Archive for February, 2006
Imagine you and Me
This british comedy really had me stumped. It’s sort of funny but it has an ending that would leave any straight guy thinking, “WTF just happened ?“. In all the romantic comedies that I have watched till date, the happy ending has been the couple getting together and living a happy life together. It happens here also, just that the couple is a lesbian pair. Just something that I didn’t expect to see happening.
It’s funny at times, but gave me a big jolt at the end. Can be avoided. I give it 5.5/10.
The Monk who sold his Ferrari
I have started reading this book and have finished just about the first quater, but still haven’t found what was there in this book that has propelled it to such heights. I really don’t like the author’s style of writing and he talks of the whole thing in such a unbelievable way. It’s books like these that get India the tags like “the misterious land of yogis“.
Anyways, I don’t like it, but I will go thru it. Maybe something better would come up in the later chapters. This book comes highly reccommended so have to finish it and see what is it all about.
Danish Cartoons Dispute
I have been reading about these wide spread protests all over the world over some cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. I saw them and even though they are not in good taste, I don’t understand why is there so much unrest over it. I am sure if Hindu Gods were ridiculed in such a way, you wont get to see so much protest even across India, let alone the world. It’s not that hindus dont care, I just feel that, if I may say, hindus are more chilled out. Of course there are the likes of RSS, VHP et al., but these are people I would rather have India disown.
One would never see such things in US. There are cartoons shows like Family Guy, South Park that do nothing but ridicule the American society and the americans love it.
I just hope this whole thing gets settled down soon.. I don’t want to hear about people being killed over cartoons.
Wirefly
I had been thinking of getting a new cellphone as my 1 year contract with T-Mobile is over. As much as I would like to stay with T-Mobile, I can’t as then I would have to pay a lot to get a new cellphone. Apparently, all rebates are refused, if you are getting a new line and getting the old one disconnected.
My only option now is to shift to Cingular and get this number ported over to their service. From what I have heard, Amazon doesn’t really help in this department, and I was told about Wirefly.com.
I tried getting in touch with someone over there and for that I needed their Toll Free number. Apparently, they too have a poor CSR service, so they have all the information online and have tried to hide the CSR contact numbers in some obscure place.
So I googled it and found them in a post on ZdNet by some wirefly customer. The numbers are:
Sales: 1–800–300–7066
Support: 1–888–466–5651
Just for my future reference and might come in handy for someone else as well.
Rent
A really good movie based on a musical by the same name. It’s a story of the lives of 8 friends in NYC. It’s got really good music all through out the movie. It’s exciting, emotional and inspiring. It shows how these friends are there for each other in their times of need and how they together face the struggles in life.
I especially liked this movie because I cant remember the last movie that I saw that had almost all the dialogue sequences as songs.
I give it 7.5/10.
Munich
Another classic from Steven Spielberg. A really good movie with excellent performances and beautiful direction. I love the way in which the story has been handled. Even though Minuch Massacre is an old subject now, I am sure it is still an important period in Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The story starts from the killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes and tells the story of how a team is organized to avenge the killings and teach the terrorists a lesson. The movie then goes on to show how these terrorists are killed and the repercussion of these killings.
The way the actual footage from that period is used in the movie is really magnificent… you almost get transformed into that period.
The movie in essence shows that violence leads to nothing. Killing will only bring more deaths and will never end. You can read more about Munich Massacre here.
As I said before, I loved this movie… it’s a must watch.. I give it 8.5/10.
Yahoo! Mail Beta
I had read about Yahoo! Mail Beta in PC Magzine about 3-4 months back and had gone online and apped there to be able to use it. I am not much of a beta tester.. I just wanted to have a look at it. Well, finally yesterday I logged into my Yahoo! Mail and I was asked if I would like to try out the beta..
It’s a lot different than any other e-mail service online and is mostly like a desktop email client (like Thunderbird). Here’s an image of the Yahoo Mail Beta’s interface.

The blog has moved
Finally I found the time (and more importantly the will) to move this blog… I was updating the blog version to v2.0.1 and thought that I may as well move the blog. Had been planning to do it for ages now and finally got down to doing it today. So now instead of accessing my blog thru the URL http://www.nalinmakar.com, one just has to goto the root URL i.e. http://nalinmakar.com.
I plan to use this blog itself to manage all my information. How will it all work out is something that I havent thought of till now.
WordPress 2.0.1 released
Well… in less than a month, I have upgraded my blog again. The current version is v2.0.1 and there has been a lot of work put into it. Apparently 114 bugs have been fixed. You can get to know more about it here.
I had issues posting with the WYSIWYG editor before. The post wouldn’t show up on the blog and ruin the whole structure. I am giving it a go again. Hopefully that is a bug that has been resolved..
Nalin and Friends goto NYC
Yup.. went there last weekend for a couple of days. It was good amount of fun but at the very same time very tiring. I slept the whole day when I came back to Chicago. We went and checked out quite a few places… Statue of Liberty, Staten Island Ferry, Brooklyn Bridge, WTC site, Time Square, Grand Central, Madam Tussads, Rockefeller, etc etc… There was a lot of walking involved and by the end of the day the only thing I could feel was pain in my feet… but “kutch paane ke liye kutch dena bhi padta hai”.. I stayed there at Surabhi’s place and she was nice enough not to complain about how late in the night we would get back from or NYC exploration. NYC.. is a lot like Chicago… I feel Chicago is better… much more cleaner and much more friendly people. People here smile at you for no reason at all… and also there are garbage bins at every corner… these are two things I missed the most in NYC. One thing is for sure… NYC has a much better transit system.. it’s very well connected… I feel the best place I went to was Time Square. It’s so bright, lively and colourful. Initially I thought that it was a bit too crowded, but later in the night (when there were only a few ppl on roads), I realized that the crowd also adds a charm to that place. I went there on both the days and just roamed around and clicked a lot of pictures. P.S. One thing that saved us a lot of money was to goto Mac Arthur Islip Airport in Long Island. It’s about 1hr and 25min ride from Manhattan, but these 3hrs extra spent in commuting can save you big bucks..
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