Heroes Season 3 last episode review, Heroes season 4 Fugitives talk

Season 3 Last episode review:

Not even close to what the season was building upto. Just before the last episode when they killed Peter's father, it was all looking like the story is just building, there's a lot more to come and all.....And then suddenly you see that Arthur Petroli is killed and it then dawns on you that the season ending is near by.

Useless story build up at the start, dragging illogically through out the season and then a very hasty end, that's what Heroes season 3 was for me. The primary aim of the season was to demarcate between two groups "The Good" and "The Evil". The writers got so caught up with that, that I am sure not even one single person watching the show would be aware who were in the good team and who were in the bad.

Season 4 Fugitives Talkback:

Looking at the Season 4 promo, it doesn't seem that's going to be any different. While in Season 3 Nathan was trying to create a force of warriors with special abilities, Heroes season 4 promo showed him complaining to the US President and asking him to shut all guys with special ability in a locker room. Now, when did he go through this mind change?
I'd probably skip season 4.

Ndtv India misreads google!

Was just watching a news story on NDTv India which said that Katrina has now become the highest searched Indian heroine ahead of Bipasha. Well, surely NDTV did not research this well. The name Katrina is getting searched only because of the US hurricane named Katrina. The film actress Katrina Kaif features in search for just 4000 times a month as compared to Bipasha, who continuously gets searched in the range of 28,000 every month. Hope you guys spend sometime on google analytics before showing such a story again.

Top 10 Famous Ugly Buildings & Monuments

Have a look at the Top 10 famous Ugly Buildings & Monuments from across the world!

read more | digg story

Jurassic Park Author Michael Crichton dies

Michael Crichton, 66, a writer and filmmaker whose enormously popular and entertaining novels such as "Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda Strain" explored the limits and consequences of science, and who also created the long-running television medical drama "E.R.," died of cancer Nov. 4 in Los Angeles.

Diwali Accident

Festive Season of Diwali often sees an increase in the number of injuries, and this time around it was me who got injured. On 20th Oct'08, a week before Diwali, I was in my local market. Someone beside the road lighted a diwali firecracker rocket which came zooming towards me and hit me on my left ear. I rushed to the hospital to get all banded up and was giving 5 stitches to stop the bleeding area.
Three days have now passed, I still have the buzzing sound in my ear, doctor says this will remain for another month. I have a small hole in my inner ear membrane and also the nerves behind it are damaged because of the shock.

Stock Market Crash Story Oct'08

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs10.
The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.
The man bought thousands at Rs10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at Rs20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to Rs25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at Rs35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell it to him for Rs50.'
The villagers squeezed up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.
Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!! !

Welcome to the 'Stock' Market!!!!! (Sensex Stands today on loss of 801 points (7%) since yesterday at 10,528)
(by BHARAT T PUNJABI on Oct 10, 2008 07:17 PM (Rediff))

Technologies behind Google ranking

Official Google Blog: Technologies behind Google ranking: "shion line or fo"

Google Page rank 4, wow!

We have been working hard for our travel guide to India, and it was an amazing feeling to see that google has given it a page rank 4. Very unexpected, but pays well for the hard work put into creating it. The site has everything from details on India and its states, to its tourist locations, to detailed road maps with distance calculator, live weather and climate conditions, hotel bookings with amazing discounts, etc.
Some might say, PR is no longer a sure shot tool for google rankings, but I don't care for now. I am way too happy to get the rank 4.

Can Plecos, cat fish live in saltwater marine aquariums

No.

They can only tolerate a very small amount of salt in their water. If you put it in saltwater tanks, it will die within a couple of hours. The salt content in the marine water aquariums, it will slowly burn its gills and dehydrate it by preventing their normal osmotic drinking behavior.

