Muranpaadu: December 2004

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Nippy recap of 2004

Here is my nippy recap of eminence stuffs at the end of 2004.Because I am not a wholehearted spectator of activities across the orb, I hv just constrained the list to Tamil films and my readings. The films Alagiyae Theeiyae and Kaadhal should hv figured in the list ~~if I had seen it.~~I have seen Kaadhal now and it figures in the best list.Simbhu has ended the year well with a good box office gathering where as Dhanush botched.

Best Films – Autograph, Virumaandi, Gilli,Aayitha Ezhuthu and Kaadhal
Best Directors – Mani Rathnam, Cheran, Selva Raagavan and Balaji Sakthivel
Best Actor – Madhavan (Inbasekar – Aayitha Ezhuthu)
Best Actress – Abirami (Annalakshmi – Virumaandi), Gopika (Lathika – Autograph)
Best Music Directors – A.R Rahman (Aayitha Ezuthu), Yuvan Shankar Raja (7G Rainbow Colony)
Best Female Singer – Sherya Ghosal (Ninaithu Ninaithu – 7G)
Best Male Singer – Karthik (Kan Pesum Vaarthai – 7G),Unni Menon(Ninaivugal – Autograph),Haricharan(Unakkena - Kaadhal)
Best Inspirational Songs – Ovvoru Pookalume (Autograph), Jana Gana Mana (Aayitha Ezhuthu)
Best Remixes – Thottal Poo malarum (New), En Aasai Mythiliye (Manmadhan)
Best Pair in Singing – Hariharan and Harini (Thottal Poo – New)

Best witty short story is from my all time favorite Sujatha in Jan02 issue of Ananda vikatan – Vasanthukku Kalyanam?
Best Informative article – An economic and financial analysis articles by Naagappan and Pugazhlenthi in Junior vikatan under the category specials. This started from Nov15th issue.
Best spiritual article – Atthanikkum Aasaipadu by Jakki Vasudev in Ananda vikatan.
Best Books I hv read so far this year is – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho,The Goal by Eliyaho Ratt and Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson.
Best Mail fwds I hv got – Advice to young programmers by Alex Stepenov from Gnanasekaran, 400-Quotes-GSN from Mr.Senthil Kumar, Readability,Writing tips and Who moved my cheese from Arun and Namakkaga oru kavithai from Alagarswamy.

Since I hv a poor memory the above mentioned list contains the happenings in the later part of the year. So leave ur comment which has a few more good stuffs u remember

posted at 4:10 PM by Cipher Permalink

Monday, December 27, 2004

Tsunami Help Online Donations

The Hindu Relief Fund http://pay.hindu.com/thrfpay/thrfpay.jsp

Pls check out this blog http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/.
Go thru the full blog you will hv some links that helps us to donate money online.

posted at 10:48 AM by Cipher Permalink

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Jaunt to Down Town – Seattle

It was determined to squander the Christmas Eve on Down Town. My roommate and myself started the day by as early as 8:15 with full fervor. The weather was too chill and I started to shiver as soon as I saw the temperature panel in front of the bus stop. It was –0.5 degree centi. We need to catch up two buses to reach the Seattle center. You could take a single ticket for the whole trip. My friend didn’t know this and spent one and quarter dollars more. Fortuitously we had heaters in the bus! We were kept warm till Seattle center. Seattle center is a place where we have the amusements at one place. You can have separate tickets for each place there or get a city pass to enjoy all the places. We opted for the second one. Going to the top of Space Needle looked worthless because it was foggy. And the chances of the climate improving looked dreary. So we went to Pacific science center. It was full of kids’ stuff. They have some science ethics explained in realistic ways. Similar to the Science city in Kolkata.There was a small place where butterflies are kept at their living temperature. This was a lovely place though we had few butterflies flying around us. We had couple of Imax theatres inside the Pacific science centre. We went to a documentary film Kilimanjaro.Imax is known for its giant screens. Nothing much abt the film except the mountains and glaciers shown. Really gigantic view. There was an ice skating board. After seeing lot of kids skate I felt – What the heck is this? We could also skate. After falling couple of times in the entrance, I decided to relinquish. My friend also could not move. It was an ignominy. No laughing please. Then went to west lake center and had a good lunch at Pabla – an Indian restaurant. Then roamed in the pike market and the streets. It was pretty much a messy place. Lot of Christmas band went on. And to our surprise we found Horse cart service there. The climate was getting worse. We felt roaming some more time is going to get things worse. We left the place without going to the top of Space Needle and Aquarium. And in the end it was a $@#*ing (disappointing) trip. Luckily we have the pass valid till Mar 31.So waiting for the sun to show some mercy on us in the coming days.
Click here for some pics that reveal Raj’s photographic talents. This link is not to my Yahoo photos. This is a different one.

