From The Moviegoer's Diary : Gangster

I went to see Gangster yesterday.. and tried out Google Page Creater too!

Here's the result : http://pawanjain19.googlepages.com/moviegoer'sdiary

Back after exams!!!

Now that my exams are over.. I tried out this new thing from Google. Man they are getting busier and more and more innovative day by day in trying to organise world's information.

http://pages.google.com

Ya, try it out to explore it.

Exam Time

When my blogging frequency falls below once a week
When lots of things to blog and things to mug up cause memory to leak
When the Zephyr's blog has to see a decline in its charms
Thats what happens when he has to study for his end sem exams...

Ya.. as another semester draws to a close
And I do not want my nice verse to become a prose
Its my books which I get to seek
And say good bye till next week

My latest possession : The Small Wonder

If you happened to click on the title of this post, you must have come to know what I am going to talk about. Now you are going to click on it right?

It was all Sony in the mind before I came across this cute little thing. Now I feel it could never have been a Sony. According to me the Canon PowerShot A530 is the cutest thing in the world of cameras. This might sound like a biased review, stepping into the shoes of a consumer type who would not like to conclude at the end of the day that his decision was wrong.

Unfortunately I did not get enough time at home to explore the little master, but after reading many unbiased reviews of experts around the world, I can feel satisfied that my decision echoes with people who know. I can't wait to paste a huge photograph of the smart photographer in my post. So here comes the small wonder..



Possesses all the features that matter, added to it the sleek and attractive look and feel. Just a handful in size. What more can I say.. I feel like putting my hand into the screen and hold it in my hands.

Meanwhile I plan read more about the camera and get inspired, and dedicate next few posts on my blog on the small wonder.

How's that!!

Impressive isn't it? Well as my partner puts it in his own words.. "This is the beauty of Ray Tracing". What you see in the image is the scene you will get when you have two white light sources(one placed near top left and one placed near bottom right), and the objects as shown in the picture, which comprise of a simple non-reflective yellow bench, three walls, a roof and a floor, and a beautiful picture of a parrot on a wall. The floor is carpeted, and one of the three walls is completely covered with a painting. The roof has a largely reflective paint which gives a cool look to the overall picture.

Technically, all the cosmetics are texture maps of images. Otherwise it is a simple collection of polygons. Ray tracing adds all that is required to bring the collection of polygons and images to life.

Have a look at the bare collections of the polygons:

Is Being Cyrus this good?

‘Another good Saif movie..’ the phrase sounds familiar. Hum Tum and Salaam Namaste have really got Saif on the right track. He is improving and nearing perfection with every movie. I liked his work in both. I guess the turning point of Saif's career was Ek Haseena Thi. He was simply brilliant in the movie.

Being Cyrus seems to be a completely different type of cinema. I haven’t seen any trailer of the movie. I came to know about the movie from an article in Delhi Times (Boman's interview). And next Friday it was 'Being Cyrus' all around.

Starting Mr. Hirani (Munna Bhai MBBS), most of the debutant directors have been breaking grounds. The success can be attributed to parameters like freshness, the 'out-of-the-blue' approach etc.

Clearly in a market when demand changes supply has to change. This is what we see in today’s successful movies. The Saas Bahu age is over. Now it takes a bold bunch of people who are willing to risk entering an arena so far unexplored. And when so much is at risk, seldom is there a scope for a mistake. Everything is taken care of in such a nice way that the final product is bound to be good.

For instance: Kalyug, Black, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer etc stepped into a different world altogether (so far as Bollywood is concerned.) and came out winners all the way. This does not require big budgets and fancy sets etc. All it takes is creativity and boldness.

Kudos to the crew of Being Cyrus. Cant wait to see the movie!

Ray Tracing Rocks!!

You just had a look at my first ray traced image. This is what I am doing in my present assignment in my course in Computer Graphics. You can see 2 spheres, well, one of them appears as an ellipse because of perspective view from eye, which does not affect the shape of the first sphere because the line joining the eye and its centre is perpendicular to the plane of projection. Enough of technical stuff right? Ok so lets talk in layman terms. Simply put, the above scene is what you will get if you had a blue sphere and an orangish sphere suspended in mid air in a room with light purple background, and have a decently good ambient lighting in the room.

