ,Kaarky and a special mention to Sujatha , (an brilliant engineer and writer himself ), because I could see an engineer's hallmark throughout the film with terms like neural schema,patents, worms ,processors, IP address and programs . Thumbs up to SuperStar and his evergreen panache . Endhiran , the Robot - A story of transformation of a Bus conductor to a Semi-conductor

Rating: 3.5 / 5

PS: Carry an earplug to the movie if your watching it within the first week because the sounds of fans screaming can be rapturous.

Inception - Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:08:00 +0000

Inception , is the fourth Christopher Nolan movie that I have managed to watch after Memento,Batman Begins and Dark knight. Memento had already introduced me to his non-linear story telling screen play , where two parts of story move in opposite direction ( unlike the the traditional start to climax way). With Inception, the director takes the screen play and story telling abilities to a whole new level of complexity. The theme of movie revolves letting somebody into your unconscious mind , i.e, Dream , where extractors can steal your deepest secrets. True to this, Nolan turns out a edge of seat thriller, heist film.

The main character of the movie , Cobb played by Leonardo DiCaprio is dream stealer however ,he is wanted in US for murder charges. The movie opens with scene where DiCaprio is trying to break into mind of Saito , a Japanese businessman. However, Saito is able to differentiate between dreams and real world to Cobb's frustration . Later , DiCaprio is offered an deal by Saito where if he manages to implant an idea on his Corporate rival, Tom Fischer that he will not take after his father in his business ; Saito would in turn help him return to US without facing the murder charges. Cobb who is longing to see his son and daughter takes the bate. He quickly assembles a team for this task . Subsequently the rules of dream world such as a kick i.e, a free fall that wakes one out of the dream , totem , a hand held object which a person could use to distinguish the difference between reality, compounding of time for a dream within a dream and eternal dreaming state called limbo are explained.All the dreams are remarkably shot in spite of keeping the graphics to the bare minimum, especially the kick scenes when the person wakes out of a dream with the world in his dream collapsing.

The screen play really starts gaining pace once assault on Tom Fischer's sub conscious mind starts. There's the story that is happening in the plane in the real world and another new story that starts at each level of dream with previous stories moving in parallel with the new ones. As if this wasn't enough , to do an inception , where the dreamer's mind thinks its his own idea rather than a implanted one, Cobb and co must go into a recursion of dreams up to three times, where things can get pretty unstable as we go deeper. Ellen Page who plays the architect of the dream, discovers there's more to Cobb than what meets the eye, on seeing his dead wife's projections in dreams.

Cobb's plan of turning Fischer against his own consciousness goes according to plan until level three, where an unexpected encounter with his wife prevents inception on Fischer. To undo what his wife had done, he goes onto fourth level of recursion . At this point there four different stories all running in tandem, with events happening in upper dream affecting the world at a lower level. The final moments of film where the time taken by the falling van, gets compounded at multiple levels with the kick setting in , the unwinding of dreams, dreamer's popping out are thrilling quite literally. Like in Memento, Nolan leaves the ending of the film to the interpretation of the end user with totem top spinning , but the bottom slowing down to halt or Is It??

Far cry from the movies where Director's present every thing in Black & White to the viewer's , Its remarkably refreshing to see Nolan to challenge viewer's intelligence throughout the film. When the movie does end, viewer's are left with more questions and then answer's unable to keep track of which world the movie ends in, thanks to Nolan's recursive screenplay . To put it in Computer terms, Inception is like multicore processor with thread going into a recursive loop and coming out, in addition to new thread at each recursive level . It is truly for this creative story telling and innovative screen play I am going with

Rating : 4/5

for Inception , a must watch mind blowing experience for any movie buff.

Hand of God

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:50:00 +0000

I never confess to be an full fledged football fan, but I couldn't help getting caught in the football frenzy during the World Cup. From the very first world cup 1998, which I started to follow , I have tried to follow the beautiful game. Though I don't care about EPL or any other club football league unlike other self confessed football fans. Now getting back to point, whats ironic with Football is the term " Hand of God " . For people unfamiliar with Football, this phrase was originally coined for Maradona's Goal in 1986 World Cup semi final against England. The score was nil-nil until Maradona got a pass , which he manipulated using his hand to score the winning goal against England.

Its ironic that minutes later after the most controversial Goal of the World cup, Maradona went onto score arguably the best Goal of the World cup beating every England Mid fielder. Argentina eventually went onto win the World Cup.

Its interesting to study this phenomenon and compare it to real life. First of all, people call it the Hand of God, but as one of my friends put it , " Why do they associate some trickery and cheating in a game with God's name , ideally it should be dubbed the Hand of Devil..." . Even more surprising , the team having the player who uses the Hand of God seems eventually to go onto win the match every time in spite of cheating. Consider the World Cup qualifier game for 2010 between France and Ireland; France where in a embarrassing position so as to not even qualify for the 2010 World cup , unless they made it a draw or win. The score was 0-1 in favor of the Irish , until the Theiry Henry's infamous Hand helped french to score a Goal to dash the Irish hopes of the world cup.

If you thought the previous two Hand balls were subtle have , wait and until you see the Uruguay's Suavez Hand Ball that prevented Ghana from winning. The score was 1-1 well into second extra time, until this happened

A Blatant stopping of the ball using Hand, but unlike the previous two times where the referees missed the Hand Ball, it was noticed this time and Suavez was red carded. But as fate would have it, the guy who took the penalty for Ghana after this missed it. The game went into penalty only for Uruguay to win and go through to semi final. So whats the moral of the story, cheaters seem to get way with it and win. No , thats not the point I want to drive home here, but rather when the stakes are high ( there is no greater glory than World Cup in Football) and you are in desperate position, every player given the bate to get way with cheating and win, he seems to take it, with striking consistency; Ethics , Morality, Right and Wrong all take a backseat, what seems to matter is winning on that moment, methods don't matter. In a way this situation the beautiful game mirrors the many real life situations , after all " Good people are bad people who don't caught doing bad things" .!!!

How Steve Jobs turned Apple Around

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:25:00 +0000

If you have been following news of late, you would have noticed how Apple toppled Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company . Its been quite an turn around for Cupertino based company which was forced to get investment from its Arch rival Microsoft in 1997. I decided to profile Apple's turn around, because there are not many companies that make a comeback , once they start to go down. When Steve jobs returned to Apple in 1997 , Microsoft had become a monopoly in the Desktop PC's, with nearly 95 % running on Windows; Apple was relegated to a niche market. So how does one turn around a fortunes of a falling company

1. Focus on your Strengths:

Though Apple had lost out on the Desktop market, Steve brainstormed to identify the areas where Apple was still making profits and not losing out. Simple enough to put your money where the value comes from.This included Desktop Publishing and Multimedia industry where the Macs where more prevalent and preferred to Windows. He shutdown projects like Apple Newton, CyberDog and Opendoc to cut costs and put his resources on where Apple was still making money Macs. There are two ways to build a software product , you either develop it from scratch which requires lot of resources and time, second is to go out buy a start up which already has the technology rebrand it has your own and sell it. And the later is what Apple did when they bought NEXT operating system. This later evolved into Mac OS X powering iMac.

2. Keep it Simple and Innovate :

When designing products what most engineers tend to focus is on features. As a engineer, there is always a tendency to pack as many features as you can into the product. On the other hand , you will find Apple products doing only a few things, but those few things are done so well, that even your grand ma could use it. What engineers tend to forget at times is that most people who use Computer are not geeks or Computer Science Graduates and have no idea how things are done by the Computer , as far as they are concerned they want their work get done. This is where Steve plays critical role of end customer at Apple. All products where he had shown a personal interest in iPod, iPhone and iPad tend to be so easy to use , but not Apple TV( Apparently Steve is not a big fan of TV ). To emphasize have a look at the PC and the iMac when it debuted in 1998.

The Speakers and the big box have all been removed and made into one Monitor with built in speakers and sockets , LAN ports attached to it. Of course , iMac does tend to look more artistic than your typical PC as most Apple's products usually are. Then there is the iPod, before it, the Sony walkman used to to be associated with Portable Music. But walkman had no software,no playlists, cannot download music,cannot watch videos. You have to admit Steve took a leaf out of Bill Gates book here, adding software to what was a plain old machine. What iPod , iTunes together made was a great synchronization software. It was the software that put an end to the iconic Walkman.

