A CEO's blog on the world at large

2007-10-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

We all are familiar with the SDLC process and the role reviews play in helping ensure that the final product is of good quality and is able to meet the system requirements. Reviews are of many kinds ranging from code reviews, test plan reviews, design reviews to performance reviews, audit reviews etc. Let us focus for the moment on design reviews. Typically in the software design phase, the design team receives the requirements in the form of the BRD, the FS or whatever name your organization has chosed to call the inputs. They then proceed to model the application using the tools available like Rational Rose, visio etc. The end result is a set of diagrams and maybe some code which is handed over to the development team for coding. One of the important artifacts that the quality team insists on is the traceability matrix which helps them to verify if all the requirements mentioned in the BRD, FS etc have been covered. But how to we ensure coverage throughout the SDLC process. Did the design team cover everything. If they did, then did the development team leave out something. Did the test cases cover every part of the system and was every functionality tested thoroughly. Thus it becomes essential that the coverage report exists for the design and development phases atleast. The traceability matrix is generally used for checking coverage after the development phase and before the release of the product. There is no real template to document the design coverage other than a set of checklists. You might have come across checklists that contain questions like:

1. Have all mandatory diagrams (Use Case, Class, Collaboration, Sequence, Deployment and Component diagrams) been included?
2. Have symbols and notations been used consistently?
3. Have all assumptions and dependencies been explicitly stated? Are these realistic and reasonable?
Use Cases – Every user interaction with the system must be documented as an Use Case and should be supplemented by an Use Case Diagram.
4. Define the use cases for all the possible interactions of actors with the system.
Activity diagrams - It must address all the requirements specified by the use case. (Activity diagram ensure that the data flow is as per the use case.
5. Describe the internal behavior of an operation pictorially
6. Depict activities that can occur in parallel. The discovery of activities that can occur in parallel will help us to build processes that are more efficient.
7. Help to identify activities whose responsibility belongs elsewhere
8. Allow the discovery of common functionality within a system
9. Show the dependencies, which can be easily identified during the behavior change of the system.
10. Define appropriate relationships between classes. Appropriate design patterns should be used while designing the system. The performance parameters should be taken into account during this process.

and so on

But how do we evaluate a design from an architecture perspective. How do we know that the present design would meet the peak maximum load of a 100,000 concurrent users. Would the system use the same resources irrespective of whether there are 50 users or 500 users. Would the system be able to withstand a DoS attack. Would it allow other applications running on the machine access to some resources or hog all the resources itself. How do you answer such questions by looking at a set of diagrams. Well looks like this others have thought of this before and arrived at some mechanisms to solve this problem.
The methodology is called the Software Architecture Analysis method (SAAM) and relies on a scenario based approach to evaluating software architecture against a set of quality attributes. Some of the main quality attributes include scalability, reliability, security, interoperability etc. In an SAAM evaluation, scenarios representing the quality attributes of the system are developed, prioritized,
and analyzed against the architectural approaches chosen for the system. The results of the analysis are then expressed as risks, sensitivity points, and tradeoffs.
After the scenario generation meeting(s), the refined scenarios are converted
into architectural test cases that the architecture team analyzes against the system architecture. This analysis The architectural test case development and analysis often takes place over an extended period of time (perhaps months) before the architecture team presents the results of the analysis to the stakeholders. This way the software architecture/design can be arrived at as a set of metrics that reveal how the architecture/design measures up against a set of quality attributes.

For more details regarding SAAM and software architecure evaluation can be found at
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/pub_by_topic.html#evaluation

2007-10-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Twenty-20に世界コ-フお勝利したいんと゛の選手におめて゛とうこさ゛います

わたしは来週のさいこ゛にエゲレスへしゅっちょうに
行きます.
しゅっちょうのし゛かんはに週間く゛らいあるそて゛す
わたしはこの前にエゲレスへいったことか゛ありません

エゲレスはたへんきれいそて゛すエゲレスはこのこ゛ろたへんさむらして゛す
そして冬服はたくさん持っていかわなけれは゛なりません. チヤンナイはたへん
あついのて゛冬服は要ないたます゛エゲレスのいろいろなところお
旅行するつもりて゛したか゛て゛もし゛かんか゛ないからいくのおやめます

このしゅっちょうはエゲレスにある有名な銀行 LTSBのコルフ゜レトヘ゛ンキンクフルマウレクお (CBF) 分解
するのためて゛すわたしは LTSBのセステマのテクニカルイスヘ゜クトは分解します
コルヘ゛ンキンについて知ていないとこの仕事はて゛きません