Also there is a point light source(say a torch, approximately). The surface of the blue sphere is near plastic so that a point light source spreads on it more. Had it been metallic, the spot of light would have been more concentrated. Well this is only a part of my HUGE assignment, but I am overwhelmed with the results. This is damn enjoyable!

More on the assignment later.. when I have something more amazing to show :)

Compu Corridor Cricket...

Sleepless again. But this time a weekend.. So banta hai yaar!!


Wing cricket has long been a tradition of Jwala since many years. It feels great to live it when we play wing cricket at 1 am with this cool breeze blowing and touching us as it crosses the wing from one balcony to other.

Rules of this cricket are amazing... We came up with a 'Body' rule.. It was really getting annoying when the batsman is not willing to get his bat in place and always gets his chest, or back, or legs in the line of the ball just to pass time given the fact that number of overs are unlimited. The rule says that you cannot touch a ball with your body 3 times in a row. That clearly increases the probability that the ball will meet the bat and makes the game somewhat more interesting.

But today's game was abandoned halfway. Guess why??

Yes.. HOLI!!

This hostel holi is real disgusting. I hate it. They make a mess of a good colorful festival by running after each other with a bucket of water just to make the person wet. I do not get the point. Whats the fun involved. Moreover in this cold weather you might catch fever.

Anyways.. the cricket is great fun!

The iPod dilemma

Isn’t it amazing when someone for the first time in life gets to feel: This is my hard earned money, and I'll use it as I feel like.. No obligations

To do or not to do? To buy it or not to buy? Is it worth the investment? Is it value for money? Should I wait for something better?

These are only a few of the questions my mind is busy asking itself these days. Since mind speaks on a blog, mine too got quite verbose while writing the questions above till I stopped myself and gave a line break :). So... now that the skills I have acquired in life are actually going to get me money, I cannot stop pondering about spending it to fulfill the weirdest "fancies" and "luxuries" that I ever had and wanted and did not want my parents to invest in it, simply because I did not consider them worthy enough. Now that since most my friends are getting 15K from their internships, my 20K makes me think that I actually have 5K extra for my "luxuries"!!!

So while all these things are running in the mind, it starts to ponder over the question: "Why should I go for an iPod and why shouldn't I?" The following answers come instantly.

Why should I: Whenever I am traveling alone, I feel extremely bored in mid-journey time. In such a situation I so wish I had an iPod! Another reason is the cool gadget it is. So much in so small a thing! Amazing!

Why shouldn't I: Maybe there are more things that I need to have before I have an iPod. Take for example a digicam. I would consider it more useful than an iPod which can do nothing more than playing music videos. Absolutely no creativity involved. The real bad thing is that it is so limited is its functionality. One can get real creative with a digicam.

Tough decision this!

Sleepless after long...

This used to be a usual state I would find myself in after midnight upto last semester. But it has happened for the first time in this semester. And I am liking it! Its always fun to explore the night and feel it, how long it is, feeling that you actually have 24 hours in a day, feeling that you havent been more creative and productive throughout the day....

But all this comes at a cost. The next day becomes quite a challenge. Given that its a normal weekday, I need to be in the same state of mind tomorrow(I should say today as its already past midnight) as I am on other weekdays. This did not matter till the last semester, but this semester I have explored another joy - the joy of being normal. Being normal feels good.. real good. By being normal I mean having around 6-7 hours of sleep like 'normal' human beings do.

So its essentially a trade-off.. Either explore the night or feel good the next day. Choosing the first one is a preferred option on weekends.

The normal state of affairs with me is : Being nocturnal feels great at night but next day you curse yourself for spoiling the day. Lets hope for the best and a good day tomorrow(today)

And by the way, I am reminded.. Today is my mom's birthday..
Happy Birthday Mom!

Does it converge anywhere?