3. Vision and Execution:

When your at the top of the ladder, leading an company, its not only important you know the current trends, but also anticipate changes , so that your company is prepared to ride the change. Companies which fail to do this tend to become part of history . If you look back at 2003, Digital Conference where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both being interviewed; Steve talked about Mobile phones , how they are going to be ubiquitous to our modern day life. Perhaps it was hint, at the things to come. Its not surprising that the same person who on seeing Point and Click GUI , envisioned every Computer to be running it had the same vision about touch screen interface. Origins of Apple's iPhone lie in Newton ( Apple touchscreen PDA in 1995 with hand writing recognition), perhaps Newton was way ahead for its time, what Newton failed to do, iPhone did it for Apple. Contrary to what most people think, Apple didn't get it right , the first time. Initially the iTunes software was tried on Motorola's Rockr phone, but Steve was extremely unhappy how the design turned out, the device could hardly store 100 songs. The alliance was terminated, Apple put in nearly 150 million USD investment on the iOS software, which included a failed version ( code named Purple 1). The iPhone as we know it is Purple 2.

4. Shock and Awe:

If you haven't yet seen a Steve Jobs presentation, your missing something. Its interesting to observe how Apple product launches work, months before the launch most blog and tech sites are rife with rumors of the impending product. They are highly secretive about anything they do. On the D-day, you have Steve presenting his keynote to a crowd that goes berserk. If you have observed his keynote over the years,First of all there is a single theme to the event characterized by one product. Consider the MacBook Air launch, where Steve took out the laptop from a envelope. Whether your a computer guy or not, what immediately strikes you is the fact , its world's thinnest notebook. Second of all, when never business people are asked to present something , they cram as much information as possible into slides with text,charts and Graphs ( Not to blame them , but that's what MBA's are taught to do by B- schools). On the contrary, a Steve Job's presentation will hardly contain 20 words for the entire session. There will be strikingly artistic pictures of the product, followed by a word or two to convey the information. Finally its his speech, where small ideas are hailed as breakthrough's and new products are touted to be revolutionary with anticipation building such as the iPhone launch , where he started of by talking about launching three products( Music Player,Phone and the Internet Communicator ) but it eventually turned out to be one, the iPhone. As one of Managers puts it , perhaps Steve learnt how to mesmerize people during the time he spent in India exploring spirituality like our God men who trick people into worshiping them. By the time session is over your already convinced of buying the product and even prepared to pay a premium price for it. The success of Apple's marketing lies in making their products seem lustful, a cool status symbol that people are willing to pay for.

5. Expand and Diversify:

Once your company profits are sustainable, the next big challenge is expansion. Its important for a company to diversify its revenue stream so as to avoid being a one trick pony. This is the process of moving into auxiliary business areas, that complement your existing products. Microsoft is a good example of this, they started with Windows, added Office suite and later expanded into database with SQL , web server with IIS , gaming with X-Box and finally mobile with Windows Mobile. Irrespective of how many those turned out to be successful, they tried to expand their revenue stream.When Apple iPods became a raging success , it could have well being happy with its success. However, Apple moved into other hand held device markets to capitalize on the iPods success. iPhone was a direct result of that to move into new markets. Before you knew it in two years, Apple had become a trendsetter in Mobile phone industry. Apple products were targeted at consumers rather than Enterprise IT Departments. I don't know whether its a good or bad strategy, but the results seem to speak for themselves , Apple being the only Tech company to buck the negative growth trend, to increase revenues by 50% year on year at the height of the recession in 2009. This was followed by further entry to Tablet market, iPad ( a crossover between an iPhone and e- reader )or rather a market which Apple seems to have created. Though Microsoft had its hand with Tablets way back in 2001 with Windows XP, it never really caught on. The ability to succeed where others have failed before you, proves greatness of a company. Steve has inculcated enough of it into Apple since returning to it in 1997.

As Steve himself puts it, 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will. Its only befitting that Fortune Magazine chose , Steve has the CEO of the decade quoting "After creating more than $150 billion in shareholder wealth, transforming movies, telecom, music, and computing (and profoundly influencing the worlds of retail and design), what should Steve Jobs do next? Given his penchant for secrecy and surprise and his proven brilliance, it's a fair bet that he'll let us know when he's good and ready." Not bad for a college dropout.!!

Sports,Scandal aur Dhoka

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:20:00 +0000

Of late, the Indian media has gone into frenzied mode in trying to cover the scoop whether it is Shoaib-Sania issue, or Modi - Tharoor issue. One gets the feeling of being bombarded with the same information on all TV channels. If anybody wants to know whats Plagiarism, they can easily learn it by watching Indian News channels covering this issues. Coming back to the great Indian Paisa League IPL , as a commoner it wouldn't be surprising for your jaws to be drop on watching the amounts that floats around for the job one carries out for just 2 months. Whether its Player's salaries or glamor quotient associated with it, IPL seems to be unmatched in its persona. To throw some figures in, the two teams Kochi and Pune were bought together for a sum of 703 million USD , that's like 3138 crores in INR ; Indian Sports Budget for 2010-11 is 2069 cr in INR . Compare this with how our Hockey Players have to go on strike to get their salary hike few months ago, you get the big picture. What even more amuses me is, whether somebody can profit on buying teams at the huge rate, given that TV and sponsorship revenues will be split among 10 teams. The Pune team for example needs to make roughly 165 crore a year just to break even . May be Indian businessmen dont bother loosing a few hundred crores as long as their names are being splashed around with all the glitz and glamor. As if this is not enough, IPL is getting Tax breaks from State governments. People who own IPL teams are in Forbes Top 100 richest people; Not elderly people who get pensions . If the exchequer is going to get any increase tax revenues, its from events like this .

Now for the scandal, anyplace where there is loads of money,glamor ; The political class cant be far behind. I always used to wonder, Politicians run governments , but why do they also run Sports Organization, Whether its Suresh Kalmadi running Indian Olympic Association or Sharad Pawar running BCCI; Its not like they have MBA degrees from Ivy League Schools to prove their management capability. Ok , As of Shashi Tharoor, well he lobbied for a franchise for his home town and ended up being rewarded ( or bargained the same ) for his efforts perhaps. Media calls it Sweat equity. I bet there wasn't for any sweat or hard work in this. I was rather surprised to see the over whelming support in twitter for Tharoor. Even I like him, may be its because of stereotyping ( remember Anbae Sivam film , where Yugi Sethu cheats Madhavan in the train) we always believe how could such a smooth , well articulated English speaking guy be doing inside dealing. But to be fair, this what you call a minuscule case compared other corruption cases that have been slammed against Politicians. Just to mention one of tweets, a minister was let of, when 76 people were killed, but another minister was made to quit for 70 crores exchanged hands, forcing you ask the question; Is 70 crore more valuable ?? Perhaps Tharoor was a tad unlucky, considering other ministers who have held onto their Positions despite corruption charges on a larger scale. He had so much to offer, but ended up being embroiled in controversies, cumulative effect of which didn't help his matters at the end. As Swapan Dasgupta, an journo puts it "a man who sought 'new politics' was brought down because he couldn't rise above old politics". That perhaps really sums up the tragedy of Shashi Tharoor.

Lalit K Modi , he was awarded the CNBC Businessman of the year award for 2008/09. To his credit he did create the worlds 2nd richest league; Though the concept was already there in Europe with EPL . Atleast I will give him the credit for adapting the format to Indian Cricket ( unlike the bollywood films which fail in on copying Hollywood ones) .The feeling you get of him is that of a gritty business man, he somehow reminds me of an Investment banker in wall street. May be because the pay cheques handed in IPL can only be compared to Wall Street Bonuses. He is in stark contrast to fluid linguistic Tharoor. If you look at it from a corporate perspective, he is a kind of a whistleblower , who came out in the open. Perhaps , he used his whistle blowing discretely with regard to Tharoor . There might be many more discrepancies , for which Modi might not have whistled, even overlooked it many times. With IT department digging up the dirt, he may face the same fate as Tharoor . Its an irony that the League which he created , might also be the the reason which could cause his downfall. And Finally if your wondering who the Dhoka was for, its for cricket crazy Indian public who seemed to have unabashed loyalty towards to the game of Cricket; But its for only one game only , for which there is exploitation and problem starts.