Ramayan on NDtv Imagine & Mahabharat on 9X

I am really amazed at how bad the two epics, Ramayan & Mahabharat look on Ndtv and 9X, resp. The acting is mediocre, the characters all wooden, background music is awful, and the sets are so unreal. There was so much that could have been done with these serials as we now have technology and digital effects to use. If done properly, these serials have the story to surpass any big Hollywood movie or ABC serial as well. The old serials were so good and genuine masterpieces, and if the new one's had taken even half of it, it'd have been worth watching them.
The only thing common in the two serials coming on 9X and Ndtv Imagine is that they have both been made equally pathetic.

quickpwn-gui.exe failed to initialize (Upgrading iphone)

I have been waiting for Zibri's tool to get my iphone upgraded to ver 2 from my current 1.4, howeve since Zibri is ttaking some time, i decided to go with his competitors, the dev team , this time. They recently came out with a windows based GUI to help you jailbreak and activate the iphone ver 2.02. All you need to do is fiirst upgarde your iphone thorugh itunes to ver2.02, then download another copy of the original ver 2.02 (around 240 MB's) and put it in the same folder as dev team's quickpwn tool. Start quickpwn-gui.exe and follow the on screen instructions. If by chance you get an error message saying, quickpwn-gui.exe failed to initialize, don't worry, just upgrade your comp's .net framework to the latest version (version 3).

Also, when it's all done, you'll have a jail broken iphone which you can use to install various applications, but if you are not a legitimate network user, you still won't be able to use the iphone as it's not unlocked. For this what I did was to use QuickPwnRC3, along with bootloaders BL-39 and BL-46. Another 5 min process, and it's all done.

But do it all at your own risk as the software is still in beta mode, and although it worked for me, it does not giv3 any guarantee that it'd work for you as well!

popsloader to play PS1 Games on PSP

Well, I got a few game files of tombraider and when I tried loading them on my custom PSP firmware 4.05, The games did not show. The reason was they were not normal cso or iso files, but EBOOT.PBP files. But searching on google and various forums, I got this solution which works! But make sure you are on a custome M33 firmware or this won't work.

1. Extract yout EBOOT.PBP file into a folder and copy the folder in the /PSP/GAME folder in your PSP.
2. Download popsloader. Search google for it. there are several versions available, so download what's closer to your firmaware version. Like I first downloaded popsloader for M33 3.71, but it did not work, then I downloaded a popsloader version which worked for all 3.xx firmwars, and it worked for me.
4. When you have the popsloader, you'll see that it has a folder named seplugins. Drag this folder to the root of your PSP. DO NOT PUT THIS FOLDER INSIDE ANY OTHER FOLDER ON YOUR PSP.
5. Now reboot your PSP is recovery mode It's very simple. Just close your PSP and hold the right button while starting the PSP.
6. When inside the recovery mode, choose the plugins option and activate popsloader.prx option using the X button on your PSP.
7. That's it. Now goto your games menu , scroll down to your game and play!
Try different versions of popsloader if it does not work for you!

The three mistakes of my Life

Just finished reading the book and must say the book is predictable that you know for sure what's coming up next! But wait, do not take this against the book. It's actually the best compliment you can give to the writer. The characters in the book are so well developed and created so real to life, that you can easily relate to them. Few chapters in the book, and you know that the central character Govind and his friends Ish and Omi are thinking exactly like you and your friends do. So, while you know what's going to happen next, you also feel satisfied because you thought correct.

The only drawback that the book has is that all major incidents happenes by chance, like the earthquake comes during the exact time when Govind books his store space, or Omi's brother dies in the same Godhra incident where so many people were affected. Also, the third mistake is considered as Govind's inability to prevent harm to Ali's hand, while in my opinion the third mistake had to be the circumstances created leading to the death of Omi. It could even have been Govind calling Omi to the fateful place on the night of the riots. Loosing Omi, a great friend, is far bigger a loss than hurting Ali's hand.

In ways more than one, I feel Govind's story similar to me.All these apply to Govind and me: I am the one came up with the business idea and got two of my friends involved, I am the one who comes up with the money making ideas and believes it's my duty to get things going well for my friends. I also met a foreign friend online and now our relation is so strong that he is inviting us over to his country, Spain, just as Govind and his friends go over to Australia. I also took wrong decisions because of which we lost money in business, like booking a wrong store place, trusting a wrong person and buying 2nd hand furniture, etc.

