Tagged: gradlife

Happening day


//sigh//

Here I am, faced with a deadline for thursday while our network has crashed and I’m unable to do any work. Now if even God is against me, then how can I get any work done? Anyways, I thought I’ll make use of this time to round up today’s news. Not even half the day is over and its turning out to be a real happening day already.

First [[http://ibm.com/|IBM]] made its Java based database Cloudscape open source, and turned it over to the Apache foundation (more [[http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040803-4063.html|here]] and [[http://apache.slashdot.org/apache/04/08/03/1212255.shtml?tid=136&tid=148&tid=198&tid=108|here]]).

Then Real released Real Player 10 for Linux, now completely GPLd and based on the open source Helix Player ([[http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/04/08/03/155212.shtml?tid=141&tid=162&tid=218&tid=106|Slashdot story here]]). Intel also released new chips today, most notably the 64 bit Xeon processors (read more [[http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/03/185238|here]] and [[http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040802-4061.html|here]]).

Finally, I came across a very interesting article on Rediff. An Indian scientist working at BARC claims to have disproved Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes, and infact, it seems that since this guys paper, Stephen Hawking has been gradually changing his stand and subtly changing his theory to bring them in line with the results proposed by this fellow at BARC, Abhas Mitra. Read more [[http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/dec/22barc.htm|here]])

Much needed break


After the paper deadline monday night, I took a much needed break yesterday. Not that I completely wiled away my time, but I relaxed a hell lot. Woke up late in the morning, then went for a haircut in the lazy summer afteroon. Came back and caught up with my reading (The hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy).

{{ http://www.cinedrome.ch/lakshya/images/LakshyaPH.jpg?200×150|Lakshya}}
Then had a wonderful afternoon nap. And to top it off, we saw Lakshya last night. The movie was pretty good actually. I loved the background score and all the cinematography, but I wished I had a larger screen and a better print. Although the movie lost and gained momentum at several places in the movie, so it lost much of the effect that it could potentially have haved. The screenplay was flawed at several places, but I think overall the movie was done nicely.

Of course, DCH’s reputation and Hrithik/Preity paired up have provided enough push to soar this movie through the box office. Asim and PSD are planning to come over for the 4th July weekend, so we’re planning to go to Sea World and even camp out for one night somewhere. So I’m also trying to chalk out those plans.

Dinner with Greeks


Its a bit late for this post, but whatever.

Ragesh and I had been thinking about calling over some of our Greek friends for an indian dinner at our place for quite a while now. Actually Kostas, Yannis and Periklis have already invited us twice, and we had promised them that a dinner would soon be held at our place. That was like a quarter back, and so it was kind of embarassing. Part of the delay was the fact that our house never seemed to be in a hospitable shape. Another reason was that I was not very sure if all my room mates would be okay with such a dinner.

After the quarter got ever, we really didn’t have an excuse coz we had ample time to clean up the house and sort things out. So finally Ragesh gave out the invitations for Tuesday night. I had a paper deadline coming up, and Manish and Mac were both busy with some of their stuff, so despite the summers it looked as if the dinner was a mistake and would end up in a miserable disaster.

We had chalked out an ambitious menu — poori, chhole, dal makhani, kheer, raita, pulao — the works. However, till tuesday evening it wasn’t even clear who was going to do the groceries, who was getting the drinks and who was cooking what! And most importantly, the house wasn’t ready either. I came back at around 6 pm on Tuesday, the invitation was for 9. After that it was just a race against time!

But it was fun! Ragesh cleaned up the kitchen while I arranged the living room and cleaned out a whole lot of trash. Then I made chhole and dal makhani, while Ragesh cooked Pulao. I made the dough for the poori, Ragesh rolled them and I fried them. We took off kheer because of lack of time, but we still managed to get the Raita in place.

In the end, it didn’t turn out to be bad at all. Infact, the guys loved the food and I was really glad to see that we almost ran out of food that day! :D We had some wine and apple juice for drinks. But the really interesting part was that we ended up watching “monsoon wedding” with the greeks! Dubey ji totally impressed those guys too!! More on the greeks some other time

More movies


So last night we saw another Hitchcock classic — The Rope. Awesome movie, and really well shot. The entire movie takes place in an apartment, and it doesn’t get boring at any point. Hitchcock plays clever camera tricks to make it appear as if the entire movie was shot in a single cut.

Anish says that it was shot in 10 minute cuts at clever places (like zoom into a guys back and them zoom out in the next cut). Absolutely marvellous performances by everyone. And I guess the gentlement of those times really had a charm that I certainly lack.

Today afternoon was a major debugging battle with Kashi, which we finally cracked after wasting a lot of time. I really hate Perl!!! Then I happened to take a look at the web page for CSE168 (its a rendering class) and they had the results of the final class projects up on the web page. And I was like, what a time waste we systems people do man! Vision and Graphics people always have this edge — they always have such cool demos!

Tonight we watched Yuva. Really impressive. Directed by Maniratnam and a sparkling cast — Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachhan, Om Puri and Vivek Oberoi. Not to mention Rani Mukherjee, Isha Deol and Karina Kapoor. For the first time I really appreciated Abhishek Bachhan’s acting. Maniratnam has really brought out this guy’s talent, and I guess the role really suited him and he carried it out quite well. Ajay Devgan was fabulous as always. Though Karina’s and Vivek’s characters were quite unnecessary and might have been just as easily eliminated. Karina’s definitely. She looks like such a w___e in the movie!

Next movie to watch out for is Girlfriend. Whats happening to Indian cinema!

First monday of summers


Today was the first monday of the summers. Its a weird feeling. Its summer. You’re supposed to be doing things that you “like” doing during summers, right? Now you like your research stuff. But thats “work” right? So how does research go during summers? Kinda weird I guess

Anyways, it wasn’t so bad. The campus was awefully empty today since all the undergrads have just vanished.

I’ve been watching a movie a day since friday, lets see for how long I can keep that up. I saw “Hum Tum” on Friday night and really liked it. The movie started of awkwardly with the direction a bit jerky. But it picked up really well as it went along, and by the end it came out really nice. It was fresh and both Rani and Saif have done a good job.

Then on Saturday night we saw “The Shining”. A Stanley Kubrick classic, the acting by all cast, Jack Nickolson in particular was amazing. But I didn’t understand the complete plot. Especially that painting in the last shot was supposed to tie some loose ends I guess. But it just created more confusion for me :-D

Last night was “Reserver Dogs”, the original of Kaante by director Quarantin Tarantino. Interestingly, Tarantino himself starrs in the movie, albeit only a cameo appearence. Some scenes are really gory (remember Kill Bill Vol. 1?) but horribly realistic. If you really want to know what happens to a man when he gets shot, you should watch this movie. Again, superb acting by all of the cast.

Finally, tonight I saw “Chronicles of Riddick”. Just one word — “pathetic”. The weird thing is, I still enjoyed the movie. It doesn’t have a gripping story, nor hair raising action. But I think Vin Diesel and the Necromonger babe were really cool, and the effects were awesome. Apart from that, there’s really no USP for the movie. I don’t know why its grossing so much in its first week. And tomorrow, we plan to watch Yuva. What a spree!