The Mistake I almost Made

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:19:00 +0000

*This is my first attempt short story writing, so feed backs are welcome
Disclaimer: The finale of the story is as such narrated to me by one of friends , when I was in school. *

It was a cold Monday morning, "Why is it the bed seems most cozy on Monday morning??" I wondered as I gazed at the Sunlight coming through the screens. I half hardheartedly got up switched the alarm off and checked the phone. " Hiii sweetie Krishna.. GM :), Cud we meet today evening at CCD ?? " said the sms from Radhika. There is nothing like a wish from your loved one that jump starts your morning. It was now 8 30 am, I had a meeting to attend at 10 30. So I went about my daily routine in the morning and was ready within one hour. Ideally one hour time would be good enough for anybody to reach their office in a bike , unless otherwise you happen to live in Bangalore, where there are 1000 people exactly like you are going to office at the same time as yours. I made it to the office just on time with 10 mins to spare. However thanks to the rains in the night, the basement parking had got flooded, I had to search for a new spot to park the bike. I hurried to the meeting room, hoping I was not the last person to enter the room, so everybody in the room wouldn't gaze upon me. I was surprised to find an empty room. Later on examining my mail, I found out that my manager had postponed the meeting, since he too was struck in traffic. " Bangalore traffic is one place where all people are treated equally irrespective of whether your Engineer,Manager or Vice President " I chuckled to myself.

Mondays are always hectic, today was no exception. But there is nothing that spurs you on to complete your work on time , not even a deadline, like a evening date with your girl friend. Four e mail replays, two hours of programming later, I was having my lunch. Beep Beep the phone rang , "Hii Krish .. I choose blue today ...Pick me up at 5 30 " it read. I was thinking what dress would she be wearing today; Its tough taking a guess , when you know a woman's wardrobe runs into three bureau's spanning more colors than your computer can display and you wardrobe will fit in two suit cases , nevertheless I replied " Ok will be there dear... I choose white .." . Its one of those silly games she played with me. It was Radhika's idea's where it would make us keep thinking about each other on the day we would meet .If she guessed my dress color, I would end up treating her, if I guessed her dress color, she would end up treating me and Yes , I would still end up paying, if we both got it wrong.I showed up ten mins late,only to find furious Radhika murmuring at me, " Idiot , you never show up on time for classes during college and you do the same here..." . I had to make a puppy face and blame it on some meeting in my office to get out. But women have this natural ability to figure out lies, which made me suck at lying . We left to CCD on the Brigade Road.

It was in college where I met Radhika. She was my chemistry lab partner and that's were our chemistry developed rather. Like most love stories in college, it started with me helping her out in experiments ,doubt clearing and then combined studies before tests. Before I figured it out , we were seeing each other.I considered myself lucky to have ended up with her. Also we worked in the same city. Bangalore being her home town and me from Chennai. It all seemed sweet dream , how we managed to get her Father's approval. Her father was an Senior scientist at HAL. I was just happy that he approved me, didn't insist on getting his daughter married to Govt job holder unlike the most Father's with Govt jobs do. We reached CCD. The smiling waiter came to our desk, " What can I server you sir?? " I went with two cold cafe latte's but Radhika corrected me and said " Three", I was puzzled. Before I could ask why three? She answered today I was going to meet somebody special, which made me even more curious. I was just hoping that it was not her Dad that would crash on our date.

The surprise visitor as it turned was her younger sister Vidya, who had returned for her study holidays from US. Radhika wanted me to meet her sister. Her sister showed up half an hour later wearing white tops with black jeans and big buckle belt with rings going around entire waist that stood out. She was as tall as Radhika though she was supposed to be younger. " So this is the guy that my sis has fallen for??" she uttered as I shook her hand. " Perhaps , Radhika mentions me while you talk over the phone??" I said, a pompous reply. She smiled back " No not really, she did tell me that she was seeing someone , but I came to know who only in India " . It was a bit of nose cut for me. Radhika then intervened to narrate our how I met her in college, followed by all that wooing escapades and the finale proposal in the final year college function. Vidya was amused by what she heard, soothing my dented pride.

After that I met Vidya, twice at forum, though during the first time, she was with her friends which meant just a exchange of a smile. The second time I met her during shopping. I offered her a lift to her home. Always helps to strike a chord with your future wife's family members. Two days after this I was busy as usual with work, until an sms " Krish.. Could you come to my home now.. its urgent..?? -Vidya " , I was more puzzled why was I receving an sms from Vidya, rather than Radhika. Nevertheless, worried something might be wrong I made to my girl friends home taking a break from work. The house was was big one. It was one of those silent neighbourhoods, where the only sound was from the movement of the trees due to the wind. I put my bike outside the gate.

Two knocks on the calling bell, nobody answered, the third time the door opened. It was Vidya who opened the door, it was the same dress she wore the first time I saw her, only difference was the tops had become even more shorter. I took seat on the sofa. She said she wanted discuss something looking flustered, She served me a drink, after which the words she spoke sent a shiver down my spine, " Krish.. I think I like you... I dont want to betray my sis... but I need to have you .." while speaking those words , distance between me and her decreased. She was literally on top of me, holding my shirt. She removed the big buckle belt that was around her waist and tossed it over the sofa. There is only that much an guy can control, though her hands were in those parts which switches of the logical part of the guy's brain,off, I somehow managed to push her away. She fell down from the sofa onto the ground. I was delirious as was she, " Krish... this is only one night stand, if your interested in me.. I will be waiting for you in the bedroom.. " She left upstairs.

I was confused has to what to do. Not many a times does a women throws herself at you like this. May be this an opportunity I thought to myself , " Choti Choti Shortcut..." lines from kaminey ringing in my ears. I didnt go after her, she came after me. To my annoyance something was poking at my pant;when I turned , I realized it was her big buckle belt which I pushed it aside. This made me remember that the usual irritating poking thing in front of my pant pocket i.e, the bike key was missing. I had left the key in the bike itself damn I said to myself. I walked out of the house to make sure bike was there and pick up the key. When I was out of the house , I saw Radhika's Father walking towards me. I was in literally shocked, totally at wits end has to what to do. I stood there still, with every beat of my heart getting louder as his footsteps got near. Radhika's Father spoke " I knew my daughter had faith in you, but I just couldn't believe you blindly, Hence I came up with this test for you .!!! ". "Huhhhh...", I gasped .Radhika's Father continued " If you had gone upstairs you wouldn't have found Vidya, but rather Radhika waiting to beat the hell out of you , Now I can proudly make you my Son in Law and arrange for engagement..". Now everything became clear to me, this whole thing was a game, if I had gone upstairs, it would have meant end for me and Radhika. By now both Radhika and Vidya came out of house. Radhika seemed the most happiest of all, with a relieved face, that I haven't failed her trust, she ran towards me to hug me. A warm hug it turned out to be.All I could ponder over was " Thank God, for the big buckled belt .!!! "

Google Matrimonial Search

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:42:00 +0000

This was too funny couldnt help posting it..!! :) Enjoy..

Avatar Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:46:00 +0000

Well, given that all the hype this movie was generating , I was sure that I am not going to miss this one. The question was more of when rather than if, as it turned out it was a stressful Saturday with having to be in Office. So was looking forward to chilling out on Sunday. Boy we were lucky, we just reached theater just 10 mins before the movie started, that too in a multiplex on a Sunday in Bangalore. As hopeless as the situation might be for not getting the tickets, one of the guys offered as two tickets for Avatar, talk about luck. We got them and made our way into screening, though there was slight fear whether it was for Avatar or Vettaikaran ( both were screened in the same multiplex). When movie started all our doubts were quelled , it was Avatar ( though I enjoyed the trailer of My name is Khan ).

