Me back

Just got back from a very very tiring whirlwind tour of Rajasthan : not really complete , but still pretty good one.
Parents have this habit of jamming any tour choke full , with time barely enough to sleep and eat :-) And this one was not really much different : we spent 1500 km on the road (which included quite a bit of ghat road) - which translated to travelling about 12 hours or more per day !

Will write up more about it later - when I have more time and patience (maybe post a few pics too !).
The one place which still stands in my mind is the fort at chittor. It is extremely moving ... and you can almost visualise the events , battles , intrigues which happened there.
The fort looks impregnible even now ! And when you stand facing the front enterance - looking down on the main battlefield - you can almost "see" the invaders and the defenders.
The place seems to have been filled with romantics ... and I was left deeply touched.

Will post more later ... save to say , Rajasthan is an awesome place to visit : it is one thing to read about it , and totally different to actually visit the legendery places.

Don "remixed"

Since I have got home yesterday , the one thing which has kept on going on in a loop in the news channel is comparison between the new 'Don' movie to be released today and the old one.

Frankly , I consider Amitabh Bachan a vastly superior actor to Shah Rukh Khan - the former can act , the latter can perform antics : inspite of popularity of both of these 'styles' , it is a fundamental difference.
Being a chocolate hero (as mom puts it) will get SRK a fan following of juvenile imbeciles - but that cant be mistaken for talent.

Not to glorify the old movie (was watching it just now on TV btw) , but Amitabh Bachan had the charisma to wear the persona of the don ... SRK will make a mockery of it : yes I am yet to see the movie , but the trailers speak volumes !
And that stupid female Kareena Kapoor has to be told that wearing scanty clothing and acting like a bitch does not make her 'sexy' ... you need a minimum amount of class and should appeal to others , she is totally devoid of both.

The only movie of SRK that I have found moderately tolerable has been Swades ... that too largely cos of the performances of the rest of the cast (SRK does not do a bad job to be fair).

This new trend of mutilating old movies which were hits is a sad practise which has gripped Bollywood ...
You see a lot of old Malayalam classics being poorly remade - largely cos of the lack of talent of the newer breed of actors. (I am sure movies from other langauages are also being targetted : just that I can identify the mallu ones !)
Just like you have remix of old classic songs , which kill the soul of the song for the same of (supposedly trendy) "beats" , you will have cheap stunts and stupid gadgets in the 'remix movies' - both of which leave you feeling empty , cheated and with a sense of violation of something you used to love.


Hopefully , the trend will die a miserable death ...

Happy Diwali !

First off , wish you and your family a very happy and prosperous Diwali !

For us , 20th , 23rd and 24th are off - took leave for the next three days and made it into a 10 day vacation :-D Currently in Bombay with parents - we plan to go to Jaipur tomorrow (21st) : and roam around Rajasthan for next 4 days : should be fun !
Parents always liked the place - they used to frequent it from Indore where dad was posted after marriage ... even I am supposed to have visited the place allegedly : I was 1- years old :-P

Project blackbox !

Check this out - project blackbox is finally out !
Yep, they mean it literally :-)
Check out the pics here - what they call "scenarios" : I like the last one ;-)

Man , this is totally cool engineering ! And very wacky when you think about it - which makes it more awesome :-D

Loosing the drive ?!

The past few months - almost the past one year actually , has been extremely hectic.
Well , after all that - from mid of last week I have been surprisingly free : I was not directly involved in anything 'burning' for the first time in like ages :-)
And , to add to my surprise , it was extremely distracting - almost felt that I was loosing my drive.
(Actually there is another reason for becoming demotivated - but that is another issue)

Dusted up my chess program and started hacking on it ... anything to get back into a furious mode of writing code (I think I seriously compromised its strength in the process : test/tune/test/repeat rigourously before introducing changes - old chess programming maxim was violated massively).
I think I should learn to relax more with my life ... imbalance is not good.
And to illustrate the point - I am writing this at 6 am , and I have not yet slept while friends are trying to make me sleep :-)

Much hilarity !

A friend messaged me this.
Enjoy the laugh :-))
What is really really ironical is this is sadly true !

BTW , this fortune quote cracked me up totally :
"
Abstainer, n.:
A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"

hehehehehe

Chess in India

No one here gives a shit about chess ... to put it mildly.
Which is really really sad - if you look at the quality of players India boasts about , and the training and preparation that they (dont) get , it is a remarkable achievement.
You have kids getting trained from age 4 or so in most of the former soviet republics - in a very disciplined way , you have innumerable clubs , tournaments , events across Europe ditto for US.
And India ? Almost no one seems to be interested !
Can you ever imagine our president or prime minister raising an issue like this for any of our players ?
It will be 'xyz who ?' where xyz == Anand/Humpy/Deepan/Sasikiran/etc.

You have to really give it to the chess players in India - they succeed inspite of their circumstances , not 'cos of it !
Here is a blog I found which gives news about chess in India : http://indiangm.blogspot.com/

The most popular game in this country is one which is played by least number of counteries , is a colonial hangover , and even at which we suck in comparison with the best !
Ok , that rant about cricket might be uncalled for ... but I find it really frustrating when people are so obsessed with it even when we are so lousy at it in comparison !

Kick in the balls

Really really painful to watch - do at your own risk ! http://www.glumbert.com/media/tonguetwister : bloody sadistic game show people !!

"Ok go"

Found this from Chris Melissinos's blog - very innovative and awesome choreography !
Check it out :

Dont ever trust a woman ...

"Dont ever trust a woman , the prettier she is - the more deadly" ... pearls of wisdom from "The Evil Cult" ? ;-)

London Underground

Very explict lyrics - so listen if you are up to it : http://www.backingblair.co.uk/london_underground/ amazingly funny , a very catchy tune and the flash video is funny :-) ... thanks to a friend of mine.


In other rants, I am finding that most of what I want to blog does to make it here (including a post today) for a simple reason : combination of linux x64 , firefox 64 bit and Xorg.
I am not sure which of these is to blame - but firefox is insanely unstable in this combination and crashes on the drop of a hat as soon as you have about 15 sites open.
And no , cpu load is not high and memory usage is low (it is my desktop at work : athlon 4200 , 2 gig ram) ....

And to top it all , blogger beta is insanely stupid in not even having something elementary like periodically saving the post as drafts until published !

So crash , restart -> post lost : I am not going to sit and type all that elsewhere or even retry.

It is pretty sad when win xp 64 I have at home is much more stable than linux ...