My musings on life, movies and technology

Officially, I’ve been proclaimed a Master of Software Systems.

A few extra letters after your name never hurts !

For the uninitiated, Birla Institute of Technology and Science offers distance learning courses in various streams.  The M.S. in Software Systems is a two year “work integrated” learning program, which essentially means that this is designed for people who wish to pursue the course while working full time at an organization. You need to have some work-ex to apply. It’s a regular 4-semester 2-year programme with a mix of open-book and closed-book exams. And, you should have a “mentor” - preferably your manager in your organization who guides you through it.

For more information, point your browser to the BITS DLPD website.

~Raj

Recently, a lot has been written on how Bollywood has come of age and produced mature flicks such as Rock On, A Wednesday and Mumbai Meri Jaan. I happened to watch the former two, and wanted to post my 2 cents on this widely prevalent sentiment.

Rock On is a story about four friends whose lives have made them sacrifice the one thing that they are passionate about most, the one thing that unites them all - their love for music. The story revolves around how their band “Magik” breaks up, how life changes after college, and how they nevertheless get to be reunited in a hell-freezes-over concert for one last time.

The cinematography of Rock On is top notch. But what really impressed me is the music of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Javed Akhtar. The songs are as good as you get in Hindi Rock.

The story reminded me of both Dil Chahta Hai and Jhankaar Beats. I would probably rate this as a 7.5/10. I liked this effort by Farhan Akhtar, but I don’t quite think it was as ‘magical’ as his first.

Another film that has satisfied established critics is A Wednesday. This revolves around the far more serious theme of terrorism. This film narrates an eventful day in the life of the Mumbai Commissioner of Police, Prakash Rathod.

It is for Anupam Kher’s and especially Naseeruddin Shah’s brilliant performances that one should see this film. While there were several obvious flaws, the storyline does not fail to thrill. Overall, this is again a 7/10 movie which I would recommend you to watch.

While none of these 2008 blockbuster Bollywood movies impressed me as much as the 1972 Hollywood movie, The Godfather, or the 2008 animated movie, Wall-E, I do believe things are looking very positive for the future of Bollywood. No longer must Bollywood flicks have people dancing around trees, or for that matter, item numbers to drive viewership.

Heck, they don’t even have to be more than 2 hours long!

~Raj

It was my good friend Rahul, who suggested Wall-E when I was cribbing about the truly awful flicks produced by Bollywood (Singh-Is-Kinng for example) that nevertheless turn out to be blockbusters. He also suggested that I should watch this movie with a special-someone. Realizing that this movie would not last in the theatres of Hyderabad if I decided to wait for that special-someone to watch this with, I opted to watch this with a friend, at IMAX.

I love Pixar. Finding Nemo was one of the best animated movies I’ve seen. I found Ratatouille nice, if not brilliant. My expectations from Wall-E were, admittedly, somewhat high right from the start. Andrew Stanton’s last masterpiece, Finding Nemo, had won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Film of 2004.

Boy, was I not disappointed! For, not only is Wall-E one of the best Pixar productions ever (if not the best), not only is Wall-E one of the best animation movies ever (if not the best), but Wall-E is also truly one of the best movies of all time!

Now that’s a tall claim to make for any animation film! I normally use such superlatives for movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, or The Godfather Part 1.

Being a geek at heart, I do love brilliant use of computer generated imagery. However, too often, CGI is overdone. Everything looks perfect on screen, but you don’t feel a thing inside. A good example of this would be Beowulf.

Pixar has enough creative genius to weave in that elusive element called magic in their films. Wall-E is an example of a movie where they have demonstrated that they have tuned this art to perfection.

Without trying to spoil the movie for you if you have not watched it yet (and watch it you must), the movie is about a robot named Wall-E - who is the only creature left on planet Earth. Humans have had to evacuate many hundreds of years earlier since they had polluted Mother Earth beyond repair. While humans live an almost completely materialistic life on a spaceship light years away, all that Wall-E wants is a companion on Earth. His journey starts when a female robot EVE lands on planet Earth and makes an indelible impact on his heart.

I was expecting a cute Ratatouille-ish story from Pixar. But Wall-E is not just-another-Disney-film-for-kids. In fact, as my friend pointed out after the movie, there are several subtle nuances, deep issues and sweeping messages in the film. I’ve never seen computer generated robots portray emotions without words so well - they can easily put many Bollywood actors to shame . On the other hand, there is also this wonderfully charming yet unlikely love between the two robots. And all this is provided in a package so adorable that you cannot help but fall in love with Wall-E.