James Cameroon takes us to whole new world , a different planet with its own set of terrain,plants,animals and humaniods. Talk about creating a new planet for your new film, thats what James Cameroon has done for 5 years while the film was in the making. The quintessential character of the film Jack Sully , the avatar makes his way to Pandora. Apparently he is a part of the mining contingent thats on Pandora to get unobtainium ( sarcastic name for something which they want to get their hands on ) which sells for a lot on earth. The unobtainium mine sits under the village owned by the Navi clan. So the story revolves around the usual Big corporation vs the underdog Tribe theme. There is also a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people to make evacuate the land peacefully, thats how our avatar comes into our picture. Where humans remotely control alien bodies. As it turns out Jack finally meets the tribal leader daughter, when gets lost on his first mission as Avatar in Pandora. During night he is human , at break of dawn he is back at playing the Avatar. The whole sequence of exploring the world Pandora from six legged Lemurs,Illuminating plants,Rhinoceros like creatures and Pterodactyl like flying creatures are a visual treat. Especially the scene where we move to the flying mountains of Pandora for exploration.

Meanwhile the General looses his patience and attacks the Sacred tree of the tribals to show them who is boss. Words like Shock and awe, kicking the aboriginal people out for getting their resources makes you think Cameroon taking a subtle poke at Bush's war on Iraq and Imperialism of the West. There is no shortage of humor on the film too, especially the scene where Jack jumps from one flying creature to another assuming that's the biggest flying creature in the planet, why would it look up to see somebody's attacking it from above. The second half is along the predictable lines, with a battle between the big corporations and Navi clan. The general tries to blow up a big crater in the middle of the tribe's sacred place which leads to final battle between the Navi and the General. With the help of creatures of Pandora and other clans the Navi defeat the humans , sent them packing to home. And Jack , who is more Navi than human after his exertions with the tribe decides to become Navi himself at the end of the movie.

As a whole Avatar is a visual cinematic experience that you 'll see, once in a decade There are not many films that you watch and Awe, there was Jurassic Park , Terminator 2 that made people make notice of the cinematic break throughs. Like films before it, Avatar will be remembered for its ground breaking cinematic experiences. Oh ya, when I came out of the multiplex, there was a poster of Vijay/Anushka in Vettaikaran with garlands next to Avatar poster. Two extremities of film making , I thought snickering as I walked.
Rating: 5/5

What People Want...

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:07:00 +0000

As puzzling as the topic I have chosen to post may be, I decided to do a bit of data mining over a month or so, on the various Facebook profiles on what people become fans of. On looking at the below list, some might turn out to be lighter moments , others might make you think, but most of this are small things are the ones that people miss.....

* I promise will study from tomorrow...;)
* You Dont Move after screaming, "Im Coming" when Your parents call you.
* I piss you off because I love you ?.
* You look at them, They look at you, You quickly look somewhere else..AKWARD.
* If anyone can read my mind, I'm screwed.
* I Hate It When Parents Get Serious About Something Funny You Tell Them.
* Receiving birthday calls at 12 at night feels great..
* ROCKING paper, SHOCKING result.
* I Think I Think Too Much...
* No I'm not lying, but when you look at me like that, how can I not smile?

* right, im going to start my work RIGHT NOW.. oh look i have a notification.
* I hate when I orginally pick the right answer then change it.
* Calling frnz night b4 xam n askin.. "Yaar! kya kya important h."
* The First Thing I Do When I Wake Up Is Check My Phone.
* Telling my parents everyone did worse then me to make my grade seem better.
* I Need A Hug....Don't Question Me...Don't Say Anything..Just Hug Me :/ ?.
* Saying you don't care when secretly it means the world.
* Switching off Alarm and Sleeping Again . . .
* Looking in the fridge, then the cupboard, then the fridge, then giving up.
* When it goes quiet in the classroom, I look up to check if I'm in trouble..
* Using "So..." as a way to break an awkward silence.
* SHUT UP You Made Me Forget What I Was Going To Say
* I could spend a lifetime browsing in bookstores.
* Having a 100% sarcastic conversation with someone who thinks youre serious.
* I hate people who walk really slow infront of you and can't get past them.
* Honestly, I write "lol" and I'm not Even Laughing.
* After Monday & Tuesday even the Calender says W T F...
* I Sit to Study with a Book in One Hand & My Mobile in the Other..
* I don't care if the spider's "not hurting anyone", I want it dead.
* Damn!!! I can't believe I used to like you!!
* i love it when i wake up in the morning and see '1 new message' on my phone.
* **SMILE** It's the best second thing you can do with your lips (=.
* You give 1 person chewing gum & suddenly everyone within 10 miles wants one
* Trying To Sleep But My Minds Having A Conversation With Itself :|.
* When I go out looking like crap, I see just about everyone I know!
* M.A.T.H.S = Murder Attempt on The Healthy Students
* I raise my hand for obvious answers so I don't get called on later.
* I hate getting out of my warm cosy bed on a cold dark morning.
* "Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, Guess what!?" "What?" "Oh, I forgot."
* F.I.N.A.L.S. = Fuck I Never Actually Learned This Shit.
* I Walk into a Room, I Forget Why I Went There, I Walk Out, I Remember.
* Texting shouldnt cost anything.
* My 2 minute break turns out to be a 2 HOUR break.
* Texting shouldnt cost anything.
* Dear Lord, may Taylor Lautner never find his shirt again. Amen.
* That feeling when you see that one person online, and you instantly smile. ·
* Smiling during serious moments(while your getting yelled etc.)
* Against People Who Say They Messed Up Their Exam And End Up Getting An A.
* 5 more mins in bed *sleeps* *wakes up* *looks at time* SHIT!!!!
* I'm so tired but I want to stay up and talk to you :D.
* How Headphones get Tangled up on Their Own, I'll Never Understand...
* I say "I'm on my way", whereas, I'm still at home.
* I HATE THAT KID WHO REMINDS THE TEACHER ABOUT HOMEWORKK!!!
* Yeah, ok, yes, yeah, yeah, ok, yes, ok, i know, ok, yes, BYE MOM.
* I daydream randomly and then realise I'm staring at someone by mistake.
* i hate it when i need something but cant find it!
* For us who love to lie in the couch, eat a sandwich and watch friends.
* I looked at my lecturer and thought, what the FUCK are you talking about?
* DONT TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, IM JUST GONNA FLIP OUT MORE.
* Thanks to Ed Hardy I recognize morons right away.
* I get off the computer because I'm bored. Five minutes later, I'm back on.
* I don't miss you, I miss who you used to be.
* I'm lazy, I know it...I'm proud.
* when in doubt...just google it :).
* My Battery is about to die is Code for, i Dont Want to talk to You anymore.
* I used to love you. Now I hope you die in a hole. Funny, isn't it?
* Don't start to tell me something, then say "Nevermind, I can't tell you".
* i like you, you don't like me. i lose feelings for you, you then like me..
* HEY! Where'd it go?! OK WHICH ONE OF YOU STOLE MY... nevermind i found it..
* Singing with your headphones on and not realizing how loud you are.
* I miss childhood, where the hardest decision was picking a crayon.
* I Hate It When I Do something Amazing And No One Sees it.

2012

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:13:00 +0000

Of late, I have been hearing a lot about the twitter effect, where tweeple determine how good or bad a movie is, by just tweeting. Well, I have to say you can trust it on how people judge a movie. All the movies which got a trending in the twitter Inglorious basterds, Paranormal activity were good to watch. I ended up watching 2012 thanks to the same hype. This time the venue was VR complex, nice cozy evening ( break from miserable rains , that have been following me where ever I go Bangalore or Cbe). Call it the outsourcing effect most movies in hollywood seem to have indian connnection now a days. This ones no different, where the movie starts with an Indian scientist discovering abnormal activity in Solar flares. The neutrinos from the sun are reacting with the earths crust and it is boiling inside out. An american colleague of his , gets this information to US government, so as to enable the world governments plan for the so called apocalypse in 2012.