Overall, the book is good and gives immense satisfaction to read. The end is very fast and you are left wanting to know more about what would have happened next....Probably a part II of this will come out!

The mummy tomb of the dragon emperor

The first reaction which you get once the movie is over is Wow! What a total waste of something which could have been made so good. The new movie has absolutely nothing in it, no scary moments, animations are shoddy, actors have no expressions, the storyline is non existent and the comic part, which used to be integral part of the mummy series, is no where. If you remove Brandon Fraser from the movie, one would think it's a B or C grade Hollywood flick.

Don't know why Brendon Fraser and Jet Li decided to do this movie? Money might be the only reason as I am sure they'd have seen the movie is going no where. Jet Li has just got a bit role to play, as in most of the scenes he's the animated rock bodied mummy. One of the major let downs is the acting by Brandon's on screen son and his new actress wife, yes, the old charming Rachel Weisz has been replaced by someone called Maria Bello (the one in the World Trade Center movie of 2006) as Brendon (O'connell's) wife. This just adds to the woes though, because one does miss the charm of Rachel Weisz. Anyways if she was to be replaced, why did you had to bring her back from the dead in the end of mummy 2 ? O'connell's son is played by Luke Ford who more than to the frill factor, adds to being irritating with his bad acting. What irritates more is that in the first half the movie focuses more on him and not Brendon.

The movie could have been made so good, because the story was there, the actors were there( I mean if they included Rachel Wiesz as well), and the audience expectations were there. Just that it was never allowed to develop properly. Movie moves in two parts, you just get a rush of action for 10 min and then another 20 min, it goes all very slow, then again 10 min of fast action and then 20 min very slow and it goes on and on and on.

At the near end of movie, O'Connell's wife asks Brendon , " Did you regret anything?". Well, my answer is , yes, I regret wasting my money, my friday night's around 2 hrs and above all I regret seeing a movie from the Mummy series, which I used to love immensely, fall so bad.

(Note: for all Delhi and NCR people, do not visit the Imax Theater in Pacific mall ghaziabad for night shows, the ticket rates are around 20 % more, they did not put the air conditioning on for around 20 min, there were huge cuts in the movie length(which they did in almost all night shows I have been there) and in the middle of the movie for around 15 min, the sound became squeaky, audience shouted but no one cared)

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Puffer Fish: my first you tube video upload!

My cute little puffer fish became my first you tube video upload. I used my iphone's trial video recorder software to make a 30 sec clip, and uploaded it directly from the iphone to youtube.

Here's the video :

Congress led UPA wins trust vote, but who cares!

Another farce of trust vote just got over. Congress and the ruling UPA coalition won the trust vote with a count of 275 votes to 256 votes to opposition. But does it really mattered who won to us common Indian people? Indian politics has become so dirty and shabby that one would have been happier if both the sides were thrown away from forming the governement.

In the ruling coalition, if you have people like Mulayam Singh yadav, Amar Singh (both of whom incidentally were very much opposed to the congress just a few months back, but suddenly came running to the doorsteps of the Gandhis on once call), Congress and the whole wild bunch of tainted ministers and criminals, on the other hand you have Mayawati (who has numerous cases against her, whose worth grew from a simple village girl to that of 55 crore or something), BJP and another bunch of tainted ministers and criminals, Indian people are left with very little of a choice.

Who cares who won the trust vote today, it's us Indians who really lost it. Everyone knows the horse trading that went through, the amount of black money that was exchanged, the huge amount of money we pay in taxes wasted, but then who cares. We Indians love to elect such people in every election and this is why nothing is going to ever change in India. These politicians will keep playing their dirty games and making money, and we Indians will keep dancing to their bloody tunes.

Rubik's cube simplest solution!