And if you were wondering if Pixar’s animation was up to the mark in this movie, hell yes, it is. The world, as portrayed, is covered in piles of metals, scrap and consumer waste - yet it looks jaw-dropping drop-dead gorgeous!

Let’s not even talk about the wit and humour throughout the film. You’ve got to see it for yourself. This is indeed a film that transcends generations, and will be appreciated by people of all ages - but for different reasons perhaps.

Overall Wall-E is a magnificient masterpiece. It’s going to take a lot of work if some other animation film wants to be considered for the Academy Award for the Best Animation Film of 2008! If you want a truly heart-warming experience, then don’t miss it!

Pixar - you guys are Gods! Keep up the stellar work!

~Raj

This weekend, I had planned to upgrade my desktop PC.

My PC was already a venerable powerhouse. Equipped with an AMD Sempron 2200+ (1.5GHz) processor, 512MB of RAM, and a GeForce 400MX IGP, it had the muscle to play all 3D FPS games of… well, the year 2003 at best

The reason behind this upgrade was to spend less of my extremely valuable time twiddling my thumbs and waiting for Firefox to start, or a Half-Life 2 episode to load.

So I headed off to Chenoy Trade Centre at Secunderabad, to an affable guy named Gaffar at a store called ‘Computer Bazaar’. Incidentally, this is also where I had bought this PC. Till date, I’m not sure if this guy hoodwinks me with all his tall claims

I had a budget of around 10k INR in mind. This is what I ended up with, after overshooting it by around 1.3k:

• AMD Althon64 X2 4600 (dual core, clock speed of 2.4GHz)
• Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H mobo based on the AMD 780G chipset, featuring ATI Radeon 3200 HD IGP
• 2GB DDR 667 RAM
• Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA hard drive
• A new 400W SMPS from a shady brand (Xtec, if I remember correctly)

This does look neat!

The motherboard itself was highly rated by tech articles on the internet, and it does boast an array of features. I’ve yet to test the performance of the IGP on this board. As per this Techtree.com article, this IGP is capable of allowing playable framerates at medium resolutions/quality details for quite recent games such as F.E.A.R, HL2: Lost Coast and Quake 4! Far Cry should also be playable, woo hoo!

The folks at the store assembled this setup, and I brought the cabinet home. Powered on, and was greeted with this message:

GRUB: Loading stage 1.5…. Read Error

Since I had two hard drives now (an older 80GB IDE/PATA drive, and the new SATA drive), I was half expecting things to go wrong. Hence, I had planned to perform a fresh dual boot setup of Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Windows XP on the new SATA drive. When I popped in the Windows XP bootable disc, and rebooted the system, the CD failed to boot.

I rebooted into the BIOS, and could not find the DVD drive listed anywhere. Trying to plug in the IDE cable and power supply for the DVD drive again did not help. Finally it dawned upon me that the master-slave configuration of the drive was probably incorrect for my new configuration. I switched the jumper at the back of the DVD drive. Voila! Not only was the DVD drive recognized, but GRUB was also able to boot everything properly!

I still plan to perform fresh OS installs on the SATA drive for better performance. For now, I’m continuing with my old XP install, and a fresh Ubuntu 8.04 install over the 7.10 installation (since I’ve had a few problems with ATI drivers on Gutsy, and wanted an excuse to upgrade to Hardy anyway).

I’ll probably post on the performance of the IGP and the new processor/RAM combo later. But from what I’ve seen, the toil has been well worth it

~Raj

Back in my school days, when life was not all bits and bytes, one of the subjects I enjoyed was English literature.

I can’t remember when, (I’d say Standard 9 if I’d have to hazard a guess), our text included Ulysses - one of the best poems I’ve ever read.

That’s not to say that I’m a connoisseur at English poetry though!

As I venture into the world of blogging, I thought it might be apt to post the last few lines from this Alfred Lord Tennyson classic:

…. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I remember our teacher, Mrs. Anuradha Choudhury, and her attempts to make a bunch of class 9 hooligans understand the great verse of Tennyson, at my alma-mater, St. Xaviers Collegiate School, Calcutta.

Those were the days, indeed!

~Raj

PS: The full poem can be read here.