This post addresses an issue I had in mind since quite a few days now. Recently my sis forwarded me a mail containing zodiac based personality descriptions having around 300 words devoted to each zodiac sign. I was perplexed by the accuracy of the descriptions! I found myself matching to around 80-85% of the stuff written under my zodiac.

Few days back, a friend of mine told me about a person nearby who boasts of making quite accurate predictions by observing just the thumbprint of a person, and he is quite famous in his area to make quite accurate predictions. Now that was unbelievable. This made me to ponder over the deepness of astrology.

I have very less idea of astrology but whatever it is, I feel that future cannot be this deterministic. If this were so, I do not see much purpose in human life. One cannot (and should not!) be able to know his/her future to this certainty. In fact, the idea is much more involved. Imagine that you are being told your future by someone who claims to be very very accurate. Will not that effect your decisions and what you planned to do the next day or in that week? It sure would.. Wont it?

So the very thought that knowing about your future can change your present(which was future a few minutes back) makes one doubt whether predictions can be "accurate" to this level. So what we notice is that astrology gives a very blurred idea of what your future looks like, and intuitively that is the only thing it should be able to do. It doesn’t and cant tell anything accurately.

Another point of view goes like - These days it costs to know how your future looks like, unless you are an astrologer yourself. Since we look for "value for money" everywhere, this department is no exception. We are not satisfied unless we feel our money has fetched us enough knowledge about our future. What we need to understand is that these are just generalizations and there is a limit to the level up to which they can be accurate.

Some people believe in astrology to the length that they won’t start their day without looking into the "Daily Horoscope" column in their favorite newspaper and wont do anything before they wear their "Lucky Color" of the day.

Some are of the opinion that "I am not crazy about it, but just out of curiosity I may have a look at it if possible". Being well aware that this cannot be accurate, they just try to take precautions. For instance, if the horoscope says you may have a quarrel with someone today, they will try to be calm and cheerful the whole day. This is a precaution and it may work, just because horoscope can’t be accurate. So you did not have a quarrel not because you were cautious, but because the horoscope was wrong.

Some think it is shit and do not believe in astrology.

I come under the second category.

So back to the issue, I wanted to give a thought to where exactly is your future hidden? In the position of planets, in your thumb impression, in your palm, in tarots, or in the card that a parrot picks up for you? Or somewhere else?

Does it converge anywhere?

Blog Templates My Foot!

To hell with blog templates!!! Wasted two hours on the crap thing.

Well to be more precise, I was stuck to my computer screen since the last 100 minutes or so, trying to change the template of my blog to something that does not exist in blogger. Tried damn lot of things, but alas! crazy sailor back home at last.

Finally got back to blogspot! There was this white elegant template which always used to pull my attention, but I was out searching for something better, which as it appears does not exist! Now I know why blogspot has so few number of templates. Seems they have selected the sober ones from a loooong list. Salaam Blogger!

Its not a single thing thats wrong with templates created for blogspot outside blogspot. Some of them cant respect the links I had given in the title of some posts, some cant just seem to be able to get the alignment right. Some are repulsive to the first blink of the eye. No one matched what I wanted. And the day I get such a template, I would sure want to use it right away.

I would surely love a template which is neat and has headings in some cool handwritten fonts(I love them) or a template which is based on my favourite toons Tom and Jerry and Popeye(but should not look overly childie). Also I wanted a counter on my page to keep track of how often is my blog visited. That is not supported in any template but wasnt a problem since so many free website counter services exist.

(Huh... Finally succeeded in writing about something other than Google(well, not really uh..) :) )

G for GOOGLE!!!

Well well well.. Cant really say whats it. But the more I read and know about Google, the more I end up admiring and adoring it. The looks, the simplicity, the elegance of all Google portals have the ability to win any heart on the first experience.

But I would like to add here that the latest Google services like blogspot, and orkut(recently taken over by google) are not that impressive. The interface of blogspot is not at par with other Google services, and orkut has a silly bug which annoys you big time. If you are a regular orkutter, you must be familiar with the line : "Bad Server, No donut for you". Once in a while is ok, but this thing has started appearing too often that it has started bugging me off.