In LA , we have our quintessential hero taking his two children for camping in yellow stone park finding the lake that used to be there missing. Now starts the story of the Day after tomorrow( because its the same director apparently). He envisaged replacing the hurricanes with earthquakes, people are quiet dumb enough not to notice the similarities. As in the original, here scientist have miscalculated the time for apocalypse and it is happening now rather than some where in the distant future. Only elite , rich and powerful are allowed to board the Noah's ark kind of ship prepared for this D-day;That most normal people aren't even aware of. Some how as the earthquake starts to become frequent, our hero finds this out from some hippie and is desperately trying to get his family on board this secret ship. What follows after this some mouth opening , awe inspiring death and destruction scenes done so well that nobody even vaguely cares about the actors or the story. Whether the Planes escaping from the pyroclastic flows which in turn springs from a volcano that erupts faster than Diwali flower pot or the large Antonov maneuvering through the rubbles of the falling buildings in Las vegas, its just breath taking.

Thanks to the earth quakes, earth has turned inside out with lava spewing everywhere in land. The secret space ship by which humans try to continue their race is in Tibet. The hero with his family and some Russian company lands in tibet. As illogical as it might seem the plane is traveling towards tibet and tibet is also traveling towards the plane ( For more details on this mystery I insist you watch the movie). Now everybody gets cozy in the space ship that is built to withstand D-day. But only problem is the number of people outnumber the number of seats. You do have the retrograde villain who locks door not allowing people inside. Meanwhile the earthquakes trigger massive tsunami's , which are so big that one from Arabian sea fills Deccan plateau makes its way across the height of Himalayas into Tibet. Oh yeah, our Indian scientist who discovered all this mayhem gets washed up in the tsunami, creating a change of heart for the Americans, who threw the doors to people open. Now for the climax, the opened door wont close for some Chinese worker throwing machine into a lever to get the door stuck, leaving the ark in line of fire of the huge tsunami thats sweeping the ark towards a big bang collision with Mount Everest. ( Yes , you heard it right people its ship colliding with Everest at altitude of 29000ft not a plane.!!). And yes as always the hero saves the day by removing the lever and saving his family, the ship navigates itself away from Everest to South Africa which apparently now turns out to be highest point on land.

All said and done, as vaunted as the climax might seem, you do happen to enjoy it thanks again to the awe inspring CG effects. As a whole this is a fun film to watch on a Saturday evening. When I came out of the theatre , I said to my friend they must have put a lot of money for all that CG and post production work , only to stand corrected by my friend saying that they have put money only in CG and post production work.!!!
Rating : 3/5

Aadhavan Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:59:00 +0000

Another Diwali, bunch of films that are releasing. When you have a group of friends getting together, the foundations of visit to a nearby theater are laid. Since his last film Ayan was good, I was looking forward to Aadhavan , plus the Director KS Ravi Kumar makes you think it must be at least worthwhile watching it. Invariably when you visit this theaters during the festive season, they try to rip you of in something, in this case it was Parking ticket, they charged Rs 8 per vehicle,People who didn't have change gave Rs 10 , since the guy who was collecting the money had no change what so ever. Basically he was ripping Rs 2 for every vehicle. Now for the much awaited movie. It started of with a stereotypical feel good,enjoy life song pretty much like his last movie Ayan. Surya plays the role of a hired gun, Aadhavan to take out people. After the intro song , he takes out a Foreign Priest. After this assignment, He is hired to take out a Judge investigating organ trade case in Kolkata by the villain. He misses his target for the first time in his entire life. What follows is a scene to show of his Marchoness, where he vows to take out the Judge in 10 days. Of course the heroine Nayanthara who plays the role of Tara, happens to be Judge's daughter. He gains entry into the house posing as a relative of Servant Vadivelu. Did I forget to mention the heroine intro song??? which tests a your patience so much, I started people getting out of Theater for a smoke. If anything holds the first half together hiding the flaws in script, its the humor between Surya and Vadivel. For most part , it leaves you in splits. Multiple attempts by Surya to take out the Judge, end up being futile during first half. In between he finds time to woo Judge's Daughter too.

Aadhavan finally resorts to planting a bomb in the car of the Judge to finish him of. But ends up traveling in the same car along with the Judge, so he is forced to diffuse the bomb. Somehow Tara ends up finding that Surya planted the Bomb. When Tara confronts Surya with this, you hear the Surya proclaiming he is the long last son of the Judge ( First in the series of illogical twists that are made logical by even more ridiculous flashbacks). Ya, the songs, they perfectly play the role of irritant seamlessly in the film. At the best, they slow the pace of the film during the second half. Again , you have Stereo typical foreign locations such Iceland and South Africa where the songs are shot. Really if the Producer wants to visit this places , he should rather take his family for a vacation , rather than the entire Production unit. ( This were I appreciate a Director as Mani Ratnam, who has shot all the songs for his movies within India ) . Seriously KS Ravi kumar seems to have included a song in the film, whenever he didn't know what to do with the screenplay. Soon the whole Judge's family finds out who Surya is, there is the Flashback where Surya plays a 10 year old . Though the story part in the flashback is over the top where you have 10 yr old playing around with Guns, atleast the CG for Ten year old Surya is good.

Add another song after flash back, villain finds out who Surya is and decides to take out Surya and his father who is the Judge. The climax is again a case of where the producer has too much money and does not know how to spend it....???? ( May be its justified when the Producer is CM's grandson). The whole story takes place in Kolkata, but apparently, the heroine manages to drive her way to South Africa in an Ambassador in climax from Kolkata. Throw in a bunch of foreign rowdis, couple of car crashes and a Bazooka which fires time bomb instead of rockets you have even more ridiculous climax, where the Judge realizes that Aadhavan is his son, Madhavan who ran away in flashback. The hero does survive a 200 feet fall from the helicopter without a scratch. The climax really tests your patience in this elongated film , add to this there is a final cameo by the KS Ravi Kumar and the producer who do a cadence of what Surya does in the beginning. By this time , I could see people banging their heads with their hands unable to bear the Super Mokkai by both and finally the one great mokkai of a film Aadhavan ends. To sum it up Sun TV top 10 movies style " Aadhavan - Kaialagadhavan " and leaving me wondering whether Surya is becoming the next Vijay.!!!

Rating: 1.5/5

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Well, its been quite some time since I have written a movie review. Its not that I have been seeing less movies but rather its hard to find quality movies that make you sit up and watch. Last night , I was pretty much yearning to see Harry Potter, unfortunately I was finding no takers for the movie. I cant understand if people are ready to see Vijay film on PVR for 180 Rs. Why not volunteer for HP6??? Though one of colleagues was interested, it was rather for Transformers 2 ( you could call him typical indian movie goer who are interested in no brainer action movies like Hulk and Godzilla, rather than quality movies ). As luck would have it, within 2 hrs of being at my office , One of senior manager's came and said you could take the day of for all the hard work you put in. I was like wow, Let me escape from office. But on hind sight, even for the last release, they had given me a day of plus Ice creams. I guess the ice creams were a casualty of the recession. Coming back to the point, I managed to cajole my tentative cubicle mate for coming with a movie (at least he has read the book, most other's just watched movies ). It was short walk to Inox across the road ( love this office cause you have a mall and a mutliplex all at a walkable distance ). The movie started and thankfully I did not have to contend with sintex ad or Kumaran silks or Sri devi silks ad before the movie like theatres in Tamil Nadu.

The movie was directed by the same director as 5th one is a more darker one. You can pretty much see that coming from initial Warner Bros intro. A grown up Harry as interested in the girls as any teen is frisked by Dumbledore to recurit Prof Slughorn to Hogwarts. You have Ginny, Harry 's love interest along with his mates Hermione and Ron. By all means the actors have outgrown their character ages. To give credit to them they have put in a good performance. Harry at the start of the year finds a potions making book of Half Blood Prince. that helps him get better grades which quite miffs of Hermione. This movie is pretty much Harry getting to know Voldemort's secrets from Prof Slughorn. Seeing Harry, Ron and Hermione at Hogwarts made me realize how much I miss college. Whether its Hermione's jealous look when Lavender kisses Ron or Ron's smile after drinking the love portion or Harry's first kiss with Ginny, they seem to be all tactile funny. Though I couldn't stand myself to see Hermione cry which she does for a long time during the first half. Draco Malfoy for a change has more meaningful role in this movie than being the usual bully. Dumbledore periodically tutor's Harry's on Voldemort's life throughout the movie. Of course , there aint a Harry Potter movie without Quiditch where Ron's turns out to be hero thanks to either Hermione's spells or Harry's luck portion.

