The Lonesome Road

I was trying to open my Rediffmail account a couple of days back and kept getting a “Page cannot be displayed error”. I didn’t bother too much as it’s not a primary mail account. However when I encountered the same problem yesterday, I thought there was something wrong.

When I went to college, I tried opening it from there, only to be greeted by a partly rendered page which showed me the “new look” of Rediffmail. I was pretty bugged - my Dilbert comes to rediffmail, and I had to actually type the url to go read the comic of the day. Anyway, the page finally rendered today and I was underwhlemed.

I mean - it looks like a normal email program - only it’s on the web. It’s got the normal Folder view on the left, and the rest of the screen is horizontally split in half. The upper half has the headers and the lower half shows previews of the mail. Unfortunately, as of now, the interface is not very fast. Fortunately, there is an option to go back to the old rediffmail. The system also allows you to alternate between the new (beta) and old versions.

I wonder why the mail servers are going all gung-ho for all these “new interfaces”. I liked rediffmail as it was fast, efficient and had the basic design elements that I needed. The same reasons I like gmail. AOL, Yahoo (and now Rediff) are trying to bring more desktop elements like drag and drop into the mail system. Not required. Make my mail system as interface optimized and fast as possible and I am a customer for life.

Anyway, that’s all from me. Until next time - check your mail

You know, I actually wanted to think of a witty title for this post, but I could not work up the required levels of annoyance and sarcasm to do so. To celebrate the teams return to form, I am reusing the title of an old post. Old colours deserve an old title.

Now, I know, I am hitting the team when it’s down. But it’s only because I care. We lost to the Windies, and that too 4-1. Why win that first match. Let them make it a white (brown?) wash. The problem with out team is that they give us hope. That most precious emotion is then cruelly destroyed when the team reverts to form and manages to lose spectacularly.

Take our record over the last few matches for instance. We’ve broken the shackles of being dependent on one man and play together as a unit. We even found people to pinch-hit, act as all rounders and bowlers who could actually bowl fast. We even managed to break the mind-set of choking when we chase a large total. People thought that we actually had a team could go and conquer the world cup.

Sadly, that dream seems to have evaporated. Yes, I am being premature as these were only the ODIs. I agree that the results of the test matches will tell us if our team has the guts and temperament required to bounce back from a series loss. I guess they should keep in mind that cricket is a fickle game - success today does not equate to success tomorrow. Also, our team should realize that when they play well, the teams facing them are going to plan better. Consider how the Windies got Dhoni out. Let me quote from Rediff :

Those two factors – shutting down the straight field, and getting the keeper up – combined to cause Dhoni’s downfall. Unable to hit straight or to change the length by going down the track, the keeper-batsman was forced to stay well inside his crease and try to muscle the ball square; an attempt to do so off a fuller length Hinds delivery that stayed a touch low and jagged a touch in off the seam ended in an inner edge onto the stump

Another factor is that our batsmen are not firing the way they used to. Dravid seems to be out of form, and most of the others are getting set and then getting out. We need a lot more work if we are going to take this team to the World Cup and have a decent chance of winning.

In any case, I will stop talking about cricket now. Yes, you may breate a sigh of relief.

In other (better) news, I have been experimenting with panorama shots. Am using a feature in my S2IS that allows me to take multiple photos that can later be merged to form a single, composite picture. You can see the photoblog for more on that.

That’s all from me for now. Later!

I’m a big believer that books do not translate well into movies. Of course, you are free to reject this notion as it’s based only on my opinion.

However, here is my reasoning: One of the major advantages in a book is that there is no time limit for the author. This allows him/her to develop characters, explain motivations and generally move the plot along. Film makers however, do not have this luxury. They have to tell the story in the span of two hours. Combine this with the fact that the average attention span of a viewer is 0.75 seconds (feel free to debunk this figure), the movie makers are forced to move things along pretty quickly.

Secondly, an author is free to take time to explain the thought process that a character follows. This gives the reader a little more insight into the players in the story. This is really hard to do in a movie. I mean, come on - won’t it be odd if an off-screen voice tells us what a character is thinking as (s)he stares into space?

Anyway, coming back to the DVC, I picked it up from the library as a friend recommended it. I read through it and thought it was a bad book. I won’t say it stinks, but it’s not exactly the masterpiece it was recommended as. I though Robert Langdon was a weakly developed character, the monk (who was into pain) was plain boring and the plot “twist” totally predictable. Now, the only things that were half-decent in the book were the puzzles. The initial ones were easy enough, but after a while, I was so out of the book that the puzzles no longer interested me.

Now, I usually give an author two books to prove themselves. You know, just in case the first book was a stinker. For example, my first Stephen King book was Thinner. It was crappy. Then I read The Dark Tower and I was hooked. Anyway, all that aside, I read Angels and Demons. If anything, this book was even worse than the DVC. Dull, uninspired and wordy are the words that come into mind when I recall my reading. Oh and Mr.Langdon falls of a plane (or helicopter - don’t really remember - was on autopilot) and lands safely without a parachute. Talk about divine intervention.

When I heard they were making a movie on the book, I was aghast. As I said, a bad book translates into a really bad movie. And it seems that the critics agree. Almost all of them have panned the movie. The best review that I have read is from The New Yorker - you can read it here.

For those who do not want to read the whole thing, here are some snippets:

A dead Frenchman is found laid out on the floor of the Louvre. His final act was to carve a number of bloody markings into his own flesh, indicating, to the expert eye, that he was preparing to roll in fresh herbs and sear himself in olive oil for three minutes on each side.

Our hero, needing somebody to trust, does the same dumb thing that every fleeing innocent has done since Robert Donat in “The Thirty-nine Steps.” He and Sophie visit a cheery old duffer in the countryside and spill every possible bean.

There is also Silas (Paul Bettany), a cowled albino monk whose hobbies include self-flagellation, multiple homicide, and irregular Latin verbs. He works for Opus Dei, the Catholic organization so intensely secretive that its American headquarters are tucked away in a seventeen-story building on Lexington Avenue.

As a rule, you should beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising poster. (Just imagine Sigourney Weaver, halfway through “Alien,” turning to John Hurt and explaining, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”)

From now on, such penance will be simple—no lashings, no spiked cuff around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket, and two and a half hours of pain.

Anyway, you get the drift. I will stop here. Of course, this has not stopped the general public from flocking to the theatres and spending a whole load of money on the movie. Enough money to allow the studios to claim that the DVC is the “most popular movie - Worldwide”. I leave you, constant reader figure out how true their claims are.

In other news, Omen is being remade. I’m a big fan of good horror movies. I really liked the Omen as there is no blood and gore in the movie and there is a gradual escalation of terror throughout the movie. Awesome it was. Well, let us see what they do with the remake. I am scared..very scared

That’s all from me for now. Later all!