I was just going through some technical info about Google on their site(Now that I got to intern in google, its good if I am familiar with these things ;) )..

And without doubt, in my opinion, anyone who is learning internet starts its lesson not with A, but with G..

"G for GOOGLE" :)

And the day I made it to Google(Intern)...

Getting through an interview is special.. at least to me, who hasnt experienced success in an interview before. And when its Google, the significance is manifold. I got the great news from a very good friend of mine and could not believe it at the first instant. And did not till I confirmed myself.

Its a feeling hard to explain.. and harder to write! The day before the interview I was browsing Google's site for the intern projects. And going through past internees' experiences and their projects, and visualising myself there!
The feeling that I am one of them now, is just great.

Lets see if its Bangalore or Hyderabad..

Google Dot Com

Google is... different and interesting!

Everywhere you will find stuff like.. "Google spends most of its time in hiring". Thats actually true. A company of this caliber wont and shouldnt compromise at all.. be it interns, be it jobs.. anything.

I have had 75 minutes of telephonic interviewing with Google in 2 days. And if I had to describe Google in one word, I would say "interesting". Though I have little experience interacting with other companies but Google has something different. Thats what I felt.

The first interview, started with the discussion of some project work, and then there came a really really unexpected and interesting question. That was about Google News.

The question : How will you choose the two stories to be displayed on Google News homepage?

The second and more interesting question : After you decide the stories to be displayed, what about its title? A news item has got to have a title No? That was even more interesting to answer. The guy seemed impressed.

That essentially was in all the first interview. The second one started on a similar note. Though the interviewer (this time a Ma'am) seemed more interested in my projects. She chose some projects that appealed to her and asked me to explain in detail about the projects and my contribution in them.

Then came some algorithm questions.

1) How will you implement a C++ STL Vector in C?
2) Given a text file, containing a URL in each line, you have to find out the top 1000 domain names which have the maximum URLs under them.

Interesting questions.. arent they? Well your opinion may differ but it was real nice talking to Googlers..

When and where did the chicken cross the road??

It is absolutely unbelievable that you havent heard the question "Why did the chicken cross the road?" atleast once in your life. My question is why should one care? And where did this question actually originate? Wikipedia says its a joke, some sites say its a philosophical question.. (I am naive in philisophy so cant say anything). This question features under "Animal jokes" at many places. I wonder if animals also make such jokes on humans.. "Why did the human cross the road?".

Now that the question is there, there isnt much point pondering over its origin when the answer seems too elusive. Instead I should try to ask myself the question "Why did the chicken cross the road?" . Well well well... This question has no single answer and hence the answer depends on the mood the person going to answer is..

Whenever I try to figure that out and create a scene of a chicken crossing a road in my mind, the first thing that comes to my mind is that :
When and where did the chicken cross the road? And anyway, he crossed the road because he wanted to! Nothing so unusual about that. Why do we care?

More answers to the stupid question at http://philosophy.eserver.org/chicken.txt

Khalbali in true sense of the word

Now thats what I call a movie!!! I can go on and on and on praising the movie right from the bottom of my heart. Patriotism the way today's world wants it, history depicted the way we would want to see it. One would really like to compare it with Dil Chahta Hai. Both revolve aroung a good friendship, and has a main storyline that the director has managed to tell very well.

Not many movies we see have been made this way. The director is very very clear in what he wants to say, and does succeed in narrating the story very well, backed by some brilliant performances by all the actors in the movie. Its a youth flick with a message. Amidst all the youth masti, it makes you think, and that too not over a stupid fictional love story, but about a real national issue.

Aamir Khan , British actress Alice Patten , Madhavan , Soha Ali Khan , Kunal Kapoor , Siddharth , Sharman Joshi , Atul Kulkarni and Kiron Kher - all have performed brilliantly.

Soha Ali Khan has really impressed. She has talent. I did not know that this is not her first movie(others are forgettable though). But this is an award winning performance by a newcomer. Full marks to her for taking full advantage of the role and good dialogues(again from Prasoon Joshi :)).