Most of the comical moments during the first half are produced by Ron - Lavender -Hermoine love triangle or Ron intruding Harry and Ginny. After the interval, the movie picks up pace with Harry using Luck Portion to obtain Hocrux information from Slughorn. However the climax of a movie is a bit of a let down. Its more of talkative climax , compared to Order of Phoenix. I wonder whether there was a shortage of CG engineers. All the action you see are pretty much at the start of movie. Dumbledore is killed on returning from his task to destroy Hocrux with Harry by Snape. The book gives details of how Death eater's and Professor's fight , however in the movie you have one man army Harry chasing all the death eater's. The movie ends with Harry faced with a hopeless situation of destroying seven Hocruxes and Dumbledore being dead for Hocrux that was not there. I kind of wished it was I could see the next parts of the movie at a stretch, at least I would be happy to see a happy ending. Yes , at last I did take some time to remember where was I was during the last HP movie with my college mates enjoying a cozy life at cbe. Like Harry's life , it seems even my life had experienced changes leaving me with nostalgic feelings when I walked out of multiplex.!!

Rating : 4/5 I am HP fan, so forgive me , if I am prejudiced in my rating .!!

Micheal Jackson - The King of Pop

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:26:00 +0000

It was usual day when I woke up, opened phone to check my twitter account There were a lot of tweets with regard to RIP - MJ. As most people love to tweet what they are tweeting, my natural intuition was that they were listening to RIP by Micheal Jackson. It was latter that I found that the Micheal Jackson had passed away. I was in somber mood to begin with. There lots of people who are in their teens and early 20's who grew up listening to his songs and trying to copy his dance moves ( Prabhu deva probably made it as a hero because of him ). He made dance such a raging phenomenon as much to do with singing. And who can forget the eternal thriller album, the first time I listened , I got goose bumps from his music.

Just to give an idea of how much interest he generated. Google got so much queries about Micheal Jackson , that it started perceive people's queries as to a one from a automated bot or spy ware and started denying people's queries initially yesterday night. Social networking site twitter crashed from the sheer number of tweets with #micheal jackson, with 200,000 tweets an hour. This interesting video on twitter trends and shows how the news of his death is captured in the words "jackson","micheal","cardiac" and "arrest" shot up to occupy the world's conversation.

Like the beatles and Presley's before him who entertained our Grand Parents and Parents , MJ set the music trend to our generation. His music will outlive him for generations like all great men's works. May the King of PoP - RIP - Rest In PoP.!!!

Geek's Pick Up Lines

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:35:00 +0000

Alright, I picked few geek pick up lines from tweets... decided it to post it on my blog, since it was really funny...

(I realize this is an email forward, but, if anyone knows an originator, I'd like to give credit where it's due?)

Geek Pick-up Lines : Part 1

1. Tell me of this thing you humans call *dramatic pause* love.
2. If you turn me down now, I will become more drunk than you can possibly imagine.
3. They don't call me Bones because I'm a doctor.
4. Your name is Leslie? Look, I can spell your name on my calculator!
5. What's a nice girl like you doing in a wretched hive of scum and villany like this?
6. You must be Windows 95 because you gots me so unstable.
7. My 'up-time' is better than BSD.
8. I can tell by your emoticons that you're looking for some company.
9. Is that an iPod mini in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.
10. Want to see my Red Hat?
11. If you won't let me buy you a drink, at least let me fix your laptop.
12. Do u have an unlimited data connection at home,looks like you have downloaded all the beauty in the world?

Geek Pick Up Lines: Part 2

1. You had me at "Hello World."
2. Mind if I run a sniffer to see if your ports are open?
3. You make me want to upgrade my Tivo.
4. By looking at you I can tell you're 36-25-36, which by the way are all perfect squares.
5. Jedi Mind Trick: "This is the geek you're looking for." *waves hand*
6. You can put a Trojan on my Hard Drive anytime.
7. Have you ever googled yourself?
8. How about we do a little peer-to-peer saliva swapping?
9. With my IQ and your body we could begin a race of genetic superchildren to conquer the earth.
10. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this when there's a Farscape marathon on right now on the Sci Fi channel.
11. I'm attracted to you so strongly, scientists will have to develop a fifth fundamental force.
12.You make my software turn into hardware!

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 3

1. I'm attracted to you so much that scientists will begin to doubt the Theory of Relativity.
2. What's a nice girl like you doing in a chatroom like this?
3. Resistance is futile.
4. No matter how I sort things, you'll always be first.
5. No, that's not a Logitech MX-100 in my pants, but thanks for noticing.
6. I think you could be an integral part of my project life cycle.
7. I'd switch to emacs for you.
8. You put the SPARC in my workstation.
9. If you have an empty slot, I have the card to fill it.
10. We're like SLI. Were great alone, but we'd be so much better together.
11. You got me stuck on Caps Lock, if you know what I mean.
12.Lets interface our hardware

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 4

1. I have so much love to give you'll have to pipe it through more.
2. Did you make a Google Bomb? Whatever I search for, it's you I find.
3. Do you work for a TelCom? Because I bet you'd be good at pulling cable.
4. I was hoping you wouldn't block my pop-up.
5. Would you like to play Scrabble with me? I am tired of playing with myself.
6. You compute me.
7. Girl, I wish I was your differential, because then I'd be touching all your curves.
8. But enough about me, let's talk about mu.
9. Be my queen and mate me with your knight moves.
10. You've stolen the ASCII to my heart.
11. You must've been made by Intel to be that hot!
12.Isn't your e-mail address beautifulgirl@mydreams.com?

The best

Dont worry .. we'll release the "beta" in 9 months !!:D

Hope you enjoyed it.!!! :)

Election Day Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Indian elections are always entertaining, with so many parties begging for people's votes (Pardon me, if I lost count of the list of parties ).It after all the biggest reality show anybody could muster up.I always felt a two party system as in US which gives the government stability, is far more better than having so many parties. In case you choose to have multi party system, then in that situation where no party gets a majority, the top two parties should have run off election, where the winner is chosen. I was watching CNN IBN on saturday morning , also following the elections in the world of Twitter. Decided to compile a list of tweets on the election day. Here are a few good ones

Wonder what happens to all the astrologers - do the losing netas ask for money back? or go bash them up?:-)

Congress sweeps Delhi! Can you CLEAN the streets now too?

But just now they said chidambaram lost & after recounting he is declared victorious they recounted not reverse counted right?

UPA will be forming the government.. advani's expressions must be a kodak moment.

I hope the BJP figures out that there's work to be done (beyond polarizing ppl) when not in power too. Grassroots stuff.

Advani needs to take rebirth as Rahul's son to become future PM.

Sun is Shining in Tamil Nadu today.!!!

Singh is set to become King Once again.!!

BJP is like Liverpool and Congress is like Manchester United. They kept attacking Congress and claimed they will win but look what happened.

Why cant people remember a basic fact that Left is NOT RIGHT before voting. Wipe them out I say!

Karat may be a red devil i..e, Man U fan, Reds might have won in Europe , but out cold in India

Haha by the time counting is over there wont be much left of Left (pun intended) , Left left out in the cold:P

Someone should accommodate a couple of Zoozoos in the govt too

Lalu, Mulayam and Amar in a meeting right now. By meeting they mean holding each other and crying

http://twitpic.com/583sw .. on d right you hv congress supporters & on the left BJP lol #indiavotes09 #hokeypokeyindia

http://twitpic.com/5ct8g - Manmohan Singh uses Nokia (?), not iPhone :-)

Blame game within the Saffron Brigade. Extremism never helps! Nor does paying Google to display ads all over the Internet

I wonder...if Hindutva is your only astitva, then your bhavishya-kaal = bhoot kaal

BJP's online presence just pissed me off so much....any similar thoughts?

Rahul Gandhi is India's Caroline Kennedy, Advani Romney+Jesse Helms, and Mayawati a female Blagojevich.

Mayawati blames her defeat on failure to put a statue of HERSELF in EVERY home in UP.