posted at 1:50 AM by Cipher Permalink

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Siachen Frozen - An Angel visits Siachen

Ais @ Siachen

Ais @ Siachen

Yet again Aish proves she is not a customary bollywood girl!The place she chose for a NDTV show(Jai Jawan) was Siachen.The place of roses might have felt guilty that there is a walking rose in this world. Click here for more photos

posted at 1:43 PM by Cipher Permalink

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Swades – We, the people

It has been exactly 12 hrs after watching the movie Swades.This was a quite different hap on two aspects. One is, we enjoyed the first-half with four intervals. Thanks to the imperfect projector. And the second is we switched theaters after first half! Three theatres are in the single floor. Of course we were played the second-half. Went with the outlook to forget about Lagaan.But Ashutosh kept ringing the same bell from the story base he had chosen. It was the same one-liner – A single person trying to revolutionize the way the natives of a rural community live. From the name of the film and the slogan they have, compels us to think it would be yet another advice to ppl living overseas. But it is not the way the film is made. And Ashutosh scores there. Mohan (SRK) comes to India to bring back his Kaveriamma (she reminds me, my granny). He also falls in love in Gitlee/Gita (Gayatri). India vanthave ippadi thaan. He happens to see some ppl struggle for survival and opts to do something for them. And gives them electricity with his assiduity. But it was Gitlee who scores in the first half. Gitlee runs a school for the village children and he also wants Kaveriamma to be with her. This makes us feel that the story surrounds Gita.So why did they have the caption - We, the people? Second half tries to explain it. But I am not convinced. No strongs scenes to support this. And after Lagaan, Ashutosh should have tried some thing different. Bcos from starting to end I am not able to stop the assessment with Lagaan. Might be my oversight. This should have been his third or fourth film. Going by the range of films bollywood had for the last few years this is a much much better one.mm film can be made without half-b(n)aked heroines. Ashutosh has put immense work.

Wondering why nothing abt music. If I see A.R.Rehman on the crew list I’ll blindly say the songs are good. I am sorry, I am his great fan. So don’t mull over my opinion on music (rather anything). Two songs come at bad time and contribute to lengthy film making (Pal Pal hai, Saanwariya). The dance in “Yeh tara” is really simple and easy. I tried at home. U could also try. Rehman controls our heartbeat for few mins when Mohan attempts to generate electricity.

I could understand your question now. Whether to see this movie or not? Right. As u all know, I am poor at decision making the choice is yours.

Saw the Trailer of SHABD, but regretted later for seeing it. Is that Aish? I hate that. U will understand why, after you see the trailer.

posted at 11:12 AM by Cipher Permalink

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Where are we heading?

For the last one-week all Indian medias were in furor. I would like to go thru those three things. All three things related to illegal videos that are circulated in Net. One is in a school, one that was claimed as video of a south Indian actress and the other one is a regarding a Bollywood actress. I don't agree to type what those things are. The cyber branch is working on full swing to find the persons who did these things. I like to have a say on this. Let’s assume that, they get hold of the person involved and also he is punished. What abt the persons who saw these things in net within few mins? Can all these ppl be caught or Can they be punished? No idea what the law says? And only very very few have apprehension over the ppl who fell victim in this. In one case the mother of the actress have given a clarification that it is not her daughter. What have we done? Can anyone imagine such a situation for our mother?

Why don’t we clean our dirty heart? Damn it.

Pls don’t post a dumb comment like – u did see these things? I am saying it is all of us should clean our heart.

posted at 10:36 PM by Cipher Permalink

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

New Releases

Google Suggest: Yet another novelty from Google. When you type your search key word in the search bar it automatically lists down the top keywords it has in its collection! Explore it guys.