(Taken from http://peter.stillhq.com/jasmine/rubikscubesolution.html and http://www.tj9991.com/rubiksguide/)

Terminology When describing the solution for the 2nd and 3rd layers, standard cube notation will be used. Here's what you need to know to read it: F = front face B = back face R = right face L = left face U = up face D = down face In addition to a letter, each move may be accompanied by an apostrophe or the number two: A letter by itself means turn that face 90 degrees clockwise (eg. F). A letter followed by an apostrophe means turn that face 90 degrees anti-clockwise (eg. F'). A letter followed by the number 2 means turn that face 180 degrees (direction is irrelevant), (eg. F2). So R U' L2 is shorthand for "turn the right face 90 degrees clockwise, then turn the up face 90 degrees anti-clockwise, then turn the left face 180 degrees". When thinking whether to turn clockwise/anti-clockwise, imagine that you are looking directly at the particular face you are turning. The First Layer Step 1 The blue/red/white corner is sitting in the bottom layer (the blue part is facing the bottom so we can't see it in this picture). Turn the blue face 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Step 2 Now your cube should look like this. Move the D face 90 degrees anti-clockwise to line up the blue/white edge with the blue/white/red corner. Step 3 Now that the blue/white edge and the blue/white/red corner have been lined up, re-form the white cross by turning the blue face 90 degrees clockwise. Step 4 Now the blue/white/red corner is in its correct place. Here are some tips for inserting the top layer corners: Start with a first layer corner that is sitting in the last layer. If there are multiple first layer corners in the last layer (there usually will be), start with one that does not have the white part of the corner on the face opposite the white face. Or, if you were using a different colour for the cross ('colour X'), start with a corner that does not have the 'colour X' part of the corner on the face opposite the 'colour X' face. When working with a first layer corner piece that is in the first layer (but in the wrong first layer corner position), you will need to get it out of the first layer into the last layer, then insert it into the correct first layer corner position. The same principle applies if a first layer corner piece is in the correct first layer corner position but needs to be flipped around. You need to get it out of the first layer (ie. into the last layer), and then re-insert it into the first layer the correct way around. This is what the first layer should look like when finished. The Middle Layer The middle layer consists of one stage: Insert the 4 middle layer edges (each edge is inserted individually). You only need to learn one algorithm (plus the mirror algorithm) for the second layer. There are many more algs, but let's just learn the essential one first. First, locate a middle layer edge that is currently sitting in the last layer. I'm going to use the blue/red edge for this example. This blue edge cubie in the last layer is the blue/red edge cubie. In this picture, U=white, L=red and F=blue. We can't see the other three faces, but obviously the R face is the one opposite the L face, the D face is opposite the U face and the B face is opposite the F face. Now, position the blue/red edge piece so that the colour on the side of the cube (blue in this case) lines up with it's centre. Now perform the following algorithm: D L D' L' D' F' D F If the blue/red edge piece was flipped the other way so that the blue was on the bottom rather than the red, you would position the cubie under the red centre and perform the following alg: D' F' D F D L D' L'. This is the mirror of the previous algorithm. The axis of symmetry lies diagonally across the white face, and along the line which divides the blue face and the red face. The Last Layer The last layer ("LL") is done in 4 steps: Orient the edges (2 algs) - i.e. form a cross on the D face. Permute the corners (1 alg) - i.e. get the corners in the correct position in 3D space (don't worry if they still need to be rotated). Orient the corners (1 alg + mirror alg) - i.e. flip the corners. Permute the edges (1 alg) - i.e. swap the edges around. The cube should now be solved! :) All last layer algorithms are performed with the cross (i.e. the first layer - white side in this example) on the bottom. Orienting the LL Edges Once you have completed the first two layers ("F2L"), hold the cube so that the white side is on the bottom. The white side will be on the bottom for the remainder of the solution. This means that the white side is the D side for all last layer algorithms. On my cube, white is opposite yellow, therefore yellow is the U face for all last layer algorithms on my