Fringe benefit of poll result: No deve gowda,lallu,mayawati,amarsingh, Karat in Delhi for next 5 yrs ...

Why not Shashi Tharoor as a minister?

"Polls won by misuse of power" - Jayalalitha. And just when I thought they couldn't be any funnier. Should I laugh? LOL!

Dear news channels, stop calling yourself the "best" place for election news. It's OVER. You CALLED it yesterday.

Also, please stop congratulating yourselves on "getting the numbers right". You didn't. The bookies were more accurate.

I am still wondering what was the message again from BJP? Yes, we can - Barack Obama

Someone just said on #cnn-ibn DMK stands for "Delhi Money 4 Karunanidhi".

Is Derek O'Brian an MP? Imagine the questions he'd ask in Parliament.

Azharuddin becomes an MP now

I think we should get the few Left MP's and put them in a museum. Hopefully communism ends once and for all

Thankfully the 3rd & the 4th Fronts remain just that - 3rd & 4th in seats too

Lalu can join Sidhu (although he won) in the Great Indian Laughter Challenge - would boost TRPs of that show

Rajdeep wants to know YSR Reddy's secret. Ha! Everyone knows he won because he uses AXE deo spray!

Indians weighed change vs stability and opted for the latter,it's like we weighed mutual funds and fixed deposits:)

Captain's DMDK responsible for ADMKs loss and DMKs victory

Birds angry, Since mayawati lost election, Less statue's to sh*t on.

I guess from the above tweets, you can say twitter is alive and kicking. One can truly hear the voices of people are reflected in tweets. Hope you enjoyed it.!!!

Dummies Guide to Software Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:58:00 +0000

I am not going to beat around the bush for this topic, its going to be straight forward and as blunt as possible. Its almost a year since I entered this industry, I did finally manage to be a part of a product release . You may not find most of the things that I have mentioned here in any Software Engineering book. If you can learn everything from reading books, then work experience has little value. To start of, the whole information technology(IT) industry in India is based on one word "Out Sourcing". Some people might feel this word applies only Service based IT firms and not Product based ones. American firms that are present here rarely if at all allow you to take ownership of Products in India. If at all they allow, its because the Product has reached its end of life, you will end up taking ownership for the Product in the name of sustainance. If you're part of brand new product development, consider yourself very lucky. The optimism of youth is often is greatly under estimated, I loved writing code in college. Being software engineer you would be expected to code , its one of the basic things your associated with. After entering this industry, at least in India I found out there more jobs here on which you can make a living without ever bothering to write a single line of code. Unfortunately the job titles companies give have engineering associated with them, which makes mockery of what a Computer Science Engineering is.!!! I would like call this jobs as Glorified Customer Support (GCS) or So called Engineering jobs. Now, how do you make out if you ended up in this jobs?? If somebody who doesn't have anything in relation to Computer Science , who hasn't bothered to master the essentials of programming, can do your job after the initial training as well as you can, then YES, your job is a GCS. Now here are a few myths and facts which I observed

As a fresher if you dream about writing code from scratch for a product, it will stay a dream for most of the time. There is already enough legacy code out there ,the odds of you doing this are next to nothing, you ll be mostly going through and making changes to some one's code.

If you're eager to learn new stuff and want to design,build your own product, then start ups are the place to be. Often with Large corporations, they have definitive roles with defined responsibilities, its like a being trapped in a box. You need to stay inside that box whether you like it or not. Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train - Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still???

No matter how much you howl or crib about, your American counterpart will be better paid than you, even if you end up doing more work than a average American does or more talented than him unless and otherwise you happen to work in America.

Acid test to see if people you employee for programming can code, Cut off access to Google or preferably internet itself and ask them to code. I bet most people from non Computer Science (CS) wouldn't be even able to compile their code, if at all run a program. As far as CS goes they might be able to run and give something as output, though it may not be what it is required.

Some companies have a policy not differentiating people from non CS and CS. Now this is an important indicator, this are companies you shouldn't take a job in, otherwise you ll end up doing GCS. Whats more annoying for you , especially if your from CS, people who never even heard of java will be allowed to write java programs while a CS guy would be put in GCS job.

Here is a tip for all those managers who work in companies who take people from CS and non CS, getting the right people in right jobs is far more important than just allocating more people as mere resources to projects. Quality can never be compensated with quantity. Going by this rule a CS guy should have a higher probability landing in a programming job then a non CS job. If this is not the case, then your Resource allocation program in your company program is screwed big time.

In software development there are more people issues than there are issues with specifications or features or code. This is unfortunate but true. As a programmer I would clone myself ten times over and allow myself to write all the code , rather than allow 9 different people to write code. Too many cooks , Spoil the broth. But with Software engineering you would always have too many cooks, but you need to come up with a wonderful dish at the same time.

'Quality Engineering' (QE), we had one big chapter on this in Roger D Pressman's S/w Engineering book. Mostly I used to find it a mundane topic , whenever it was taught in class. People with right aptitude for QE are as much important to success of a product as people Good Programmers are. At higher level we do need people from CS in QE , to ensure quality, but lower level it doesnt really make any difference. Ideally QE is right job for people from non CS but who are interested in IT.

This is for all QE Managers who take QE seriously. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. Doing plain QE without knowing the code is like learning engineering with theory but no practicals.

Often managers in IT could get too much cobbled up, in deliverables. and metrics. The mantra here is not getting things done on time, but it should be getting things done right. Metrics are just another indicator, they are like a women's skirt, they hide more vital things than the reveal.It is easier to measure something than to understand what you have measured.

The perception of favoritism is can be as bad as inequality in the cohesiveness within a group. This ones again for mentors and managers. Its often easy for people to get cozy with a few people in a team whom they like then others, after all its human nature to pick favourites. But if that favouritism influences your decisions at work, then your laying the foundations of breaking up your team.

Combine a deadline for delivery date, with large numbers of bugs, add to it shortage of trained resources to solve those bugs. What will a manager do?? He ends up deferring bugs to meet the release date. Deferring bugs never fixes bugs. Its like your being an ostrich digging its head beneath the ground and pretending its not in danger, when its faced by a threat.

Slogging your work during weekends to meet a deadline under pressure, will lead to more slogging. Slogging will never ever be a replacement for having a proper Work Plan in Place. Remember, the very moment you start slogging, it means something in your work plan is under estimated.

I’m a programmer, and I want to change the world, but they just won’t give me the source code. This one of typical out cries you hear. Coding is just one aspect of programming. The even more important thing is coming up with ideas how to implement things. Your good old O(n) vs O(nlogn) vs O(n^2) stuff. Call it a downside of having chain of management , Getting people who program to listen to people with ideas is one thing, getting people who program to accept those ideas is a whole another thing.

This are just a few of the issues that most of "want to be CS engineers" will face at workplace. Atleast it will help in setting the aspirations for a fresher who comes into IT , for what to expect and what not to expect. Expectations after all are the basis of all disappointments in life.!!!!!!!!!

Luck by Chance, Perfomance & Position.!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:33:00 +0000

I know its been a long time since I have posted anything here. Most of my time has been eaten up in my office work or other personal issues. 7 months into work, it makes you aware that college is way more fun than your stereo typical office. To the people who follow my blog, I have not abandoned the world of blogging, but taken to the world of micro blogging of late. This my Twitter profile http://twitter.com/gkmaestro for you to follow. Now two things which I passed through recently which I feel are fact of corporate life. Lets start with two stories which recently came across

Luck matters ;-)

With a pile of 300 resumes on his desk and a need to pick someone quickly, my boss told me to make calls on the bottom 50 and toss the rest. "Throw away 250 resumes?" I asked, shocked.
"What if the best candidates are in there?"

"You have a point," he said. "But then again, I don't need people with bad luck here."