2007-10-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

In a spineless display of courage, the Indian government is silent on the pro-democracy movement in neighbouring Burma. By their silence they have proven that they do not care for human rigts, democracy etc which they themselves claim to uphold so often. They have failed to practice what they preached and have thoroughly let down a neighboring country that desperately needs its help to free itself from a military junta that has ruled dictatorially for over 40 years. Its sad to hear external affairs minister saying that sanctions should be the last resort when national and international expectations are that India would do much more than that. If sanctions are the last resort, then what's the first, invite the leader of the junta for a state dinner with the president. India has by its silence expressed its solidarity with the wrong side of the struggle and not where it should rightly be, with the peace loving people of Myanmar. It is imperative that India stirs out of its lethargy and do its utmost to free the burmese people from the clutches of the dictators and let the burmese people choose the person that they want to lead them. The freeing of activist leader Aug suu kyee would be the first step to take towards achieving that end.

2007-09-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

It is a day after the 6th anniversary of the sep 11 terror attacks on the WTC. Six years ago, on this day, me and my friend stood watching the towers collapse just a few hundred metres away from ground zero. We were on our way to work when we saw the fire in the first tower and were told that we could not go to work. The first plane had already struck but the magnitude of the attack was not yet known. To me it looked like a small plane had maybe crashed due to pilot error. Then a little while later the second plane struck amidst a thunderous noise and the second tower was engulfed in a ball of flame. The first tower came down in a heap and the second one followed soon after resulting in a cloud of smoke and dust several storeys high.
The smoke cloud hung over the financial district for the next 2 days not dispersing and serving as a constant reminder of the events the previous day. It was hard to believe that in the place where the twin towers stood earlier, there now was a void. Our workplace was in the World Financial center which was just over 18 storeys tall. A part of the tunnel under the river had collapsed rendering commuting difficult. The impact from the collapsing towers was believed to have compromised the integrity of other structures around it such as Goldman Sachs, WFC etc. We learnt that it was a terrorist attack from the clerk at the hotel we were staying at.
I was at the time working with the Repo trading desk of Merrill Lynch, New York. While the emergency response teams were involved in relief and rescue work, the repo support team was frantically trying to restore the trading platform back into operation. The newyork stock exchange was temporarily out of operation (for a day or 2, if I remember right) after the disaster but trading soon began. The repo desk too was back in operation although with a few days old data. In fact, they would have been back up much earlier had not they been prevented from entering their offices to fetch some backup tapes for fear that the WFC building might collapse. The repo desk operated out of their office on the new jersey side in the immediate aftermath. The repo support team worked day and night to restore systems to operating state. Not an easy task by any standard. The same was the case wherever systems had shutdown or gone offline owing to the terror strikes and it was the triumph of human spirit that could be seen all around in the few weeks following that eventful day.

2007-09-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I had blogged about a stite that allowed you to clip portions of webpages. Well looks like that was not the only one website that allowed you to do that. Here's another one and this guy goes far beyond just clipping and has a range of products in the area of social annotation, bookmarking etc. The link is here.
There's tons of social networking sites. Well, here's another one. perfspot. Make sure you check out the perfNights section. It's hot.

2007-09-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

I finally installed ubuntu on my desktop. I got the Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn CD and installed it on one partition. First impression - "great". I don't have the complete software but the desktop itself looks good. Ubuntu imports your windows profiles while installing under a userid you provide (defaults to windows id). The files should be available if you login with that id, I think though I haven't checked myself.

2007-09-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

One of the things that are part of my plans for preparing for the JLPT test is to watch japanese movies. Last week, I brought home the movie "The hidden fortress" directed by Akiro kurosawa. I was hoping to be able to follow the japanese in the movie but after a few minutes it became clear that was not going to be possible. The movie was made in 1958 and following present day japanese is hard enough.
The movie itself was quite interesting and had me tied to the TV set for the entire duration of the movie. The plot is very simple one, that of taking a displaced princess to safety across enemy territory. The person given this responsibility is the commander who does a brilliant job of it. In this he is aided by 2 peasants and another girl they see on the way. Finally when they are caught and to be executed, they are saved by another samurai whose life the commander spared earlier. The first half is full of suspense and the latter half has a bit of action as the commander takes on the enemy. The peasants serve as the comic relief. Quiet a well-made movie. Not much grandeur even though a princess is involved. The hidden fortress is a secluded fortress in a valley and hidden from view where the princess stays temporarily till she leaves for safer territory. When they are caught and about to be executed, the princess says that she's ready to die since she's seen the world now and talks about the folk song she heard enroute. She then launches into a rendering of the song herself. A nice poignant touch from the director.