cube. Note that your cube may have a different colour opposite white (e.g. blue). Now have a look at your last layer, and in particular, look at the last layer face - there are 4 possible patterns of LL edges that you may see. State 1 State 2 State 3 State 4 Unlike with the initial cross (where all the edges must match up with the white centre and with the centres on the middle layer), here all you need to worry about is getting all the last layer edges matching up with the last layer centre. It doesn't matter if the other colour on the LL edge piece does not match up with the colour on the middle layer centre. Also, ignore the LL corners too. It doesn't matter what they are doing at the moment. Now, let's consider each of these LL edge states separately. State 1 All the edges are already oriented correctly. Move on to permuting the corners. State 2 We are going to re-orient our faces for this algorithm. The face you are looking directly at in this picture is now the U face (it was the D face for when you were doing the second layer edges). Perform the following algorithm: F U R U' R' F' State 3 As with State 2, the face you are looking directly at in this picture is now the U face. Perform the following algorithm: F R U R' U' F' State 4 State 4 is really a combination of States 2 and 3, so all you need to do is perform the algorithm for either State 2 or State 3. Once you've done this, you'll see that your LL edges now look like State 2 or State 3, so just perform the appropriate algorithm and you will have a cross on the LL. Orienting the LL Corners There are 8 possible orientation states for the LL corners. One is where all 4 corners are correctly oriented. The other 7 look like this. State 1 State 2 State 3 State 4 State 5 State 6 State 7 State 1. Twisting three corners anti-clockwise R' U' R U' R' U2 R U2 State 2. Twisting three corners clockwise R U R' U R U2 R' U2 To see an animated version of this algorithm, look at Lars Petrus' Sune algorithm. States 3-7 Once you know the algorithms for States 1 and 2, you can solve any LL orientation State. The remaining States can be oriented using a maximum of 2 algorithms. You will need to do one of the following (i) the State 1 algorithm twice, (ii) the State 2 algorithm twice, (iii) the State 1 algorithm, then the State 2 algorithm, or (iv) the State 2 algorithm, then the State 1 algorithm. In a previous edition of this solution, I had said that I'm not going to tell you exactly how to combine the State 1 and State 2 algorithms to solve States 3-7. My reason for this was because it is important that you try to understand how the State 1 and the State 2 algorithms work, and that once you do understand them you will be able to work out how to use them to solve all the States. I still believe this, however, I received emails from a few people who were having trouble with States 3-7, so I decided to write some extra tips. Permuting the LL Corners The two possible states are: two adjacent LL corners need to be swapped; or two diagonal LL corners need to be swapped. These are the only two possible states. If you cannot identify one of these two states with your LL corners then one or more of the following must be true: You have not finished the F2L. Someone has ripped out a corner of your cube and put it in the wrong way. Someone has ripped off some of your stickers and put them back in the wrong place. You are not looking hard enough. ;) Swapping adjacent corners Hold the cube with the white side on the bottom, and the two corners to be swapped are in the front right top and the back right top positions. Perform the following algorithm: L U' R' U L' U' R U2. Swapping diagonal corners Swapping diagonal corners can be done by executing the adjacent corner swap algorithm twice. Perform it once to swap any two LL corners. Re-examine you cube and you'll see that now there are just two LL corners that need to be swapped. Position it correctly for the final LL adjacent corner swap and perform the LL adjacent corner swap algorithm. Permuting the Edges The following are the two algorithms you need to know for moving three edges clockwise and counter clockwise.       (R2' U)(R U R' U')(R' U')(R' U R')       (R U')(R U)(R U)(R U')(R' U' R2)   Nutshell : Step 1. Complete one side for any colour Step 2. Go for te middle line colour allignment using D L D' L' D' F' D F or D' F' D F D L D' L' Step 3. Arrange the center pieces of the layer opposite the completed layer using F U R U' R' F' or F R U R' U' F' Step 4. Arange the corners of this layer using R' U' R U' R' U2 R U2 or R U R' U R U2 R' U2 Step 5. If the corners in the last layer need to be aligned, use L U' R' U L' U' R U2 Step 6. Surely just the center pieces now need to be arranged in last layer using R2' U R U R' U' R' U' R' U R' or R U' R U R U R U' R' U' R2