A R Rehman's music, as always, is just too good. Lukka Chuppi is my best(An unforgettable combination of Guitar, Lata Ji' s voice, Rehman's voice and music, and Prasoon's lyrics). Rehman's songs have the ability to "build upon you", as they say. Every song from him sounds ordinary the first time. And then as you listen to it more than once, you come to know the genius of Rehman.

Hats Off to the crew of the film!

A Newfound Admiration!

"Thanda matlab Coca Cola!"

This was among some very different ad slogans I observed (and actually liked). I have always been a great fan of Coca Cola and have preffered Coke brands over all other cold beverages. So it was not something that shifted me from another drink to coke. But the slogan did sound different! And I thought who would have thought of this?

As a matter of fact, that was the time I started watching TV ads more to appreciate the creativity of the ad makers and less to appreciate the product being advertised. This change in my attitude will be attributed to this "ad guru" of India. You must have come to know by now who I am talking about. Needless to mention, none other than Prasoon Joshi.

And incidentally, this man shares my initials! :).

And then came Hum Tum.

I was really really impressed by "Ladki Kyon...", but never really tried to find out the lyricist's name. Now that Rang De Basanti has come up so well, and far beyond expectations(both the movie and the songs), I could not help observing the lyricist's name. And guess what? PJ Again!


This person has impressed! Seems he can create a slogan out of anything. I was researching more about him. This is what I found:

http://www.uttaranchal.org.uk/prasoon.html

A poem I wrote last year on Tsunami

Something somewhere was awfully wrong...

Neither sweet, nor sour

It was bitter all the more.

More than a devil's curse,

Oh God! could it have been worse?

The previous day was a different one,

No other Christmas was so much fun.

Nothing, nowhere seemed to be wrong,

Celebrations all day long.

Fun and frolic everywhere,

With the city up in top gear.

Churches were the place to be,

Nothing was more charming to see.

It was beyond the midnight beep,

That the city happily went to sleep.

Could it have been anyone's foresight?

That he'd not see the morning light!

Suddenly and shockingly, the horrendous waves

Appeared from the calm, turning cozy beds into graves.

The early rising fishermen, however, were on the shores,

To be driven away, out of their life's doors.

For several minutes, the waves did last,

And left a few live faces, aghast.

Debris, corpses everywhere,

Humans turned into earthenware.

Debris, corpses everywhere,

Mother Nature! Is this the way you care?

Is that how you sing the Christmas Carol,

Firing silent bullets through an invisible barrel?

Life has come to a standstill,

Mother Nature, satisfied? Or still someone left to kill?

You danced to your tune before it was long,

Yes! something somewhere was awfully wrong.

A great damage, a huge loss,

Everything did break, except the Jesus cross.

A question comes to my mind, I'm keen

Was it something Scrooge's third ghost could have foreseen?

I am back!

Ok.. so its been around three months since my last post on the page. I have been quite busy these days first with my semester going on, then my holidays(which were busier.. believe me :) ).

Hmm.. as another year draws to a close, I see very less changes in the world around me. Nearly everything is same..

Everything is as always very fine with Delhi.. just that some 3-4 blasts occurred this year, which resulted in great destruction and panic.. and the number of rape cases in the city went beyond imaginations, and some sting operations got some ministers restigated.. otherwise in my view Delhi is much the same(read BAAKI SB THEEK HAI)

In a broader view, a mild earthquake in J & K in October, a gangrape in a Western Railway train, a brutal murder of a girl in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai nearly flooded by rains, nearly humdred deaths owing to the extreme cold conditions.. BAAKI SAB THEEK HAI

The living legend Mr. Amitabh Bachchan spent 19 days in hospital which had the whole country praying for him.. Uh.. Why am I sounding like a year-end issue of a news magazine!

Sorry! May be because I am new to blogging..

Next post : About the Ganguly issue.. I have a lot to say on that

My first post!

Well not much to say rite now.. Shall hopefully have a lot in future