2007-09-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

Here's something for cricket lovers. At present, there's not much support for cricket in Joomla CMS. It is possible to embed a widget inside a joomla component quite easily and see the scores etc. However that would mean leaving what you are doing and visiting the component with the widget every once in a while. Joomla supports modules which are floating areas that can be displayed along the sides of other components. So even if you are writing a blog, contributing to a forum or browing the classifieds, you can still know what the score is.
I created a small module that displays the current score and the teams playing. The module fetches the rss feed from http://www.cricinfo.org and displays in a module. The cricinfo site only gives the total score and does not provide individual scores as part of the feed. For that matter, none of the sites do. If you know of a site that does provide such a feed, please let me know. The feed should refresh frequently enough, at least once every minute. Anything more is a plus.

2007-09-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

Back from Mumbai, I decided to go in for the level 2 of JLPT (japanese Language Proficiency Test). I had completed level 3 2 years ago and had forgotten most of what I studied including how to speak. Little did I realize that Level 2 was an altogether different proposition than Level 3 at that time. Since it was august already, most japanese language tutors have refused to coach me for the test. Here's a small prelude so you could know what is involves. Level 2 requires that you know over 5000 words vocabulary and are able to read over 500 kanji apart from the level 3 Kanjis. A real tall order indeed. Gotta go. It's cram time.

2007-09-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

I took a deep interest in php based CMS and I was hoping to build a web 2.0 site. My search led me to Joomla, a php based CMS. My earlier experience to CMS was with 'PostNuke', another PHP based CMS and quite mature with a lot of features. What PostNuke didn't have or I didn't see was that the look and feel was not that good. Joomla comes with a lot of cool templates to make your site look like a web 2.0 site and giving you the benefits of a CMS at the same time. Joomla was so good that I got quite involved in it and started developing components, templates and such. For an example of a component that I developed (in fact it is an enhancement of an already existing component) you can visit http://www.omkaragifts.info/joomla/download.php
The component is a EventList component that allows you to add upcoming Events to your site. The problem with the current EventList component was that the venue of the event had to be added first by the site administrator before an event can be added. I wanted a way where users could add events themselves. Also there was no way to feature the events and there was a chance good events would be missed in the crowd. So I added a mechanism to feature events at the top of other events. As always, the component is free and open source and is available at the above link. There's also some templates that I developed that I have made available. Though not free, they are nominally priced and available at the above link.

2007-08-23T22:50:00.001-07:00

I was at the mall and I didn't know "The Transformers" had been released. So when someone offered me a ticket, I grabbed it and went inside. I had no idea what "The transformers" meant or who they were. All I knew was that it was a video game that had been made into a movie, just like 'Tomb raider and resident evil'. It wasn't until the chopper started morphing into a robot that I realized what "transformers" meant. The movie is directed by 'Michael Bay', the director of other movies like The rock and The island. A director known for making action packed films, you can look forward to some rollicking action. Since the movie is about robots and there are almost 7 or 8, they raise quite a racket and the visuals become hard to follow. The sequence in the character Sam's residence with the robots outside requires special mention though. The climax is another riot and you are glad its over when the movie ends.

2007-08-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Iam just back from a 2-week trip to Mumbai to help one of our projects, the phase 1 of which was scheduled to go live shortly. My services were specifically requested as the people there felt that my expertise and experience might come in handy. I however had my reservations because the phase 1 of the project involved only minor development which they could have handled themselves. It was only after I was told that I could use my time to work on phase 2 did I agree to visiting Mumbai. Little did I realize what an unforgettable experience I was about to have. I was hoping the team there would be friendly and great to work with. They were friendly alright, about as friendly as a room full of rattlesnakes. They somehow saw my presence there as a threat and were unwilling to treat me as one amongst them. No matter how hard I tried to make friends, they were unwilling to reach out. So in the end I had to cut short my trip and return much earlier than earlier planned. It was only the time I spent outside of office and away from the cut-throat corporate world that made the trip somewhat worthwhile.