(Taken from http://peter.stillhq.com/jasmine/rubikscubesolution.html and http://www.tj9991.com/rubiksguide/)

Jaane tu ya Jaane na review

Well, jaane tu ya Jaane na why, but this movie rocks, at least for the time that you are watching it. Only when the movie gets over, and you are back home or probably the next day morning while having tea, you understand that there was nothing new in the movie, no storyline, the theme was very predictable and you have seen it all a thousand times before in other movies.

But frankly speaking, all that's besides the point. The bottom line is the movie is a must watch, if not for the story, then for the performances. The friend circle of the lead actors makes the picture lively and fun to watch. All of them have been well cast and play their part to the best. The flash back story telling thing has never been such fun to watch before. The lead actor Imran Khan as Jai Singh Rathore is extremely impressive and his dialogue delivery and expressions are perfect to suit the movie demands. His dancing skills are limited as can be viewed in steps for the song "Pappu can't dance, saala" but then who cares as long as he acts well. Genelia D'Souza as Aditi also gives a stellar performance and it is actually she who keeps you hooked onto the movie. Her voice is just lovely and facial expressions cute. You really do know what's going to happen next as the story line is predictable, but the way it comes out on screen, makes you feel good about it.

The storyline is pretty straight. Boy and girl are good friends and not good lovers, until the boy gets a girlfriend and the girl gets a boyfriend, and then the realization dawns that "pyaar dosti hai, rahul!" . We have seen it all in so many movies like dil to pagal hai, kooch kooch hota hai, and several more, but the way the movie unfolds, it's still good enough to watch.

It's probably the first movie where I liked the duo of Sohail and Arbaaz khan, their on-screen time, although very limited, adds to the fun factor and Ratna Pathak with Naseeruddin Shah give another good performance. The director has to be credited for bringing the best out of each actor and making the repeated formula line of "pyaar dosti hai, rahul" an enjoyable experience to watch. A R Rahman's music and back ground score is just another of the reasons as to why you need to watch this movie at least once .

Numa Numa Cult

The numa numa sensation started in Nov'2004. It was originally a flash animation video created by me, Gary Brolsma and was submitted to a online website called Newgrounds.com on December 2004. Moving forward two years later to September of 2006, the original Numa Numa Dance video has hit over 13 million views on Newgrounds.com alone, not to mention the other countless number of websites that it is now hosted on. It's been featured in multiple newspapers, television, radio, ABC Good Morning America, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, and even VH1's Best Week Ever.

The phrase Numa Numa is from a refrain of "Dragostea din tei" a song written by the Moldovian pop band, O-zone. The refrain, "nu mă, nu mă iei", can be approximately translated from Romanian as "you don't, you don't take me [with you]." As mentioned above, the Numa Numa phenomenon was first popularized by Gary Brolsma's release of Numa Numa Dance onto Newgrounds.com on December 6, 2004.[2] The video shows a kid (Gary Brolsma) in headphones lipsyncing to the audio of the original O-zone track whilst moving his head, shoulders and arms and gesturing to the music in an animated, yet earnest manner. A viewer would assume that the man was sitting at his computer filming himself with a webcam, which thus provides a tightly restricted frame of action giving the video and its genre a visually distinct character.



"New Numa" or "Numa Numa 2" is the sequel to the "Numa Numa Dance". The second video was recorded and produced by Gary Voelker and Andrew Lee of Seattle-based Experience Studios.



On November 14, 2007, Gary Brolsma posted his latest video, Numa Three - Crazy loop. It showed Brolsma lip-syncing to one of Dan Bălan's latest songs, Crazy Loop.

I did enjoy the numa numa guy's first video, but his recent one's are a disappointment. But still, as long as numa numa is there to be seen, who cares about the other videos. And apart from himself getting hugely rich and popular, I have heard that the numa numa guy is sponsoring a numa numa contest to the tune of $45,000. Amazing, isn't it!