- Becky Horowitz(Reader's digest)

Performance & Position ;-)

A Priest dies & is awaiting his turn in line at the Heaven's Gates.
Ahead of him is a guy, fashionably dressed, in dark sun glasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket & jeans.
God asks him: Please tell me who are you, so that I may know whether to admit you into the kingdom of Heaven or not?
The guy replies: I am Kumar, Auto driver from Chennai!
God consults his ledger, smiles & says to Kumar: Please take this silken robe & gold scarf & enter the Kingdom of Heaven ...
Now it is the priest's turn. He stands erect and speaks out in a booming voice: I am Pope's Assistant so & so, Head Priest of the so & so Church for the last 40 years.
God consults his ledger & says to the Priest: Please take this cotton robe & enter the Kingdom of Heaven ....
'Just a minute,' says the agonized Priest. 'How is it that a foul mouthed, rash driving Auto Driver is given a Silken robe & a Golden scarf and me, a Priest, who's spent his whole life preaching your Name & goodness has to make do with a Cotton robe?'
'Results my friend, results,' shrugs God.
'While you preached, people SLEPT; but when he drove his Auto, people PRAYED' It's PERFORMANCE & not POSITION that ultimately counts.

Hope you had a good laugh.!!! :)

Yamming & Tweeting

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:21:00 +0000

Its a week where I read in the newspaper that Paris Hilton wants to stimulate the world economy by shopping more (Hmmm, I dont know about her stimulating the economy, but she certainly managed to stimulate a lot of men by her videos ) . On a more serious note now, one of the events that happened during this week, made me think about the kind of work one ends up doing. It all started in a meeting, where my manager stressed on the need of increasing communication. The topic here was site called Yammer , it basically your Twitter modeled for your office, communicating with your colleagues. Personally I have never moved beyond FaceBook and Orkut with respect to Social Networking. It was one of those days in office where I had time to myself, that enabled me to try out Yammer. I found it interesting, when I joined it. So went ahead and joined my Team's private community on it. (PS : My team's community on yammer was owned by Software Development Director in US i.e, SDD for short). What happened was,I used my actual name as in most of my official documents G@#@!# K#@!#!. But in MCE( my company) its screwed up as G@#@!# R!@#!@#( Apparently when I joined here, they wanted the name as in Passport, which was G@#@!# K#@!#! R!@#!@#) . Taking the first name and last name, they made it G@#@!# R!@#!@#, again nobody knows me by this name outside MCE.

Coming back to the point, When I joined my team's community on Yammer, Mr SDD was wondering whom I was. Since people were exchanging pretty confdential information on that community. On searching his Outlook address book he couldnt find anybody there going by my actual name, which totally got him freaked out. Thinking I could be some sought spy from our competitor's such as Big Blue. He went as far as asking the Site lead to ran a background check against the names of people working out of Bangalore, which led my manager to scamper to my cubicle where I was happily listening to songs, to enquire my name. Leaving me to explain the mix up that was created because of my name. When to two manager's come running to your cubicle during this times , it could either mean you might be promoted or getting laid off ( more likely during this recession times). In my case , it turned out to be neither. In the end, Mr SDD did approve my membership request in that community. Apparently, I latter found out after joining the community , I am probably the youngest member in that community with most people there in the level of Managers, Senior Software Engineer's and so on. Now for the other side , when one of my friends tried to join his products community on Yammer, his request was rejected on the basis he is not a part of R & D team by his team's SDD. Leaving him to wonder, whether India is just one big Customer Support Centre of US MNC's for carrying out back office operations or whether any serious Software Engg work goes on in bangalore. Now thats question I am asking myself, the answer of which could well lead to a lot of changes in what I end up doing in my career.

(PS: I have joined Twitter after Yammer, I am loving it. I cant go about saying everything that I want on a official corporate site like yammer, Can I??)

Escape to Ooty

noreply@blogger.com (Ganesh Karthick) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:24:00 +0000

Well, after a turbulent start to the New Year I couldn’t wait to get myself out of Bangalore. Things change with time, but its ability to cope with change which is tested. As with most of my outings rarely do, I end up planning. Within 3 hours of me landing in Coimbatore, the plan for two day outing to Ooty was already chartered out by my friends. The next day we started early by 7 30 am to Ooty. Here I need to make a word of caution about our chauffeur; He basically thinks he is Michael Schumacher’s prodigy. People normally speed up when the highways are free. But he was traveling at 140km/h in road in between the forests. I knew something was going to go wrong, when I saw the speedometer. As it turned out, a poor deer took the wrong moment to cross the roads, it tried to squirt its way across the road, as we were moving. I thought the deer may not make it across the road, but it may end up in heaven for sure. But Luckily thanks to some superb Scorpio braking, the deer was able to cheat death (Thank God for those Scorpio brakes). Not the greatest of starts to the journey, midway through I knew something was wrong. The weird feeling was getting stronger with every hairpin bend we took. Finally in 4th one I had to take a call from one of my friends, as soon as I finished the call, I knew it was coming out. A bang on the door ensured the car was stopped and I rushed out to puke. Not a pretty site, when you have to go, you have to let it go. Another hour we finally reached Ooty. We managed to get some well deserved rest thanks to our friend’s guest house.

It was time for some sight seeing after we had a pretty good lunch. I knew there was going to be more hairpin bends to contend, so my lunch was basically a lip service. Couple of my friends never realized the meaning of it. A half hour into travel for Pykara Lake it was their turn to puke. At last after a lot of puking we got down at lake for much warranted Sight seeing and Photo shooting. I am used to seeing girls Bangalore wearing outrageous dresses in office and malls , but one of the girls t-shirt had the following saying on it “Twin Towers” , of course there was her beau near. (Poor him, God only knows who is going to ram the Twin Towers with a plane!). We further traveled to Dodabetta after it. Its like at the junction of Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats, makes a good sight. Provided you don’t have fog, you’ll be able to see most of Ooty. Then it was time for leisurely boat ride, took a couple of great pics here. We decided to call it a day and returned to house. I decided to wash my face after returning home, but only problem you’re hand literally started to freeze when you poured water over it. I had to rush to another room, kept my hand near the heater for 5 mins to warm it up again. It was dinner time, there was a good restaurant near by where you could order food to your house, but decided to eat out at the restaurant rather than eat at home. It was bloody cold when we ventured out, but what surprised me was the food my friend ordered. Let me list it out 10 chappati’s , 10 Parotta’s , 3 Fried Rice’s, 2 Plates of Chilly Chicken, 2 Plates of Pepper Chicken, 2 Plates of Kadai Chicken Gravy, 2 Plates of egg gravy ( Huff , I am at last done ). This was for just 6 people; personally I couldn’t go beyond 2 Chappati’s and a Parotta. Most of the food was going to be wasted, so we decided to pack it, so that we could warm the food and eat them in morning. And we weren’t done yet, probably we were the only people in the restaurant to order ice cold Limca after eating all of this in that coldness of Ooty (after affects of which I am feeling as throat pain now).

Finally it was time for camp fire, to warm up ourselves with some foot tapping music in the middle of night, played some cards and drifted of into sleep. There was another college group who also had camp fire opposite to ours. It would have been better, if we could have joined them, things would have really spiced up. I got up real early next morning with birds chirping, clear sunshine with a mountainous background, perfect wallpaper material. Though we had a solar heater, it was like name sake, because the water literally turned cold within mins from the tap. Taking bath in that cold water is one experience you’re not going to forget. We had more of sight seeing with monkeys (I always manage to find them, no matter what) and deers. Now I need to say about return journey, the normal duration of travel from Ooty to Coimbatore is 3 hours. But the bet was for our chauffeur to get us down within 2 hrs. Well, I have played NFS drift, but to experience it in reality is a whole another thing. We took a Hairpin bend at 100 km/h. I was in the front seat; my heart was in my mouth for the all 14 hair pin bends. That was the first time in my life; I started wearing seat belt out of fear of safety. And to make matters worse, my friend said he was going to puke, while we were caught in a middle of traffic jam. The worst case scenario of puking inside the car happened, since my chauffeur was unable to maneuver out of traffic jam. After that we basically need to clean up the car. ( Though my friend was like , I haven’t puked since drinking Vodka in 3rd yr, I wasn’t amused) . Another half an hour I finally reached home, thoroughly exhausted; But it was well deserved escape to Ooty away from the hectic Bangalore life. Last but no the least, We did manage to reach Coimbatore in 1hr 55 mins.!!

(PS: A girl who was at the back of my seat while I was traveling from Coimbatore to Bangalore also ended up puking in the bus in the middle of the night. )