2007-08-02T20:59:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading the book "The Google story" by David A. Vise and boy what a fascinating read it was. I certainly didn't expect the story of 2 stanford graduates who made it big to be this good a literary work. Kudos to the author for crafting this work and providing an insight into the birth and maturing of the world's best search engine.
The journey starts with the characters being introduced and the meeting of Larry and Sergey at Stanford and the sequence of events that followed. Larry is the first to come up with the idea of building a search engine and Sergey helps refine it with his mathematical prowess. The two then seek funding for their project, get the necessary funding, drop out of Stanford and are on their way. Who would not provide funding for such a project if they had the money especially in the peak of the dot com bubble. o much is being said about there not being money involved in search. Yahoo and microsoft think of search as not being primary areas of focus for them. For a large part of the nineties, internet users had to be content with the likes of Altavista, Excite, Looksmart, Lycos, yahoo and a host of other search engines none of which were good. Altavista in fact is mentioned by Bill Gates in his book "The road ahead". Altavista and to an extent yahoo were in fact undermining the usefulness of search by offering paid placements in their search results. Yahoos method of indexing sites by category was not liked by many, me being one of them that disliked it. All this was brought to an end with Google's amazing 'PageRank' algorithm that ranks search results on their importance.
E-commerce had already laid its roots and it was only obvious that merchants would have flocked to have their sites advertised on Google. If google did not have an advertising mechanism in place, they needn't have feared since Altavista already had one notwithstanding their eye always being on the cash register. The cinderella story continues as the company's IPO is a money spinner and their advertising picks up momentum so much so that they have begun to be seen as a big threat by the likes of Microsoft. Nearly all of google's revenue comes from the ads they display alongside the search results. In that respect, they are a 'one trick pony' in the words of the author himself. Any disruption in this ad displaying would result in immediate losses to Google which the author does not fail to highlight. All somebody has to do is launch a slew of search websites, all of which use the same search engine, possibly even google's, and provide the facility to advertisers to advertise their products alongside search results just like Google. This way, Google would no longer have the monopoly that it now enjoys. Having said that, it would really take some serious work to beat google at their own game especially since by now they would have refined their search engine and know all the tricks of the search engine trade and thus have a headstart over anyone else. But still, thats something Microsoft would consider worth exploring. There's no mention of Google maps in the book but that's probably because it was still on the drawing board then.
On the down side, the book is infectious and reading about all that money rubs on you a little bit. Especially if you are a wannabe entrepreneur like me. Beware or you could end up losing your friends because you are always talking of IPOs, scaling up and branding. As for the future, I for one don't see Microsoft or anyone else beating Google at their own game. Sure they would get close. But if the people at Google are on their toes, then they could really win hearts across the globe.

2007-07-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

Grabbing frame from video

This is in continuation of my earlier post where I wanted to pick a color from an Image. Only this time, I wanted to grab a frame from a mpeg2 video and save it as a file so I could submit it to a photo contest. I got a couple of software none of which worked. I then decided to take matters in my own hand and use the Screenshot program in java that I had to take a snapshot of the video while it was paused. There's usually a slight blurring and I was okay with that.
To my amazement, the results were astounding like straight out of a Stephen King novel. First I played my video using Windows media player. Then I paused it at the frame I wanted. Then I ran my Screenshot program to save the frame to a PNG file. So far so good. Now that I had saved the frame I wanted, I let the video play till the end. Then when I checked the saved image guess what I found. The image stored was the last frame from the video and not the frame I wanted to save. It was as if the image got updated by itself after the java program had saved it and exited. How could this possibly be.
I wasn't ready to give up just yet. The last frame got saved to the file since the video kept running till the end. What if I didn't run the video after the file was saved and left it in pause mode. So I tried this out and I got my frame in a image. The picture was still inside of the WMP in the image which I planned to correct using the 'crop' tool of my image editing tool. Again, when I loaded the image into the ImageEditor, the results were frustrating to say the least. The 'crop' function wouldn't work. It was as if the image had a mind of its own and wouldn't respond to my effort to scroll the image. The picture inside the WMP itself would remain stationary while the rest of the picture scrolled. In the end, I decided to make the best use of what I had and just cropped the portion of the image I wanted AND was visible, and saved as a new image. So I had the picture I wanted or so I thought. I closed my ImageEditor and also WMP which was still paused. I was ready to upload the image I had saved to my website. I wanted to check the image before I uploaded it and when I opened it, I was amazed at what I found.

"The image was pitch dark and there was nothing but a black rectangle where earlier there was the picture of a marble structure."

Is there a scientific explanation that has to do with codecs and proprietary video formats or should I treat this as something out of a Stephen King novel.

2007-07-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

I was in Jaipur in May'2007 on some business and I had a chance to experience the culture and climate of Rajasthan for the first time. I was treated to some warm hospitality and saw some great architectural sights. Here's a video from my trip showing the magnificient Birla Mandir.