Victory for people, shame to Tatasky

[QUOTE=Sirx Blue;8184607]NEW DELHI: ESPN-Star India has won its first legal battle against Tata Sky. The DTH service provider has assured the Delhi High Court that it will restore ESPN-Star’s sports bouquet on its platform in a phased manner in the next 12 days.

As per ESPN Software India counsel Nanji Ganpathy, the commercial agreement between the DTH provider and the sports broadcaster expired on March 15. Following this, Tata Sky had moved to TDSAT, which directed ESPN-Star not to disconnect its signals from the platform.

This then resulted in ESPN Software India filing a petition in the Delhi HC on May 26, which said that till TDSAT disposes the case, ESPN should not disconnect its channels on Tata Sky.

“However, Tata Sky removed the three channels from its platform and informed subscribers that they were free to opt for the three channels of ESPN,” said Mr Ganpathy. He added that ESPN filed a contempt petition before the Delhi HC.

The court said that the latter appeared to have violated the court’s orders. “Tata Sky’s counsel informed the court that the company would start restoring the three ESPN channels in a phased manner in the next 12 days,” said Mr Ganpathy. Tata Sky MD Vikram Kaushik said that he was not aware about the day’s proceeding.[/QUOTE]


I feel so good.
Wondering what's going to happen for the days they already deducted my money as I had to subscribe to these packages on the 1st.

Star's newspaper article against tatasky

I am glad star came out with the newspaper article.Proves my point that Tatasky is really duping people.

Tata Sky's new packages no Jingalala!

This probably had to happen some day. Tatasky comes up with its new packages starting today, 1st of june'2008. Cleverly disguised and segregated packages to make you spend much much more than your normal monthly package.

The tag line for tatasky says "Monthly Subscription Prices Reduced".In reality, the prices gets increased by almost 20%. Consider this :

1. The new Super Saver Pack which earlier used to be Rs. 300 has now been reduced to Rs 260 per month. But consider the channels it drops : almost all sports channels, except of course DD Sports and BBC channels.

2. Now here's the catch . The sports channels it dropped are certain to be addd by almost everyone having tatasky. With so much cricket and Euro 2008 coming up, no one's going to miss on the sports channels. So you go ahead and get your self "Sports Platinum Pack, which has been priced at Rs. 40 per month. So Rs. 260 and Rs. 40 = Rs. 300 and you are back to your earlier monthly price.

3. But wait, that's not all. The sports package , quite absurdly, leaves out Ten Sports. So all you WWE fans and fans of Spanish football and all, will have to go ahead and get this package as well.The package is priced Rs. 15 per month, so you now pay Rs. 15 more than what you used to.

4. This still leaves out your BBC channels. Now I am not sure how many of you really watch BBC, but I do. BBC Entertainment serials like My family, My Hero, Keeping up Apperances, Hustle, Doctor Who are all my must watch serials. Then BBC news is probably the only source for quality news for me because these days all Indian news channels believe Raju Srivastava's comedy and news on serials are the best news one has got to see. So , here I go ahead and book this package as well, which is now priced at Rs. 30 per month. So monthly billing now goes to Rs. 345.

5. Also consider the fact that I have already subscribed to Sports Gold Pack (only the Neo Channels there) at Rs. 30 per month because most of the cricket matches played in India comes on it, my monthly outing will now be Rs. 375.

This certainly does not make me go Jingalala. A Rs. 75 increase in my budget per month, makes me really miss my old cable wallah, which just kept showing all new channles without ever increasing the monthly price. And to think , that even after paying that high a monthly rent, I'd be still missing a whole bunch of channels like Bindass, 9X, Zoom, NDTV Imagine, World Movies, etc, because you guessed it right, this package "Lifestyle Gold Pack" costs Rs. 30 per month as well.

If this continues, I am sure we'll soon be getting a Star plus package, a sony package, a zee package and so on .... all in the name of giving you choices to pick your monthly spending, all the while creating a big hole in your pocket.