MSN Desktop Search: I just went thru the features in a slide show. I am not impressed. Nothing different from Google’s tool bar and Desktop approach.Click here for more on this in Rediff…

Both are Beta versions. Google is available globally whereas MSN is available for only US users, as of now.

posted at 9:55 AM by Cipher Permalink

Monday, December 13, 2004

For altruistic fellows

Being in IT profession I always admired fine tuning of my programs to run in fast and proficient. I also felt that these tweaking can be applied to most aspects of day to day life. What if it is applied for a better tomorrow? And this is what precisely SANVEDANA does.SANVEDANA is a non-profitable organization, in Pune which helps for the people in need. No, it is not yet another social organization.SANVEDANA is a NGO formed by people who are interested in better tomorrow. Most of the people involved in this are IT pros! (This brought my close attention).SANVEDANA helps the existing social organization to get more things done with existing resources. Typically fine tuning the process they follow! Years of IT experience is inside.
The trust has a methodology in which they pick an organization and evaluate what the best can be done to serve better. Their mission is to make people give a small hand but for a longer period, which I feel is a commendable approach. We can volunteer or we can donate in terms of money, cloth, books etc. They ensure that every penny is spent astutely. The current project they are working is for the street children in Pune. They even have a tie-up with ICICI for the people who would like to donate a small amount on monthly or yearly basis. Visit their site, get to know about their approach. Come and join hands, let us show what IT can do for Mother India.

posted at 4:16 PM by Cipher Permalink

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Wanna try this one ?

Do you belong to a category of person who wants to try out different things? Then here is an interesting search engine which might get your nod.Teoma - means "expert" in Gaelic.

Teoma ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it rather than ranking a site based merely on links leading to that site. Sounds sensible! Teoma shows the result with two additional features - Refine and Resources. Refine suggests you how best you can tune your current search to get better results. Resources shows if there are any expert resources about our search.

Having Google ad sense to the right of the page and I am trying to promote its competitor is a kind of sarcasam, right? And that's why I named this blog as "Muranpaadu"!

Click here to know How Teoma works? I know one of my friend, sofpro will be the first one to click this :-)

posted at 6:56 PM by Cipher Permalink

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Unpredictable

We might have seen all-embracing mails with pics about the prospect of a computer or a chip or the world. And did u deem that the world will be like that? If so, then here is the msg which exemplifies, you will be wide of the mark. Below is a picture and msg published in 1954 by Popular Mechanics Magazine. The scientists foretold how a computer would look like in 2004.No need to articulate that they were perplexed now. And one more affirmation that technology is not varying every day but every second. So, never predict the future. Bethink the msg from the film Anbe Sivam (The letter Nalla writes to A.Ars)

Popular Mechanics Magazine

posted at 8:00 PM by Cipher Permalink

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Creative Ad making

I always like the knack of Ad making. Within a trice the people who watch the Ad, should be able to read between the lines. That’s the challenge. It should be like giving a child, a small dose of medicine with sweet toppings! And the Ads that suggest an awareness message should be done scrupulously. Because people seldom like public awareness message. People forget that, they are THE PUBLIC. And, the above pic does that exactly. The designer deserves a great applause.

posted at 10:58 AM by Cipher Permalink

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Looong Weekend

# After a long long time I had four uninterrupted holidays (Nov 25 - Nov 28).Though I am adept in memory, I am not able to nail down the last occurrence. My dream was to rusticate on these oppurtunities.But the dream eluded this time.Nov 25th was dedicated to sleeping. Shopping was paramount on Nov 26.Nov 27 and Nov 28 got depleted in shifting to a new domicile. During the breather between sleeping and shopping watched lot of Bond movies. A channel named Spike had Bondathon (successive Bond movies for four days) as their Thanks giving weekend special. I don't know what correlation I have with Rooger Moore. Whenever I turned to Bondathon, he is the one featuring in the film. Octopussy is a film which had some Indian background. It was fun to see Bond in India. He showed his heroics with knife. The lady lead - Maud Adams was prettier in sarees.Found out why most Indians look pretty! At one instance an Indian tiger abides to Bonds command (May be it’s not a Bengal Tiger).Damn sure this has been acquired from an MGR Film. Within the span of two days I saw Rooger Moore act with a Japanese heroine, a Spanish and few more country idols. I guess he is the bond who acted most films with other country female protagonists!
# Technology to the max has been misinterpreted by few people. Funeral goes online is a main page heading, few days back in rediff. Interment to be shown live on net. I don't hail these kinds of things. I somehow feel there are certain things that needs be as it is.
# One agreeable thing off late is - The word “MOTHER” has been selected as the most beautiful word in English, in a recent survey. The word “Love” is in fourth place! click for more on this survey….

posted at 1:25 PM by Cipher Permalink