2007-07-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got interested in plugins (extensions?) for the firefox browser and the feature I was looking for this. "Being able to capture the content of a portion of a webpage and store it somewhere with the possibility to transform it later into a different format. The search led me to this site which fit my need to a T. It is a web 2.0 site which allows uses to clip contents of web pages and store it on their site. Cool, isn't it.

The link.

2007-07-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Taj has found a place among the seven wonders once again. It took an intense SMS campaign towards the end to get the Taj among the elite list. The other monuments that have found a place include

>The great wall of china
>Rome's Colosseum
>Jordan's Petra
>Peru's Machu Picchu
>Brazil's Christ the Redeemer statue
>Mexico's ancient city Chichen Itza

The number of votes received by SMS seems to bethe basis for the selection of the final list. A more accurate criteria would have included a number of factors such as
the novelty of the concept, the awe inspiring nature of the monument (subjective) and more measurable factors like the number of visitors to the monument, the difficulty of execution etc. The monuments that made it to the list all deserve to be among the top wonders of the world irrespective of the number of votes they received.
Federer beat Nadal in a marathon 5-setter on sunday. The match was different from the games of the past when players like Becker, Edberg and Sampras were around when the point usually consisted of a serve, a return and a volley. This time around there were powerful groundstrokes from both players and both players played some great tennis. It was only in the very end that Federer could assert his dominance on grass to win his 5th Wimbledon title. So it is still "Federer on Grass and Nadal on clay". How long that will that stand good is anybody's guess.
In the women's segment, France's Marion bartoli fought valiantly against Venus Williams and it was only some powerful serving and raising of her game that saw Venus retain her title. With a better serve and volley game, Marion could be a force on grass court tennis.

2007-07-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned earlier that I had cleared my mind of the wicket related stuff I was working on. I had kept the files intact and today I had the opportunity to tinker with it a little bit. I started tomcat and browsed to the link and it worked like a charm. I might be onto something here. A treetable component capable of editing XML in your browser could have many uses in these web 2.0 crazy times. RSS comes to mind immediately but any XML could be edited. Here's a screenshot of my editable XML treetable showing a ruleML file.

2007-07-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

The other day I was listening to the track "Stuck in a moment you can't get out of" from U2's album 'How to dismantle an a*****c b**b'. By their standards, it looks quite ordinary though that might change as I get to hear it more. I am great fan of U2 and feel that their album "Joshua Tree" is in my opinion the one of the greatest albums ever made and the song 'with or without you' quite simply the best song in the album. I have seen people rating 'Achtung baby' in the Top ten rock albums and Iam ready to agree with that too. One thing I noticed and Iam sure many would have also is why the long names. Their last album title and the song I mentioned above both have more than 5 words.
Their work in eradicating poverty is admirable and they deserve to be the highest paid Rock stars for their music and commended for their charitable work.

2007-06-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

Added a new features to my blog. You can now see daily top ten list along the right side of this blog. You can also express your opinion by voting on the items in the list. If it is a media item, you can also click on the link next to the item to visit the item listing on amazon.com. I hope this feature will add more interactivity to my blog and make things more fun.

2007-06-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Two products from internet innovators that are for limited number of users are the EC2 from Amazon and Google's Mashup editor. Both are radically different products and have nothing in common but that they are for limited trial offers. Amazon EC2 is a business model thought up by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and relies on making available servers and hardware on a as needed basis. This means that you don't have to pay for computing resources you don't need right now. The exact nature of the program is still not clear as the offer was limited to only 10000 users and was taken up in no time at all. In fact, the story goes that one would-be participant who missed out was ready to offer $20000 for a seat to another who was successful but his offer was turned down. Such was the attraction that the Ec2 program had on the internet community.
Google Mashup editor is a relatively new offering from Google. It is amied at making building mashups easy and should pave the way for better mashups in less time. It isn't appear to be in the same league as EC2 in business terms. Google nevertheless is testing the water before making it available for public consumption. A couple I have tried myself include
1. A wiki based product from IBM alphaworks
2. A great product from openkapow

Would have loved to get my hands on Google's mashup editor though.