My iphone

I was desperate to get an iphone ever since I first saw it in the Palika bazar, but the uncertainty of its working in India stopped me from buying it. But as a marriage present , my brother got it for me while coming from US. as soon as I was free from marriage chores, I set down searching google for the unlock methods. Was glad to find that there's a software called ziphone (ver3.0) which automatically does it.Took me 5 min or so and the phone was unlocked and I am now using it with my vodafone sim card. The phone is really wonderful and I must say the real fun of using it is only when you have a good EDGE connection or wi-fi network.

Xoom.com

A few months back I was a worried man. Living in India, I had no other option of receiving money directly from Paypal to my bank account. Searching Google and a lot other forums finally led me to xoom.com. It's a really nice service ,which for a nominal fee, transfers money from paypal directly to the bank account. It also has got a good customer support as most of the times they are able to solve my queries.

10,000 B.C. Movie Review

Here's the first day first show review for the movie :

I probably saw the trailer for the movie in Dec'2007 and had my mind set on watching it first day first show since then. I imagined a movie based in 10,000 B.C. with lots of fights and high quality graphics . The movie that I saw today was disappointing-to say the least.It's not even within a 1000 km's of what I imagined.The director went through LOTR, The Matrix, 300, Apocalypto Now and several other movies and decided to make one single film out of it.

The story starts with a civilization living in some snowy mountains.Oh well, actually the story starts with a narrator's voice which is so gloomy and bad that you'd soon start to feel that this is not the movie you imagined. Ok, so back to the story. This civilization has a nanny , like the Oracle from Matrix movies, who can see the future . See sees four legged demons coming to destroy the village, and when they really come, I thought here we go with the excitement. I wondered if next we'd see some real demons or probably even the saber tooth tigers shown on the posters for the movie. The excitement was short lived as soon you get to know that the demons are nothing , but normal men on horses . For almost half the movie you don't know why did they attack the civilization and took about 15 of the helpless people, including the heroes love, as prisoners.The only thing worth seeing in this movie comes in this first half when the men chase several mammoths.But then , that's it.

The middle of the movie shows you the chase by the hero to get his love back. The punch line for the movie says " It takes a Hero to change the world ". God knows which world the hero was trying to save , as through out the movie the only thing the hero seemed interested in was getting back his love. The middle portion does give you an ostrich type bird attacking the hero's group scene and all, but the director fails to provide any excitement. The widely publicized scene of the Saber toothed tiger with the hero was a damp squib as they don't fight but make friends. Even the animation for the tiger was very unreal and coming from the people who made Independence Day, this was a huge letdown. Then come s the interval and one feels that probably the director has the best hidden for the end.

The end shows you a scene straight out of LOTR finale. Only that it was no where as magnificent as the original. We do get to hear the bad guy finally who's almost 8 feet's tall and one gets the feeling that the end can be an interesting one. What happens in the end is as mediocre as the entire film. The Hero picks up his spear and launches it at the big baddy, the spear goes through the bad guy's body and the bad guy's dead. No fight, no special effects, just dead. It was at this point that I wanted to scream and shout and say why did the director choose those magnificent scenes for the trailers, why did he not portray what the movie actually was . Probably like me, he too never understood what the movie was actually for!

While coming out of the theater, one of my friends said it'd be nice to see a scary movie type spoof of this movie, and I just wondered if this wasn't already a spoof movie on LOTR, Matrix, 300 and others. Better watch the trailers 20 times, you'd still feel happier!

GTA San Andreas!

I was waiting to play this game for so long and after a painfully long install,when I ran it on shitty Vista, I got a blank screen after the loading screen and in came the error "GTA_SA.exe has stopped working". It was so frustrating and I spent like two days finding a solution.
Well the solution is fairly easy though. When I installed GTA, it got installed in the third folder ...meaning folder inside a folder inside a folder and then inside the GTA folder. So solution is just to copy the actual game folder from that location to your windows drive/program files folder and it'll start working.