Archive for March, 2007

Harry Potter

Just finished reading Harry Potter – The Order of The Phoenix. I have spent the last 2-3 weeks reading the first five novels and now I am going to take a break, cause now it’s starting to get to me… :) I will start reading the sixth novel next weekend….

I didn’t think it would be a lot of fun reading these novels once I had already watched the movies, but I must say I have enjoyed reading all of them. JK Rowling has become one of the richest celebs now because of these novels, and for good reason. These novels are very well written. What I have really liked about them is:

  • There is an increase in complexity as you go from one novel to the other. It’s not like all the adventures are similar. First two novels were meant for kids, but the rest aren’t. Also, the latter novels are a lot more dark and sinister. But what I really liked the most is that there is always a reason or an explanation for everything in the end and everything makes sense.
  • There is a connectivity between all the novels, yet you don’t need to have read one to understand the other. And this connection of events there relevance is quite significant in every novel.
  • Everything has been written as being seen from Harry Potter’s point of view. No wonder it is so easy for one to get into Harry’s character and actually feel what Harry is going thru.

I think another reason that I enjoyed reading these novels more was because I had already watched the movies and I was able to better visualize what was happening. Also, now I have a better understand of the events in each movie because things have been explained in much more details in the novels.

Over all, I would say all these novels are definitely worth a read. Now I see what the Potter Mania is all about :-)

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Shooter

ok… just came back after watching Shooter. Please avoid this movie. The critics had rightly criticized this movie but +70% that viewers at rottentomatos.com gave it, made me think it might just have something good in it. It seems like, directors here are running out of ideas and are now trying to imitate Indian directors in making flicks that make me go… “so like an Indian (Bollywood) movie…”

Mark Wahlberg, could have done much better with this role. He did fit into the character well, but didn’t act good enough. The action sequences at times reminded me of some that you might see in some super hero movies or in Commando. And a very very stupid ending… 4.5/10

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Citibank credit line increase

Sometime back I went to my Citibank credit card’s online site and saw this neat feature. One can request a credit line increase with a click of a button and they get back to you instantly. It’s a feature that you can use once in about six months. Once you get an increase, you can request more incerease, but for that you need to fill up a form. Anyways, for this card, I just got a credit line increase. Here’s a screenshot of the page.

Citibank Credit line increase request

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Commercial

Pregnancy test commercial. Wait for 18 seconds… People make any kind of ads nowadays…

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HemingwayEx 0.95 beta

I have updated HemingwayEx wordpress theme by adding some simple new features. I also made some bug fixes. The best thing about this update is that now users will see a notification of a new version on the HemingwayEx Option page. I really hope that this works. I am not much of a PHP coder… just hacked up what I could by reading Peter Harkins’s code for the wordpress plug-in Sociable.

I also fixed some more CSS issues with the white.css stylesheet. The worst part about styling a theme is making it compatible with different browsers. I must make my displeasure with IE’s handling of CSS very clear here. I have done what I can for now and will keep fixing things as I learn more.

You can download the latest version, 0.95 beta from HemingwayEx homepage.

If you are UPGRADING, you will need to reset/uninstall the previous version of HemingwayEx first as I have moved the blocks around. If you don’t you might find the display mixed up. Here are the steps you should follow:

  1. Goto HemingwayEx Options page and note down you settings.
  2. Now upload the new files for HemingwayEx theme.
  3. Click reset button right at the bottom of the HemingwayEx options page.
  4. Refresh the HemingwayEx Options page and set the options to what they were before.

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