2007-06-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

I had this requirement to pick the pixel color from an image. I usually use a image editor program that I have to select the color. Iam aware that programs like photoshop would do this kind of thing quite easily. But it didn't make sense to start photoshop if it wasn't already running just for this small requirement. As usually the case with free programs, the image editor software started acting strange and would not tell me the color. So I began searching the net for ColorPicker programs. Most of the results were for html websites that allow you to select web safe colors. There was a flash based one which I couldn't use because I didn't have flash installed. Another was a COM based google gadget which I couldn't test because I didn't have google desktop installed. So I went to the usually reliable Java for a solution. Only in this case it didn't prove so reliable after all. I call it usually reliable because there's always some java code out there that does what you want. A small example would be when I had to capture a screenshot and the print screen function was not working. A java code I found on the net did just what I wanted. I was hoping for something similar to happen with the color picker as well. But no luck. To select a color from an image, you would have to be able to manipulate the image at the pixel level. Java 2D allowed you to do that. But life is never simple, is it? I was working with a jpg file and to obtain a BufferedImage from a jpg file, you need a jpeg decoder. The sample code said that this could be done using something like below:


 InputStream in = ClipImage.class.getResourceAsStream(imgFile);
 JPEGImageDecoder decoder = JPEGDecoder.createJPEGDecoder(in);
 final BufferedImage bufferedImage = decoder.decodeAsBufferedImage();
 in.close();

Only the jai-imageio project which contained JPEGImageDecoder did not have any JPEGDecoder in it. So it was back to search for JPEGDecoder and there were very few hits. The GNU classpath project had a JPEGDecoder and after getting all the files, it became evident that it wasn't quite the same as the decoder I wanted. The documentation was also scarce and by then I was able to get the color I wanted by running the image editor on my laptop.

Moral of the story: Don't go on a wild goose chase

2007-06-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

This year's javaone a 'damp squib'? It sure does appear like it. Considering all the hype that was generated before the conference, this years' javaone definitely was pretty ordinary compared to previous years conferences. After thge keynotes and the announcement about JavaFX, it was as if they all had into a deep slumber only to wake up once the conference was over. Or maybe a Maoist regime had taken over the moscone center and imposed a blanket ban on any news getting out. Whatever be the reason, if the powers behind javaone think that 1 solitary announcement maketh a conference, they better think again. With the likes of Microsoft and Adobe coming out with new platforms for computing, java would have to buck up and get going if it does not want to get left behind.

2007-05-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

Babel is a movie with intersting sub-plots that are full of emotion and the actors have given full support to the script. That they have given their best is evident as this movie is definitely oscar material. Brad Pitt is a different person in this film and a welcome change from the usual slam bang stuff he is known for. The story revolves around a american couple who are traveling in Morocco when the american woman is shot accidentally by 2 Moroccan sheperd boys. The movie traces the lives of 4 different people, that of the american couple, the nanny who looks after their kids, the moroccon boys family and surprisingly a japanese connection in the form of a hunter who happens to gift his rifle to the boys who end up shooting the american tourist. The last connection is so far-fetched that it could have been left out or atleast treated with a bit more sensitivenes. What does the japanese gifting the rifle to a Moroccan have anything to do with the problems faced by his deaf daughter.
Especially considering that most of the nidity in the film is centered around this Japanese girl.
The editing does lend to keeping the interest in the story alive but only ends up confusing the viewer about whats happening. A case in point is the telephone conversation that Brad has with the mexican nanny. Does he have it before or after the ordeal his kids go through. Could have been avoided. The director makes sure that the viewer is not bored with some clever screenplay and delivered a good movie containing elements of human interest. rating: 3 stars over 5

2007-05-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last blog mainly because of some stuff I got involved in. Our company is getting into other businesses away from developing the XML editor product. That has been put on the back burner temporarily to see if could strengthen our bottomline before contiuning development on that front.
Come May-June and the summer is at its peak here in Chennai. The showers expected from the depression that formed off the coast disappointed last week. The power situation isn't all that good either. Its important to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration from the heat. It was another hot and humid afternnon this saturday when I went to the juice shop for a cool drink. I had a slight pain in my right ear for which I was taking medication and which hurt if I had anything cold. So I ordered a fresh juice with no ice and waited. There was this man by himself, 40-45ish and dressed in a pant and shirt. But it was only after watching him for a while that it dawned on me that he had quite a big sweet tooth. He sat there by himself surrounded by plates filled with fruits. He ate them after sprinking sugar on them. He then went on to order an icecream which he ate after adding sugar. Icecream with sugar, imagine. All this time I was enjoying my drink with an occassional look at him. I was getting ready to leave when I heard him asking the waiter for a banana milkshake with dry fruits. I couldn't help but think that the poor man must have been finding it difficult to get his family to serve him enough sweet stuff to satisfy his craving.